“I’m on it.”

Smiling, I snuggled deeper against my cold pillow. “Lowe?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for being such a good friend.”

He was silent so long, I didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he replied quietly, “You make it easy.”

I was almost drifting off to sleep with a small smile on my lips when Lowe whispered, “Charley?”

“Yeah?”

“If I didn’t think it would get me hurt in the end … I’d be the guy who got serious for you.”

His confession hung in the air around us, making tears burn in my eyes. An overwhelming melancholy set over me.

Lowe was a great guy. The kind of guy I could really fall for. But he was right to guard himself against me, because no matter how many times I told myself otherwise, I still hadn’t let go of Jake. I was beginning to fear that I’d lose every good thing that came into my life because I just couldn’t set myself free of him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Light streamed in from the thin curtains hanging at the small window in Lowe and Matt’s room. My eyes rested on Lowe sprawled on his stomach, his arm dangling over the side of the twin bed, his graceful fingers almost touching the floor.

His face seemed so much softer in sleep, but it could be that after last night, I was feeling especially tender toward him.

Curled up on my side on Matt’s bed, nerves bit into my empty stomach at the mere thought that my friends would assume Lowe and I had slept together if they discovered I wasn’t in my room with Claudia. If I’d been a little more sober last night, I would’ve realized slipping into Matt’s bed was a terrible idea.

At least Jake had gotten so drunk he’d passed out before realizing I’d disappeared into Lowe’s room. The clock on Matt’s bedside table told me it was just before seven in the morning. Nobody would be roaming around yet, so it seemed like a safe plan to get up now. Flipping back the covers, I quietly got out of bed, not bothering to fix my bed head or my wrinkled clothes as I tiptoed toward the door. Passing the mirror fixed to the wall, I saw I had sleep-smeared mascara around my eyes. I looked like I’d been up to no good.

Groaning under my breath, I pulled open the door as silently as I could, tiptoed out, and turned to click the door shut gently. Feeling a little hungover and a lot tired, I turned to head toward the kitchen for a glass of water and instead of meeting an empty hall, I met Jake.

Frozen, I stared at him numbly as his eyes glanced from Lowe’s door to me, back to the door, and then back to me. His already pale face turned white and the glass of water in his hand trembled. His assumption settled as an unpleasant ache in my chest and before I could explain, he jerked like I’d shot him and quickly disappeared into the room he was sharing with Beck.

Panic suffused me and I stood there, stuck in the awful moment. My breathing was harsh as I leaned against the wall, cursing fate that I’d have to have crossed paths with Jake of all people as I snuck out of Lowe’s room. Sliding down the wall, I buried my head in my hands, trying to talk myself off the ledge.

I hadn’t cheated on Jake, for Christ’s sake! I was barely even talking to him.

Why did it feel like a betrayal?

Why was I terrified Jake would hate me?

This was what I wanted. I wanted closure; I wanted Jake to let me go so I could move on. But I never wanted to move on like this, and I definitely didn’t want to put a strain between him and Lowe.

If the horrified look on his face was any indication, I’d say Jake was not going to speak to me ever again.

And why did that thought burn in my throat so badly, when that’s what I’d said I wanted all along?

Winter sun shone on us as we stood outside the lodge ready to trek down the hill to the center of the small town. There we’d decide where we were going to eat before we got taxis out to the Ben Nevis Whisky Distillery.

I was staring down at the beautiful sight of the sun glinting across Loch Linnhe, waiting on Claudia to declare us fit to go and worrying about Jake who’d told Beck he wasn’t feeling up to leaving his bed. Ten minutes earlier I’d pulled Lowe aside and warned him about my encounter with Jake. His mouth had gotten tight but he’d given me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. I guessed that meant he would deal with it.

I didn’t want him to have to deal with it.

This was so messed up.

“Jake?” Claudia suddenly asked and I whirled around to see Jake coming down the concrete porch steps toward us. “I thought you weren’t coming with us.”

His dark eyes were hard and brittle as he stuck his hands into his coat pockets and came to a standstill beside her and Beck. “Decided fresh air might do me good.”

