The million-dollar question. “We’re friends.” Or they were.

“Look, this is the cellar of truth, so stop lying to me and yourself. You’ve loved him since we were kids.”

“Fine. I loved him. I still love him. I walked out of the most important pitch meeting of my career because I love him and Marissa, but that doesn’t matter because he doesn’t feel the same way.”

Lia frowned, her head spinning toward her. “Wait. You left the meeting? The one you were preparing for for months?”

Sarah nodded. “Yep. Marissa invited me to the camp’s parents’ day, and there was a scheduling conflict. I basically quit…or I was fired. I don’t know.” The logistics didn’t really matter. She no longer had a job.

“Does Wes know that?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I realized the job no longer made me happy anyway.”

“So what happened?”

Sarah launched into the details of the hacked app and her own failings to keep Marissa protected online.

But Lia shook her head. “That could have happened to any of us. No one’s perfect when it comes to parenting.” She scoffed. “I think you need to talk to him. I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time, and he needs to get out of his own way and give himself another chance at love.”

“No, he’s right. He has to think about Marissa.”

“Marissa adores you. You’d be really good for her. For both of them.”

“You mean all that?” Sarah asked. Lia knew Wes and Marissa so well…if she thought Sarah would be a good fit for the family…then maybe there was some truth to it. But it was hard to get her hopes up when she had no idea where they stood now.

“Like I said—cellar of truth,” Lia reminded her, gesturing to the room around them. She stood and grabbed a bottle of red in one hand, white in the other. “Anyway, back to the wine—red or white? I drink both.”

“Both sounds great,” Sarah said. Maybe the answers she was seeking weren’t at the bottom of an expensive vintage wine bottle, but she had to start looking somewhere, right?

Lia smiled as she rejoined her on the floor. “I think for the first time since second grade, we just agreed on something.”

…

An hour after arriving at the event, Sarah had disappeared. Wes had seen her briefly in the dining room when she’d been setting up the electronics for Lia’s surprise for Malcolm’s family, but then she’d vanished.

He needed to talk to her. They couldn’t just let everything end after one argument. He’d been angry and he’d said things he hadn’t meant. A few days to cool off had him realizing that Marissa was right. He couldn’t protect her from everything, all the time.