After Riley and Lucas had been together for five months, Winter moved back to Lark Springs, boyfriendless once again. She kept calling Lucas. When Riley complained about that, he swore he didn’t have feelings for her anymore. He said they were still friends, though, and she was going through a hard time. She needed her old friends.
Lucas had done a good job of making his attention to Winter look justified and Riley’s worries seem ungrounded.
One night, he’d told her he was playing basketball with some guys from work. She’d believed him. He played basketball with them often enough, but she’d accidentally left her phone in his car. When she tracked it, she saw Lucas’s car was parked at Winter’s house. If he’d lied about playing basketball, what else was he lying about?
In what was perhaps the worst moment of her life, she drove to Winter’s house and retrieved her phone from his car. She hadn’t planned on peering into Winter’s living room like some sort of stalker, but the curtains weren’t drawn. How could she not look? Lucas was there, sitting knee to knee with Winter, deep in a conversation.
While Riley watched, Lucas put his arm around her shoulder and Winter leaned her head against his chest. His head tilted down so that his chin rested on her hair. It was such an intimate pose, filled with all sorts of familiarity. Not a we’re-just-friends pose.
Riley took a picture of them, but even then, she hoped she was wrong. She hoped that Jace had driven here in Lucas’s car, taken off his glasses, and he was the one she was seeing. She wanted there to be an explanation.
Riley called Lucas’s phone and watched him pick up.
“How’s the game?” she asked, trying not to let her voice shake.
“Pretty good,” he said. “But I have to get back to it. I’ll call you later, okay?”
Perhaps she should’ve confronted him right then. She couldn’t speak, though. She thought of all the times he’d been busy lately, the times he’d been hanging out with the guys, and everything inside her shattered.
Riley had clearly only ever been a rebound, and all Winter had to do to take Lucas away was pop back up and reclaim her position.
Riley hung up the phone, spun on her heel, and stormed back to her car. When she arrived home, broken and crying, she sent him the picture. Just like the saying, it was worth a thousand words. She wrote, “I’m done being lied to.” and blocked him.
The best and worst part of the breakup was that Lucas and Winter never officially got back together. Winter had come back to town only long enough to ruin Riley’s relationship with Lucas, and then she flitted off to Europe to go to school there while she looked for the next rich guy’s son.
But Riley couldn’t trust Lucas again.
Riley’s mother hadn’t done much for her, but she’d given her good advice on men: Never take back a liar or a cheater. There’ll always be a repeat performance.
She smoothed her hands across the desk. “It’s nice that you want to be friends. I mean, you certainly have a track record of attentive friendship with your exes, but I don’t think I could do that to your current girlfriend.”
Lucas pressed his lips together, clearly trying for inward patience. “I don’t have a current girlfriend.”
“Oh, see, I’m not as up to date with your doings as I should be. Next, your parents will sell their boat, and I won’t even know.”
He sighed and folded his arms. “Riley, you know that your best friend and my brother are serious, right?” The twins’ older brother Carson had been dating Riley’s former roommate, Olivia, since the beginning of the summer. “If you don’t want to make amends for our sake, how about making them for Olivia and Carson? Otherwise, things are going to be awkward at their wedding.”
Granted, Olivia had moved to Denver in September to be near Carson, but she hadn’t said anything about an engagement. She’d never mentioned Carson dropping hints or asking about her ring preferences. “I’ll worry about that when it happens,” she said.
Lucas looked off to the side, thinking. She remembered that look from when they’d dated. He knew more and was debating whether to say it.
Riley straightened. “Wait, do you have insider knowledge about a proposal?”
“I never said that. I absolutely didn’t say that.”
Why else was he bringing it up? “Did Carson say something to you about proposing?”
Lucas didn’t reply right away. She waited.
“I’m his brother,” Lucas said at last. “Of course we’ve talked about marriage in nonspecific ways that you shouldn’t say anything to Olivia about.”
That answer spoke volumes. Riley put her hand to her lips in excitement. “Really? Has he picked out a ring? I mean, a guy should look at a woman’s Pinterest board before dropping a lot of money on a diamond. Just saying.”
“What’s a Pinterest board?”
“Maybe have Carson call me.”
Lucas hesitated. “I’ll pass that on.”