“And here I am with my numbers game,” I tease, but I also use my own thumb to stroke his hand back, sorry for the stress he feels about his job. Honored that I’m as much a relief to him as he’s been for me.

He smiles down at our hands. “I don’t mind this one. What’s two?”

Two is a hard one. I swallow.

“Two is—Avery. You, and Avery, and the wedding program.” I watch his face, search for some grimace or sadness, something that’ll give me an indication of how this one will go. “If you still hold it against me, Reid, it doesn’t matter how much you may like me now. It doesn’t matter how much we like each other. If you don’t forgive me for those letters, and if you still have feelings for her—”

“I don’t. I mean that I don’t hold it against you. And I don’t still have feelings for her. Please, let me make this clear to you.”

“Okay,” I say, because that is not going to be enough. I remember the way he’s looked, sometimes, when she comes up. I remember the way he’d said she was beautiful, and powerful. “Make it clear.”

He clears his throat. “Avery’s father arranged for us to meet after she had been through a difficult time. A breakup with someone she’d been with since college, who had some problems with . . . ah, substances.”

“Oh.”

“I think he thought I’d be a good choice. Stable. Boring, probably.” Reid gives a lift of one shoulder. “I thought being with her would help me find my way here, in some way. And I think she thought being with me would be easier. Undemanding, and . . . calm. But we were a terrible match, and we both knew it. For much longer than either of us was willing to admit.”

“But you bought her that ring,” I say, which is ridiculous. But it’s the first time since he came back to the shop that Reid and I have had any meaningful conversation about him and Avery, about what happened between them. My memories of her, of them together, are shaped by that ring, by what it represented.

“That was not the ring I bought her, actually.”

“What?”

“A week after we got engaged she came to a dinner we had planned with the new one. A gift for the two of us, from her father. An upgrade.”

“Ouch,” I say, grimacing, and he chuckles softly.