Page 14 of Amethyst

The stone that looked perfect on her—indeed had been created for her—and now Jenna can’t stand the sight of it.

And all I did was…

“Damn it!” I say out loud. “Damn it all!”

God, she looked beautiful today. More beautiful even than I remember. The scar? It didn’t mar her face as she thought. It only made her more beautiful.

And I still love her, scars and all.

Damn.

After all these years, those feelings came ramming back into me like a steam engine.

And I’m engaged to marry someone else.

I don’t want to hurt Mimi. I don’t want to—

The lock on my door clicks, and in comes Mimi as if she materialized right out of my thoughts. We’ve had keys to each other’s places for a while now.

She looks around, her hands on her hips and her pump-clad foot tapping. “Just as I suspected. You haven’t even started packing.”

Packing. Right. I’m moving in with her.

“I’ve been busy. Work and all.”

“I know that, which is why I’m here. I knew that if I didn’t spearhead this, it wouldn’t get done. So I hired movers.”

I glance around the apartment. “They’re not going to be able to move anything until I pack.”

Though packing won’t take long. I’m a bare bones kind of guy, whereas Mimi has knickknacks everywhere, the kind that collect dust. Of course she has a weekly housecleaner to keep everything spotless. That’s another thing. I hate the idea of someone in my living space messing with my stuff.

“Wrong,” Mimi says. “They’re moversandpackers. They will do it all for you, and they’ll make sure everything is wrapped securely so nothing gets broken. It’s their company’s guarantee.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I just got my fourth-quarter bonus,” she says. “It’s way bigger than I anticipated, so this is part of your Christmas gift, Maxie. No packing for you. I’m taking care of all of it.”

“I can’t let you do that.”And please stop calling me Maxie.

“Yes you can, and you will. We’re a team now. Remember?” She places her hands on my shoulders. “Nothing is yours and nothing is mine. It’s allours.”

She gives me a kiss on the lips, and I grab her and hold her to me.

I want to feel something—some kind of undiluted love that perhaps I’ve forgotten.

But I can’t.

I don’t.

Mimi is a wonderful woman. She’s twenty-eight, two years my senior, and she knows what she wants. She’s done so well in sales—promotion after promotion, bonus after bonus. She knows what she wants, and part of what she wants is me. Sometimes I wonder if I’m simply another check mark on her list.

And now…heading into the holidays…

I don’t know what to do.

Jenna has never felt the way I feel about her. Plus, even if she did, who knows what kind of things she needs to work through?

I haven’t allowed myself to think about what happened to her. When the women started to leave the island, their stories dominated the homepages of all the major news websites, but I had to stop reading them after a while. I couldn’t stomach it, and that was before I knew Jenna was one of them.

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