Sean’s expression softens. “I’m glad, babe.”

“We had a fight one night, and . . .” I realize now that I’m going to shut this down prematurely. I’m not sure I can finish the story. “I needed some time to think, and ‘some time’ turned into eleven years.”

Sean’s eyes widen a little. “Oh?”

“We ran into each other a few days ago.”

“I see. And it’s the first time you’ve spoken since.”

I swallow thickly. “Right.”

“So there’s some baggage to unpack,” he says, smiling a little.

I nod, repeating, “Right.”

“And has this relationship been hanging over you all this time?”

I don’t want to lie to him. “Yes.”

Other than the deaths of my parents, nothing looms larger in my life than Elliot.

“Do you still love him?”

I blink away. “I don’t know.”

Sean uses a gentle finger to turn my face to his. “I don’t mind if you love him, Mace. Even if you think you might always love him. But if it makes you wonder what you’re doing here, with me, then we need to talk about it.”

“It doesn’t, really. It’s just been emotional to see him.”

“I get that,” he says quietly. “It brings up old stuff. I’m sure if I saw Ashley again, I’d struggle with all of that. Anger, and hurt, and yeah—the love that I still have for her. I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on when she walked out.”

It’s a perfect description. I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on.

He kisses me, once. “We’re not eighteen, babe. We’re not coming into this without a few chinks in our armor. I don’t expect you to have room in your heart for me only.”

I’m so grateful to him right now I nearly want to cry.

“Well, work on the friendship. Do what you need to do,” he says, his weight returning above me, his body pushing against mine, hard and ready. “But right now, come back to me.”

I wrap my arms around him, and press my face to his neck, but as he moves over me, and then into me, I have a brief flash of bare honesty. It’s good—the sex has always been good—but it isn’t right.

It doesn’t set off alarm bells in my head, sure, but it doesn’t send goose bumps across my skin, either. It doesn’t make my chest ache so deliciously I’m nearly breathless. I don’t feel urgent, or desperate, or too hot in my own skin because I’m so hungry for him. And in a tight gasp that Sean reads as pleasure, I worry that Elliot is right and I’m wrong and—like always—he’s taking care of both of our hearts while I flop around, trying to figure it all out.

I feel my thoughts circling something, the same thing over and over: how Elliot went home after seeing me and broke up with Rachel.

He only had to see me to know, whereas I can barely trust a single feeling I have.