Page 103 of Begin Again, Part 1

The emergency exit door burst open in exactly ten minutes, and her friends spilt onto the rooftop. Out of breath and out of their minds with worry, all three screamed as they ran up to her, "Edie!"

After all the hugging and crying had stopped, Sienna was the first to scold her. "Don't ever do that again, you hear me? Do you know how terrified I was when the girls told me you're on the rooftop?"

"I didn't say I was planning to jump." Eden smiled ruefully.

"Hello, you were crying a river, and you told me you're on the rooftop. What the hell was I supposed to think?" Cassandra asked.

"I'm sorry," Eden apologised. The last thing she wanted was to worry her friends.

Still gasping for air, Lydia pointed at the bakery box on the ledge. "Since we've confirmed you're not going to jump, what's that?"

Eden had forgotten all about the cupcakes.

"They're from Liam," she replied, and explained how they ended up on the rooftop with a bakery box.

"You need to marry that man!" Sienna said,

"Yeah, Edie, he ran all over Rock Castle looking for cupcakes for you so you can stop crying," Lydia agreed. "You won't find that anywhere."

"And I'm guessing that's his?" Cassandra smiled, nodding at the jacket around Eden's shoulders.

That was another thing that had totally slipped her mind. Did she have to wash it? Was it even machine washable? No, she'd rather not chance it. She'd take it to the dry cleaners. It was the right thing to do.

Eden sighed, irritated at all the admin she'd have to go through to return Liam's jacket on Monday.

"Edie—" Cassandra waved her hands in front of her face. "Where did you go?"

"Dry cleaners," she replied.

"Huh?" Her friends turned to her with puzzled looks.

"I'll have to dry clean this. Why didn't he leave me alone when I asked him to? Now I have to spend my weekend washing his jacket."

Lydia was outraged. "You don't deserve Liam!"

Sienna agreed with her. "Yeah, I'll take him if he'd have me."

"He will," Eden said. "He's not above a little infidelity."

"I feel like I'm caught in a time skip, time jump, weird reality shit. Nothing you've said so far makes any sense!" said Cassandra.

"He kissed me. I kissed him. And we're not supposed to be because he's a married man. I found out about his wife, Laura Stone," Eden said, and filled her friends in on all her little encounters with Liam and her internet hunt for the truth about his marital status.

"Laura Stone is such a media whore," Lydia announced as she held up her phone.

Eden closed her eyes and prayed for patience. "You searched for her? Why?"

"Knowing you, you weren't going to stalk her," Lydia smirked, pointing at herself proudly. "So I'm doing all the stalking for you."

Eden snatched the phone from her and browsed through Laura's photo gallery on her social media page. Her heart broke anew when she came across a few photos of the other woman posing with Liam's sisters at various social events.

Wordlessly, she handed the phone back to Lydia. Even if Liam wasn't married, Laura held a special place in his heart, seeing that she was so buddy-buddy with his sisters.

"She has quite a profile," Cassandra said as she scrolled through her phone. "She's twenty-eight and a lawyer at Hayes & Jones."

"Wait, isn't that where Isaac works?" Sienna asked.

"It is," Eden replied. "His dad is a senior partner."

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