Page 43 of If Tomorrow Never Comes

“How far are we taking this analogy?”

“You started it.”

“Look, all I’m saying is you’re doing something incredible that you’ve been thinking about for a long time. You want this, even if it’s hard to see it through the crap that happened tonight. Don’t let this thing with Jamie hold you back from your dreams. No man is worth that, okay? He’s not worth it.”

Elliott didn’t know what to say to that.

“Right?” Yuka pressed.

Elliott frowned, and finally replied, “Right.”

But as she restarted the car and made her way back to the apartment, she questioned if she really believed it.

Chapter Thirteen

Jamie

Jamie’s hands shook as he pulled into Carly’s driveway and put the car in park.

“You okay?”

Her familiar voice sounded muffled. Far away. His fingers were numb, and he rubbed his palms up and down his thighs, blinking himself back into awareness.

Rational thought was just out of reach, as if his brain could do nothing but man the machinery in his body, directing basic functions like pumping blood and breathing. Single words bounced around his head, jumbled and erratic.

Elliott.

Kiss.

Love.

Carly.

He couldn’t seem to grab ahold of any to make sense of them.

“Jamie?” Carly said, probably for the second time.

He looked over at her then, noting the slight frown between her brows. He cataloged her features, ones he’d known for years. He knew so much about her—the good and the not-so-good. Not long ago, he’dhave said she knew the same things about him, but that wasn’t true anymore, was it?

She didn’t know he’d met Elliott last year. That the night he’d spent with Elliott was possibly the best night of his life, and that until the day heforcedhimself to stop thinking about it, he’d replayed kissing her over and over in his head. That he thought he’d moved on and was ready to try again, but that truth was shattered when he saw Elliott at The Patriarch. He’d been fighting himself ever since, unwilling to give in to the selfish, ugly side of his brain he apparently inherited from his father.

Tonight, he’d lost that battle.

Tiffany’s words had ripped through him like a shock wave.

She said his name while she slept. Elliott, I’ve never forgotten the look on your face when you told me about him.

When Elliott, pale and shaken, had walked away, Jamie had desperately wanted to follow her. He’d wanted to ask her if what Tiffany said was true and if even a sliver of those feelings remained.

If he was really,reallyhonest, even before all that, when she and Stephen walked in at the beginning of the night? For a split second he’d wished he was the one standing beside her.

It wasn’t okay.

He swallowed past the gravel in his throat. “Carly.”

The gravity in his voice was unmistakable. She blinked. Straightened.

“I—” he began, but nothing else came. How? How was he supposed to do this? “Shit.”

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