Her feelings for Conrad were all over the place. She’d spent so much of her adult life wishing they could be together, knowing they couldn’t, regretting so much of what they’d done—there was too much to unload. Better to leave what they were inside the dump truck parked in her heart.

Conrad climbed the steps to stand beside her, looking down with those pretty brown eyes that had always seen inside her. So familiar, but so far away, because that’s what time did. Time made strangers of even the oldest friends. “Why can’t you let me be close to you again?”

“You know why, Con.”

He reached out and brushed her hair back. “God, Livy, I just want to press rewind and change what happened. That night—”

“Con, I don’t want to talk—”

He pressed a finger over her lips. “No, let me say it. That night was one of the best nights I’ve ever had. I know you don’t believe that, but for the first time in a relationship, I felt like I fit in my skin. All the upheaval with Marley, all the trying to control my life and what she was doing, all that darkness seemed to melt away that night. I couldn’t believe how right you felt in my arms, and the way you looked at me, I saw what my future could be. My best friend had been there all along, and I had been blinded to who I was supposed to be with.”

Her heart thudded hard against her ribs, because that’s exactly the way she’d felt. She’d waited so long for him to see her, to really see her. Once he had, she’d finally felt whole. Finally, he had discovered what she’d known for a long time—they were meant to be.

Of course, she hadn’t known that when he’d phoned her that Saturday evening.

Conrad had said he wanted to talk to her about Marley and what he should do with her sister. Olivia had been so tired of discussing that situation, her first inclination was to tell Conrad she was busy with her thesis. Marley was so many wonderful things, but Olivia’s sister was also a master manipulator, puppeteering her family, her friends, and definitely Conrad, who she pulled to and fro so often the man likely had permanent whiplash. So Olivia had led with “I don’t think—”

“Please, Livy. I just want to be with someone I can talk to tonight. We don’t have to talk about your sister, but I need you.”

Magic words.