“I was tired of him hurting you,” Stone says.
“What do you mean?” Up until then, Jude had never hurt me. At least not to my knowledge. Aside from a handful of quarrels here and there, we were happy and in love.
“Do you remember the night the two of you had that big fight, and you went home to stay with your parents to get some space for the weekend?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“And you tried to call him and he told you he was out with me?”
I nod.
“He slept with someone else that night,” he says. “Some random girl from a bar.”
My stomach hardens. Five years, a career, and a failed marriage later, the betrayal stings the same.
“I’m sorry.” He takes my hands in his. “I tried to stop him …”
“Don’t apologize for him, Stone. It wasn’t your fault.”
“He begged me to cover for him the next day, and he swore it was a one-time thing,” Stone continues. “And then he met Stassi in Tulum, and all the apologetic bullshit from that morning was out the window. Maybe I should’ve stayed out of it, but goddamn it, Jovie, I couldn’t stand back and let him take advantage of your trust like that.”
“So you told him you thought we were stale?”
“Something along those lines.” He exhales. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing for him.”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt. In the end, you got hurt anyway.” His eyes fall to my thighs, where the tail end of my scar is visible from beneath my shorts. “You could have died that night.”
His beautiful eyes rest on mine, and I drink him in the way he’s done to me countless times since he’s been back in my life.
“I always wondered why you had this chip on your shoulder,” I say. “Now I’m thinking it wasn’t a chip at all. It was the weight of Jude’s bullshit and lies.”
He manages to crack some semblance of a smile.
“You said Jude didn’t deserve me,” I say. “But he didn’t deserve you either.”
Brushing his thumb along my lower lip, he grazes his mouth across mine. It’s the tenderest of kisses, an apology and a promise all wrapped into one. I melt against him, slipping my arms around his broad shoulders.
“You don’t have to pick me over him, you know,” I say. “I’d understand—”
“—stop,” he says. “I want you. And if he wants to be a part of my life, he has to accept that. I made that clear to him yesterday. I also made it clear that he’s been a shitty excuse for a best friend, and if he wants to keep throwing that term around like it means something to him, then he needs to start acting like it.”
I suck in a breath, impressed.
“How’d he take all of that?” I ask.
“Not well,” he says. “But he’ll figure it out when the time is right.”
“Optimism is a good look on you,” I tease.
“I think some of your sunshine must have rubbed off on me lately.” He leans down for another kiss, but I turn my cheek. “What?”
“There’s one more thing we need to discuss before any of this moves forward.”
“All right.”
“You lied to me about the night we met,” I say. “You told me you didn’t remember. From the gist of your shouting match yesterday, I think I determined that it had something to do with both of you liking me and you stepping back so Jude could have me? Didn’t realize I was a commodity to be had, but okay …”
“Jude was coming out of a bad breakup and you brought out this part of him I hadn’t seen in years.” He rolls his eyes. “That entire thing had nothing to do with you being traded like an NFL quarterback and everything to do with me trying to do the noble thing at the time … the kind of thing I’d want him to do for me if it was the other way around.”
“Hate to tell you, but he wouldn’t have done the same for you.”
“I know that now.” He grabs a gift bag off the ground and hands it to me. “Anyway, I’m sorry I lied, and I hope this makes up for it.”
Reaching in, I pull out a soft, wash-worn t-shirt in a faded shade of black.
“The night we met, you told me you were one of thousands of Bon Jovi babies.” His eyes twinkle with humor. “Whether or not that’s true is impossible to know. What I can tell you is there are approximately one hundred and fourteen t-shirts being sold online from the 1996 These Days tour.”
I unfold the fabric and feast my eyes on a vintage image of Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, David Bryan, and Tico Torres in all their nineties rocker hair glory.
“Believe it or not, I bought this a week ago,” he says. “Had it overnighted. I was so nervous to give it to you, but I wanted to come clean about that night. I was hoping this would be a way to soften the blow.”