“Right,” he responded flatly, his expression unreadable.

“Nine years, but who’s counting?” I forced a laugh, hoping he’d break and laugh back.

But he didn’t.

I sighed and gave up my attempts to pretend that nothing was wrong. “Jax—” My voice sounded more pleading.

“Don’t call me that, Chloe. There’s only one person who used to call me by that nickname, and she doesn’t exist anymore.”

I flinched in response to both his sharp words and his scathing tone. The fact that he had just called me by “Chloe” and not “Clo” also hadn’t escaped my notice.

“Can we please sit down and talk about things?” I tried to catch his gaze, but he refused to look at me.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Yes, there is,” I insisted, feeling desperate and frantic. “We need to talk about us. Our friendship. Our pact.” I cringed the second I heard myself utter those last two words.

He snorted. “Are you serious?”

Feeling a bit flustered, I shook my head. “No,” I retracted. “I don’t know why that came out.”

“Chloe, I gotta run.”

“Wait!” I wasn’t ready to give up. I wasn’t ready to let our first conversation end like this. “I’m sorry, Jax. I’m sorry for what happened. I never meant to hurt you. What happened was such a long time ago. And after everything we’ve been through, after all those years of being best friends, can you please forgive me, Jax?”

He turned away from me and said through gritted teeth, “Just because it was a long time ago, doesn’t mean what you did carries less weight.”

His words stung, but I still wasn’t ready to give up. “Yes, you’re right. I made a mistake—a huge one. But things have changed. I’ve changed.”

He finally turned to face me, and for a mere second, I thought he was finally coming around. But the second his icy stare met my gaze, I knew he hadn’t forgiven me. “And I’ve changed too, Chloe. We’ve both changed. And that means neither one of us is who we used to be when we were friends.”

Without another word, he jogged past me and around the corner, leaving me standing there feeling completely devastated and alone.

CHAPTER E LEVEN

Present Day

I almost decided to skip the wedding. As much as I wanted to see Jackson, I wasn’t sure I was emotional ready for another round of what happened yesterday. But then I realized if I did skip the wedding, he’d know I’d changed my mind last minute, he’d know I was a no-show because of him.

So against all my internal resistance, I arrived at Clara and Sam’s wedding in my emerald green dress, feeling more nervous and less excited about attending the event than I had felt before my run-in with Jackson yesterday.

But to my relief, there were over three hundred guests at the wedding, and I didn’t run into Jackson during the ceremony. The wedding was a beautiful outdoor ceremony surrounded by evergreens and lights. Clara and Sam had prepared their own vows and I cried when I watched them share them with each other.

During the wedding ceremony, I was happy to find Cindy and Jules, two other high school friends. It had momentarily calmed my nerves to escape from the constant fear I’d been feeling of unexpectedly running into Jackson at the ceremony.

But I didn’t.

I hadn’t seen Jackson during the wedding ceremony. I had tried to look around, without looking obvious. But I didn’t see him. After the ceremony, I walked with Cindy and Jules to the reception hall where the rest of the night would be held. Cindy and Jules were sitting at a different table, so I had to say goodbye to them before heading to my table.

This time, Jackson was there, sitting at the table by himself.

To my relief, he hadn’t seen me yet I walked toward his direction. When I approached the table, I drew in a deep breath to calm my nerves.

“Hi,” I said calmly and politely.

I saw his body stiffen at the sound of my voice and my heart sank at his negative reaction to me.

I tried not to let it effect me as I sat down next to him.

We sat there in silence for several minutes without anyone else stopping by our table. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and I broke the silence.

“I know I may be the last person you want to talk to, but I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am to hear about the passing of your dad.”

“You’re right. You’re the last person I want to talk to.”

I shook my head, frustrated by how he’d shut me out.

“How many times do I have to apologize to you?”

“You don’t have to apologize at all,” he responded without looking at me. “There’s really no use to apologize. What we had is broken, and what is broken is already broken. There’s no way we can change that. An apology can’t turn back time to make things different, to make what had happened not happen. An apology doesn’t magically let me let go of what’s burned into my memory. I can never forget it. So really, you don’t have to apologize at all.”

I didn’t know how to respond to him. It was obvious to me at that point that his hatred for me was alive and well.

Then he spoke again. “You know there are eight other empty seats you can choose from, why do you insist on sitting right next to me?”

His directness took me by surprise and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from crying.

I wasn’t sure if it was out of spite, or if the drinks with Cindy and Jules earlier had caught up to me, or if I just wanted to speak from the heart, but I turned to him, and answered his question as truthfully as I knew how. “Because you won’t talk to me, you won’t look at me, and you won’t forgive me. Because I miss you. Very much. And every single day. Because for the last nine years, there hasn’t gone a single day that I didn’t hate myself for hurting you. Because I lost my first and only best friend in the world, the man I recently realized that I love and want a life with. And because if I didn’t at least tell you all this when I had the chance, there’d be another reason to hate myself every day.”

He sat there and looked straight ahead the entire time, but I knew he had heard every word of it.

Upset and frustrated that even after my declaration, where I let myself be vulnerable, he didn’t even bother to acknowledge me, I pushed back my chair and ran out of the reception hall in tears.

By the time I got outside, I was sobbing and thinking about going home. Today had been a nightmare and I didn’t want to live another second in it.

Just then my phone started to ring in my clutch. I pulled my phone out to see that it was a call from Uncle Tom.

“Hello?”

“Chloe.” Something about his voice sounded alarming.

“Uncle Tom, what is it?”

“I know you’re at the wedding, but can you leave now?” I knew immediately something was really wrong because he didn’t sound like his usual jovial self.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“It’s Betty,” his voiced cracked into a sob. “We’re at the hospital.”

When I heard the news, it was all too much for me to bear. Everything around me started to spin, making me feel dizzy, and as I saw a figure that looked like Jackson come out of the reception, the world went black.

CHAPT ER TWELVE

Spring 2006

Twenty One Years Old

I had a secret.

It was a secret that no one I cared about knew of.

It was a secret that would change the way those I loved would look at me.

It was a secret that would break Jackson’s heart.

So that was why it was the one secret I would take to my grave.

Shortly after I started my freshman year at University of Pennsylvania, because I needed a lot of money, and fast, I was forced to join an elite escort service for men. It wasn’t the typical escort service. In addition to the services a typical escort service would provide, this escort service catered to men who wanted to unleash their wildest fantasies while also maintaining a long term relationship with the girls they hired. These men wanted the long-term all-inclusive fantasy—the fantasy that they had a hot, young girlfriend or mistress who was willing to fulfill all of their needs, whenever and wherever they wanted.