She shrugs. “He’d call my mom after Heath and I had a silly spat and ask if I was around because he was worried about me. She’d have to pry it out of him, but he’d admit that Heath and I had been fighting or that I’d been upset or that Heath hadn’t done something I asked. He had a way of turning nothing into something awful, and a way of making my mom hold on to the idea that he and I might get back together.”

“But was it bad? You and Heath? Do you think you could have been happy with him if . . .” If he hadn’t died. I swallow, wishing I could take it back and feeling like a jackass for asking at all.

“No,” she says tightly. “We couldn’t have. And that was my fault.”

The guilt in her voice sets off warning bells in my head. “How so?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” I force myself to give her a reassuring smile. “I didn’t mean to push.”

She lifts her gaze to meet mine. “What about you? Serious relationships, I mean.”

I groan. I guess I’m the one who brought it up. “I had a girlfriend for a couple of years in high school. Her name was Marjorie and we were pretty happy, but we kind of grew apart.” I haven’t thought about her in a long time, but the memories are mostly good ones. Marjorie was my first love . . . my first all-around. “Then lots of dating, lots of searching for that elusive the one.”

“Did you ever think you found her?”

My gut knots when I think of Renee. We weren’t together long in the scheme of things, but I’d thought she was it for me. “I dated a woman named Renee when I first started at the fire department. My dad was sick, and she was the one who was there for me. We dated for six months.”

Teagan cocks her head, frowning. “Renee French? The one who runs the yoga studio by the bar?”

I grimace. For better and worse, Jackson Harbor is a small world. “That’s her.”

“What happened? Why’d you break up?”

“She didn’t want what I did, and she found lying about it easier than honesty.” I shrug. As if it’s nothing. As if losing her wasn’t like having the earth yanked from beneath my feet while my world was falling apart around me. I hate being lied to. “But really, I’ve never had a long-term, serious relationship. Ethan says I’m too damn picky and I should stop looking for Miss Perfect.”

“You want Miss Perfect, and yet you tried to start something with me?” Her cheeks flush, and she averts her gaze. She opens a dresser drawer, and I try not to stare as she fills it with her undergarments. “Or maybe I misread that day at the lake.”

“When we were in the water?” I drop my toiletry bag back into my suitcase and step toward Teagan, threading a hand into her hair. “And I did this?”