Then I smiled sweetly at Camryn. “You each got into med school, right?”

“Right,” Camryn said.

“The same med school?”

“No.”

“The same city, at least?”

She shook her head and the gorgeous dark red tresses swayed like weeping willows. “But he’ll be in New York, and I’ll be in Philadelphia. They’re not that far apart. We may be busy, but we’ll see each other on some weekends and — ”

“When do you leave?”

She pressed her lips together and her grip on her daiquiri tightened. “The end of the month. Why?”

“He’ll break things off before then,” I told her, my voice projecting a certainty I didn’t feel in truth, but I made sure I sounded believable.

She tried to shrug it off. “Just because you couldn’t hold on to him doesn’t mean I — ”

“Has he told you he loves you?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” she shot back.

“Fine, don’t answer. Just think. Has he made you any promises? Or, when you bring up the future, does he deflect your questions?” I stopped for a long swallow of margarita.

Camryn remained silent, a cloud of uncertainty darkening her eyes.

I pressed on. “How about this — does he hide his feelings behind a façade of arrogance and cleverness, so you never really know what he’s thinking? Does he enjoy the sex, but always keep a barrier between you? I’m talking emotional, not prophylactic,” I clarified, although Camryn was, I gathered, a smart enough cookie to figure it out.

The slight pallor of her complexion let me know I’d hit a nerve. This should’ve made me feel guilty. But, guess what? It didn’t.

“You seem like a very intelligent person,” I told her with measured condescension, “but even clever girls make mistakes in judgment sometimes. No one would blame you if you got taken in by him. Temporarily. Although, knowing the truth, one has to wonder why you’d put up with it for — ”

“What the hell is this?” a furious male voice demanded.

Sam.

Camryn and I swiveled toward him. “Back so soon?” I said.

Sam’s eyes sparked with blue fire. Guess he’d overheard some of our conversation. Oops.

He speared me with a glare, then turned to his girlfriend. “Seems Ellie has become a bitter, spiteful person who never forgets the stupid things that happened in the past, and she can’t see beyond her own issues and biases. Oh, and — ” he said and glowered at me again, “she has a history of lusting after loser guys like Jason Bertignoli, for God’s sake, so her judgment is questionable.”

Every syllable leaving his mouth jabbed me like a stiletto to the heart. He thought our night together was a “stupid thing.” God damn him. But, yeah, he was right about my judgment being bad. After all, I’d practically fallen in love with him.

He returned his gaze to Camryn. “So, regardless of what she’s told you, just because she and I had no way of working things out four fucking years ago — ” He paused to frown at me. “It doesn’t mean it’ll be the same with us.” He reached for Camryn’s arm.

She snatched her arm away. “What went wrong?” she asked him.

“What?”

“‘Four fucking years ago,’ Sam. What went wrong? How did it end?”

“Yeah, Sam,” I chimed in. “Tell her. Please. And, while you’re at it, I’d appreciate an illuminated recap because I was kind of deprived of your high-level reasoning back then.” I drained my drink, set the glass on the counter and crossed my arms to keep them from trembling. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Sam looked between us, an expression of incredulousness on his handsome face. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “I am not doing this. Here. Now. With either of you.”

“So, she wasn’t lying then,” Camryn said, her voice turning several degrees colder. “You really did something to warrant her anger and total bitchiness.”

Total bitchiness? “Hey,” I said. “I’m not being — ”

She pointed a well-manicured fingernail at me. “You shut up. You’ve caused enough trouble.”

Then she scowled at Sam. “Were you planning to break up with me this month? Is that why, no matter how many times I asked you about Labor Day plans or whose house we’d meet at for Thanksgiving, you kept putting me off? Is that why you couldn’t commit to going to my brother’s wedding in October? Why you kept saying, ‘We’ll see, Camryn,’ every time I brought it up?”

Sam stared at her. So did I.

“Answer me, dammit!” she shrieked.

He exhaled long and hard. “Camryn, please. Let’s go somewhere else and discuss this rationally. I don’t want — ”

“No! I want to know now. I don’t want you trying to weasel out of it again.”

Sam shrugged, but his shoulders looked so stiff I thought they’d crack from the motion.

