Page 149 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

It still happens whenever I say something like that. A flash of disbelief, so quick most people would miss it. As if some part of him still expects love to be revoked without notice.

I brush my thumb over the dark stubble on his cheek.

“You good?” I ask.

He nods. “Getting tired.”

“I’ll bring food in an hour.”

“Actual food?”

“Something with protein. And something green. You’ll complain about it and then gobble it up.”

His mouth curves. “Come here again.”

I kiss his forehead this time.

“I love you.”

“Love you more.”

“That’s an impossibility.”

“I love you the most,infinity,” he fires back, and I chuckle at his stubbornness.

The woman laughs again as I leave the booth.

I’m still smiling when I turn into the next aisle.

And absolutely freeze in my tracks.

Because a woman stands twenty feet away from me with an iced coffee in one hand and a convention badge hanging against her black tank top.

Her hair is darker than I remember, cut above her shoulders now, and both arms are covered in ink. Vines curl over one elbow. A moth spreads its wings across her forearm. There are more tattoos climbing her throat, delicate black lines that disappear beneath her hair.

She’s older, maybe in her late twenties.

Of course she is.

We both are.

And she’s staring right back at me, her mouth dropped open like she’s trying to make sense of something impossible.

I know the tiny crease between her eyebrows. I know thoseeyes.

Because she was my high school best friend.

Harper.

The cup slips out of her hand. It strikes the floor, splashing iced coffee across the concrete and the toes of her boots.

Neither of us looks down.

“Marie?” she asks. Because of course I went by my middle name back then.

I don’t remember moving. One moment, she is twenty feet away. The next, I’m pushing through people, knocking my shoulder against someone hard enough that they swear at me.

“Harper?”