Page 507 of His Virgin Romance Series

“Is that your excuse?”

“I wanted to tell you,” I said. “But… Seth insisted that he should be the one to tell you. But he obviously never did because he didn’t really intend for our relationship to be long term.”

“But you thought it would be?”

“Things were going so well between us,” I said. “Seth was amazing—”

“Of course he was amazing, Molls,” Jason said, sounding frustrated. “That’s how he is with women. He’s charming and charismatic and a whole heap of other things besides. It’s how he lures them in. Did you actually believe he would be different with you?”

“Well, yeah,” I said defensively. “It was different between us.”

“Oh,” Jason said, with obvious disbelief.

“Scoff all you want,” I said. “It was different. I felt it. I’ve seen Seth with old girlfriends, and I know how he behaves around them. With me, he was…more like himself.”

“Okay, then what happened?” Jason asked. “There’s a reason you’re here brooding about something. Something must have gone wrong to make you quit.”

I sighed. “He became distant with me suddenly,” I said, unable to bring myself to tell Jason the whole truth.

I didn’t want this little thing between Seth and me to destroy the relationship that he had with my brother. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to preserve that friendship, but I felt like it needed to be done. A part of me also knew that when I told Jason, he would definitely be pissed off enough to cut Seth off, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to let go of him that completely. At least this way, I would still hear about him through Jason.

“Distant?” Jason repeated.

“He just… He was working all the time,” I said. “He didn’t have time for me.”

His expression relaxed a little. “Is that the reason you quit?”

“I was angry and emotional,” I admitted. “I made a split-second decision.”

“So…you didn’t quit because…”

“Because what?” I pressed.

“Because you saw him with another woman or anything, right?”

I gulped inwardly. “No,” I said, hoping that I sounded convincing enough. “No, that wasn’t it.”

“Oh, okay,” Jason nodded. “Because if that had been the case, I would have flown down to Hawaii just to kick his ass.”

I smiled. “Thanks, big bro.”

“Anytime,” he said willingly.

I nodded and looked down at my hands, feeling slightly more depressed than I had this morning. Talking through the whole thing had made me realize how rash my decision had been at the time. I had been impulsive, and I remembered what Meryl had told me on the flight back home. Should I really have let a man get in the way of my career? I loved my job independent of Seth, and I should have stayed at it, for no other reason than to prove to him that he didn’t have power over me.

“Hey,” Jason said, calling my attention back to him.

“Yeah?”

“What’s going on in your head?”

I smiled. It was a phrase that Dad used to use on us when we were a little too quiet at the dinner table. “I guess I’m just sad,” I said.

“About Seth or your job?”

“Both,” I said. “But with Seth, I tried. But my job I loved, I wish that I hadn’t quit it.”

“Don’t you have a contract?” he asked.

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