“Okay, fine,” he told her. “The thing is, I don’t know about the wedding. I don’t have a clue what our schedules are going to look like then. We’ll both probably be up to our ears in work. You know as well as I do that’s what med school is all about.”

“We’re talking about two national holidays, Sam, and one once-in-a-lifetime event. Three lousy days out of four months.” She twisted her fingers together into a warped steeple. “I told my family all about you. They wanted to meet you. I told them you might be someone they’d be glad they got to know. Someone I might have in my life…” A few tears dropped from her eyes, making the green even brighter. She swiped them away viciously and bit her lower lip.

I took a step away from the two of them. I didn’t belong in the middle of this and, I’ll admit, I was beginning to feel a few pinches of remorse for my — how did Camryn put it? Oh, yes. My anger and total bitchiness.

I took another step back but, in a flash, I was pulled nose-to-nose with Sam.

“Don’t. You. Dare. Leave,” he said in a low, very dangerous voice, his clenched fist full of my pink light-knit shirt. “If we’re having a public confession session, you’re damn well going to be a part of it, Ellie Barnett.”

I swallowed and looked into his enraged face. He hadn’t changed much, really, in the years since I’d last seen him this close up. His skin was a little tauter now, perhaps. His bone structure a bit more defined. His hair a fraction shorter. His muscles a tad firmer. His eyes were the same cool blue, though, with maybe a hint more malice.

Jane cried out, Make him release you. Insufferable man!

“Let go of my shirt, Sam,” I managed to say in what I hoped was a composed and level voice. Inside, though, every part of me quivered, and I couldn’t figure out the reason. Fear? Shame? Anger? Jane’s unaltered disdain? All of the above or something else entirely?

Sam released me, but his eyes didn’t let me go. They trained on me with a wrath I hadn’t been the recipient of since, well, since high school.

Camryn’s response to this little scene bespoke a different reaction altogether. She no longer looked infuriated, just deflated. Disappointed. Sad and kind of hurt. “You don’t love me, Sam. And you’re not going to, are you?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “I’ll take a cab home.”

“Aw, Camryn, c’mon.” Sam tried to touch her again and, again, she pulled away.

“No,” she said.

“Can’t we at least talk? Can I call you tonight? Tomorrow?”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “We’ll see, Sam.” She turned and marched out of the bar.

Sam stared after her in stunned silence.

I should’ve shut up, but I was slightly toasted. So, I said, “Well? Get going. Aren’t you gonna run after her? Aren’t you gonna tell her you love her and that you really do want to go with her to her brother’s stupid wedding?”

My hands shook. To stop them, I squeezed my fists so hard my fingernails dug deep into my palms. I looked at them and saw those familiar crescent-shaped welts. Visible signs of a habit I’d never broken.

“I don’t love her.”

“What?” I glanced up from my hands to study Sam’s face, now shuttered against all emotion.

“I’m not going to run after her because I don’t love her. But” — he gave me a frozen glare — “I really did like her. She’s bright, funny, a little high-maintenance, maybe, but a good person underneath the cool exterior. And you had no business at all doing what you did. That was heartless, Ellie.”

My breath caught in my esophagus. “I’m heartless? Me? Screw you, Sam — ”

He raised a brow. “So, your relationship with that Dominic dude is real wonderful, eh?” he said, implying with a tilt of his head that he didn’t think so. “You two have got it all together? You’re happy?”

“It — it’s pretty good,” I lied.

His eyes traveled down my body and then back up again. “How good?”

Intolerable rudeness, Jane muttered, along with a few other choice phrases.

I mentally turned down the volume on her complaints and swallowed. “Don’t be an ass,” I said to Sam.

“Don’t sidestep the question,” Sam shot back.

“It’s better than it was with you,” I retorted before I lost my nerve. No doubt I’d burn in hell for all the lies I’d been telling, but I couldn’t let Sam know the truth. He already had too much dirt on the real me.

Sam pressed his lips together until they were nearly colorless. He then focused the intensity of his gaze on Dominic, whom we spotted chugging the last of his beer and bumming a smoke off of Mick.

“Hey, Dominic!” Mick called out, too loudly because he was, as usual, thoroughly smashed. “Maybe you can score some more cash off your girlfriend and get us another coupla beers.” He blindly looked around. “Where is Miss Moneybags anyway? She didn’t take off on you again, did she?”