He looked at her, eyes bleak. “What do you want?”

She forced herself to meet his eyes. Took a deep breath. “I want to be over you. All the way over you. It’s the reason I agreed to this damn story. But I approached it all wrong. Talking about it isn’t going to help. There’s nothing we can say that the other person wants to hear.”

“So what would help?” His voice was rough once again.

She swallowed. “Distance. I need some space.”

“We’re neighbors. And we work together. Distance is going to be a little hard to come by.”

“We did it before,” she said, her voice slightly desperate now. “We’ve survived in each other’s orbits for the past year without things being weird. You’ve had girlfriends, I’ve dated people…I want to go back to that.”

He searched her face. “You want me to date other women? You want to see me bring a woman back to my place on a Friday night—want to see her leave the next morning?”

Emma felt nauseous at the thought, but she forced herself to nod. “We’ve done it before. We can do it again.”

He uncrossed his arms, shoving his hands into his pockets as he resumed his initial stance at the window, staring out. Except before, his expression had been contemplative.

Now the hard set of his jaw and the distance in his gaze made him look cold. Ice cold.

He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “You know, when I came here tonight, I knew it would be about me answering questions. I was prepared for that. But I’d hoped to get you to answer some questions, too. I wanted to know what you remembered about us.” He cut his eyes to her. “But you don’t want to remember.”

She put her shoulders back and stared blindly at the twinkling lights, not really seeing them. Not seeing anything.

“No. I guess I don’t,” she said softly.

His chin rested briefly against his chest before he nodded once, twice, before moving away from her, scooping his jacket off the chair, and walking toward the front door.

She turned and watched him walk away, although she didn’t try to see him to the door. She wasn’t entirely sure her legs would work.

Cassidy turned back before moving out of her line of sight. “You used to be brave, Emma. What happened?”

“We happened. We’re no good for each other. There was no payoff in being brave. I’d rather be cautious.”

It hurts less.

He searched her face for a long moment before unexpectedly moving in her direction, stopping by the table to pick up both wineglasses. He handed one to her.

She took it in confusion, searching his face for an explanation, but his features were blank, his eyes cool. He clinked his glass to hers. “To moving on. To fucking distance.”

He took a long swallow before she had a chance to react, then turned away, setting his glass on the counter as he headed for the front door.

“Cassidy.”

He paused, turning back, and the flare of hope in his eyes was almost her undoing, but she didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. She couldn’t.

“The last question,” she said. “For my article. Why did we break up?”

His eye shuttered, and his laugh was harsh. “Why did we break up? I’ll tell you why….The girl I loved—yes, loved, Emma—told me she didn’t want to marry me. In fact, she threw the engagement ring I spent four weeks picking out at my head.”

Emma sucked in a breath, and Cassidy shook his head sadly. “I’m sure you’ve got your version of what happened, but my version? My version ends with the girl who’d claimed to love me not even listening to me. I made a mistake. Yes. Mistakes. But you left me, Emma. Be sure you get that part right in your story.”

She heard the door open. Heard it shut. And still she didn’t move.

Her brain knew she’d just dodged a whole lot of heartache by ensuring their cold war raged on.

But her goal had been protecting her heart, and she was desperately afraid that it was too late for that.

That it had been too late from the day she’d met him.

Chapter 18

“Scale of one to ten, how painful is this?” Riley asked, appearing at Emma’s side.

Emma glanced at her friend. “It’s not painful.”

Much.

Okay, it was painful. No. Pain didn’t begin to describe it. Emma was in agony.

Riley’s grin flashed, her teeth white against the siren red lipstick that bumped up her already-bombshell status to the stratosphere. The short black dress wasn’t so bad, either.

“Come on, Ems. You know you want to vent to someone.”

Emma pursed her lips as she pulled one of the glasses of wine off the small bar set up in the corner of the private room where Julie and Mitchell were having their rehearsal dinner.

“I figured it would be bad,” Emma admitted. “I’ve been mentally pep-talking myself for days.”

“Yeah?” Riley asked, grabbing a glass of wine for herself and tugging Emma over to the corner of the room where they could talk.

“Yeah,” Emma said. She took a sip of her wine, her eyes scanning the crowded room even as they purposefully avoided Cassidy.

“And?” Riley prodded. “Was it as awful as you thought?”

This time Emma’s eyes did land on Cassidy, looking handsome and completely at ease as he talked with Julie’s aunt and uncle on the far side of the room.

“It’s worse, Ri.”