LITMIR.BIZ

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she wouldn’t have minded a few minutes under the spray of the shower to clear her head and organize her thoughts. Except that after unlocking the door to their suite, Grace pointed to a chair, a wordless command to her to sit.

      Her dark-haired, dark-eyed friend with the take-charge personality had always been the unspoken leader of their little group. The other two women sometimes teased her for being bossy, but they were mostly content to follow her lead.

      And because Brie accepted that she owed her friends an explanation, she sat. Lily and Grace settled side by side on the sofa, facing her.

      “So...you were married,” Grace prompted, when Brie remained silent.

      “I was married,” she confirmed.

      “Before you moved to New York?” Lily asked, seeking clarification.

      She answered with a slow nod.

      “Which means you were barely eighteen.”

      Brie nodded again. “I was eighteen and—” her voice wavered and her eyes filled with tears “—pregnant.”

      * * *

      The silence that followed her announcement was so complete, she could almost hear her friends’ jaws drop.

      Grace recovered first and asked, “You had a baby?”

      Now Brie shook her head and pressed a hand to her chest, as if to assuage the ache that had never quite gone away. “No, I... I lost the baby.”

      “Oh, sweetie.” Grace breached the distance to embrace her.

      If anyone had asked, Brie would have said that she’d finished crying for her unborn baby years earlier—but the tears that spilled onto her cheeks now proved otherwise.

      “Oh, crap.” That remark came from Lily, because any outpouring of emotion inevitably brought on her own tears of empathy. “We didn’t know...we didn’t mean... Oh, Brie, we’re so sorry. Oh, please don’t cry.” She shoved a box of tissues into Brie’s lap, after plucking a couple out for her own use.

      She managed a watery smile. “You did so mean to push and pry—it’s what you do.”

      “Well, okay,” Lily conceded. “But we didn’t mean to make you cry.”

      “Although tears can be therapeutic,” Grace said soothingly. “So you shouldn’t be afraid to let them out.”

      “I don’t think I can stop them now,” Brie admitted. It was as if she’d built a dam around her emotions and that dam had suddenly given way, allowing seven years of repressed feelings and grief to flood over her.

      She told her friends everything: from the first terrifying suspicion that she was pregnant, to Caleb holding her hands while they waited for the result of the home pregnancy test, followed by his impulsive proposal and their impromptu trip to Vegas, all without telling anyone in either of their families about their plans. And then the fallout, when they finally got back to Haven and shared the news about their wedding and the baby with their parents and grandparents.

      “Your grandfather actually had a heart attack when he found out you’d married a Gilmore?” Lily asked.

      “I don’t know if the announcement of our wedding directly caused the cardiac arrest, but yes, he had surgery the next day.” She plucked another tissue from the box as her eyes overflowed again. “Four days after that, I had a miscarriage. And since the baby was why we got married, losing the baby meant there was no reason for us to stay married, so I went to see a lawyer and had divorce papers drawn up.”

      “I’m sorry,” Grace said again, clearly at a bit of a loss for words.

      “You don’t have to apologize. I should have told you both everything a long time ago.”

      “We would have been there for you, if we’d known,” Lily said gently.

      “Even without knowing, you were there for me,” Brie assured her friends. “When I first went to New York, I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t. The hurt was too raw. Not even Regan or Kenzie knew all the details of what happened. And then...well, the more time that went by, the more I didn’t want to remember everything that happened.”

      “Is this really the first time you’ve seen Caleb since you moved away?” Grace asked.

      “It is,” she confirmed.

      “That’s why you always avoided going home,” Lily realized.

      “And why you weren’t thrilled about coming to Vegas,” Grace guessed.

      “Well, I never actually believed I’d run into him here,” Brie said.

      “And I never would have suggested coming here if I’d known,” Grace said, almost apologetically.

      “It’s fine,” Brie said, wishing it was so. “And it was inevitable that our paths would cross sooner or later. Now at least that first awkward meeting is done—and it wasn’t even all that awkward.”

      Her friends exchanged a glance.

      Brie frowned. “Or was it more awkward than I realized?”

      Lily gave a slow shake of her head. “No. At least, awkward isn’t the word I would have used to describe it.”

      “I’d suggest sizzling as a more appropriate descriptor,” Grace added.

      “Well, it is one hundred and six degrees outside,” Brie remarked.

      “And about a thousand degrees hotter between you and your sexy ex,” Lily noted.

      She couldn’t dispute the accuracy of her friend’s description. Because even though almost half of the more than eight million people who lived in New York City were male, she’d never met a man who turned her on as much as Caleb Gilmore. “He did look good, didn’t he?”

      “I never understood the cowboy mystique,” Grace confided. “Now I do.”

      “Of course, it doesn’t matter how ruggedly handsome he is,” Lily hastened to add. “We hate him for breaking your heart.”

      Brie managed a smile, touched by the unswerving loyalty of her friends. “When I left Haven, I broke his, too,” she admitted.

      “He shouldn’t have let you go,” Lily said.

      But Grace shook her head. “He had to let her go.”

      “Why?” Lily demanded.

      “Because he loved her,” Grace said simply. “And he knew that she didn’t want to stay.”

      “I couldn’t stay,” Brie told them. “There were too many memories—and too much heartache—in Haven.”

      “But you loved him, too,” Grace noted.

      “When I was a teenager,” she agreed. “And maybe for a long time after.”

      “And maybe still,” Lily said, obviously choosing not to believe her friend’s previous denials.

      “I’m not still in love with him,” she said again.

      “Are you sure?” Lily pressed. “Because all the evidence suggests that you still have some pretty deep feelings for your cowboy.”

      “What evidence?” she challenged.

      “The fact that you didn’t mention his name to either of us—even once—in the seven years that we’ve known you.”

      “That’s somehow proof that I’m still hung up on him?” Brie challenged skeptically.

      “Actually, I think I agree with Lily on this one,” Grace said. “If Caleb didn’t matter to you, you wouldn’t have been so careful to avoid talking about him.”

      “Or maybe I just didn’t

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