His eyes skirted over the crowd before they locked onto me. I met his private smile with one of my own. One thing I craved almost as much as Josh himself was the peace, the serenity I felt when I was around him. Everything else melted away. Seeing him brought to mind all those horrible analogies in romance novels, like water in a drought, sunshine in winter, color in a world of gray. Yes, yes, yes. He was all of that and more.

Josh eclipsed Riley, and the twinge at seeing Riley again after these six weeks was no more. Could I really be over it?

“Is he . . . What’s going on with you now?” Riley asked, his voice dropping just like his face.

I nodded. “Yeah, I think he is.”

Josh’s eyes moved to the right, over Riley, and his smile faltered. He gave me a head nod, like he finally had something figured out, and turned his back on me. Shit. He thought I was here with Riley.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it when the puck dropped.

The first period went by in a blink, and the Bears were up on us two to nothing. Gus skated his heart out, but man, the other team was good.

The kids headed back to the locker room, and the coaches filed out after them. Josh glanced up at me, but his eyes held none of their usual warmth.

“Hungry?” Riley asked.

My stomach answered for me. “Sure.”

“You kids have fun.” His mom winked at us.

Once we were at the top of the stairs, entering the rotunda, I had to ask. “Your mom has no clue why we broke up, huh?”

Riley shook his head and ran his hand through his hair in a gesture I knew all too well. “No. I told her we’d grown apart, and you needed to move down here for your family. She’s secretly plotting with your mom to get us together.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I haven’t told Mom, either, otherwise she’d know this was never going to happen.”

Riley stopped in front of the snack bar and ordered me a slice of cheese pizza and a root beer. That’s what being with someone for three years did; he knew the mundane details about me. “Never?”

I stared up at him for a long moment, absorbing the light in his eyes, the way his hair lay, the familiar worried purse of his mouth. A feeling of peace came over me, and I managed to let it all go. “Never, Riley.”

“But we have a plan, and it’s a great plan. You in teaching, me in law. Everything is mapped out so perfectly.” He took our pizza from the cashier and handed me the soda. “How can that all just be . . . over?”

We chose a spot to the side, sitting at a tall table tucked away in an alcove. “It just is, Ry.”

“But I love you. I’m not just saying that. I’ve known since our junior year that you were my perfect partner. I know we can work past this if we fight for it.”

I chewed my pizza slowly, turning over the phrasing in my head before I swallowed. “That’s just it. I don’t have any more fight in me. Too much has happened to go back, and the things you’ve done make it impossible to go forward.” I sighed, letting the last of my pain over Riley go with my words. “I want to be angry. I want to scream, and kick, and tell you what an asshole you are for what you did, but the truth is I’m not mad anymore. I just don’t have the energy for it.” There was no bluff, no lie. Out of everything that had happened the last six weeks, he was something I was actually over. Saying it aloud only drove it home.

“Is it this thing with Josh Walker? Is that why you won’t give me a second chance?” I knew from the strain on his face what this was costing him. Riley didn’t lose. It wasn’t in his nature.

“No. Yes. I don’t know, I guess.” I laughed, feeling free for the first time since December. “I can’t be with you because I can never trust another word that comes out of your mouth, not after what you did to me. Maybe if you had loved Kayla . . .” That thought spun around my brain, blurring it. “Did you? Love her?”

“No. She was just . . . there. Convenient.”

I concentrated on the drops of condensation that formed on the outside of my root beer. “I thought that would make it better,” I shook my head. “But it doesn’t. It just means you traded what we spent years building for sex. Just sex. I can’t be in a relationship with someone who values sex over love, especially when I offered you both.”

Silence stretched between us. It wasn’t awkward as much as it was final.

“I can’t give up on you, Ember. I’ve never pictured my life without you.” He reached across the table for my hand, but I pulled it back into my lap.

“It’s time to start. You’re going to do amazing things with your life; I know that much about you. But I won’t be a part of any of it.”

He picked up our empty plates and tossed them into the trash can behind the table before turning back around for me. “I’d gone through this a hundred times. I pictured you hitting me, cursing at me, crying, and every time, I convinced you how much I loved you and won you back.” He lifted his arms out, palms up. “What I did to you was selfish, and wrong, and . . . fucking awful. I can’t make up for it.”

Part of me wanted to feel moved by his honesty, but instead, there was only a lingering sadness in my heart for what we had lost, and what he hadn’t given up on yet. Asshole or not, I’d loved Riley for three years, and it wasn’t easy to see him hurt, even if he’d been the one to destroy us. I walked into his open arms and tucked my head against his shoulder, where it had always fit. “You can’t make up for it, Riley. Not now, not ever.”