Cam and Avery kept the conversation flowing naturally, picking up whenever the gaps of silence started to stretch out too long, which didn’t happen often. Grady was easy to talk to, guiding me into conversation. There were only a few times when Cam or Avery had spoken to me and I hadn’t heard them, so Grady had to catch my attention. This didn’t seem to bother them, which made it easy for me to gloss over it.

Our main dishes arrived while Grady was telling me about a new art exhibit that had come to Shepherd. The way his eyes lit up as he talked about the exhibit, you could tell that was the kind of stuff he was into.

And it was cute.

“Sounds like it’s an amazing thing to see,” I said, picking up my fork. “I haven’t gone to many art exhibits recently.” Or ever. Like, seriously. I didn’t go look at art. Not like I saw anything wrong with doing that, but it just wasn’t something I did.

Then again, there wasn’t much I did.

“I can take you,” Grady offered, grinning. “I’d love to.”

My lips parted at the unexpected offer. We were getting along well, so I wasn’t sure why the offer caught me off-guard, but it did. I started to respond, but realized I didn’t know what to say, because I wasn’t sure if I was excited about what seemed like a genuine offer or if I was wholly unmoved by it.

An all-too-familiar feeling swept through me, the one that usually hit me in the middle of the long night, keeping me awake. It was how I had felt when I’d been dating Ben; it was the feeling that had kept me with him, because I didn’t see anything better for myself. Not because I didn’t deserve better, but I . . . I gave my heart so completely, so fully to someone else, that when my heart was broken, those pieces I’d freely given away weren’t mine any longer.

My heart wasn’t complete.

And that might sound silly and overdramatic to some, but I didn’t care. It was the truth, and I wasn’t sure I could ever feel that way about someone else again. So I had settled with Ben. Would I be doing that again with Grady, if it got to that point? Settling?

Oh God, wait a second.

Was I really sitting here and thinking about settling after I just met this guy an hour ago?

I needed to get a grip.

“Jillian?” Grady said, and I guessed he thought I hadn’t heard him.

“T-that would be nice,” I managed to force out.

He studied me for a moment too long, and I wondered if he could sense my growing nervousness.