Page 15 of It Happened Again

“I don’t know. I-I can’t. Not when I have so much to prove at Orion. I’m just getting a start in my career. The timing couldn’t be worse.”

“Let me tell you something I firmly believe. Time is simply a construct we humans made up. And you are smart, you know that. The heart has no idea if today is yesterday or ten days from now, it just knows what it wants. And you’re getting in its way. This must be a sign. You two are meant to try again.”

“No, Sophie, it means nothing other than we happened to run into each other.Again.” I took up my wine goblet and guzzled it, the entire time worried she might be right.

“Then why are you ready for your second glass of wine?” She observed, cocking her head at me.

“I couldn’t handle it.” Ugh. Every time my eyes locked with his intense steel-blue gaze, too much played there. “There are too many things to be said.”

“So talk to him about it. You and he used to talk for hours, believe me, I know. Remember, we lived together our senior year? I recall the lengthy conversations you two had.”

How could one explain the connection I’d always held with him? I was a neuroscientist and I couldn’t. Something about his manly, tall, muscular frame shut down the logic part of my braincompletely. Leaving me trapped in the creative part of my mind, desiring only to drag him to bed to please me in every position possible.

Not that I would know about such positions first hand, but Sophie loved sending me links to articles about sex, as if she considered herself my mentor in this particular area.

“We didn’t have much chance to talk at Orion. It was one of those things tonight where our eyes kept meeting across the way, like we couldn’t avoid each other if we tried. And you should have seen the look on his face when I was speaking with Julian?—”

Her face twisted. “Your boss? Still doing the ‘accidentally brushed your hand’ vibe? You can complain to HR, you know?”

I winced. “He’s been friendly, hinting at wanting things more than professionally. I like the guy, really. We became such good friends on the ship; I couldn’t have spent that entire year and a half with him if we weren’t. But that’s as far as it can go—colleagues and friends, and I try to make that clear to him, giving him no room to feel otherwise. Sometimes I wonder if there had never been Brooks, there might have been room for Julian.”

Sophie whistled. “So you’ve got a broody architect and a morally questionable professor slash boss. Such a triangle. This is almost better than my favorite reality TV show, Brewed for Love. I’m glued, and I need the next episode.”

“But I don’t want either of them,” I muttered.

She arched her brow.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I do want one of them. Still.”

She softened. “Maisy. It’s okay to still want Brooks. Desire doesn’t make you weak.”

“It makes me distracted,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I came back to the city to focus on my career before deciding about getting a doctorate. My job is fulfilling. I’m not living on aboat in the middle of the ocean. I actually have health insurance now. Like I’m really adulting?—”

“Wow. Sexy.”

“—but one look at Brooks and it’s like I’m back on that island with him, falling so hard,seeing him again after so much time. Knees weak, voice cracking, heart doing that stupid skippy thing.”

Sophie set her wine down and leaned in. “Do you think he still wants you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He looked at me like he did. But then his assistant was there and rather familiar with him, giving me that ‘hands off him, he’s mine’ look. And he stopped talking, so I walked away.”

She smirked. “Men. They definitely don’t know how to handle women who scare them.”

I raised a brow. “I scare him?”

“You terrify him. You’re gorgeous. Brilliant. Ambitious. You’re a virgin and almost let him take your V-card. He asked you to marry him, and you once said no?—”

“In my defense, that was only because I was leaving on the ship and it was a desperate move on his part. Not a romantic, put-a-lot-of-thought-into-it, type of proposal.”

“Well, that kind of emotional bruise never really fades.”

I swirled the wine. “Or maybe he moved on. He might have a girlfriend for all I know. Maybe he’s been screwing Lacey after hours.”

“Nope. I’ve kept tabs on his social media.”

“What? All this time?”

She shrugged. “I keep tabs on a lot of people. Not a single photo of him with a woman. Not many photos posted, period.” Sophie reached over and plucked the glass from my hand, pouring more wine into it.

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