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classes, I'm sure.”
    The memories of our high-school friendship were as fresh as if they'd happened last week. We were close then, but adults now. We'd changed.
    “We should probably get our story straight,” he said, crumbs falling onto his lap, messy as he'd always been. Okay, maybe he hadn't changed that much.
    “Our story?”
    “Yeah. Just how much do your grandparents know about your husband-to-be?”
    “Not much at all. They don't touch social media, so it's unlikely they've even seen a picture of him. Even if they had, they're pretty blind – and you two look kind of similar, anyway.”
    He feigned being hurt. “Aw, don't say that. At least tell me I'm better-looking than him.”
    I'd never been so painfully attracted to anyone as I was to him. Of course, I couldn't tell him that.
    “You're handsome, all right,” I admitted.
    “That's all? C'mon, I worked my ass off to get these muscles.”
    “I can't really make a fair judgment. It's not like I've seen you naked or anything.”
    Both of us said nothing for a long while. Then he smiled, and there was a new kind of sparkle in his eyes.
    “We can remedy that, if you like.”
    “E-excuse me?!”
    “Can I get you anything, ma'am?”
    The attendant with her cart stopped by our aisle. I was so shaken that I could barely manage to order coffee.
    Carter got himself cranberry juice. He sipped it and began to page through a magazine as if those words had never actually left his mouth.
    Had I been hearing things? Did he seriously just offer to take his clothes off for me?
    I wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or throw myself into his lap right freaking now.
    “So, that cover story,” he said, a bit too nonchalantly. “They'll want to know all the juicy details. How we met. How we fell in love. Stuff like that.”
    My heart beat harder at the mention of love.
    “Just tell them the truth. We're high-school friends who found each other again after all those years apart.”
    “It's a good, sappy story. Old folks will love it.”
    Once the plane reached cruising altitude, he kicked back in his seat and put away the magazine.
    “I've missed you, Allie. Really, I have.”
    “Well, that came out of nowhere.”
    “We've been apart for so long, but it doesn't really feel that way to me. Now that I've found you again, it almost feels like I never left.”
    How nice it would have been to pick up right where we left off. But we couldn't do that, could we? We weren't seventeen years old anymore. We'd grown. Changed. Become different people.
    “I shouldn't have left at all,” he muttered, shuffling his muffin crumbs into a napkin.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Maybe if I'd stuck around, I could have scared off guys like Andy. Assholes like him don't deserve you. I wouldn't have let any of them come close.”
    The way he punched out that creep at the reception, I was inclined to believe him. He'd always been protective of me, and got somewhat cagey when a guy flirted with me at school. I'd told him to calm down and knock it off more than once.
    “If I had you hovering around me, Carter, I don't think you'd let anyone get close. How would I ever get married in the first place if you're chasing off every guy who looks at me?”
    He cracked his knuckles and stared out the window. “You just seem to attract the wrong sort of guys, that's all.”
    “As if you're the ideal person to judge who's wrong for me and who's right.”
    We didn't talk much after that. He pretended to be listening to music on his phone, but the look on his face couldn't fool me. He was stewing over something I'd said. I'd seen it a hundred times.
    What I couldn't figure out was why. Why the hell was he acting so weird?
    And what was that line about him getting naked for me? That one bugged me most of all.
    Three hours later, the plane landed at the airport. Carter dutifully hauled my bags on his shoulders though I assured him I could do it myself.
    “My grandpa Ed and grandma Susie should be here to