The Trouble with Love

by Lauren Layne

  The Cassidy who had wanted to be a star soccer player, president of his frat, top student, and later, wunderkind at her father’s company.

  The Cassidy who wanted more than what he knew how to make happen.

  Acting on instinct, she went to stand beside him. She didn’t touch him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to—or could. But she wanted to be there for him, somehow. Wanted to ease whatever restless pain seemed to be eating at him.

  Wanted to help him. Even as she knew she was the cause for his torment.

  “You want to know what I remember,” he said quietly, his fingers fiddling with his cuffs as he rolled the sleeves up to his elbow, his eyes locked on the view before them.

  She nodded.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and dipped his head just slightly, glancing at the floor before lifting it and staring out at the night sky.

  “I remember everything.” His voice was low. Raspy. Intimate.

  Emma closed her eyes, even though he wasn’t looking at her.

  “I remember every damned thing,” he continued, gaze still straight ahead. “I remember how I thought you were so shy up until our first date when I realized you had a bawdy, brash sense of humor. I still remember the jolt I got when you first touched my hand. I remember our first kiss, our first fight.” He took a deep breath. “I remember our last kiss, our last fight.”

  “Cassidy.” Her voice was a whisper.

  He grinned then. She saw it out of the corner of her eye. “I love that you’ve only ever called me Cassidy.”

  She shrugged. “It was all anyone called you back then.”

  “Which made sense when everyone knew me best by what was written on my jersey. But you’ve kept it up even with my soccer days long behind me. And you’ve got everyone else doing it, too. Nobody ever calls me Alex.”

  Emma pressed her lips together, not wanting to admit that part of the reason she held on to the old name was because she was trying to hold on to the old memories, in some tiny, harmless way.

  Except there was no such thing as harmless memories. Not when it came to the two of them.

  He turned to face her, his familiar features shadowed. “Ask me what else I remember.”

  She started to turn away, but his hand touched her arm.

  “Ask me,” he commanded.

  Emma shook her head, feeling both terrified and the most alive she’d felt in years.

  He waited patiently until her eyes met his. “I remember us, Emma.”

  Emma couldn’t look away.

  In the light of day, it was easy for Emma to convince herself that she was an independent woman who didn’t need a man. Any man.

  But at night, with nothing but the twinkling Manhattan skyline and Alex Cassidy in her vision?

  It was harder.

  Harder to remember that this was the man who’d once left her standing all alone in a very puffy white dress.

  And harder to forget that once being in this man’s arms had been the best part of her day.

  The best part of her life.

  She told herself to move. To run. But his eyes held her still.

  He moved closer and slipped an arm around her, his hand finding the small of her back.

  “You used to love it when I put my hand here.” Cassidy’s voice was rough.

  She lifted her chin slightly. “Did I? Must have blocked that out.” But the way the heat from his palm branded her made the lie come out just a little bit breathlessly.

  His hand pressed, pulling her closer until there was nothing between them but their stormy past. “You sure about that?”

  “Yup,” she said, her eyes looking anywhere but his. “You’re utterly forgettable.”

  His other hand found her chin, his fingers lifting her face to his. “Prove it.”

  Emma’s breath caught in her throat as her eyes found his mouth, which was now just inches away from hers.

  He stepped even closer, and Emma couldn’t breathe.

  He whispered her name and she closed her eyes. She could smell him, feel him . . . wanted him.

  She wanted this. She wanted so badly to have his lips on hers again. To remember how it had felt to be in his arms.

  To remember how it felt to be loved and cherished.

  Cherished.

  Emma’s eyes flew open.

  Cassidy had never cherished her. Not really. Not in the way that was lasting and real. He had walked away the second things got hard.

  What am I doing?

  It had taken her years to pick up the pieces after this man shattered her heart. She couldn’t do it again.

  Wouldn’t do it again.

  Emma stepped back.

  His hand at her back resisted only briefly before he let her go, his gaze puzzled.