No one else seemed to notice that anything was wrong with him, perhaps putting his obvious bad mood down to being hungover, and Claudia continued on trying to explain to Matt why a bunch of novices couldn’t, and definitely shouldn’t, try to take on Ben Nevis.

“I’m just saying it’s the kind of experience you want to tell your grandkids about,” Matt said, his eyes wide with hope.

Lowe snorted. “And what grandkids will that be, Matt, considering you’re probably going to die at the bottom of the highest mountain in Britain?”

He grimaced. “The highest?”

“I just told you that,” Claudia frowned at him. “Don’t you listen to me?”

“Honestly, when you talk I’m pretty much just staring at your mouth. Or your boobs.”

Beck slapped him across the head.

“Dude,” Matt rubbed the back of his skull. “I’m going to have brain damage before I have kids with the way you keep f**king smacking me around. Just have sex with her already and be done with it.”

Claudia blushed while Beck took a menacing step toward Matt.

Lowe stepped in front of Matt protectively. “He’s just messing with you,” he grinned. “Give him a break. The guy is seriously hungover. He was wasted last night when we put him to bed.”

“We?” Jake suddenly asked, his tone demanding.

Lowe stiffened, his hands curling into fists as he nodded. “Denver, Rowena, Char, and me.”

Jake took a step toward him. “And then what happened?”

Oh f**king oh! My feet started walking toward them both with a mind of their own.

Lowe’s eyes sharpened and he murmured silkily, tauntingly, “And then we went to bed.”

Without another word Jake launched himself at Lowe with fierce aggression and punched him so hard in the face, Lowe stumbled back and lost his footing.

As a group we shouted a multitude of curses and cries of shock, and I propelled forward, putting myself between Jake and Lowe.

Shaking, I flinched when Lowe glanced up at me, his lips bloody and swelling, and gave me a sardonic shrug.

“Don’t f**king look at her,” Jake growled, trying to push past Beck. “Get up.”

Lowe eyed him with arrogant insouciance but slowly stood.

“Whit is goin’ on?” Rowena asked softly, worry dripping from the words as Denver now helped hold Jake back.

Lowe wiped his lip. “He thinks I f**ked Charley.”

Everyone hushed at that announcement. Even Jake grew still.

All eyes but Lowe’s and Jake’s turned to me.

I blanched. “He didn’t!” I denied vehemently.

Jake jerked at the denial and whipped his head around to me. “He didn’t?”

“No, I didn’t,” Lowe answered for me, his eyes fixed on Jake. “I kissed her. One kiss. We stopped. Decided it was a bad idea. But since you dumped Charley years ago and flaunted a new relationship in front of her for months, I’d like to know what business it is of yours who Charley f**ks and why just the thought of some lucky guy going there stirs you into a blind rage?” His eyes narrowed now and suddenly it occurred to me that Lowe wasn’t as unaffected or nonchalant as he let on. He was pissed at Jake. Big time. His voice was rough as he continued, “Sort your f**king head out, man, before you lose friends and worse … hurt someone who definitely does not deserve to be hurt by you again.”

After a few seconds of hard-faced death stares, Jake’s shoulders slumped wearily and he scrubbed his hands over his face.

I felt sick.

Never did I want to be the girl who caused a fight between anyone, let alone friends, and I definitely didn’t want to be the girl to put blood on Lowe’s face and that look in Jake’s eyes.

“Talk to him,” Claudia whispered, coming to a stop beside me, her fingers squeezing mine. “We’ll get Lowe cleaned up and head into town. You take Jake for a walk. You need to work this out before it implodes. No more avoiding.”

Swallowing the nausea, I nodded at her and watched as she quietly and calmly herded everyone, except for Jake, back into the lodge.

Claudia gave me one last bolstering look and disappeared inside.

Jake looked over at me, a riot of emotions roiling in his dark eyes. I felt those emotions blast into me and take hold, pleading with me to go to him. Instead I turned in the opposite direction and began to stride away with the hope that he’d catch up to me.

He did.

Soon we were walking downhill, side by side, the atmosphere between us thick and exasperating and a little frightening. We’d always, always felt too much around each other. Jake punching Lowe was proof enough of that.

“The thought,” he suddenly said, his voice raspy, gruff, “the thought of you being with him, with anybody … I was sitting in there trying to get past it, trying to tell myself it wasn’t my business, but it just … it was eating at me and eating at me and I just had to get it out.”

