“I wanted to. But you acted like he was everything to you.”

He was. He is. Still, she’d have wanted to know.

“I didn’t want to shatter the illusion of Mr. Perfect,” Maggie said. “You based your entire future around him. I just couldn’t mess that up. I’m sorry. But I told him straight out he’d better never try anything with me again, or I’d go straight to you. That’s when I guess he told you to stop spending time with me, because the calls started to get further apart. Then you started ignoring my text messages.”

“I never received any text messages,” Quinn said, turning defensive, even though her mind still reeled from the news that Ethan had put the moves on her best friend. Why she should be shocked, she didn’t know.

“Well, I sent them.”

Quinn knew then. Ethan had read the messages and deleted them. He was always picking up her phone, going through it. But God forbid she ever touch his. She should’ve suspected it before. She thought it was Maggie’s outgoing personality he didn’t like—but the fact is that it was her rejection that had turned him against her best friend. And she’d considered over the years that he might be too controlling, but she’d always pushed that thought away, because he really was a great catch, and she was lucky to have snagged him. She wasn’t ready to even consider they wouldn’t have a future.

“Let’s not talk about him anymore,” Quinn said. “Not for now. I want to focus on you. And tomorrow. I’m so nervous. But I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Well, if not for me being stubborn, I’d be sitting on a balcony right now, not right here on the sand beside you. I can’t believe you made me a reservation,” Maggie said. “You know me better than that.”

“Well, the cottage is so small. I didn’t want you to feel closed in.” She’d called the Maui location of her hotel brand and used her employee discount to reserve a room. Just in case.

But Maggie wasn’t going for it.

“Actually, small is better. I like to know every corner of where I am. Less space to check out before I go to bed,” Maggie said. “And of course I want to stay with you. It’ll be like old times.”

That it would. When they were younger, most of their overnights had been at Quinn’s house, since she didn’t have brothers to irritate Maggie. And their homes had always been small. Or cozy, as they liked to consider it.

But Maggie was referring to her stalker: the man who had made her last few years a nightmare. All from an online dating site, and one real date gone awry.