“You don’t have to apologize.”

  When he’d arrived this morning, Rafe had explained he just wanted to be there for me to keep me company for the weekend. Owen was covering his Saturday appointments. Neither Roger, Kendall, nor Jude could get away this weekend, though Roger was planning to fly out on Tuesday to spend a few days with me. Rafe hadn’t liked that I didn’t have anyone with me for support, so he’d jumped on a plane.

  Even lying in his brawny arms, I couldn’t think about what his presence here meant without freaking out.

  Instead, I confessed my guilt over wanting to be anywhere else. Tears burned in my eyes. “I’m a terrible daughter. An awful human being.”

  Rafe tightened his hold on me. “You are not. Arlo isn’t making this easy on you and I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling about your mom.”

  “I hate her right now,” I admitted.

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I hate being here.” My whispered confession rang out between us. “There’s a reason I don’t visit my parents a lot. It just . . . hurts.”

  Rafe’s voice was gruff. “You want to talk about it?”

  I couldn’t. I shook my head and closed my eyes. For years, I’d shoved down the ugly emotions I felt about my childhood, determined they would not ruin my spirit or my glass-half-full attitude toward life. If I spoke about it, if I popped the lid off that bottle and let the genie out, who knew what kind of mess it would leave me in?

  Rafe’s chest moved up and down in a big sigh, but he didn’t push me.

  “Talk to me about your family,” I implored.

  “My family?”

  “Yeah. What it was like growing up as a Whitman? To have siblings? I always wanted a brother or sister.”

  “Okay . . . Uh . . . Did I ever tell you about the time Gigi catfished me?”

  Laughter, and the relief of amusement, glowed through me. “No.”

  “She was only ten. I was eighteen and somehow she found out about my crush on an older woman.”

  I grinned harder. “Go on.”

  “I’d just broken up with my high school sweetheart and I’d decided that younger women weren’t for me.” Mirth trembled in his voice. “I set my sights on this younger friend of my mom’s, but she was still a good fifteen years older than me. Newly divorced and I was convinced she was giving me the eye.”

  I was convinced she probably was.

  “Anyway, I’d told a few of my friends that I was going to sleep with her before I left for college. And out of nowhere, she starts private messaging me. So I think I’m in. Thankfully, I said nothing overtly sexual to her in those messages, because when I turned up at our rendezvous point, Gigi was there on her bike to confess I’d been messaging her all along. She blackmailed me into taking her for ice cream every week for the rest of the summer. She said if I didn’t, she’d send a file of the private messages to my parents.”

  Shaking with laughter at her ingeniousness, I quizzed him, “What happened next?”

  “I bought her goddamn ice cream every week and lied to my friends about what happened.”

  “You never got your older woman?”

  “Well . . . I got a different one at college.”

  A flash of irrational jealousy scored through me, but I ignored it. I was too exhausted to deal with it and the myriad of emotions bubbling inside me. “Tell me another story.”

  “Uh . . . let’s see . . . there was the time Hugo and I decided we wanted to be David Attenborough and took off to live in the wild while we were on vacation in Oregon. My dad sent search and rescue after us.”

  Grinning, I patted his stomach. “Yes, tell me that story.”

  “Hugo was about twelve, I’d just turned nine . . .”

  Rafe’s voice and arms wrapped me in a cocoon of safety as I listened sleepily to a story that proved at one point he and Hugo had been the best of friends. My heart felt easy knowing Rafe had had a childhood filled with sibling friendship, and parents who loved them so much they were mindless with fear when the boys took off into a dangerous wilderness. My eyelids grew heavy as his voice soothed me, and soon I was deep asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The closeness I’d experienced with Rafe that night all went to hell the next day.

  It started when I woke up in his arms. Unlike the Fourth of July weekend, this time we were asleep on our sides facing one another, my cheek pressed against Rafe’s chest. He had an arm stretched out above us on the pillows and the other wrapped around my waist. Our legs tangled in each other’s.

  We were both still fully clothed.

  My first thought:

  I feel so safe and wanted.

  My second thought:

  I want to wake up in this man’s arms every day for the rest of my life.

  My third thought wasn’t so much a thought as much as it was a fearful instruction from the back of my mind to get the hell out of this situation with Rafe as quickly as possible.

  That crushing pressure returned to my chest and I shoved none too gently out of his arms to roll away from him. Rafe grunted as he woke up.

  “Hey, what time is it?” he sleepily asked.

  “I don’t know.” I couldn’t look at him as I grabbed clean clothes and underwear. “I’ll check. You don’t want to miss your flight.” I hurried from the room, checked in on Arlo to find him asleep, and dove into the bathroom before Rafe could fully rouse himself.

  By the time I emerged, sleep-rumpled Rafe had disappeared. He’d changed his clothes and sat in the living room waiting for me. “Bathroom’s free,” I announced as I wandered into the kitchen to start breakfast for Arlo.

  “I washed at the kitchen sink.”

