A small smile graced Kelly’s pretty face when she walked back into the room. She placed a glass of tea in front of Elisa, then took a seat at the table next to her.

They sipped in silence for a moment, then Kelly spoke. “Tyler was just telling me this morning that he misses you already. And that dog.” Kelly took a sip of tea and lowered her glass. “Tyler said you found him while you were out walking. Do you really plan on keeping him?”

“Not at first. I thought maybe—” She almost told Kelly about her suggestion about Brody taking the dog. Then she thought, Maybe not. “I thought maybe about taking him to a shelter. But now I’m not sure. He’s growing on me.”

Kelly shook her head. “Good luck. He looks like he needs some serious TLC.”

Elisa ran her finger over the rim of her glass and tried to channel some courage. Kelly’s your friend, remember? She’ll forgive you.

“You have something you want to get off your chest, don’t you?” Kelly asked, just as Elisa was about to plead her case.

“Yes, it’s about the other day, about…” She paused, trying to find the right words. “What you walked in on.” Good Lord, she couldn’t even look at Kelly, and her brain was dangerously close to not functioning properly—all because of a man. Finally, she lifted her gaze to Kelly’s. “I just needed to apologize. I felt like maybe you got the wrong impression.”

Kelly tilted her head to one side, as though scrutinizing Elisa. “You mean the one where you were making out with my ex-husband?”

It sounded so harsh when Kelly worded it like that, even though that’s what Elisa had been doing. And if she and Brody hadn’t been interrupted, they likely would have ended up on the couch again.

“Yes, I guess that would be the one,” Elisa said with a nervous chuckle.

Kelly shook her head again and offered Elisa a reassuring smile. “It’s okay, Elisa. You don’t have to say sorry. Brody and I have been divorced for several years now. He’s allowed to date whoever he wants.”

“I wouldn’t really say that’s what we’re doing,” Elisa responded quickly.

Kelly studied her for a moment. “Then what are you doing?”

Well, so far it’s been mad, passionate sex. Don’t tell her that, dummy!

Elisa took a shallow sip of some tea. The drink was cold, smooth, and sweet. Just what she needed. “To be honest, I’m not sure.”

“I know what you mean,” Kelly said with a laugh. “Brody has a way of making a woman feel unsure about herself. And you have that look about you. Like you’re in love with him.”

A small, startled gasp escaped Elisa’s lips. How in the world had Kelly figured it out? Just from seeing the two of them together?

Kelly pressed on, not giving Elisa a chance to explain herself. “I know, because it’s the same look I had when I was nineteen. Trust me, I know how you feel.”

And, suddenly, Elisa didn’t feel the urgency to ask Kelly’s forgiveness, like the words were Kelly’s way of forgiving her. Because the woman had once had the same feeling, the same helpless, drowning-in-overwhelming-love that Elisa had. How in the world had she survived that?

“I don’t want to pry,” Elisa replied softly, even though she really did.

Kelly took a long draw of her tea, then dabbed her mouth with a white napkin. “You’re not prying. It’s just something I haven’t talked about in a long time.” The other woman stared at a point over Elisa’s shoulder.

“You fell in love with him quickly,” Elisa guessed.

Kelly nodded. “Oh, yes. Very much so.” She shook her head. “Boy, he could make my head spin. I had never felt anything like that before. Completely blindsided me.”

Well, Elisa could certainly relate to that. Apparently Brody had a way of sweeping the rug out from under a woman’s feet.

“What went wrong? I mean…” Shit, what did she mean? Why did you get divorced?

“A lot happened in a very short amount of time. It wasn’t until years later that everything caught up with me, and I realized the life that I’d been waiting to happen was already happening. Does that make sense?” Kelly asked in an uncertain tone.

“Kind of.”

Kelly pursed her lips and stared down into her tea. “I found myself pregnant with Tyler two months after I met Brody. I had just turned twenty. By then I was already so much in love with him, I couldn’t think straight when he was around.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Anyway, we were both living in separate dorms, and because of our situation, we were kind of forced to move in together off campus. Not that I felt forced. The idea of living with Brody sent me over the moon.”

“But you think he felt forced?” Elisa asked.

The other woman exhaled a deep breath. “I think if I hadn’t ended up pregnant, the idea of living with me wouldn’t have occurred to him.”

