He lifted his hand tentatively, stopping centimeters away from my face. When I didn’t move, he brushed his knuckles across my cheekbone. The featherlight tenderness seemed out of place somehow. Everything about this seemed out of place. “I wish,” said Chad, “that it had been you. Maybe things would be different now.”

There had been a time that I wished it had been me, too. Once, long ago.

But Penny had never let me feel, not for one instant, like I was the third wheel. Every step of their relationship, I’d been there. Every up and every down. She asked me to go birthday shopping with her, let me pick out a shirt for Chad that matched his eyes. She deferred to my judgment when I told her to give him some space. She asked me to spend the night, all three of us curled up in her bed, after an exhausting night of partying.

I knew what I owed her for wanting me as much as she wanted him. I also knew she would view the words Chad was saying—and the old, decrepit emotions he was stirring—as disloyalty.

“There hasn’t been anyone for you since Elodie left,” he murmured. “And now I don’t have anyone, either.”

His implication was clear. But was he really saying what I thought he was? Or was he just looking for some comfort in a what-could-have-been?

Flustered, I tried to find the right words. “It doesn’t work like that. Just because we’re both single doesn’t mean that—” I broke off, dropping my eyes to the sand.

“We make sense. We could just try it. See how we feel after.” Chad took a step closer. And then another one. “Maybe it’ll be magic.”

My head hurt, but it had nothing on the excruciating sensation that was sporadically clenching and unclenching my heart. Was he as afraid to be alone as I was? We were back on the precipice, but this time, I didn’t want to pull away.

I wanted to fall.

So when Chad bridged the distance between us and tipped his head down to mine, I let myself fall over the edge. As his lips settled on mine and his hands squeezed my hips, I kissed him back not for myself, but for the girl I used to be.

For the part of myself, no matter how small, that still fluttered when he said he wished it had been me and him for the last four years.

I wasn’t falling for him, I knew that. My feelings for Chad were very much in the past tense, faded into nostalgia. I was just falling for the moment. The what-could-have-been. The what-almost-was.

But this wasn’t just a fall. This was a ruination.

three