She hadn’t wanted to have to wear her brave face every day, and she hadn’t wanted people feeling sorry for her. She’d wanted to start again. She’d wanted to wipe the past where she’d been Joanna-and-Nate and redesign herself as Joanna. She couldn’t imagine how to do that. She hadn’t known how to hear a joke and not laugh with him, how to see something beautiful and not share it with him. He’d been there for every one of the low points in her life, but then he’d become her low point and she’d had to find a way to get through it on her own.

“For me there was no other way. If Cliff hadn’t come along when he did, I would have left, anyway.” And maybe what she’d felt for Cliff wasn’t love in the way she’d known love, but she’d been happier, felt safer, with the simpler friendship she and Cliff shared.

“I’m sorry you felt you needed a new life.” He hesitated. “Joanna—”

“We don’t need to talk about it, Nate.” She turned her head and smiled at him. “It’s all in the past.”

“What if I want to? What if there are things I need to say? Would you listen?”

Would she? There had been a time when she’d dreamed about having the chance to have it out with him. Whitney? Really, Nate? How could she be everything to him one minute and nothing the next? So many questions and no answers, but eventually she’d realized that answers weren’t going to change the facts.

“I don’t see the point. It’s been twenty years.”

“Yes. And some people might decide that’s a long time, too long to worry about what happened. But not me. I promised myself years ago that if I ever got the chance, then I’d say all the things I wished I’d said that night.” Maturity had brought with it a quiet confidence. He was a man who knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to go for it.

Her heart beat a little faster. “Friendships go wrong. It’s a fact of life.”

“We both know that what we had was so much more than friendship. And I wrecked it. That was down to me.”

Twenty years ago she would have agreed, but now she knew life wasn’t so simple.

“People change. Circumstances change. There’s nothing to talk about. You wanted to end it. We didn’t want the same thing, and at the time I struggled with that—” she’d been heartbroken “—but it’s not a crime, Nate. Not loving someone enough isn’t a crime.”