  “When is your flight?” I opened the refrigerator, staring blindly inside because I had no idea what I was looking for.

  “Star.”

  “Do you want breakfast before you go?”

  “What I want is for you to turn around and look at me.”

  Flinching at his hard tone, I reluctantly faced him and found him standing in the kitchen, staring at me with a slightly panicked glimmer in his eyes.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  What was going on was that I’d fallen asleep to this man telling me stories about a normal, happy childhood only to wake up feeling extremely attached to him when those stories actually only highlighted our extreme differences.

  Rafe Whitman wanted what his parents had.

  I couldn’t give it to him. While I was many things, I wasn’t a person who strung someone along.

  A choking sensation filled my throat, but I forced past it and let the words out. “I appreciate you coming here, but I can’t do this with you. I’m sorry.”

  He took a deep breath, his expression pained. And then he asked, “Why?”

  “I’m not good for you. I can’t give you what you want.”

  “In what way?”

  “In every way!” I yelled now in frustration because it should be obvious and I just wanted this over with, and him gone. For good.

  “Well, I’m sorry, that doesn’t cut it. I need to know why.”

  “Because you want me to commit to you and I don’t have that in me!”

  “How do you know that if you won’t try?”

  “I just know!” I gestured around the house. “Look around, Rafe! I’m coming from a totally different place than you and I’m just going to let you down!”

  “Bullshit!” he yelled back now. “You’re not afraid of letting me down. You are terrified of me letting you down like the assholes who raised you!”

  “Don’t psychoanalyze me again!”

  “Get your head out of your ass and maybe I won’t have to!”

  “Stop yelling at me!” Tears flooded my eyes. “Just . . . stop.”

  Remorse filled Rafe’s expression and he took a step toward me.

  “Don’t.” I held up a hand to ward him off. “Please.”

  The horrifying disappointment and hurt on his face made me want to die inside. “Star . . . don’t do this.”

  I couldn’t look at him. “You need to go.”

  “Star—”

  “I asked you to leave.”

  Rafe let out a shuddering breath. “If he were well enough, I’d kick Arlo’s ass. He messed you up good. They both did.” Face clouded with anger, Rafe walked away, crossed the room to where he’d left his overnight bag, grabbed it, and marched out the door.

  He slammed it so hard behind him, I jumped.

  Suddenly that crushing pressure disappeared, but the hollowness it left behind was worse. “Fuck!” I sobbed, fisting my hands in front of me, wishing I had something I could tear apart.

  “Star Shine!” Arlo called from his room.

  My heart lurched. “Shit.” I wiped at my tears, trying to scrub away the evidence of what had just happened.

  “Star Shine!”

  “I’m coming!” Shaking my whole body as if to shake off Rafe, I let out a shuddering sigh and hurried into my father’s bedroom.

  Arlo sat up in bed, his expression contemplative.

  “Hungry?” I asked from the doorway as if my entire body weren’t trembling with adrenaline.

  “C’mere.”

  Reluctantly I crossed the room and sat in the chair next to his bed. “What’s up?”

  His blue eyes searched my face and I noted that he really needed a shave and his goatee trimmed, and I should offer to help him do that. “Your friend leave?”

  How much had he heard? “Yeah.”

  “You know, I’ve got money saved. I’m thinking I’m going to hire someone to come out and make my meals and stuff for the next few weeks.”

  Anger followed my shock at this announcement. “Isn’t Dawn coming back at all?”

  Sadness slackened Arlo’s features. “No, it’s not her vibe. I think I’ve been angry about that and taking it out on you. Sorry about that.”

  Wonders never ceased. “Why isn’t she here?”

  “Dawn hates being around sick people.”

  “But you’re not people. You’re the man she’s spent thirty-three years with.”

  Instead of responding to that, Arlo twisted his lips. “Your friend doesn’t think much of me, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I heard him before he slammed out of here like the fuzz was on his tail.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “He meant nothing by it.”

  “I don’t care. You know I’ve never cared what anyone but Dawn thinks of me.”

  Not even me.

  “He might not be wrong, though.”

  “What?” I gawked.

  “Your friend. He might not be wrong that you’ve got this all upside down in your mind about, you know . . . relationships and stuff.”

  I must have been in some alternate universe, because surely my so-called father wasn’t trying to talk to me about my love life. “What?”

  He snorted. “You think you’re Dawn. But you’re not. You might look alike, but that’s where the similarities end. I love Dawn, you know that. But she abandoned me when I needed her and you didn’t do that. Far as I can tell from all your stories of your life in New York, you’re loyal to your friends too. You’re there for them like you’ve been there for me.”

  “That’s different,” I murmured, though I was still reeling from his confession that he felt abandoned by Dawn.

  “It’s not so different.” He sighed and rested his head on his pillow as he stared up at the ceiling. “All that talk about being commitment-free all these years was just bullshit on my part. I said it because that’s what Dawn wanted to hear. She was the one who couldn’t be monogamous, who wanted our relationship to last but needed other lovers in her life to make it work. I didn’t want to share her.” He sounded suddenly belligerent as his eyes flew to my shocked ones. “I love her. I could have lived happily without ever touching another woman, just Dawn. But I had to show her I was cool with the sharing thing, so I did it.”