  She stepped back even further. “If you want to take a trip down memory lane, have at it, but don’t expect me to come with you.”

  Hurt flashed across his face before anger settled over his features. “I wasn’t the only one feeling it, Emma. You forget that I know you. I know I’m not the only one who wishes we could turn back time. I’m not the only one who wants—”

  “We can’t just go back, Cassidy.”

  Her hardly spoken words seemed to rattle against the window, echoing through the apartment before hanging between them like a poisonous ghost.

  There. She wished some of her old boyfriends could see her now. There was nothing cold and unfeeling about her current state of turmoil. It was always there. Always threatening to boil over.

  His jaw clenched and he inhaled, but said nothing.

  “We can’t just go backward,” she said, more calmly this time. “We have good memories. A lot of them. But we have bad memories, too, and—”

  “And we get to choose which ones we hold on to,” he interrupted. “We get a choice, Emma. And you’re intentionally making the wrong one—”

  “The safe one, Cassidy. I’m making the safe choice, and I won’t apologize for it.”

  He crossed his arms, looking both agitated and disdainful. “We’re adults. Don’t we owe it to each other—”

  “You hurt me!” Emma exploded. “You hurt me, Cassidy!”

  “You hurt me, too, Emma!” he shot back, his statement every bit as vehement as hers, made even more fierce by the look of torment on his face. “You think it’s easy, seeing the woman who once tore me in two on a daily basis? You think it’s easy sitting across from you at the conference room table, or riding the same elevator or sharing a damned cheeseburger with you? Somehow you’re managing to pull me closer even as we’re further apart than ever, and I’m fucking tired of it, Emma.”

  Her lips parted a little in surprise at the unexpected outburst. Cassidy had never been one prone to monologues. And certainly not ones that had to do with his feelings.

  “I’m not trying to pull you closer,” she said, her voice quiet. “I don’t want things to be complicated, I just want . . .”

  He looked at her, eyes bleak. “What do you want?”

  She forced herself to meet his eyes. Took a deep breath. “I want to be over you. All the way over you. It’s the reason I agreed to this damn story. But I approached it all wrong. Talking about it isn’t going to help. There’s nothing we can say that the other person wants to hear.”

  “So what would help?” His voice was rough once again.

  She swallowed. “Distance. I need some space.”

  “We’re neighbors. And we work together. Distance is going to be a little hard to come by.”

  “We did it before,” she said, her voice slightly desperate now. “We’ve survived in each other’s orbits for the past year without things being weird. You’ve had girlfriends, I’ve dated people. . . . I want to go back to that.”

  He searched her face. “You want me to date other women? You want to see me bring a woman back to my place on a Friday night—want to see her leave the next morning?”

  Emma felt nauseous at the thought, but she forced herself to nod. “We’ve
done it before. We can do it again.”

  He uncrossed his arms, shoving his hands into his pockets as he resumed his initial stance at the window, staring out. Except before, his expression had been contemplative.

  Now the hard set of his jaw and the distance in his gaze made him look cold. Ice cold.

  He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “You know, when I came here tonight, I knew it would be about me answering questions. I was prepared for that. But I’d hoped to get you to answer some questions, too. I wanted to know what you remembered about us.”

  He cut his eyes to her. “But you don’t want to remember.”

  She put her shoulders back and stared blindly at the twinkling lights, not really seeing them. Not seeing anything.

  “No. I guess I don’t,” she said softly.

  His chin rested briefly against his chest before he nodded once, twice, before moving away from her, scooping his jacket off the chair, and walking toward the front door.

  She turned and watched him walk away, although she didn’t try to see him to the door. She wasn’t entirely sure her legs would work.

  Cassidy turned back before moving out of her line of sight. “You used to be brave, Emma. What happened?”

  “We happened. We’re no good for each other. There was no payoff in being brave. I’d rather be cautious.”

  It hurts less.

