on her tongue and felt raw coming out of her throat, but there it was. And it hadn’t killed her.
He stopped walking a few feet away from her, the distance more comfortable to Katie than his nearness inside the bar. As long as he stayed over there, she would be fine. As long as she maintained their current proximity—as long as she couldn’t smell the lemon-and-mint soap he still apparently used, and if she couldn’t hear him breathing—she would be okay. She couldn’t allow him to come any closer, even as she cursed herself for wanting nothing more.
“Katie, it’s so good to—” He moved a foot in her direction, and she matched it with one step backward. “It’s good to see you,” Ryan said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “I know you don’t want to see me, but it’s good to see you.”
Katie met his eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t.
She watched as his attention moved down to the roundness of her midsection. His eyes grew wide and he swallowed before his lips formed a thin, straight line.
He lingered there for a moment before he looked back up at her. There was softness in his gaze, along with a...hopefulness...that she couldn’t have prepared herself for.
Eight years had done nothing to temper what she’d felt the night of Ryan’s graduation. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the way his features had shifted when, after several long moments of standing silently in front of her, he’d finally understood what she’d been trying to say.
It had taken over a year for Katie to work up the courage to confront him...to force herself to face what she’d been feeling for far longer than she’d been able to admit, and muster enough bravery to share it with Ryan.
She loved him. Not as the best friend he’d been since childhood, but far more. Even at sixteen, she’d known something then that hadn’t changed since: he was her true love...her person. No matter how hard she tried in the coming years, he would not be replaced.
At the time, she’d been naive enough to believe that loving him was enough to make him hers.
She found out soon enough that other things could come first...that other things could matter more. Things like the baby his girlfriend, Sarah, had been carrying—the baby Ryan had found out about only moments before Katie pulled him aside.
She would never forget the way he looked at her when he told her why he had to go and “do the right thing” by Sarah. Even as he’d told her that it was what he wanted, Katie could see the truth in his eyes.
For a second, a single second, she’d seen what she’d known all along. He loved her the same way—the way she wanted him to. He left that night without another word, the expression in his sad, determined eyes seared into her brain...but she knew. She wished she didn’t—perhaps his leaving would have hurt less—but she knew.
When Ryan drove away that night, Sarah by his side in the cab of his old truck, along with the couple’s few possessions and a jar full of cash Ryan had been saving for college, a piece of Katie went along with him.
She had cried and holed up in her room for two days, wrapped in Ryan’s favorite old sweatshirt with Peach Leaf Panthers emblazoned across the front, but when the last tear had fallen, Katie let it drop, and she’d made a vow to let him go. Ryan was a wonderful childhood best friend and an amazing person, but she wasn’t going to let his memory take away the life ahead of her. He’d taken a piece of her heart with him, but he couldn’t have the rest of her, and she would make her own happiness in the world.
Even if the men she loved kept leaving her.
Katie pushed out the breath she’d been holding.
Yeah, she wanted more. She wanted a family. She wanted a husband to share her life with, and she wanted the baby inside of her. She wanted to re-create the joy that had filled her childhood home. But she was a patient woman, and she was willing to wait for those things as long as she needed to. In the meantime, she’d found a way to create a kind of makeshift happiness, and she’d found a way to embrace the parts of the past that she wanted to keep by working at the museum.
So how was it that, in one day, the world she’d built so carefully was falling down around her? And the last piece to hit the ground was Ryan Ford, who stood staring at her, waiting for her to say something.
“Ryan, I don’t... I mean, I never expected to see you again,” she choked out before clearing her throat. “I didn’t think you’d ever come back here.”
He nodded and his shoulders slumped, and Katie felt herself melt into the molten pools of gold and brown inside his eyes.
“I didn’t know you still lived here, Katie. I didn’t think I’d run into you like this. I’m sorry I freaked you out back there. That wasn’t my intention.”
Hearing him apologize tugged at Katie’s heart. Why had she bolted from him? It wasn’t like her to be so impolite, so unkind. And it wasn’t as though he didn’t have the right to visit his own hometown.
She didn’t have to like him, and she didn’t have to spend more than a few more seconds with him, but that didn’t mean she had a right to be rude.
“No, it’s okay. I’m the one who should apologize for brushing you off. Seeing you just...caught me by surprise, I suppose.” She reached up and tugged at a strand of hair that had come loose from her hairdo.
Oh, God.
She still had her hair up in the Gibson Girl. She must look like a complete idiot.
And why did she care, anyway?
It was Ryan. Ryan Ford, who used to spend every weekend and afternoon at her house because he preferred it to the tumultuous atmosphere his parents’ incessant fighting caused inside his own. Sweet Ryan, who used to call her Katydid like the bug, a nickname no one had used since, one which she secretly missed tremendously.
Ryan, whom she’d loved in a way she’d always known she could never find twice in a lifetime. Anger swelled inside her and Katie was grateful for its presence. It was much easier to handle than the myriad of other emotions she shoved aside.
Stupid Ryan Ford.
“Look, Katie, I—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “You don’t have to say anything else.” She dropped her arm to her side and before she had a chance to do anything to prevent it, his steps had eaten up all the distance between them and there he was...right there in front of her.
Her breath caught in her throat when he opened up his arms and wrapped them around her tightly. She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to, and the worst part was...she wasn’t sure she did.
When she could finally breathe again, his familiar smell washed over her and brought hundreds of memories with it...most of them happy, which startled her. His chest was firm and wide, and Katie resisted the urge to dissolve into him. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she gave in, about how hard it would be to let go.
He must have sensed her tension because he pulled back abruptly, balling his hands into fists at his sides as though he didn’t quite know what to do with them. They stood staring at each other, the air between them a silent pool of chaos, filled with all the things they weren’t able or willing to say.
And what was there to say, really? Yes, she’d had a crush on him growing up...more than a crush. But what he’d done that night—or rather hadn’t done—had erased any chance of whatever unspoken feelings had been between them. The bottom line was, she couldn’t trust Ryan. Couldn’t trust him to be there for her and couldn’t trust him with her heart.
“Look, Katie. You don’t have to talk to me, and you don’t have to stay. I understand if you want to get away from me. I just want you to know that I don’t feel the same way.”
She leaned back on her heels, just to get some feeling into her legs, which had gone numb along with the