She turns to look at me. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?” She shakes her head and turns back to the window. “I don’t know,” she continues, answering my question. “I already told him I would.”
So she’s going. “What did he say to you at the Swanson Court, the day we met?”
She turns back to me, confused. “I don’t think that has anything to do with—”
“Please, Rachel.” I stop her. “I’m trying to understand your…relationship with him and why he keeps coming up between us.”
She flinches at my use of the word us, and my resolve falters. What if I’m wasting my time? It’s entirely possible that she really wants nothing to do with me.
“I don’t think it makes any difference…” She meets my gaze and sighs. “He told me he was engaged.”
He broke her heart.
“You were in love with him.”
She doesn’t reply.
“Tell me what happened between you two.”
Her brow furrows. “I met him when I went to work at Gilt. We started seeing each other, stopped after about two months, but we stayed friends.”
“Why did you stop seeing each other?”
“We didn’t want the same things.”
“You’re being deliberately vague.”
“I told him I was in love with him.” I see the hurt in her eyes just before she faces away from me again. “He didn’t feel the same way.”
And she stayed in love with him for two years after that.
She’ll always be his, Landon.
I can’t…won’t accept that.
“You told me you were completely over Weyland,” I push on. “Were you being honest?”
She pulls in a deep breath. “There’s really no point in talking about Jack.”
Except I need to know for sure how she feels.
“Are you still in love with him?”
For a long time, she says nothing, and it looks as if I have the answer I feared all along.
“No.” Her voice, when it comes, is a whisper. “I was never in love with him. For a while, I thought I was, but I was mistaken.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. She’s over him. She doesn’t love him. There’s no reason we can’t be together.
I lean my body close to hers. “Then why?”
She raises confused eyes to mine. “Why what?”
I take her hand in mine. She’s trembling and I can feel it. I feel shaky, too—hopeful.
I want you to be mine, Rachel.
“Why do you keep pushing me away?”