Page 37 of Imagine Me and You

She kept replaying her own words, hearing how small they sounded. How pitifully meager in light of what he’d offered.

She pulled her knees up against her chest. She’d lost him now. In every way. As her support. As her lover. As her friend.

She wanted to be angry. To scream at him and say this was why she couldn’t do it. Because losing him would hurt too much.

Because it did hurt too much.

So much. So much she didn’t know if she would survive it.

He left because he offered you his heart, and you asked him for something else. You didn’t offer a damn thing.

A tear rolled down her cheek and she squinted, the light from the fire blurring into orange stars, the heat on her face doing nothing to heat the chill in her soul.

It was the truth. He’d laid it all on the line, and she’d rejected it. Rejected him.

Because she’d been afraid. But not of what she’d thought.

The realization made a sob catch in her throat. Jace was already everything to her. No matter what she’d let herself think. No matter what lies she’d told herself.

She hadn’t needed to share his bed for him to have her heart. He’d always had it. Always. It was why she’d never let her relationships progress past a certain point. It was why no one had ever been important enough to replace him in her life, to come between the two of them.

She loved him. She’d always loved him.

He was her everything. Not just her support, but hereverything.

And what would happen when he realized that she could never be his? That was her real fear. That he would suddenly look at her and see what her father must have seen when he decided to walk out. What her mother must have seen when she’d let her teenage daughter stay behind in a different state.

That he would realize at some point she wasn’t worth all that emotion.

She closed her eyes and scooted closer to Poppy, resting her head on her dog’s shoulder. “What did I do?”

Eleven

Sam’s fingerswere stiff by the time she raised her hand to knock on the motel room door. Her heater had decided to crap out in her damned van, and she’d been driving all over Bend, checking every hotel in mad pursuit of Jace, with Poppy in the back, happy as a clam among the pies. And the cherpumple, which, epic broken heart or not, she had to deliver today.

But she hadn’t opened her bakery today.

She had priorities.

She’d been to eight motels already and it was only seven-thirty in the morning. Because somewhere between midnight and the gray light of dawn, she’d made a decision.

Fear was a dumbass state to live in.

She was hiding from possible heartbreak by giving herself certain heartbreak.

More than that, she was being a lousy friend. Because Jace had never lied to her. He had never let her down. And she was judging him based on other people’s track records, and not his own.

And dammit, she loved that man, and she wanted him. For always. For keeps.

She stuck her hands in her armpits and waited. No one came to the door, but the front desk man had been certain that Jace Colter was indeed staying here and in this room. And when she’d given a little eyebrow wiggle and said she wanted to surprise him, the man had immediately given over a room number.

Because men were very predictable that way. And of course, he was not going to block Jace out of a potential lay. It was bad security.

But the motel employee letting his penis do the thinking was currently her best friend, so she wasn’t complaining.

She extricated her hands from their place of warmth and knocked on the door again. “Jace!” she shouted for good measure. She knocked again; the cold, combined with the hard door, made her feel like she was in danger of splitting her knuckles open.

Fine. She’d knock ’til her hands were bloody. She didn’t care.

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