  He searched her face for a long moment before unexpectedly moving in her direction, stopping by the table to pick up both wine glasses. He handed one to her.

  She took it in confusion, searching his face for an explanation, but his features were blank, his eyes cool. He clinked his glass to hers. “To moving on. To fucking distance.”

  He took a long swallow before she had a chance to react, then turned away, setting his glass on the counter as he headed for the front door.

  “Cassidy.”

  He paused, turning back, and the flare of hope in his eyes was almost her undoing, but she didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. She couldn’t.

  “The last question,” she said. “For my article. Why did we break up?”

  His eye shuttered, and his laugh was harsh. “Why did we break up? I’ll tell you why. . . . The girl I loved—yes, loved, Emma—told me she didn’t want to marry me. In fact, she threw the engagement ring I spent four weeks picking out at my head.”

  Emma sucked in a breath, and Cassidy shook his head sadly. “I’m sure you’ve got your version of what happened, but my version? My version ends with the girl who’d claimed to love me not even listening to me. I made a mistake. Yes. Mistakes. But you left me, Emma. Be sure you get that part right in your story.”

  She heard the door open. Heard it shut. And still she didn’t move.

  Her brain knew she’d just dodged a whole lot of heartache by ensuring their cold war raged on.

  But her goal had been protecting her heart, and she was desperately afraid that it was too late for that.

  That it had been too late from the day she’d met him.

  Chapter 18

  “Scale of one to ten, how painful is this?” Riley asked, appearing at Emma’s side.

  Emma glanced at her friend. “It’s not painful.”

  Much.

  Okay, it was painful. No. Pain didn’t begin to describe it. Emma was in agony.

  Riley’s grin flashed, her teeth white against the siren red lipstick that bumped up her already-bombshell status to the stratosphere. The short black dress wasn’t so bad, either.

  “Come on, Ems. You know you want to vent to someone.”

  Emma pursed her lips as she pulled one of the glasses of wine off the small bar set up in the corner of the private room where Julie and Mitchell were having their rehearsal dinner.

  “I figured it would be bad,” Emma admitted. “I’ve been mentally pep-talking myself for days.”

  “Yeah?” Riley asked, grabbing a glass of wine for herself and tugging Emma over to the corner of the room where they could talk.

  “Yeah,” Emma said. She took a sip of her wine, her eyes scanning the crowded room even as they purposefully avoided Cassidy.

  “And?” Riley prodded. “Was it as awful as you thought?”

  This time Emma’s eyes did land on Cassidy, looking handsome and completely at ease as he talked with Julie’s aunt and uncle on the far side of the room.

  “It’s worse, Ri.”

  Her friend made a motherly clucking noise and put an arm around Emma’s waist. “I strapped a flask to my thigh for exactly this sort of situation.”

  “It’s an open bar,” Emma pointed out.

  Riley squeezed her shoulders. “Honey, you’re at your best friend’s rehearsal dinner with your ex-fiancé. And the best I can tell, your rehearsal dinner is when everything went south?”

  Emma lifted her eyebrows. “Went south? That’s a gentle way of putting it.”

  “You know what I mean. Imploded. Exploded? Hit the fan in a shitty burst of rage?”

  “Closer,” Emma agreed, taking another sip of wine.

  Riley glanced at her. “You’re different tonight. Angry.”

  Emma sucked in her cheeks and considered. Was she angry?

  She was . . . something.

  It had been a week since she and Cassidy nearly kissed in her apartment, and, true to his word, he’d given her the distance she’d asked for. They still worked together. Still saw each other at the mailboxes in their apartment building. But whereas before there’d been intentional disregard between them, now it was like she no longer existed.

  She was invisible to him.

  It was exactly what she’d wanted.

  Emma had every intention of ignoring him tonight just like she did every other day. And everyone knew that rehearsals were more or less a formality. If you’d been in one wedding, you’d been in a million.

