Confessions from the Quilting Circle by Maisey Yates (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

And then...oh then when she hadn’t. When she’d exploded and done the very thing she shouldn’t have...

“Where’s your car, Lark?” he asked. “I was about to leave, but you know I’ll help you out.”

There was something about the way he’d said that. A familiarity to his words that melted the years away.

And now it was just right there, in her mind, a full Technicolor view of that night.

With wine and potato chips and a movie playing in the background that neither of them watched. He’d just been so... Broken. Because Keira had left him and broken off their engagement. And Lark was going away to school, so he was losing her too.

She could still remember seeing him like that. Like he was missing a piece of himself. And she’d thought...finally. Finally he’s missing something too.

Because she had been missing him her whole life, at least it had felt like it.

She’d let her desire free. All the spontaneity and feeling and need she’d pushed down with him—only ever him—and she had touched him.

Not like a friend. She had touched his face, like a lover might do, and dragged her thumb over his bottom lip. And the next thing she had known he was kissing her.

It was so much like every fantasy she had since she’d been fourteen years old that she hadn’t been able to say no. She hadn’t wanted to. Even though she’d been certain at the end of that particular road would be heartbreak she... She hadn’t wanted to say no. So she hadn’t.

So she’d given Ben Thompson her virginity on the floor of his parents’ daylight basement with the DVD menu of Mean Girls playing on repeat in the background. Which was maybe the most dated memory she possessed. And also one of the sharpest. One of the most devastating.

And they had never talked about it. Not ever. Because by the time she had quit hiding from him he had gotten back together with Keira. And it had been time for her to go to school. So she had.

Hadn’t come back even for their wedding.

Hadn’t spoken to him since.

“Do you have to... You don’t have to be home?”

With your wife.

Your wife, who I also care about and miss. Your wife who I’ve totally accepted you have because it’s been sixteen years and of course it’s fine and I’m not hung up on you at all even if you are still hot.

“Nope.”

She wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t.

“Great. Lead the way.”

She walked out the door, and he paused, turning the sign so that it said Closed, and when the cold air hit her, so did the reality of what was happening. It settled over her suddenly that she was walking down the street with Ben Thompson and rather than feeling like she was back in her sixteen-year-old skin, she felt like that girl was watching her, like she was both the Lark she was now and that girl from then. There had been a time in her life when he had been the dearest person in her world.

Her friend. In a deep, real way. But the problem had always been that she had felt for him in ways that a friend wasn’t supposed to.

And Keira had been her other person. Her friend from childhood she’d shared everything with. Until she’d found herself loving the same person she did, which took the sharing thing a little too far.

For Ben it had always been Keira, never Lark.

And if there was one thing she had never wanted to feel again for the rest of her life, it was that sense of being with him and not really being with him.

She shoved all that introspection aside, and focused on the sound of her feet connecting with the sidewalk. The sole of her shoe on the cement, the vague crunch of dirt and sand that was nearly invisible on the uneven surface.

She let it consume her. Her thoughts, her chest.

That mundane action. It was so much better than memories.

“This is it,” she said, stopping in front of her little red hatchback.

“Okay then.” She’d never heard two words so heavy with judgment.

He muttered an expletive under his breath as he rounded to the front of the car and popped the hood. “What exactly is going on?”

“It won’t start. I mean, it took a couple of tries this morning, and I went to the store, and when I came back I tried again and nothing.”

“Probably spark plugs or wiring. Connections. That kind of thing.”

“Right. Well, I don’t know what any of that means, so if you just want to give me a bill when you figure it out, that would be great.”

“You don’t want to know what you’re paying for?”

“I’m just telling you it’s not going to make sense to me even if you explain it.”

“Fair enough. I’d probably feel the same if you started telling me about the crafts that you do in here.” He gestured toward the cottage.

“Well, give me too much detail about the car engine, and I will.”

She watched him work, bent over the car, the muscles in his arms shifting. He had tattoos. He had not had tattoos when they were younger. She was fascinated. He’d put art on his body, permanent art, and art was only ever personal. But when you inked it down beneath your skin it had to mean something truly deep.

She wanted to ask.

He looked up at her and their eyes caught, and so did her question. He just stared at her for a long moment. She had no idea why this man had the power to tilt her world on its axis like this. With one look.

She was saddest right then that they weren’t friends anymore.

“You look the same, Lark,” he said, a husky note in his voice telling her his own feelings were tangled up right now too.

But that wasn’t possible.

Or fair.

He never had been. Neither had her feelings for him.

“You don’t,” she said. “I mean... I...you have tattoos.”

He looked down at his arms.