It was as though his words ripped through her very soul, reaching for its most damaged nerve and searing it.

And in that moment, she really, truly hated him.

Hated even more that there was truth in his statement. Truth she wasn’t ready to deal with.

“Get out,” she said, after several tense moments passed between them.

He closed his eyes briefly. “If I walk out that door, I won’t be coming back, Brynn. Ever.”

Her stomach lurched. Ever? “But…”

He met her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore. You’re killing me from the inside out. You’ll be able to walk away with a tiny little battle wound. But me? I’ll be…”

Will didn’t finish the sentence, but her heart began to pound anyway. “What are you talking about? You can’t do what anymore?”

His face crumpled slightly as he reached out a finger toward her cheek. “Brynny. Do you have any idea what I felt when you showed up on my front porch that night three years ago?”

She tried for a smile to lighten the mood. “Horny?”

He didn’t smile back. “I felt like my entire life was finally about to start.”

Brynn literally felt her heart skip a beat.

“But it was just sex,” she whispered.

He didn’t respond.

“Wasn’t it?” she asked, her voice cracking.

He continued as though he hadn’t heard her. “I waited so long for you to come to me. I was on top of the world. And not even a week later, I find you on a date with some other guy.”

Her mind reeled, remembering. “You came over to return something my mom asked you to drop off, not to see me. And if I remember correctly, you were a total dick. Two days later, you were gone.”

His jaw tightened. “Did you care that I moved?”

No.

Yes.

Yes, I cared.

“I just thought you might have mentioned something that big, even to me,” she said softly.

“I didn’t mention it because I didn’t know I wasn’t going to move until I got on the plane.”

Brynn shook her head. “What do you mean you didn’t know? You moved across the country; you must have had some idea.”

“Nope.”

“That’s ridiculous. Who changes three time zones without a plan?”

He gave the smallest of smiles. “You and your plans.”

She took a deep breath. “So you moved because we slept together?”

Will went very still, his eyes dark and pleading. “I moved because I couldn’t stand the thought of watching you with other guys. Not after we’d been together. I moved because I didn’t want to be your dirty little secret, Brynn. I still don’t.”

Brynn froze. “You mean…you want…”

“Yeah,” he said with a harsh laugh. “I want. I want to hold your hand, and take you to the movies, and be with you when we go to your parents for dinner, and I want you to call me when you have a flat tire.”

“I did call you when I had a flat tire.” It felt like the safest thing to say at the moment.

“You think that wasn’t planned?”

She snorted. “How could you plan a flat tire?”

He just looked at her and her jaw dropped.

“You gave me a flat tire?”

Will didn’t bother looking the slightest bit guilty. “I would have done anything to get you to notice me.”

Her world tilted slightly at the implications of that. “Notice you how?”

“You know.”

She did know. But still her brain rejected it. “You…That’s why you moved next door? That’s the game you were playing?”

“It was never a game, Princess. Not to me.”

“So you…you’ve wanted us…me…you…to be like, a thing?”

He gave a curt nod.

Brynn’s fingers dropped again to the mark on her hip. “One step closer to what, Will? What does it mean?”

His hands were on her shoulders again, only this time he pressed her into the wall, his breath coming harsh and fast as he lifted her to her toes, shaking her. “Not one step closer to what, Brynn. One step closer to who. One step closer to me. After all these years, you finally came to me. Finally took a step in the right direction. And I didn’t want you to forget it.”

Brynn’s vision went fuzzy and her mouth went dry. “All these years…?”

He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, the emotion was so raw that she almost gasped.

No.

She put a hand up to stop him. “Will.”

He grasped her fingers, refusing to be silenced. “I’ve loved you every day. Every single Goddamn day since you first flicked your hair at me on the football field in that tiny cheerleading skirt.”

Brynn’s entire body trembled even as her brain shied away from his words.

Will Thatcher loved her.

And she…

She had never felt so lost. She had no idea what to say. Had no idea how to make this go away, or how to fix it.

She opened her mouth to say something. Anything. But her brain couldn’t put the pieces together. Couldn’t reconcile that the Will who’d always hated her had never hated her at all.

And that the Will she hated could be…

No. They’d spent their entire lives making each other miserable, and he wanted to push that all aside for something that could never work?

She was ice and order and calm. He was fire and instinct and chaos.

He would hurt her. And she’d already hurt him.

There was nothing for her to say.

Brynn forced herself to watch his eyes. Forced herself to recognize the exact second that he gave up.

The moment he realized that she wasn’t going to be saying it back.

All the fire and heat dropped from his gaze as he gently let her drop down to her feet. His hands fell away from her, arms falling loosely to his sides.

Brynn felt the loss of contact acutely. She wanted it back.

“Will, can’t we just…I need time.”

He gave a quick shake of his head, before planting a tender kiss on her forehead. “You’ve had plenty of time, Brynn.”

A sob hiccuped in her throat as she felt the meaning behind that kiss. She knew what that kiss meant. Knew Will well enough to understand what he wasn’t telling her.

He wanted all or nothing, and he was done waiting.

That kiss had been a good-bye.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Routine is the path to your future.

—Brynn Dalton’s Rules for an

Exemplary Life, #37

I look like a freak.”

Brynn sat back in her chair and set her distal end cutters on the tray before peeling back off her latex gloves. She tried for her most reassuring smile, but the truth was, she was bone tired. Tired of painstakingly attaching metal to misshapen teeth only to get petulant complaints in return.

“You don’t look like a freak.”

Abby Cornwell’s fourteen-year-old face scowled up at her, and Brynn felt a pull of sympathy. Between the thick glasses, the frizzy hair, the acne-ridden skin, and now the mouthful of metal, Abby hadn’t exactly hit the adolescent jackpot.

It will get better, sweetie.

Except sometimes it didn’t. Even when you did everything right, there were no guarantees. Because having straight teeth didn’t bring happiness. Apparently, neither did creating them.

“You look great,” Brynn said, leaning forward and giving Abby’s arm a quick squeeze.

Abby gave her an oh, please look that was apparently written into the female DNA to develop around the age of eleven.

“Well, yeah, okay, braces suck,” Brynn heard herself say. “But I promise that one day you’ll realize there are a lot more important things in life.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. My mom tells me all the time. Looks are passing, but brains and kindness are forever…all that crap.”

Good mom.

“Your mom’s right,” Brynn said.

“Easy for you to say. You’re perfect.”

Brynn leaned forward and gave her a little wink. “I work hard to make people think so.”

She escorted Abby to the reception desk to wait for her mom, knowing that nothing else she could say would make Abby hate her reflection any less, but silently sending up a prayer that life would be kind to the girl. That she would be happy instead of perfect.