out, Lila silently ordered herself. And then, after you’ve finished eating and he asks if he could see you again, you tell him No!
You tell him no, she silently repeated.
Taking another deep breath, she turned the key in the ignition.
The car rumbled to life. After another moment and a few more words of encouragement to herself, Lila pulled out of her parking space and drove out of the parking structure and off the lot.
* * *
The restaurant she’d selected was normally barely a five-minute drive away from the Foundation. Even with the sluggish midday traffic, it only took her ten minutes to get there. Before she knew it, she was pulling into a space in the restaurant’s parking lot.
Sitting there, thinking of what was ahead of her, Lila found that she had to psych herself up in order to leave the shelter of her vehicle and walk into the restaurant.
To face her past.
“No,” she contradicted herself through gritted teeth. “Not to face the past. To finally shut the door on it once and for all and start your future.”
Yes, she had a life and a career, a career she was quite proud of. But she also needed to cut all ties to the woman she had once been. That starry-eyed young woman who thought that love lasted forever and that she had found her true love. That woman had to, quite simply, be put to rest once and for all.
And she intended to do that by having lunch with Everett, the man who had taken her heart and made mincemeat out of it. And once lunch was done, she was going to tell him goodbye one last time. Tell him goodbye and make him realize that she meant it.
Lila slowly got out of her car and then locked it.
Squaring her shoulders, she headed for the restaurant. It was time to beard the lion in his den and finally be set free.
This was absurd, Everett thought. He was a well-respected, sought-after physician who had graduated from medical school at the top of his class. Skilled and exceedingly capable. Yet here he was, sitting in a restaurant, feeling as nervous as a teenager waiting for his first date to walk in.
This was Lila for God’s sake, he lectured himself. Lila, someone he’d once believed was his soul mate. Lila, whom he’d once been closer to than anyone else in the world and had loved with his whole heart and soul. There was absolutely no reason for him to be tapping the table with his long fingers and fidgeting like some inexperienced kid.
Yet here he was, half an hour ahead of time, watching the door when he wasn’t watching the clock, waiting for Lila to walk in.
Wondering if she wouldn’t.
Wondering if, for some reason, she would wind up changing her mind at the last minute and call him to cancel their lunch. Or worse, not call at all.
Why am I doing this to myself? Everett silently demanded. Why was he making himself crazy like this? So what if she didn’t show? It wouldn’t be the end of the world. At least, no more than it was all those years ago when Lila had told him she didn’t ever want to see him again.
The words had stung back then and he hadn’t known what to do with himself, how to think, what to say. In time, he’d calmed down, started to think rationally again. He had decided to stay away from her for a while, thinking that Lila would eventually come to her senses and change her mind.
Except that, when he finally went to see her, he found out that she was gone. Lila had taken off for parts unknown and no one knew where. Or, if they did know, no one was telling him no matter how much he asked.
That was when his parents had sat him down and told him that it was all for the best. They reminded him that he had a destiny to fulfill and now he was free to pursue that destiny.
Not having anything else to cling to, he threw himself into his studies and did exactly what was expected of him—and more.
He did all that only to end up here, sitting in an Austin restaurant, watching the door and praying each time it opened that it was Lila coming in and walking back into his life.
But each time, it wasn’t Lila who walked in.
Until it was.
Everett felt his pulse leap up with a jolt the second he saw her. All these years and she had only gotten more beautiful.
He immediately rose in his seat, waving to catch her attention. He had to stop himself from calling out her name, instinctively knowing that would embarrass her. They weren’t teenagers anymore.
* * *
Lila had almost turned around at the door just before she opened it. It was only the fact that she would have been severely disappointed in herself for acting like such a coward that forced her to come inside.
The second she did, she immediately saw Everett and then it was too late to run for cover. Too late to change her mind.
The game was moving forward.
She forced a smile to her lips despite the fact that her stomach was tied in a knot so tight she could hardly breathe. It was the sort of smile that strangers gave one another in an attempt to break the ice. Except that there was no breaking the ice that she felt in her soul as she looked at Everett.
All the old heartache came rushing back to her in spades.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured to Everett when she finally reached the table. “Am I late?”
“No,” he quickly assured her. “I’m early. I didn’t know if there was going to be a lot of traffic, or if I’d have trouble finding this place, so I left the hotel early.” A sheepish smile curved his lips. “As it turned out, there was no traffic and the restaurant was easy enough to find.”
“That’s good,” she responded, already feeling at a loss as to what to say next.
She was about to sit down and Everett quickly came around the table to hold out her chair for her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, feeling even more awkward as she took her seat.
Having pushed her chair in for her, Everett circled back to his own and sat down opposite her. He could feel his heart swelling just to look at her.
“You look really great,” Everett told her with enthusiasm.
Again she forced a quick smile to her lips. “Thank you,” she murmured.
At least all that time she’d spent this morning fussing with her makeup and searching for the right thing to wear had paid off, she thought. Looking good, she had once heard, was the best revenge. She wanted Everett to be aware of what he’d given up. She wanted him to feel at least a little pang over having so carelessly lost her.
The years had been kind to him, as well, she reluctantly admitted. His six-foot frame had filled in well, though he was still taut and lean, and his dark hair framed a handsome, manly face and highlighted his dark-blue eyes. Eyes that seemed to be studying her.
“But you do seem a little...different somehow,” Everett said quietly a moment later.
She wasn’t sure what he meant by that and it marred her triumph just a little. Was that a veiled criticism, she wondered.
“Well, it has been thirteen years,” she reminded Everett stiffly. “We knew each other a long time ago. That is,” she qualified, “if we ever really knew each other at all.”
He looked at her, wondering if that was a dig or if he was just being extremely touchy.
It seemed there were four of them at the table. The people they were now and the ghosts of the people they had been thirteen years ago.
The moment stretched out, becoming more uncomfortable. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Everett