  Did he realize how incredibly immature that sounded?

  “Arlo, are you telling me all these years you’ve wanted to be in a committed relationship with my mother?”

  “Don’t call her that.” He winced.

  I rolled my eyes. “Well?”

  “Yeah, I told you that, didn’t I? I didn’t want to share, but I wanted to keep her, so I did everything she asked, the way she wanted!” His voice rose with his growing anger, and I worried about his heart. “And in the end, I still don’t have her. Look around, Star Shine, where the hell is the woman? Things get heavy and she fucking bolts.”

  Compassion mingled with the pain I felt over the scene with Rafe. “I’m sorry.”

  “But look who is here.” He pointed at me. “You showed up. Even though you’ve got a life, your work, a man, you showed up for me.”

  “He’s not my man.” I glared down at my feet.

  “But he could be, if that’s what you want. Look at me, Star Shine.”

  I raised my gaze to him.

  He gave me a small smile. “I don’t know you all that well.”

  What a horribly sad thing for a father to say to his daughter.

  “But I do know from what I’ve seen over the years, from what I see of the woman in front of me, that you are not Dawn. You’re not her. You won’t hurt your man like she hurt me.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I stayed one more week with Arlo.

  In that time we interviewed a few nurses and we hired a woman named Maggie, who Arlo outrageously flirted with. She dealt with him with steely-eyed professionalism, and I liked her matter-of-fact attitude. I felt confident I was leaving Arlo in excellent hands.

  It had not been an easy week. The first open conversation I’d ever had with Arlo hadn’t mended all my wounds. In fact, once I had time to think about it, I was pissed at him.

  I was pissed at both my parents for providing me with a crappy emotional upbringing and for giving me all these hang-ups about trust, commitment, and relationships. I was even angrier that it turned out to be hypocritical bullshit.

  Rafe didn’t call.

  However, I heard his voice in my head all the same.

  “You’re not afraid of letting me down. You are terrified of me letting you down like the assholes who raised you!”

  Too smart for his own good.

  Roger picked me up from the airport and I cried in my friend’s arms, finally letting the last few months of emotions out.

  “You need to call Rafe,” Roger insisted. “You need to tell him you’ve changed your mind and you want to try something real with him.”

  I shook my head. “It’s done. I’m done messing with his head.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” my friend warned me.

  I stared at him dully. “Then it’s my mistake to make.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The sounds of honking, engines, the grating drill of a jackhammer, conversation, and rock music blaring from the phone of the person waiting in line in front of me wouldn’t fade into the background as I tried to read a book. Early August in New York could be hot, and today was one of those days. It was humid, and the air was filled with the scent of traffic fumes and something unpleasant blowing up from the subway grate a few feet from me.

  Gone was my glass-half-full attitude and it was all because of the freaking hollow ache in my chest that wouldn’t go away. I was sad. Lonely. And it didn’t seem as if those feelings were going away anytime soon. I’d returned to New York and fallen right back into routine, minus my job for Rafe.

  I hadn’t seen or heard from him in two weeks, and I missed him and I was pissed that I missed him.

  Unable to bear any connection to his world, I’d ignored Gigi’s texts. She’d finally stopped reaching out, which just made me feel like the worst human ever.

  So there I was, my usually sunny disposition in the toilet. My hair stuck to my neck, my sundress to my skin, and my feet were covered in soot from the traffic from just standing there, waiting in line for free tickets to the opening launch of a new restaurant. Yeah, someone was paying me to wait for free tickets.

  “I bet the food stinks,” I muttered to myself.

  A woman passed me with a huge to-go cup of coffee in her hand and despite the heat, I eyed her enviously. My last coffee had been three hours ago, and I needed an energy boost.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to find a young couple at my back. The line stretched out all the way down the sidewalk behind them. “Yeah?”

  The guy leaned into me. “So . . . uh . . . what are we waiting for?”

  I scowled. “You don’t know what you’re waiting in line for?”

  They shook their heads.

  Rolling my eyes, I turned back around. “Morons.”

  “Did you just call someone a moron? How very un-Star-like.” My head whipped up to the side at the familiar voice.

  And there he was.

  Rafe.

  What?

  His denim-blue eyes shone as he squinted against the sunlight. I drank in every inch of him like the thirsty, thirsty woman I was. He wore a green T-shirt, dark blue jeans, and a crisp pair of navy Converse that appeared as if they’d never been worn. In his hands were two tall cups of coffee. He held one out to me. “Thought you might need a pick-me-up, and apparently if you’re calling people morons, I was right.”

  Mouth hanging open in surprise and confusion, I took the coffee on autopilot as he stepped right up next to me, his arm brushing mine. “So, what are we waiting for?”

  Rafe was here.

  Waiting in line with me.

  “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”