Sloane had seen the truth in her words after her viral status had doubled down after Carol had streamed the live video from the auditorium. The sound for Brady hadn’t come in as well, but Sloane’s voice through the speakers was crystal clear.

Self-growth and epiphanies aside, that still hurt a week later.

Sloane suspected it would keep hurting for a while more.

She sighed and bent down to grab a discarded program from beneath one of the seats. It was an awkward angle, so she had to twist to try and reach. Her arm wasn’t long enough, but she was stubborn. She put her bag down and went lower in another attempt, but someone’s hand got to it first from the other direction.

“Oh, thanks,” she said, fully expecting it to be one of the other staff members on clean-up duty. However, when she straightened, it was none other than the Golden Boy of Arbor Bay.

“Marcus?”

He was dressed down in jeans and a Star Trek T-shirt. His signature winning smile was on. “Hey.”

Sloane knew she looked like a wackadoodle. She was in Nashville, at her job, and Marcus was acting like it was normal for him to be there. She just stared at him until he started talking again.

“We never really got a chance to talk the other day, so why not do it now?”

That shook Sloane out of her confusion. As much as the last two weeks hadn’t been about Marcus, they kind of had been at the same time.

“Me first,” she hurried. “I just wanted to say again how sorry I am about the whole creepily writing about you for years and then not even having the courage to tell you about it thing. And then, well, telling you before admitting that—”

“That you don’t really love me,” he finished.

She nodded, feeling oddly apologetic. “Do you remember the day we spent at your family’s garden? We were seventeen, and you had that broken arm from football?”

He nodded. “You came over with Ms. Peggy while she got something from Mom, right? Then I found you at the fountain.”