I wanted to sink into the couch, find a show, and enjoy the peace. The library was quiet, but the reference desk required constant energy and brain power. Some days I didn’t get more than a few minutes to myself at the desk. I didn’t mind, but eight hours of it could be taxing. The feel of my house sank into me, soothing my bones. It wasn’t a cluttered house, full of memory-laden knickknacks. I would’ve liked to do more, but Aiden had seemed to prefer the starkness.

A blanket and pillow rested on an armrest of the couch. Had he been sleeping out here?

I didn’t sit. I couldn’t.

“What did you want to talk about?” I whirled around and stumbled back. He was close, towering over me in a way I loved too much.

“Why were you out with a guy the other day?”

“Gabriel? How did you…”

“Xander saw you.”

The truck stop was on the same side of town where Xander lived and Billings wasn’t a big city. It wasn’t a surprise he fueled up there. How had that looked to him? Gabriel and I had laughed a lot while we were together. To Xander, I’d probably looked like I was having the time of my life. “I had just finished lunch with Dad and then Gabriel happened to stop in. He’s an old…friend.”

“I don’t recall a Gabriel.”

I sighed. “It’s not like you told me about all your exes.”

“I don’t have any exes.” At my doubtful look, he added, “Not long-term ones.”

I crossed to the island. Our divorce papers were in a haphazard stack. Aiden never left less than tidy piles. “Well, I had a long-term boyfriend in college. That was Gabriel.”

“How long?” Aiden tracked me.

I flipped through the papers. They lay like they’d been tossed. Had he even read them? “How long what?”

“Did you date him?”

I thought back to those days. College seemed so long ago. Gabriel and I had been young, idealistic. We were going to save the world with nothing but our brains and our ambition. “Not quite two years. But he got a job offer in California and I’d already been accepted to the master’s program at Montana State. It was an amicable breakup.”

His expression darkened. “And suddenly you ran across him?”

“Yeah, Aiden. Coincidentally, we were in the same diner—in the busiest gas station in town. He was here for a conference.”

“And he’s single?”

Aiden’s rapid-fire questions were unlike him. Normally, I’d find the way he latched on to the topic of Gabriel fascinating. Aiden King, jealous? But Aiden had asked for more time and he was doing nothing but working. “Yep,” I said, popping the p.

His jaw worked. “How convenient.”