Chapter 1

The guy blinked slowly and lifted his distant gaze first to Mary, then to me. For a second I thought he was going to get up and leave. Why would he sit with me? But he only sighed heavily, took his glass with the last of his coffee and his phone, and silently moved to the vinyl bench across from me.

We looked at each other, and a pause as deep as the Grand Canyon opened between us. Like two neighbors in misery who’d suddenly found themselves standing on two tightropes stretched over an abyss.

The guy was tall, broad-shouldered, and athletic in a lean way. Dressed pretty simply, though: jeans, a shirt, a plain windbreaker. He probably hadn’t had a haircut in a year, because his hair had grown out enough to brush his shoulders. But his eyes were so blue, almost blueberry blue, that my sobs cut off, and my gaze followed him before I could stop it.

Then again, he didn’t look any better than I did. He looked like he’d been run over by a truck loaded to the roof with disappointment. I stared at him for about thirty seconds and then blurted, completely before my brain could interfere:

“Did someone betray you too?”

“What?” The guy blinked in surprise and stared at me. His voice turned out to be low and a little hoarse, as if he’d been holding something inside for a long time. Annoyance, maybe.

I didn’t look my best, but right then I couldn’t have cared less.

“You’ve been sitting here for two hours with a face like you drove straight into a dead end and can’t figure out how to turn around.” I waved a hand, smearing the last of the mascara across my cheek. “So I thought maybe someone cheated on you too. Your boyfriend or girlfriend turned out to be so low they slept with someone behind your back on the back seat of a pickup. Exactly one week before they were supposed to introduce you to their parents. And all that’s left of your eight-month relationship is the memory of his bare ass in the window. So gross and hairy…” I grimaced. “Brr. How did I never notice that before? Although, then again”—I sighed—“why would I ever have looked at him from that angle? That’s just stupid…”

The guy stared at me in silence for several seconds. In that time I managed to sigh sadly, take a sip of coffee, wipe my nose with a paper napkin, and sigh again. God, life was hard.

“Girlfriend,” he answered at last. “And I’ve known her parents since high school. Betray me? I guess. But it’s more that I turned out to be an idiot.” Then, unexpectedly, he admitted, “She dumped me for six months. Asked for a break so she could test her feelings with someone else. That’s how she put it.”

My jaw almost hit the table.

“What? Oh no…” I whispered, stunned. Because I swear, that sounded even worse than the pickup. Some twisted new category of betrayal.

“Yeah, believe me, apparently that happens too,” the guy said with a dark little smile, though his eyes stayed dead.

“So you two dated through high school and stayed together in college? And now this princess decided to keep you on the bench while she test-drives a new option?”

The stranger gave the tiniest nod.

“Pretty much.”

“And you’re sitting here suffering?”

The guy didn’t answer right away. First he rolled the glass of cooling coffee between his fingers, his jaw tightening.

“Mostly I’m trying to figure out when I became someone she could offer that kind of bullshit to. Maybe I just didn’t see what was obvious all along.”

“Holy shit!” I couldn’t help it.

“Agreed.”

We both sighed again at the same time.

“So what happened with you?” my new acquaintance asked. “How did you catch them? Wrong place, wrong time?”

“Both,” I admitted reluctantly, looking down at the napkin in my hand. “I came back early. Took the evening bus and asked the cab driver to stop by the next dorm over. Travis wasn’t expecting me until morning, but I wanted to surprise him. I did.” I gave a bitter laugh and looked at the guy. “Mostly myself, when I saw his pickup in someone else’s parking lot and a naked couple inside. I can only imagine what a full weekend he had.”

The stranger kept slowly turning his glass.

“Definitely not as crappy as ours.”

I nodded.

“You won’t believe this, but I don’t even want to know who he was with. I don’t care. We’re done.”

“I don’t think so,” the guy said unexpectedly.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not following.

“You said he was going to introduce you to his parents. So I thought, if a guy is planning to bring a girl home to meet his family, he’s got plans for her. He probably won’t see your ‘we’re done’ as final. More like normal girl hysterics, and then he’ll try to get you back. I hate to break it to you, but it sounds like this isn’t his first time, which means it’s business as usual. He’ll come.”

I choked on air.

“Absolutely not! Let him try!”

My new acquaintance shrugged.

“I’ll call campus security! I once smashed a guy’s nose just because he shoved his tongue into my mouth without permission. And he was the captain of the school lacrosse team, by the way. I… I’ll sic my grandma on him!”

The corner of the guy’s mouth twitched up, this time in a warm half smile.

“You’re talking about Travis Sanders? I’ve seen you together. Grandma is a strong move, sure, but guys like Sanders don’t know how to lose. If he hasn’t found you yet, it means he’s working on a script. Want me to predict what happens next?”

“Try me,” I said, frowning.

“He probably doesn’t expect you to come to him. You’ve got a spine, otherwise he wouldn’t have picked you. He’ll wait until morning, until you’ve burned out and cooled off, and then he’ll bring you a bouquet of some cheap hyacinths because he blew all his money over the weekend and his parents haven’t refilled his account yet, and he’ll say it was ‘a moment of madness and the biggest mistake of his life.’ He might even swear on something, and then you’ll go to dinner with his mom, meek as a lamb.”

“Holy shit,” burst out of me.

“Agreed.”

I stared at the guy, feeling my anger at my ex come boiling back even harder. The worst thing was, he was right. Travis had always considered himself an irresistible gift to Briar Adams, and I could absolutely imagine him doing exactly that. Except I wasn’t going anywhere with him.

I wiped my face with a napkin, refusing to keep crying even though I badly wanted to.

“Damn, why are you so smart?” I asked, genuinely upset. “You’re not a psych major by any chance, are you? I feel like I remember you too.”

“Business,” the guy answered calmly, holding his hand out across the table. “Kaylen Ryder. Just Kai is fine. We have some classes together.”

I looked at my own hand, still holding the wet napkin, wiped it thoroughly with a fresh one, and slipped my fingers into his palm.

“Finance and math. Markets and risk. I love anything that can be calculated, and I can’t stand my ex-boyfriend. Briar Adams. Just Bri to my friends.”

Kaylen shook my hand.

“Nice to meet you, Bri. And welcome to the club for people whose weekends have officially gone down the drain.”

I smiled through my drying tears.

“Likewise, Kaylen. But you know what?”

“What?”

His palm was warm, dry, and unexpectedly firm.

“I’ll try a prediction too. About your ex. Want one?”

“Try me.”