Elisa studied Kelly closely. And for the first time, Elisa saw the signs of old hurts that Kelly had probably been carrying around with her for a long time. She’d fallen in love with Brody, gave him a son, married him, and yet he never truly loved her back. Or so Kelly seemed to think.

“Because we weren’t living in college housing,” Kelly continued, “we both had to work longer hours to pay bills.” She lifted her gaze to Elisa’s. “It wasn’t easy. Going to school full time, working full time, being pregnant. Hardly ever seeing Brody because our schedules were opposite. He went to school during the day and worked nights, and I took night classes so I could work as a receptionist during the day. But somehow we made it work.”

“How did you manage all that after Tyler was born?” Elisa couldn’t imagine juggling such a full plate. And Kelly had done it at a young age, when most other twenty-year-old girls were living carefree.

Kelly fingered the pearl earring adorning her ear. “By then we were already living in Trouble. Brody graduated right before my due date, and we moved here so he could go to work for his father.”

“You didn’t graduate with him?”

“No,” Kelly said with a shake of her head. “I still had two years left. But we both knew we couldn’t stay where we were. Brody needed to make good money so he could take care of us, and I could stay at home with Tyler. I had never been to Wyoming and I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of moving here. But as his wife, it was my job to support Brody in whatever he wanted to do. His father offered him a job with really good starting pay. Plus Brody wanted to be close to his family.”

Elisa stared back at the woman. “So you gave up your degree and moved here. And didn’t you miss your family?”

Kelly nodded and picked up her glass. “Oh, I missed them terribly. That’s why this thing with my mother hit me so hard. I feel guilty that I wasn’t there for her when it happened. Anyway, I basically dropped out of school. I was five semesters short of graduating. Then I had planned on getting my graduate’s degree.” A wistful smile broke across Kelly’s face. “I’d always wanted to be a relationship therapist.”

“But you never got to be one,” Elisa concluded. She’d never realized how much Kelly had given up, how lonely she must have been. “And you never had the opportunity to finish school?”

Kelly shook her head. “Not really, no. After we moved here, Brody worked long hours to support us. I stayed home with Tyler, and I knew there was no way I could go back to school and get my degree. I kept thinking, maybe sometime in the future when Tyler got older, but… things started going downhill in my marriage.”

Kelly stopped talking suddenly and took a long sip of her tea. She gulped the drink down and closed her eyes briefly. This was like opening an old wound for her. Elisa sensed the other woman’s discomfort and anguish. Then she remembered Brody’s words from the other day.

There are things I’ve never told anyone before.

“How long has it been since you’ve talked to anyone about this?” Something told Elisa that Kelly had been virtually alone during her divorce from Brody. Chances were she didn’t have anyone to confide in.

“I’ve never talked to anyone about it. No one knows what really happened. Not even Colin.”

Elisa placed one of her hands on top of Kelly’s in an attempt to comfort her. She was still hurting. “Tell me.”

The other woman’s gaze remained on her tea. “I gave up so much for him,” she said, as though she didn’t hear Elisa. “I sacrificed everything. I left my home, moved away from my parents, gave up the opportunity to have a career, quit school, and he—” She stopped and licked her lips, then pulled in a shuddering breath. “And he’s being so difficult about this situation with my mother.”

“What else did he do, Kelly?”

“I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone,” she said instead of answering Elisa’s question. “Clearly Brody hasn’t told you anything about our divorce, and I don’t think he’d appreciate me telling you this.”

Elisa was curious about the comment regarding her mother. But right now, she felt the need to get to the bottom of Kelly’s troubling words. “Whatever you tell me won’t affect whatever relationship Brody and I might have. You obviously need to talk to someone about this, and I’m here to listen.”

Kelly’s distressed green gaze lifted to hers. “I’ve buried this so deeply, and there were times I told myself it never happened.” She tucked a short strand of hair behind one ear. “Toward the end of our marriage, during the last weeks when things were really bad, Brody went to stay in his brother Noah’s guest house. I felt like it was a good idea for him to leave because all the fighting was starting to affect Tyler. I also felt like it would be good for us to spend some time apart. He’d been gone for three weeks when I realized I didn’t want to be apart from him. I just wanted some things to change.” Kelly twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “One night I’d left Tyler with some friends so I could go see Brody and talk some things over.” She paused again, twirling that ring around and around. “But when I got there, he wasn’t alone.”