“Wait just a minute.” He threw up a hand as if to ward off the barrage of words. “We had a lot of fun in college. But that’s all it was—fun. Are you saying you expected an opportunity to talk me out of it when I said it was time to move on?”
“No,” she countered. “I expected that you’d figure out you loved me as much I loved you and ask me to marry you.”
She’d thrown up wall after wall to prevent a repeat of those feelings. Unsuccessfully. Because at the end of the day, that was still what she wanted.
And she knew now it was an impossible dream.
* * *
“Marriage?” The pattern of Cass’s granite countertops blurred as Gage processed that bombshell on top of the Rebecca Moon accusation. “You wanted to get married? To me?”
Of all the things he’d thought about their time together, her in a white dress and diamond rings and...other together-forever stuff that he couldn’t even fathom right now—none of that had ever crossed his mind. None of that had ever crossed his mind with anyone, let alone back in college when he’d just begun to spread his wings.
He’d vowed to himself, and to Nicolas, to have the quintessential college experience—drink a lot of beer, sleep with a lot of women, have a lot of esoteric conversations at coffee houses with foreign exchange students. No one got married in college.
He and Cass had totally different viewpoints on their history. How was he only discovering this now? And in the midst of a conversation where apparently, he was being accused of planting an employee at Cass’s company. His temper simmered again, which was not a good sign. He never got angry. Mostly because he never had much of an emotional investment.
Looked as if he was going to experience yet another first with Cass.
“I guess this is news to you,” she said and her voice broke.
There were no tears, no hard lines around her mouth, but he could tell she was upset about their relationship ending. Still upset. The bitterness radiated from her and he caught it in the gut.
“Completely. Jeez, Cass. We were kids with our whole lives—our whole careers—ahead of us.”
But that wasn’t true now. If that was what she’d wanted then, what had she wanted this time around? The same? While he was trying to reconcile and explore these new, unprecedented feelings she’d evoked, had she been waiting for a proposal? The thought put his chest into a deep freeze and none of the beating and breathing that should have been going on inside was working.
She crossed her arms over her abdomen as if to protect herself. From him. “So what’s different this time that makes you say things like let’s see how it goes? Am I suddenly more palatable now that I have power and money? Or is my allure strictly related to your bottom line?”
His anger mounted. How dare she accuse him of not only consorting with a former employee to steal from Fyra but then playing other angles, too. As though he’d faked his attraction and feelings for Cass strictly because of her formula?
“My offer to buy your formula is legitimate and legal. And I didn’t bring up extending our affair because of it,” he told her truthfully.
Maybe the affair had started as a way to make sure the odds fell in his favor. But that had changed a long time ago. She had their relationship all wrong—the first one and the second one—and somehow he was the bad guy in all of this. As though she’d had expectations of him that he’d stomped all over and God forbid he be given a second chance.
“Then why?” she pushed, her expression darkening more with each passing second. “Why keep seeing each other? Why not end it like you always do?”
Because...he had all these feelings he didn’t know what to do with. Because he liked being around her. Because he couldn’t imagine saying goodbye.
But all at once, he couldn’t spit that out. Heaviness weighed down his chest. If they didn’t say goodbye, what then? He wasn’t marriage material.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said derisively when he didn’t answer her. “You haven’t changed. You’re another broken heart waiting to happen.”
Another broken heart? Something snapped inside.
All this time... Cass had been in love with him. And he’d broken her heart because he’d ended their relationship, despite never making any promises. No wonder she’d been so frosty and uptight at first. Obviously, their past had colored her agenda and explained why he could never put his finger on what she was up to. Why he could never find his balance with her.