Page 7 of Still the One

“You look well. You look…” Absolutely mesmerizing is what Gabrielle Mackenzie looks like. I can’t even finish my sentence. How the hell am I going to give her the apology she so deserves? How am I going to clear the air between us? Is that even possible after all this time—and after what I did?

“What?” Mac asks.

“You look really good.” I follow up my statement with a weird chuckle.

“Thanks. I’m kind of contractually obliged to.”

Typical Mac to wave off a compliment about her looks like that.

“Look, Mac…” I try again. “I’m sorry for what happened and I’m sorry that I’m only saying this to you now.” I wrote her plenty of emails I never sent and picked up the phone dozens of times to make a call that never went through. What I did was so shitty, I even lost the right to apologize—because a bunch of useless words could never make up for it.

She doesn’t say anything, just briefly arches up her eyebrows and fixes her gaze on something behind me.

“Seeing you again,” I say. “Part of me feels as though I shouldn’t even be in this room with you. It’s not how I usually feel, but… there’s something about you. Something so intensely familiar and understandably distant at the same time. I don’t really know how to act around you because of that.”

The first sound to pierce the short silence that falls is a deep sigh from Mac.

“I don’t want to sound like a cold-hearted bitch, but the truth is I don’t care how you feel, Jamie. It took me a long time to figure out how to stop caring, but I did. In the end, I managed to stop loving you and what we had. If I seem distant, it’s because of that. I had no choice.”

Damn. I swallow hard.

“I’m here for Sandra, whom I care for a lot,” Mac says. “For that reason, I can be perfectly civil to you, but that’s all I can be. Seeing you again was always going to be perturbing, but I’m over that now. I’m not here to rehash the past. Maybe you had other ideas about what this conversation was going to be, but this is all it can be for me. Just so we’re clear.”

“Fair enough,” I manage to mumble.

Before I can say anything else, Mac exits the balcony and heads inside the room.

“You’re leaving already?” I blurt out.

“Why would I stay? What else is there to say?” She’s not kidding about not caring one bit about me any longer. There’s nothing but coldness in her voice and her friendly face is hidden behind a sheet of pure ice.

“I’m so sorry, Mac,” I stammer. “I really need you to know that. I’ve always regretted what happened between us.”

“Good to know,” she says, before turning around and leaving the room. So much for having a conversation. Why did she even agree to a private chat? Probably because she couldn’t say what she just said in front of anyone else. But again, I have no leg to stand on. When it comes to Mac, I have zero claims to make. And she has zero fucks to give, apparently.

I find the guys by the pool. They’re drinking champagne already, and I’m tempted to join them, but it’s a bit early—and it’s Sandra’s long-awaited wedding day.

Alan stares at me intently. “And?”

“And, what?” I sink into a lounge chair.

“How did your chat go?”

I shrug. “Badly.” From under my lashes, I glare at the pool. Mac said she was going for a swim. She could pop up at the side of the pool, right in front of me, at any moment. I sit up a bit straighter. “Mission failed.”

“What were you hoping to get out of it?” Charles asks. He wasn’t around when Mac and I broke up—although breaking up is too gentle a term for what went down between us. When I callously destroyed our relationship of ten years, our wedding plans, and our future.

“Maybe some peace of mind. I don’t know.” I fill my cheeks with air and let it escape slowly. “Either way, Mac doesn’t care, so nor should I. It’s been too long. We’re both different people now.” I keep my gaze trained on the water. “Did you see her go into the pool?” I ask, just to be sure.

“She went for a swim in the ocean,” Charles says.

Of course, she did. She’s probably a mile out by now.

“What did she say?” Alan asks.

“It doesn’t matter.” I shrug. “We both agreed seeing each other again is quite distressing, but that’s all it is.” I’m not going to repeat what Mac said to me—ever, to anyone. “No residual feelings whatsoever.”

“BS,” Alan says. “Any fool can see that. Even this one.”

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