Which is exactly why I kept myself so busy. And, why I was ushering around an injured motocross star and agreeing to have lunch with him. At least if I was busy, I could pretend that I wasn’t hoping that it was all just a bad dream. Hoping that I’d wake up one morning and Jamie would be lying in bed with me. That we would be happily married and living our life together like we were supposed to. I wanted the pain of missing him to stop but deep down I knew it never would.

“The diner?” Brett asked as I nearly drove past it.

“Right,” I said, yanking myself out of my head while easing into a parking spot on the street.

Brett ambled out of the car and looked over at me with those piercing blue eyes. “Not like we had too many other choices.” He shrugged.

“This is true,” I agreed, forcing myself to be in the moment with him and not wallow in the past.

“A burger sounds good,” Brett said as we stepped onto Main Street. “Besides, it’d be great to just hang out for a while. Outside of the hospital and the cabin.” He laughed, casually bending and straightening his leg as we walked.

Diner burgers were Jamie’s favorite.

“I guess.” I hadn’t really thought about it. Helping Brett out was just another thing on the schedule that I kept jam-packed. I was close to completing my nursing degree. Class on Mondays and Tuesdays. Clinical hours on Wednesday and Thursday. Volunteering at the hospital between hours of studying the rest of the week. I usually squeezed in a workout or two, and maybe a night out with my sister when she was home. Which she wasn’t right now. She was out touring the country with her boyfriend, which meant more hours at the hospital for me. I’d squeezed giving Brett rides to and from check ups and physical therapy appointments on the calendar without as much as a second thought. Helping people out was kind of my thing.

Over the past couple months I’d fallen into a friendship with Brett that I hadn’t expected. He was fun and easy going. He didn’t look at me like I might fall apart at any second like most people in Halstead did. With good reason, I guess. Most girls didn’t lose their fiancé at the ripe old age of nineteen. I knew Reid had probably told him about Jamie, but he’d never inquired so I’d yet to volunteer any info.

As much as I liked that Brett didn’t handle me with kid gloves, he also made me nervous. A kind of nervous I hadn’t felt in a very long time. A kind of nervous that I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for.

I especially wasn’t ready for the casual way he leaned across the booth in the diner and reached over, his elbow resting on the table between us as his hand brushed aside my hair. His hand lingered a moment on my neck, his fingertips trailing up and then down my skin in a slow, seductive manner. My skin rippled with goosebumps as soon as he leaned back in his seat.

“See? Hanging out with me could be... fun,” he said. My eyes glanced up momentarily into his and then back to my menu. “We should have a little fun, Georgia.” He bit back a grin. “It’s allowed. I promise.”

What just happened?

His gaze was different—less playful and far more enticing than I was used to from him.

No. No, this wasn’t allowed. This was mine and Jamie’s place and being here with Brett, letting him touch me, liking it, was wrong.

Panic rose like bile in my throat.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked, setting my menu down. A faint tightness in my chest and throat made it hard to breath.

“I wanted to see your face,” he said nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t just crossed the line between us. The line that I was comfortable with. The line that kept me safe. I was used to Brett making innuendos from time to time, but this caught me off guard. “Can I not touch you?”

The physicality of his actions—the slow, steady sweep of his hand across my skin had made it impossible to think. I could tell by the smirk on his face that he knew exactly what kind of affect he’d had on me and while a part of me felt exhilarated, and admittedly a bit turned on, I felt like I was doing something wrong.

“No. I mean... I don’t know. I...” I kept trying to reason out an answer until a waitress came to take our order. “I forgot that I need to go to the library,” I blurted out. “Big test this week,” I padded the lie. “Let’s get our food to go then I’ll drop you off.”

* * *

How did I let that happen?

I’d asked myself the same question a handful of times, but I still couldn’t come up with a good solid answer. Could Brett touch me? Sure. I mean, we weren’t strangers. We’d walked arm in arm through the hospital and I hadn’t thought twice about it, but the touch in the diner was different. It was fueled by much more than friendship. It was more sensual and less innocent. Perhaps Brett had caught on to my stolen glances and how I sometimes let my eyes linger long than they should have. He was subtlety calling me out. The real question was…did I want him to touch me? The second he was out of the car when I’d dropped him off at Reid’s cabin, I’d let out a deep breath that I might have been holding in the remainder of the ride.

I’d driven around for over an hour after I left Brett. Once I’d lied to him about having somewhere to be, his laid back posture stiffened. We’d waited for our food and driven back to the cabin in mostly silence, peppered with awkwardness and short answers from both of us. The look on his face when he was getting out of the car caused a physical ache in my chest. I wasn’t sure if he was shocked or sad about it. But I’d hurt his feelings in some way and I hadn’t meant to.

Truth be told, our interaction had scared me. Not only because of his reputation, but because I liked the way it felt when he was touching me. The stroke of his hand on my neck had my insides coiled tightly. It made me giddy, which made me feel like a teenager again. I wanted to be a woman, not a teenager. I needed to start behaving like I was in my twenties. A guy was interested in me, or physically attracted to me at least, it shouldn’t have been a big deal.

Don’t make it a big deal then, Georgia, I told myself as I tried to fall asleep that evening.

Until Brett, I honestly hadn’t even entertained the idea of going on a date with anyone, let alone being physical with someone. I’d become numb to the entire concept. Not that anyone had asked. Every guy in Halstead knew Jamie and knew my story. Maybe it scared them. Maybe I appeared unavailable. Brett either didn’t know or didn’t care, which was kind of liberating. I found it hard to believe that Reid or my sister hadn’t filled him in on at least some of my backstory.

My fingers found the chain that I constantly wore around my neck and I pulled on it until the engagement ring Jamie had given me slipped out from beneath my t-shirt. I’d stopped wearing the ring on my finger when I couldn’t take the looks of pity anymore.

“That poor girl.”

“Surely she’ll find someone else.”

“Not if she keeps holding onto a ghost…”

I’d heard it all when they thought I wasn’t listening. The people in my small town just had to talk about me—and everyone else for that matter. The truth was…they were right. That poor girl indeed. Once I’d slipped the ring onto a chain and tucked it under my shirt, the comments seemed to slow. Little did they know I was still holding onto him. To the future I’d never have. I was still thinking about him. Every single night.

The difference was tonight, between thoughts of Jamie and how it used to be, how it could’ve and should’ve been, thoughts of Brett Sallinger managed to sneak in as well.