Free Brody by Cheryl Douglas

sure about.”
    I laughed, trying to pretend his choice of words didn’t cut deep. It shouldn’t hurt anymore. I’d heard it all before, but hearing the man you loved saying he didn’t share your dreams never got easier. “Is that how you felt when you thought about a future with me—trapped?”
    “No, God, no,” he said, sitting up straighter. “It wasn’t like that at all. I wanted to be with you. Only you. I wanted to come home to you. I just wanted to travel too. I wanted to explore, to see what was out there.”
    “You’ve seen a lot of the world. More than most.” Sometimes I even envied his nomadic lifestyle a little. He could pick up at a moment’s notice, go anywhere, do anything, and he didn’t have to answer to anyone.
    “Yeah, I guess I have.” He twisted the flashy diamond ring on his right hand. “It’s been a good life. I can’t say I have any regrets.”
    No regrets? I wished I could say the same. I had a ton of regrets. I was even beginning to regret letting him in when he showed up at my door in the middle of the night.
    “That’s not true,” he whispered as he turned his body toward mine. “I regret losing you.”
    I looked at him, wishing he weren’t so handsome. It made him nearly impossible to resist, to which all of the women who’d been checking him out in the airport would no doubt attest.
    “No sense dwelling on our regrets,” I said, hoping he would let this go. I did not want to talk about us now. I couldn’t. Not on a crowded airplane with no means of escape. “Not like we can do anything to change the past.”
    “What if we could?” he asked, sounding anxious. “What if you could rewrite our story? How would it play out?”
    “What are you talking about?” Was he crazy? I couldn’t share that with him. It would make it seem as if I wasn’t over him. I suspected that was obvious, but still, I didn’t want to admit it.
    “Come on, tell me,” he said, nudging my elbow with his. “Tell me the story of Brody and Riley. Your version.”
    Oh God, he really expected me to do this? If I refused, it would prove that I was still living in the past, hoping for a different outcome. If I gave him what he wanted, maybe it would show him that I could talk about it without falling apart. That I’d come to terms with it.
    After taking a sip of water, I said, “Well, after college, maybe we would have gotten a little apartment somewhere, jobs to support ourselves.” Instead, I’d gotten an apartment and a job working at a bridal salon while he decided to travel the world, chasing fame and fortune at a poker table.
    “Go on,” he said, obviously eager to hear more.
    “We would have worked, saved up for a while, maybe bought a little house eventually.” I felt silly sharing this with him, since it was so far removed from his glamorous, jet-setting life. “I would have started my business when the time was right. You would have found a career you enjoyed.”
    He chuckled. “Can’t imagine what that would have been. You know I wasn’t very good at staying in one place for long.”
    “Then maybe you would have started your own business,” I said, considering his options. “Something to do with sports. You were almost as passionate about that as you were about gambling.” I whispered his vice as though it was a dirty word. Probably because during my strict Catholic upbringing it had been. “After we were both settled in our home and careers, we could have saved some money and started trying for a family.”
    He grinned. “I think that would have been my favorite part.”
    I shook my head, thinking he was adorable but incorrigible. “What? Trying to get pregnant?”
    “You have to admit we did have a lot of practice.”
    Yeah, keeping our hands off each other had always been the problem. If not for reliable birth control, we probably would have had a few kids by now.
    “What would you say if I told you that pregnancy scare when we were seventeen didn’t turn