“Nothing? ‘You too’? ‘Ditto?’ ‘I met someone else, and it’s over?’ I don’t fucking know, Whitney but not fucking love you too.” I knew things were complicated. I knew she was continuing to put up a facade for now, but hearing those words fall from her lips just seconds after my name had fallen from them felt like a dagger to my heart.

Christ, how am I back here again? Completely over the line obsessed with her.

She lets out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I…I’m just so sorry.” She lets her hand slide off of me and drops them into her lap and instantly I want her hands back on me. “I know it probably feels like shit, but I don’t love him. Part of me thinks I never did and that’s not your problem. It’s not your fault or your problem that I got myself into this mess. But I just hope you know how much I love you. Despite all these mistakes, you’re who I want to be with. I just need some time, JP. First and foremost, I need him to get out of the hospital.” She shakes her head. “I was going to tell him the second he got home. I was going to tell him it was over. By then, maybe we would have told my parents, and I could have been honest about everything. I would have told him about everything between us and that I never got over you. That you’ve been the love of my life for all of it, and I’m sorry that it was unfair to him but now you’re back and I can’t marry him.” She sighs and puts a hand over her eyes and when she sniffles, I know the tears are falling and all I want to do is pull her into my lap and make them disappear. “But now everything is complicated and what kind of person does it make me to break up with my fiancé while he’s in the hospital?” Her shoulders sag. “I guess the kind of person who cheats on her fiancé while he’s in the hospital.”

I don’t say anything for the rest of the ride, letting her words sink in while also trying to rid those three words she said to Parker from my brain. I take the exit toward my house before turning down a busy street with a few restaurants.

“You want to get something to eat?” I ask her.

She nods. “Are you mad at me?”

I pull into a garage and put the car in park and rest my head against the headrest while letting out a sigh. “Of course not, Angel. But I’m not happy. I’m not happy about any of this. We’re right back where we were three years ago.”

“What do you mean?”