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again.
    â€œLook at me!” Grace laughed and pushed the plate away. “I’m going to end up eating this whole damn thing. Here, take it.”
    Ivy didn’t move. She reached for her coffee mug with both hands and took a long sip instead.
    â€œHa, like you have to worry about your figure,” said Kara.
    â€œBecause I’m married now?” Grace shook her head.
    â€œHey, you have it easier than we single girls do,” Kara pointed out. “It’s a miserable dating scene out there.”
    That it was. Ivy reached over and broke off another piece of the cookie. A smaller one this time. The damage was already done, after all. She’d have to sneak off to the bathroom soon to give herself an injection of the insulin she now religiously carried with her at all times.
    â€œWhat about Sam Logan? Or Jackson Jones?”
    At the look of wrath Kara flashed at Grace, Grace’s expression turned to one of bewilderment, and Ivy laughed at her best friend’s mishap. “That’s who Rosemary is fixated on setting her up with,” Ivy explained.
    â€œOh. Well, why not? I always thought they were both sort of cute…”
    Kara groaned. “Not you, too!”
    Grace held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. So they’re not your type. What about you, Ivy?” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
    â€œOh. No. I’m—” She considered her words.
I’m still hung up on Brett, nearly twenty years after he helped me pick up my books after I dropped my open backpack down the stairwell? Still thinking about that high school dance, where I sat on the sidelines, pretending to nurse a single glass of punch, and willed the other wallflower in the room to cross the gym floor and talk to me? Or how about, I’m still thinking about that passionate kiss I shared with Brett Hastings while you and Luke were feeding each other wedding cake?
    â€œI’m happy being single,” she blurted.
    Grace and Kara blinked at her, and Ivy had the uneasy feeling they could see right through to her heavy heart. Nausea began to stir, rearing another unfriendly reminder, and she reached behind her chair for her bag. “I’ll be right back.”
    She hurried back into the bookstore, thinking of what she’d just done, what Henry would say. By the time she frantically locked the bathroom door behind her, her fingers were shaking as she unzipped her bag and retrieved the syringe. She lifted her shirt and expertly pushed the needle into her abdomen.
    There. She had it all under control.
    Kara and Grace were chatting about Rosemary when Ivy retook her seat. Her coffee had gone slightly cold, and her taste for it was long gone. The cookie, she noticed, was thankfully finished, and all that remained on the plate were a few delicious-looking crumbs.
    â€œI was just telling Kara that Jane and Henry are having a cookout this Saturday night. Are you coming?”
    Henry had left a message for her earlier that day, but she’d been too busy handling a rush order for a new baby to even listen to it yet. Her mind rattled with potential excuses. The thought of going to a party with a bunch of married and engaged people suddenly felt like too harsh a reminder of how far she was from that phase.
    But then again, the thought of sitting at home, all by her lonesome, on Saturday night was even more unappealing.
    She opened her mouth and then closed it again. There was no use trying to lie her way out of this. Grace and Kara both knew she had nothing planned for the weekend, and work was only an excuse for so long. Besides, a night out with her favorite people in the world might be just the thing she needed to take her mind off Brett once and for all.

CHAPTER
4
    B rett pulled the last box from the trunk of his car with a grunt and carried it up the creaking stairs to the place that was now officially home. At least temporarily. The top step was a bit loose, and he made a