Page 83 of The Space Between Your Heart & Mine

“She is my friend. My brother’s wife. The mother of my niece and nephew. And that is all she will ever be. It’s all Iwanther to be.”

There was a time when Pen was my whole world. Every plan I made, everything I did, I considered her first because I never wanted to be without her. But she fell in love and moved on, and things changed.

She still means a great deal to me, and she will always be one of my favorite people, but I let her go a long time ago. Honestly, I had to. And losing her made me see how unhealthily I relied on her. I was clingy and needy and truthfully, just a pathetic excuse for a man who didn’t want to grow up and let go of the past.

I’m not that man anymore.

“Please say you believe that,” I finally say after too long of silence. “I need to hear you say it.”

“I do.”

Relief floods through me. Not just because she said the words, but looking into her eyes, I can see she means it.

“Aspen will always be a big part of my life. She’s family. But’s that all. I planned on telling you about everything, one day. It just didn’t feel relevant because I don’t feel that way about her. I’m sorry. I should have been the one to say something.”

“It’s okay. I understand. It’s impossible to know everything about someone, especially when you haven’t known each other that long. You have a past. I have a past.”

A past I’m suddenly even more curious about, given how she says it.

And while I didn’t expect the Aspen situation to be a huge deal between us, and I wasn’t purposely hiding it from her either—like she said, we haven’t known each otherthatlong—Ididexpect more of a reaction than this. Especially given that she found out from Aspen and not me.

“Will you tell me what happened?” she asks after a brief pause.

“You mean between me and Aspen?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“Well, lucky for you, I’m here all night.” She presses a soft kiss to my mouth.

“Okay,” I agree, happy to tell her anything she wants to know. “Where should I start?”

“From the very beginning.”

“Like the very, very beginning. As in, when we were kids?”

She nods.

“Okay, but I can’t promise I won’t bore you to sleep.” I grin.

“Somehow, I doubt a single thing you’re about to tell me is going to be boring.” I feel her smile rather than see it.

“From the beginning then.”

And that’s where I start. I tell her about how I met Aspen in seventh grade. How I felt instantly drawn to her. How I was convinced I would marry her one day. How we became inseparable, doing everything together. Every high school event. Every family gathering, she was there next to me. That I followed her to college, and we lived together for a couple of years, which she already knew, and that even after Pen got her own place, we were still a package deal. You never saw one without the other.

Then I tell her about Sutton. About finding him at her apartment. About the betrayal I felt. About how desperate I was to hold on to her and keep her all to myself.

I’m embarrassed by some. Amused by others. But by the end, the only real thing I feel is contentment. I don’t regret how things turned out. How could I when I’m lying here with the most beautiful woman in the world in my arms?

She listens to me quietly, digesting everything I say, and when I’m done, she leans in and kisses me good and proper.

And that’s when I know...

I know that everything that happened, happened so that one day, I could find myself here...

I’ve never been more grateful to Aspen than I am in this moment. She knew my heart as well as her own, and she knew there was somewhere else I belonged.

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