Page 35 of If Tomorrow Never Comes

She regarded him for a moment. “You’ll never let it go, will you?”

“Me? You’re the one who planned to prove me wrong the second you saw me again.” The pleasure he felt in the fact she’d thought about him—enough to bring something with her to Omaha—filled him with joy and discomfort. “I think you’re the competitive one, here.”

“If you’re not competitive, admit it’s a pie.”

“Absolutely not. It’s a tart.”

“You’re impossible.”

Yeah, Blythe had said the same thing once or five times.

He just shrugged. “If by ‘impossible’ you mean right, then yes.”

??Can I come over???

Jamie sent the text within minutes of returning to his apartment. Half an hour later, he was on his sister’s back porch with a beer in his hand.

Blythe reclined on a deck chair, hands folded behind her head as she gazed at the stars flickering in the darkened sky, patiently waiting for him to say what was on his mind.

They’d done this more times than he could count, though sometimes their roles were reversed.

He released a long, slow breath. “Do you ever wonder why Dad and Greg are the way they are?”

“No. I hardly think about them at all.”

Apparently she didn’t share his fear of turning into them. “Must be nice.”

“They’re driven by loyalty only to themselves. I can’t tell if it’s in the hope of achieving some illustrious social status or about feeling powerful. Maybe both. All I know is, I’m glad I fell under Mom’s influence. That we both did.”

“What if we didn’t, though? Not completely? What if some sliver of Dad’s asshole tendency is buried somewhere?”

“Jamie.” She frowned. “Even on your worst day, you’re not like him. Like either of them.”

Most days, he’d agree with her. Not because he was some perfect moral specimen, but because he’d worked damned hard toward becoming a man of strong character. To the best of his ability, he’d surrounded himself with people he respected and wanted to emulate, like his mom and high school baseball coach. He made mistakes just like everyone else but reflected back and tried to learn from them. His mom had encouraged self-discipline and held him accountable for his actions, expectations he’d carried forward for himself into adulthood.

In his eyes, honesty and integrity were as close to godliness as a person could get.

Which was why the emotional roller coaster he’d been on since Elliott had arrived left him feeling so unsteady.

Maybe he’d never really been tempted before.

“How did you know Jake was the man you wanted to marry?”

When she didn’t reply right away, he glanced over at her. She eyed him curiously, as if trying to piece together how the two questions were connected. “Everything was different with him. Better and brighter. After that first date I found myself wanting to be with him, no matter what I was doing. Even mundane errands were better if he was with me. I loved the way he saw the world and how he helped me see it in a new way.”

TheWhy?would come soon. She’d try to get to the bottom of why he was asking these questions at some point ... but until she forced it out of him, he wasn’t going there. He didn’t even have a full grasp on it himself.

His thoughts and feelings were a shit show.

“Have you ever been interested in another man? Since you realized you felt that way about Jake?”

If the question caught her off guard, she didn’t let it show. “Define ‘been interested.’”

He almost saidI can’t, because the whole reason he’d come over was to try to figure out where that line was. But he tried for a broad definition to see what she’d do with it. “Interested in getting to know more about them, I guess. Enjoyed talking to them.”

She shrugged. “Sure. There was this one night Jake and I went to a bar in Dundee. It was a slow night, so we talked to the bartender for like two hours. The guy had this fascinating life—he’d lived on a boat and made his way through Europe with just a backpack. He was young and super hot. I had a blast, hearing his stories. He was friendly, funny, and passionate about travel and was about to leave on another adventure. I haven’t seen him since, and sometimes I think about him and wonder how he’s doing and if he’s achieved everything he wanted to.”

Jamie turned that over in his mind. Was that all this was with Elliott? She was interesting, young, friendly. He definitely found her attractive. She’d been dealt a shitty hand in a lot of ways but still had a lot she wanted to achieve. And the more he learned about her, the more inspired he became.

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