Page 78 of Blindly Yours

None whatsoever

Nate

There’s a little café downtown that overlooks the river. The weather is really nice.

Rose

meet you there at noon?

***

“So, what were you like in high school?” I ask Nate while we sit at a round café table, watching canoers glide past on the river. “Jock? Nerd? Where did you fit in?”

He relaxes back and rests a hand on his knee. “Neither. I spent most of my time in shop class. We had a little clique of us. Four guys, one girl.”

“Did you stay for the tools, or the girl?” I smirk.

“Both,” he laughs. “I think the four of us were quietly competing for her, and she knew it.”

I take a sip of my raspberry lemonade. “Who won?”

He laughs again. “I did.”

“Well, well.” I’m impressed, and also a little retroactively jealous. “That must have been quite the confidence booster.”

“As a sixteen-year-old, oh yes. I wore it as a badge of honor,” he replies. “She was my first kiss too, but we only lasted a few weeks. She dumped me for the kicker on the football team.”

“Ah, I bet he was cooler than you.”

“Waycooler.” He nods. “What about you? Did you date in high school?”

I shrug. “There was this one guy. We actually met over the summer at the lodge my family always stayed at. We had one of those short little whirlwind summer romances. I think I was seventeen. He broke up with me a week before school started.” I roll my eyes. “And that was it for serious relationships until I met Malcolm.”

“The Carnegie?” Nate asks.

I nod.

“Is he the one who cheated on you?”

I press my lips together and plaster on a fake smile. “Yes. With his secretary.”

Nate clenches his jaw and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Rose.”

I wave him off. “It was like four months ago. I’m fine.”

“You were together how long?”

“A year.”

“What an idiot,” he shakes his head again. “And he’s trying to get you back after all that?”

I sit back and sigh. “Yeah, and he’s enlisting my mother’s help. She’d drop all her morals to have me end up with a Carnegie.”

He watches me incredulously. “She knows what he did and still wants you to take him back?”

I nod.

“Dang. All because of his name?”

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