I bit down on my lip, my body wanting to stop the words I needed to say. But before this went further, it was going to go from playful to primal in no time. I needed to say some things.

“Lucas,” I said, trying to pull him up toward me.

“Mmm?” he replied, his lips tickling and sweet.

“We need to talk about a few things, before you leave tomorrow.”

“You want to talk”—he pressed against me with a very specific part of his anatomy—“now?”

“Oh, boy . . . ohhh, yes . . . Wait—yes, we need to talk,” I said, leaning up on my elbows so I could see him. I traced a hand across his face, running my thumb over his lips. “And then hopefully we can go right back to this right here,” I said, lifting my hips slightly and bumping him right back.

“Talk fast, woman,” he said, rolling off of me and resting his head on his elbow. His other hand, however, continued to roam.

Now I had the floor, and I didn’t know where to start. Was I making too big of a deal of this? Should I just rip off the Band-Aid?

“Last night was . . . wow. I don’t even have words for last night.”

“You said some words last night,” he murmured, his hand dipping just below the sheet and cupping my breast. My toes pointed. Literally. Reflex. He did it again, and the same thing happened. So much so that the sheets rustled. Lucas looked down toward the bottom of the bed, and touched me once more. Toe point. The scientist in him was delighted. Boob. Toe. Boob. Toe.

“This is an interesting phenomenon,” he mused.

Meanwhile, I was coming out of my skin. “Could you—and I promise I will never say these words again—please stop touching me? It’s hard to think straight when you do that.”

He was a scientist, yes, but a boy first, so he touched me once more, then moved his hand safely above the sheets. “Best behavior, I promise.”

“Anyway, so, yeah. Last night, amazing. And I’m hoping, I mean, when you get back from Belize, that there’ll be more nights like that?”

“Um. Yeah,” he said, grinning so big I thought his head was going to split.

Band-Aid. Pull off the Band-Aid so you can get back to the boobs and toes.

“I left Charles the morning of our wedding,” I said in a rush, instantly feeling better for saying it. Looking down at my hands, I continued. “I had this sudden moment of clarity, and I panicked at the thought of getting married to someone I wasn’t in love with, not truly crazy-in-love with, and I panicked and I ran. He never made it to the church, he was still on the golf course with his groomsmen when I ran, but I did in fact run.”

I chanced a look up, saw that his smile had dimmed, and pressed on. “And then when I met you, I realized, holy fudge, we have so much in common, but holy fudge, Julie just did almost the same thing to you that I did to Charles, and there was no way I could tell you what I’d done. And it was all so new and fresh and raw, and I was just figuring out what I wanted to do up here, and if I could truly stay and live here, and then you and I started spending so much time together, and holy fudge, Lucas, you’re the best, and we were spending so much time together and then my mom and dad were here, and I was so afraid something was going to come up about the wedding and you’d find out that way, and I knew it would be better coming from me and—”

“Better coming from you?” he asked, his voice quiet. The smile had twisted into a grimace.

“Yes. That I should be the one to tell you that I—”

“Left a guy at the altar,” he finished, his voice rough.

“Not technically, but . . . yeah. Yeah, I did.” I sighed, ashamed that I’d kept this from him for so long.

“So rather than tell me this, something that probably had a fairly logical explanation—I mean, people do break up all the time. I should know, right? But rather than tell me the truth, you let me go on about Julie and what she’d done to me?”

He kicked the covers off and rolled to his side of the bed, climbing out. Stabbing his legs into his jeans, he turned back to face me, anger blazing in his eyes. “I must look like such a fool to you.”

“What? No—God no, Lucas,” I said, shocked. I moved across the bed, kneeling up and reaching out to him. But he stood just out of arm’s reach. “It’s nothing like that. I—I—You’re—”

He stared at me, hard. He seemed to be weighing something. “I gotta go,” he said, eyes cold.

“What? No way! You have to stay; we have to talk about this,” I cried, jumping off the bed and grabbing his arm before he could walk away.

“There’s really nothing to talk about. You lied to me. I can’t go through that again. I can’t get involved with a girl who’s lied to me since the beginning. I’ve gone down that road before.”

“You think I’m the same as Julie?” I asked, horrified.

“Right now? I think you might be exactly the same as Julie—and I can’t get suckered into that again.”

He turned and left.

Chapter fourteen

The worst day ever was also the longest day ever, creeping by like frozen molasses. I spent the morning shoveling dog shit. I spent the better part of the afternoon on the phone with the local ASPCA, making sure that the dogs that were rescued from the ring yesterday were transferred to me once they were given the immediate medical care they needed and fully checked out. I’d need to call Lou in on this one too. I’d never handled this many dogs at once, and especially dogs that’d been bred for only one reason. Would they be able to be socialized? Would they be able to trust?

It didn’t matter. Whether or not they were ultimately adoptable, they’d come here and not be on chains, not be in the cold, not be expected to fight and snarl and shred . . . They would only be expected to chase balls and gobble treats. That, I could promise every one of them.

By lunchtime, there was no call from Lucas. I gave him the space he clearly wanted. Whether it would be a forever kind of space . . . well . . . I wasn’t thinking about that yet. I couldn’t think about that. I went back over our conversation this morning, remembering the pain in his eyes when he realized that I’d lied to him.

And when I thought back, there were plenty of times when I could have told him the truth. I could have told him why I walked away from my wedding, and how it was a different situation from the one with Julie. He would have understood—of course he could have understood that. Oh, I had played this one very very wrong.