I’d made my way into the large dining room, my weary gaze tracking over the familiar faces, and I’d seen Brock first. He’d been staring at the door, and for a moment, I thought maybe he’d been waiting for me, looking for me. Although he had dealt a death blow to my emotions that night at Mona’s, tiny seedlings of hope had formed in the weeks afterward during his visits.

But then I’d seen who he stood next to, and seeing her, knowing that he brought her to the dinner, meant she was important to him. No one-night stand. No drunken hookup. He’d never, ever, brought a girl to my parents’ house.

Kristen was his girlfriend. Not me. Never me.

I’d pivoted right around and went back upstairs, managing not to flip my shit in front of my entire family. It hadn’t mattered, though. They all knew. And that mortification and raw hurt from the night at Mona’s had resurfaced in a messy explosion of emotion.

Brock had come after me like he had a hundred times before then, like he hadn’t the night at Mona’s.

He’d come to my bedroom, and I’d yelled at him. I was pretty sure I called him a “selfish, conceited whore” at one point and I’d told him that I never wanted to see him again. I’d said other things, terrible things, and I could still see his face and the shock that had been etched into his features. The pain I didn’t want to see, and especially the guilt I didn’t want to acknowledge.

It was like almost dying all over again, but looking back, I knew it hadn’t been all his fault. He shouldn’t have had to live his life worrying about hurting the kind of feelings I had for him. It wasn’t fair to him, and that had taken a whole lot of soul searching to realize—painful, brutal soul searching.

His thumb massaged my pulse, tugging me out of the past. “Jillian?”

“I’d . . . I’d overreacted. I mean, I was . . . fuck,” I said, letting it all out. “I was jealous. I was so jealous, Brock, because I wanted to be her. I’d lo—” I cut myself off as tiny bundles of nerves formed in my stomach. I pulled so his hand was no longer touching my throat. “I just wasn’t in a good place.”

“Don’t take the blame for this,” he told me.

“I’m not. Well, I’m taking partial blame for the . . . the fuckery known as us.” Desperately needing space to think about this clearly, I slipped out of his hold and off his lap. Standing, I thrust the hair back from my face and moved until the back of my legs touched the coffee table. “I was young and—”