Page 12 of You Had Me At Valentine

“Wait.” Lyra catches my arm. “You’ll need the list mapped out. And the invitations. Let me sort through them first.”

“I think I can handle reading names and addresses.” I carefully extract the box from her reach. “You’ve got your hands full here.”

“But—”

“Trust me.” The words slip out before I can stop them.

Something flashes in her eyes. Pain? Regret? All of the above.

Because she doesn’t trust me, nor do I have a lot of options for repairing what I broke.

Then Justine calls her name and her gaze cuts away. While she’s distracted, I escape into the cold February morning with my heart pounding and a box full of Valentines that better include evidence of my biggest regret.

To be clear, it’s Lyra. Losing her is my biggest regret, not pouring my feelings onto a card.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Lyra says, appearing beside my car before I can even get the door open. “Some of these addresses might have changed. This way, one of us can drive and the other can navigate.”

Uh, what? I start to shake my head and correct her that I meantby myself. You know, so I can pluck out the inflammatory Valentine and burn it. But other words come out of my mouth.

“I always enjoy your company.”

The looks she gives me sends a thousand volts to my heart, defibrillator style. Ipleasedher with that off-the-cuff comment.

I’ll have some more of that, stat.

She climbs into the passenger seat of my BMW as if she owns it. Now I have to pretend I hate the idea of being shut up in a car with Lyra for a couple of hours. I sigh and slide into the driver’s seat, setting the box on the center console so I can snap my seatbelt into place.

“We should organize by location,” she says, already reaching for the stack. “Make a route that—oh!”

Several cards slip from her hands, scattering across the floor mat. We both bend to retrieve them at the same time, bumping heads in the process.

“Great minds bonk alike,” we both say at the same time.

She flushes, a faint smile on her lips that I might call nostalgic if I didn’t know better.

“You always hated it when I said that,” she reminds me.

“Because it’s not the saying.” I shrug, playing my part like I always did back in the day, as if truly bothered by the heinousness of this phrase crime. “Why mess with a time-honored aphorism?”

She rolls her eyes. “Only a lawyer would use that word. Besides, mine is better.”

“Debatable.”

My smile is absolutely rooted in sentiment as I casually pick up cards from the floormat, checking each envelope before handing it back, praying mine isn’t among them.

“Look at this one.” She holds up an elaborate creation covered in pressed flowers, her face misty again. “To Miss Henderson, my favorite teacher. She still substitutes sometimes at the elementary school.”

“First stop then?” I ask, mostly to distract her from the remaining cards I’m gathering. Including one cream-colored envelope I just spied that makes my pulse spike.

Lyra busies herself sorting Valentines into neat piles.

“There are so many. Gran never turned anyone away.” She shuffles through another stack. “It was like this little piece of magic, you know? The way my grandmother brought people together at exactly the right moment.”

The right moment. I wrote mine the day before the party, convinced it was the perfect time to tell her how I felt. Before everything changed.

What would it change today if I dropped my Valentine into Lyra’s hands atthismoment?

“Byron?” Her voice pulls me back. “You looked far away for a minute.”

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