Page 74 of The Wedding Situation Romance

“You want the truth?” he asks.

“No, I want you to lie to me,” I mutter. “Of course I want the truth. No frills would be nice, too.”

“You’re acting the way you did with–”

“Don’t say her name,” I warn him.

“Lauren.”

Every part of my body clenches at the sound of it.

“This is not the same,” I say sharply.

“No, I totally agree,” Drew says. “It’s not the same. It’s not the same because you’ve not naive this time. And I say that with love. We have all been there. Young and in love. But also, Quinn and Lauren are two very different people.”

“Lauren believed in love,” I say, picking up our pace to a jog again, partly because I want to get to the cars faster and partly because the conversation is stressing me out.

“In her own way,” he says. “And unfortunately, it wasn’t with you. You weren’t her endgame,”

“Clearly,” I punch out. I speed up even more. Maybe if I outrun him, he will be panting too hard to keep talking. Unfortunately, he holds steady, like he’s getting some sort of mid-life second wind.

Of course.

“More importantly, Reid, she wasn’t your endgame,” he says. “Which is why this is different.”

“Funny,” I snort, “A moment ago, you said I’m acting the way I did with Lauren.”

“You’re acting like you’re falling for someone, yes,” he says, and every word of it makes my skin crawl. But for a moment, I try to figure out why. It isn’t that the idea of caring for Quinn upsets me. I may be a realist when it comes to love, but I’m not heartless. I still know what it means to care for people, tovalue relationships. Am I picky about who I let in? Sure. It only makes sense after what I went through. After what Lauren put me through. But that doesn’t mean I am incapable of feeling…something. And after this past weekend, I can’t deny that. I definitely feelsomething. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.

“I’m not sure about that,” I say, and Drew nods once with a short smile. Despite playing footsie with the red tape, he does at least seem to know when to back off. A little anyway. “What happened with Lauren…gutted me,” I admit. “And I’ll never be stupid enough to get into a situation like that again.”

“Alright,” he nods. “But I’d be careful not to fuck up therightrelationship either.”

Chapter 31

Quinn

“Darn rain,”Allegra shakes her head as she looks out the kitchen window. It’s been two days since I got back from Myrtle, and while we had a day of sun yesterday, today is back to the gloom, putting a major damper on our planned backyard pool party. “So much for our spa day.”

“I don’t know,” I say as I pick chocolate chips out of the cookie dough. “I feel like baking cookies is pretty therapeutic, too. And we can still enjoy drinks while we do it.”

“That’s true,” she smiles, letting the momentary negativity go as Allegra always does. It’s one of the things I love about her. Allegra’s life is stressful with work and kids and taking care of all the things, and yet she always sees the good in everything. Moments of stress are just that. Moments. Then she moves on, radiating positive energy again. “Speaking of that, are you ever going to tell me the secret ingredient of your amazing chocolate chip cookies?”

“Nope,” I answer. “It was a strict rule of my mother’s…never disclose the family secret.”

“Dang,” she says, plucking a chocolate chip out of the dough and popping it into her mouth. “My family secret was that my cousin Sarah was gay. We thought she just liked dogs more than people.”

“I think most people like dogs more than people,” I say.

“Fair enough,” she shrugs with a warm grin. “So I wanna hear all about this trip. And don’t leave out the good stuff.”

“I mean, it was all good…” I say. “Other than flying. That was horrible. Both times I swore up and down I was going to die,” I say as I spoon lumps of dough onto a cookie sheet. Meanwhile, the baby is clamoring on the floor with wooden spoons and pots.

“Is that why you slept with him?” Allegra asks. “You figured you had nothing to lose?”

With that, I drop the spoon on the floor, and Kimbree grabs it, licking it before I can snatch it back from her. “Wait. When did I tell you I slept with him?” I ask, and a smile stretches across Allegra’s face as she fetches the spoon back from Kimbree and hands it to me.

“Just now,” she says, and I frown. “Come on. Tell me what happened. I won’t judge you.”