Free My Mistake (Stories of Serendipity #7) by Anne Conley Page B

then kill myself.” Her beautiful eyes widened in shock and he felt ashamed of his vehemence.
    Grabbing her hand, he continued. “You don’t understand. I’m sorry for sounding so…intense, but I was in a bad place, Case. You have no idea.” He turned to her, and the tears were there in his eyes, and Casey reached for him, stroking his shoulder, overwhelmed at the depth of feelings pouring from Brent. “And then you came back, and now you’re mine, and my life’s too good to be true. I don’t want to wake up from this dream.”
    Casey unbuckled her seatbelt and crawled into his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him as tightly as she could until his hands finally unclasped from the steering wheel and his arms returned the hug. He was breathing heavily into her shoulder.
    “You have no idea what I went through because of that one mistake. I’m so sorry.”
    “Hey…Hey.” She whispered into his neck. “Who’s to say high school Brent and Casey ever would have worked out? What if that would have been the mistake? We can’t go back and change time for a reason, Honey. We needed this time apart to become who we are, to live the experiences that made us fall in love so intensely again.”
    Her fingers tugged at his hair until he was looking at her again. “Don’t you see? What if we wouldn’t be right here, right now, if we’d gotten together back then? Huh?” She kissed him sweetly. Just a peck on his lips to show affection and squeezed his neck again before crawling off his lap. “Now can we please stop talking about all that stuff? It’s depressing. Let’s focus on the positive. Okay?” She buckled her seatbelt. “What position do you want to try next?”
    Brent sniffed loudly as he rubbed his face with his hands. When his face emerged again, it was redder, but there was a trace of a pained smile. “I don’t deserve you.”
    “Sure you do.” She eyed his crotch appraisingly. “You ever done it against a wall?”
    Brent’s groan and his shifting his pants made Casey giggle. “Woman, you are killing me.”
    “Well it’s definitely something to think about for next time.”
    “I’ll be thinking about it, that’s for sure,” he muttered.
    Her stomach growled and they both laughed before Brent pulled off the shoulder and continued their trek into town for breakfast. It was almost noon.

Chapter 10
    “I had no idea. I feel awful for not calling her.” Casey’s eyes watched the swirl of the cream as she poured it into her second cup of coffee.
    “She probably wouldn’t have answered, even for you. She’s in a bad place right now, and I’m a little worried.”
    They were seated in a booth in the back of Sam’s, a diner on the outskirts of Serendipity. There was a lunchtime crowd, but together, they seemed to coexist in their solitary booth, as if they were on an island in the sea of people.
    Brent was filling Casey in on Summer’s troubles.
    “I’ll call her this afternoon. Maybe I can get her to go to lunch with me tomorrow. We can commiserate or something.”
    Brent looked at her, his steely gray eyes intent on her face. “You don’t have anything to commiserate about. You’ve got me, now.” His mouth set in a stern line.
    She reached across the table for his hand, clasping it reassuringly. “Yes, I do. And so does Summer. But we’ve both been dumped recently, so we can commiserate. Don’t feel threatened by it.”
    “I’m not threatened.”
    The guilt of not seeing her friend before now turned to amusement at Brent’s transparency. He was jealous of a man he’d never meet, a man Casey had absolutely no feelings for anymore. It was cute. She squeezed his hand before letting go and blowing on her coffee. She watched him eat.
    Like everything he did, he was focused and purposeful. He appeared relaxed on the surface, but the stiffness in his shoulders and his stern mouth showed signs of tension. She knew he worried about his sister, they’d always been