“A few years longer,” I tell him as he takes another step toward me.

“I guess we fell out of touch.”

“Something like that.” My smile does nothing to soften the hard edge to my tone.

Christian takes another step toward me. “Tell me you’re not leaving yet.”

“Tell me you want me to stay.”

That’s when, at last, he touches me. A single light press of his fingertip on my collarbone, tracing it from the center and up toward the sensitive space below my ear that always makes me shiver. He touches my pendant again. He remembers, I think. I have not become nothing to him. There’s still something between us.

“You kept this,” he says. “I won it for you at the St. Paul’s church bazaar.”

“I know.” I cover it with my hand.

“It’s just cheap junk.”

“I know,” I repeat.

We stare at each other.

“Stay,” he whispers into my ear. “Please.”

CHAPTER
4

“THERE YOU ARE.” Lisa comes out of the ballroom. She carries Beth’s shoes hooked over her fingers on one hand and a raffle basket in the other.

“I guess we didn’t win anything,” Christian says. “Too bad.”

Beth stumbles out after her, a hand on the flowery wallpaper to help keep herself upright. “After-party in Christian’s suite, right? Unless you have a suite, Jewelann? Me and Lisa are sharing a double.”

Tonight’s gala is at a mid-level hotel chain famous for cucumber water in oversized dispensers displayed in the lobby and its free afternoon happy hours. The hotel is technically in Kentucky, although most of the reunion weekend’s other activities were across the river in Cincinnati. We’re about an hour away from our hometown of Kettering, but this is closer to the airport for people coming in from out of town. I hadn’t gone to any of the other events … and hadn’t anticipated needing a room of my own for tonight.

“What makes you think I’d have a suite?” I ask her.

“The bottoms of those shoes,” Beth says with a snort, but under her breath as though I’m not meant to actually hear her reply.

“We’ll go to mine,” Christian says smoothly and puts his arm around her waist. The other goes around Lisa’s. He pulls them both close to him while I stand apart. “Jewelann?”

This is not how I’d planned for the night to go when I put on this dress. Being invited up to Christian’s room? Yes. Going there with two other women? Not in my imagined scenario. Yet there I am, riding up in the elevator to the top floor with Christian, Lisa, and Beth, and somehow we’re all wrapped around each other with roaming hands and there’s kissing and touching and laughing that I’m sure is giving the security cameras a really nice show. We manage to make it down the hall and into his suite.

This room has a bank of glass overlooking the Ohio River and the Cincinnati skyline. In the kitchenette, Christian has champagne in buckets of melting ice and crystal glasses. He pulls out a platter of strawberries and chocolates from the full-sized fridge. Through an archway, I see a king-sized bed with a bathroom beyond it.