“By punching Lowe?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

Taking a deep breath of crisp, clean air, my voice shook a little as I replied, “We’re not together. Who I sleep with shouldn’t matter.”

“But it does.”

“Jake …”

“Did the thought of me being with Melissa bother you?”

The question hurt like a mother and I stopped so I could glare up at him in disgust. “You don’t deserve an answer to that question.”

Jake stared down at me sadly. “No, I don’t. But I need it.”

I didn’t say anything for a while but slowly his anguished expression loosened the words until they fell onto my tongue and right out of my mouth. “Why do you think I started avoiding you? I need to move on from us, Jake, and I couldn’t do that and be around you … and Melissa. When I heard you broke up with her … that didn’t really change how I felt.”

He hung his head, his fingers scrunching into his hair. “You put up a good front. I used to be able to read you but you seemed fine. I kept looking for some indication, something …” He shrugged unhappily. “Then your dad’s attitude at the airport … I couldn’t get the questions out of my head. What did it mean? Why was he still pissed on your behalf? Did you want me still?” He breathed softly. “It caused another huge argument between me and Melissa. We broke up in a f**king taxi,” he sighed sadly.

Every word he said repeated in time with the hard thud of my heart. “Is she okay?”

He shook his head. “She wasn’t at the time. But it’s been almost a month so … I don’t know. I never meant to hurt her. Never. But I started to think maybe you weren’t fine. That you were just lying to protect yourself. Then your question on the train …” He looked up from under his eyelashes, studying me. “It gave me hope. Until you went back to avoiding me again.”

My body jerked at the unexpected comment. “Hope?”

Jake nodded, shoving his nervous hands into his pockets. “I wasn’t looking for anything from you. I never imagined you’d ever want me back. Not after what I did, how I acted.” He turned now, starting to walk again and I found myself hurrying to catch up, my breathing shallow as Jake’s confession became my whole world. “A few months after we moved back to Chicago, I still wasn’t doing well. I wouldn’t talk to my parents, my grades were slipping, I spent most of my time holed up in my room listening to crap music, and I was … pretty good at pretending to be numb.”

“What happened to Brett wasn’t your fault, Jake,” I reminded him quietly.

“I know that,” he nodded, “I know that now. But back then, I couldn’t get the what-ifs out of my head. For the most part, I did a good job of negatively associating you with it all.” Jake’s gaze was apologetic when he saw me flinch. “That didn’t last long. Three months after we left Lanton, I was up in my room and I still had a lot of moving boxes lying around. My parents paid for a company to pack most of our stuff and transport it back to Chicago, so when I opened one of my boxes, I wasn’t expecting to see you there. I’d forgotten about the tickets to Blind Side and that frame I had on my bedside table …”

I hugged my arms around myself, remembering the photograph that Lukas had taken of me and Jake leaning against Hendrix. He had his arms around me, I had my hand on his stomach, and I was smiling up into his face. Jake wasn’t smiling but the expression in his eyes told everyone who looked at that picture that he was in love with me.

I’d loved that photo. So had Jake.

Tears formed in the back of my eyes and I fought hard to restrain them.

“I pulled out that photograph and as I stared at it, it was just a floodtide. I remembered. I remembered how much I loved you. How happy you made me. How much you could surprise me. How hard you made me laugh. And what it felt like to feel you laughing against me. To hold you. To kiss you. To be inside you.” He shot me a dark look and my breath caught. “I remembered what I said to you. I remembered every tear on your face when I broke up with you, and I couldn’t believe I was the one who put them there. That’s when it hit me: there was no going back. When I threw you away, somewhere deep down I think I believed it would be okay because we were us. We were solid. But reality set in after the fact. After what I did? There was no way I could win you back.” He glanced warily at me. “I lost it. The blame, the guilt, the anger, the loss, it all just swallowed me whole. My parents heard me yelling and breaking things and by the time they got to my room, I’d trashed the place and I’d cut my hands on the picture frame glass.” He shrugged sadly. “That makes me sound psycho, I know … but think of it from my perspective. To me, in that moment, it was like you’d died too.