Page 42 of The Spark Between Us

Sarah had been sitting forward, so focused that she almost spilled her wine before noticing and righting the glass. Then she slumped back against the couch with a hand on her cheek. I saw the rise and fall of her chest and realized my pulse had sped up as well.

Where the fuck did that come from?

I was not the expressive kind of guy who generally waxed poetic about love. Especially because I didn’t believe it in. Not anymore.

She shook her head, eyes glistening and fixed on me. Not gonna lie—I loved the way it felt. Maybe because she had the potential to connect with me the exact way I’d just described.

Which is why you need to shut it down. Now.

She also had the power to leave me so much worse off than Ellie did if I wasn’t careful.

“Braden, that’s just...wow.” She shook her head again and bit down on her lip. “I really hope you find her. And while you’re at it...order me up one of her too. I don’t date the ladies, but that sounds freaking amazing.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, she doesn’t exist.”

“Why d’you say that? C’mon, where’s my optimistic fireman? You just haven’t met her yet.”

I ran a hand over my scruff, which was a nervous habit. “I did meet her. Or at least I thought I did. I was engaged...previously. To a woman—Ellie was her name—who I thought was at least some of those things. Or if not, she fell pretty damn close.”

Sarah put her wine glass down and leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. “What happened?” she asked softly, her forehead creased with worry. “Did she die?”

I couldn’t help my smile at her earnest concern. “No. Nothing like that. She’s alive. But she’s with a different guy. She met someone else two months before the wedding, moved to New York to live with some brilliant hotshot lawyer she met on a business trip.” I waited for her to digest that information.

Sarah blinked a couple times and squinted as though what I said didn’t make sense. To me, truthfully, it still didn’t.

“Yeah, at first it was phone sex, then he started flying out to see her. They were screwing in the spare bedroom right up until two weeks before the wedding when she dumped me officially. In a text. Said I wasn’t enough for her. She needed someone more educated, with more depth.”

“Depth?” She spat the word out. “Screw her, Braden. What a horrible thing to say.”

“She didn’t mean it the way it sounds.”

As usual, I was defending her. I’d been doing it since the day she left, not to make her look less cruel but to make myself feel less fucked over. If her reasons sounded valid, it was objective, not personal.

Sarah scooted closer and put a hand on my knee. The heat spread like a late summer brush fire consuming dry leaves.

“Braden. You are educated. Your job is selfless and admirable. And you have more depth than most people I’ve met. I’m sorry she said that.” Her scowl and the crease in her brow underscored her words. She closed her eyes, then leveled me with their expressive sea of blue. “Wait, did you also just say she told you all this in a text?”

“Well, not all of it. She started with the ‘I can’t marry you,’ and that dovetailed into a screaming match in person.”

“Good. She deserved some screaming at.”

I appreciated that she wanted to take my side, but if she’d met Ellie, she’d see that I was outclassed. No doubt, everyone saw it. Except me.

“Maybe in the moment, but it wasn’t meant to be. She grew up in downtown Chicago, loved big cities. She was never going to be happy here. She was too good for me. I was just too dumb to see it until it was way too late. Willful blindness.”

She picked up a pillow from the couch and threw it at me. Her aim was decent. If I hadn’t ducked, she’d have beaned me in the face. “Hey.”

“You’re an idiot. Albeit one with fast reflexes.”

“Why, because I don’t understand particle physics?”

She rolled her eyes. “First of all, no one really understands it. That’s why we call everything a theory. We’re just really convincing when we talk about shit we can’t see.”

“Okay...” I wasn’t sure where this was headed.

“You’re an idiot because you think she was too good for you. That’s absurd.”

“If you met her, you’d know.”

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