Anthony kept his gaze fixed over the top of her auburn curls. “I am the one who was to blame.” He clipped out each syllable of each word. “I invited the young woman over. I stated my intention to kiss her and invited her to reject me.” She hadn’t initially. She’d kissed him in return, until the door had opened, and Rhys had walked in, and the young woman had seemed to realize what she’d done, what they’d done. He closed his eyes. For the rest of his life, he’d recall the stricken look on her face. “So do not attempt to absolve me or minimize my role in what transpired that day.”

“You were…what? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Sixteen,” he said brusquely. He knew she only sought to excuse the inexcusable. “Very nearly seventeen.”

“You were a boy.”

Several years younger than Rhys, Anthony had idolized his best friend. In his mind, he’d been so very proud at the idea of finally being the one to look out for Rhys that his judgment had been clouded. “I was a young man who should have known better,” he said flatly, determined to rid her of her innocent notions.

“You were a boy who found yourself taken advantage of,” she said simply. “You were a boy who thought he was helping a friend, but who was really being used by that same friend’s mother.”

“How are you so certain—?”

“That my mother was the mastermind behind breaking up Rhys and his actress love?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Because I know my mother…” She drifted closer, stopping when she was just a handbreadth away.

Lettie rested her palms on his chest, and he was helpless to draw back. He found himself as powerless as he always did around her.

“And I know you,” she said quietly, with a solemn emphasis underscoring her pronouncement. “I know you are not one who’d have ever betrayed Rhys otherwise.”

His throat worked. This was the closest he’d ever felt to absolution. He slid his gaze beyond her shoulder, staring sightlessly into the distance. “Either way,” he said tiredly, “none of this changes what I did, and it will not impact Rhys’ feelings of antipathy toward me.”

That past transgression was also what put Lettie beyond his reach. And she was absolutely beyond his reach.

He’d no longer deny it or lie to himself and say he did not care about her.

“He might listen—”

“No, Lettie,” he said quietly. He knew that for a fact, because Rhys hadn’t listened back then, so why would he listen now?

“If you speak to him—”

“I said no,” he repeated more forcefully. “What’s done is done, and the past is the past.” That past, however, dictated the future and what it could never be with him and this woman before him.

Because he didn’t trust himself around her, Anthony turned to go.