Page 27 of Missing Pieces (Men of Manhattan 3)

But I could tell it did. The love of his life had gotten married and he had fled the state.

"What does she look like?"

He kept his eyes on the road. "She's beautiful."

"You can give me more than that."

He shook his head and was quiet for a moment. "Red hair, blue eyes, petite, a smile that can light up a room. And she gets the cutest little line in her forehead whenever she's upset." His eyebrows lowered as he stared straight ahead.

So that was his type. No wonder he didn't want me. A tall, tan brunette with brown eyes was basically the opposite of what he was attracted to. "She sounds stunning."

"Yeah." He shrugged. "But it wasn't really about that. At first maybe. But she was just really sweet and fun to be with. Our personalities just meshed really well. She was one of my best friends."

"That must have been hard...losing a friend too."

He didn't say anything.

"How long were you in love with her?"

"Almost three years."

"Were you ever more than friends?"

He laughed. "For about a week a little after we first met. Pathetic, right?"

"No. I don't think so." I pulled my feet up onto the seat and sat cross-legged. "At least you tried. At least you got it off your chest before it was too late."

He glanced at me for a second. "Yeah. I guess. But it was a shot in the dark. She's never liked me as much as I liked her. She never looked at me the way she looked at him."

"But now you don't have to regret never trying."

"Yeah, I just have to regret losing one of my best friends."

"Maybe it's for the best. You needed to get away from her in order to move on. So, screw her."

He lowered his eyebrows again. "I still care about her. I want her to be happy."

"You deserve to be happy too."

"I'm working on that."

I stared at him as he drove on in silence. Any girl that could turn him down must have been blind. He was s

eriously hot. Like straight out of the pictures of a magazine. And he had lips that were just begging to be kissed. By someone else. Not me. Some redhead he hadn't met yet probably. I turned away from him.

He had just opened up to me. It seemed wrong to leave him the only vulnerable one. His heart was broken. I could see the devastation on his face. He loved and lost. That's why it was never really worth taking the risk to love in the first place. I knew that. I had been burned too.

I took a deep breath and turned back to him. "I'm not just low on cash. I'm in debt. Awful debt, actually. The bar is failing. The bank is taking it back at the end of next month."

"What about your dad? Can't he help?"

I looked away from him again. "He's done everything he could think of." Maybe I could open up to him about the bar and my financial problems. But I couldn't talk about my dad. I couldn't say that he was dying out loud. It made it too real. It made it an actual possibility. I couldn't deal with that.

"So, why the sudden urge to go to Pasadena then? Didn't want to stick around to say goodbye to your bar?"

"No. I'm not giving up that easily. There's someone there that can hopefully give me a loan." I didn't feel like answering any more questions. "What about you? Why are you heading to California? Did you just want to be on the opposite side of the country as her?"

"Something like that. Really I just wanted to go somewhere...sunnier."

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