If that wasn’t the making of a good date, I didn’t know what was.
Ever since our senior prom, my one regret was that I’d never sat Holley down and spoken to her. Back then, we were nothing more than kids. Sure, at eighteen, we thought we knew everything and could never be wrong.
Ironically, we couldn’t have been more wrong.
After that night, when she’d caught me kissing her high school bully, I’d left her alone. She’d demanded that I didn’t go near her and ordered me to never speak to her again, and I’d listened to her.
Eighteen-year-old Sebastian had done exactly what she wanted, thinking she’d come around. I’d thought I was doing the right thing by respecting her wishes and giving her the space she so obviously needed after I’d hurt her.
Twenty-seven-year-old Sebastian regretted every moment of that.
I wish I’d had the confidence to make her listen. I wish I’d had the sense of self to sit her down and tell her what I needed to tell her even without caring whether she wanted to hear it or not.
Now, for the first time in years, I had the chance to make it right.
I was home for long enough that I could bug the shit out of Holley until she did just that—listened to me and learned the truth about that awful fucking night.
Until she learned that thanks to the darkness of that room and two red dresses that were barely discernible from one another, I was on the other side of a severe case of mistaken identity.
That, that night, I hadn’t meant to kiss Iris.
I’d meant to kiss Holley.CHAPTER FOUR – HOLLEYrule four: at least try to make it believable. flowers help.“Damn. Is there something you aren’t telling me?”
I jerked my head up from where I was marking up books for the new book club. “What?”
Saylor was standing in the doorway, her scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face, and she cocked her thumb over her shoulder. “You mean you haven’t seen the huge bunch of flowers out here on the sidewalk?”
I frowned. “What flowers?”
She rolled her eyes, an action that seemed to accentuate her winged liner that made me green with jealousy, and then wedged the doorstop under the door.
Brrr.
I wished she hadn’t. It was one degree from freezing out there, and I’d spent all morning warming this old store up.
Wasn’t that a waste of our money?
“These flowers.”
My eyes bugged as she hauled a bouquet through the door. It was bigger than both our heads put together, and it was a gorgeous mix of red and white roses interspersed with greenery and sprigs of baby’s breath. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen in my life, and my stomach plummeted so quickly I think it fell through my feet and disappeared into the center of the Earth.
“Ooh, there’s a card!” Saylor sang, setting the flowers down on the table next to the books I’d been setting aside. “Oooooh!”
I didn’t want to ask it, but apparently, my mouth wasn’t listening to my brain. “What?”
Her head popped out from the side of it, and she grinned, her cheeks rosy from the cold now that her scarf had fallen down. “You’re not gonna like thiiiiiiiiis,” she continued in her little sing-song voice.
“Saylor!”
““To Holley,”” she read, plucking the card from the bouquet. ““I really am sorry. No buts this time. Can we talk? Love, Seb.””
“No.” I turned back to the books and slipped a question card from the publisher into the front of one.
“Uh, are you blind?” She pushed the flowers closer to me. “Have you seen these? Hols, there are about two-dozen red roses in here. Do you know how much those things cost?”
“I don’t care,” I said calmly, putting another question card in the next book. “If he’s trying to get me to come around, flashing money left, right, and center isn’t the way to do it.”
“White roses are your favorite.”
“I don’t care.”
“Holley.”
“No, Saylor.” I scooped up the eight romance novels and carried them over the register, away from the frustratingly beautiful bouquet of flowers. I put them down next to the tissue paper I intended to wrap them in and looked at her. “That’s just… just… stuff.”
She stroked the petals of one of the roses. “Beautiful stuff.”
“Beautiful stuff,” I admitted. “And it’s very nice, but one bunch of flowers isn’t going to suddenly make me forget everything that happened.”
“Has anyone told you that you’re being completely pathetic about this?”
“No, but thank you for your opinion.”
“It’s not an opinion,” she said, shrugging off her jacket. “It’s cold, hard facts. You are. You’re being ridiculous and childish, and the least you can do is hear him out.”
I tore a piece of tape from the dispenser and slapped it down onto the book I’d just wrapped. “Is it.” I said it so flatly that it wasn’t even a question anymore.