  As a bridesmaid, your biggest worry was how high your heels were, and assessing the walking surface you had to deal with. If you were a groomsman, your biggest concern was checking out the bridesmaids.

  Everything was always the same. Don’t walk too fast. Turn off your cellphone. Stand up straight. Don’t lose the rings.

  But tonight, Emma had been thrown a curveball.

  Unlike other weddings she’d been in where the groomsmen escorted the bridesmaids down the aisle ahead of the bride, Julie and Mitchell had opted to have the bridesmaids walk in alone, while the groomsmen would stand beside Mitchell at the end of the aisle.

  In other words, Emma had to walk toward Cassidy.

  Just like she would have done seven years ago, had she not lost her temper the night before their wedding. Had he not been so wrapped up in his pride that he hadn’t been able to forgive her when she’d apologized hours later.

  She hadn’t looked at him as she trudged her way up the makeshift aisle at the Plaza. Didn’t have to look at him to know that he wasn’t looking at her, either. She hadn’t glanced at him as Mitchell’s pastor droned on and on about the structure of tomorrow’s ceremony.

  It had been surprisingly easy to stay in the moment. To remember that she was there for her best friend. That this day was about Julie, not Emma. And then the rehearsal had been over, and she’d survived. They’d survived.

  But now they were at the rehearsal dinner.

  And Emma was mad. Because for the first time in a long time she was reliving moments she’d long thought dead inside her.

  Riley was watching her, looking half-worried, half-amused. “You sure you don’t want this flask? Just in case? Because this just might be one of those nights where a nice glass of wine doesn’t quite cut it, you know?”

  “We’re at one of the most expensive restaurants in Manhattan,” Emma replied. “I’m not going to start drinking from a flask.”

  “If it makes you feel better, the flask is from Tiffany. Twenty-first birthday present from Liam. First and only time Big Brother has stepped inside that store, so it’s practically a sacred object. Also, pretty damn classy for a whiskey vessel.”
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  “I’m good,” Emma said, forcing a smile. “But thanks.”

  Riley forced a smile back, her eyes sad, and that made Emma feel so much worse. This was supposed to be a night of celebration and happiness, not a dreary trip down memory lane with her friend trying to force whiskey on her.

  She mentally shook herself. “You know what? Let’s go mingle,” Emma said. “You’re looking way too good to be huddled in the corner by yourself. That dress is—”

  Riley gave a cocky grin and a wink. “Sam liked it, too. Twice.”

  “No more detail,” Emma muttered, holding up a hand. “Please.”

  She let Riley pull her into a conversation with some of Julie’s high school friends from California, and did her best to ignore the fact that Cassidy was about four feet to her left, now talking to a leggy brunette with crunchy-looking hair and a dress that was even shorter than Riley’s.

  Julie bounced up to them, looking adorable in a white halter top cocktail dress and a perky ponytail. She looked fresh faced and radiant.

  And happy. Almost unbearably happy.

  Emma remembered what that sort of happiness had felt like.

  And that’s why she was mad. Not because she was remembering the bad parts. Because she was remembering the good parts.

  Julie made polite excuses to everyone else before pulling Emma, Riley, and Grace aside. “Okay, no pressure, girls, and by that, of course, I mean feel entirely obligated by what I’m about to say. Mitchell’s parents are insisting we do toasts.”

  “So?” Riley asked.

  “So, they’re paying for this whole fancy thing, so they get to do what they want, but so help me God, if Mitchell’s mom gets up there and starts talking, this party will turn into group nap time and this blowout will have been for naught—”

  “Naught?” Emma interrupted.

  Julie pointed at her. “You try living with Mitchell and not picking up words like that.”

  “Calm down, Jules,” Grace said. “We’ve got you covered. If Mitchell’s parents start to drag the mood down with their monologue, Riley will pretend to be drunk and make a grab for the microphone.”

  Riley nodded. “Did I mention I brought a flask? Might as well be a prop, since Sinclair here claims to have no use for it.”