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married.”
    “That’s not happening now.”
    She shook her head until the tips of her ponytail slapped her on the cheeks. “Never. He married someone else.”
    Somehow, his eyes got larger.
    And now for the humiliating part. The reason she lied to everyone to begin with. “Um, he got married within a few months after he finished boot camp.” That familiar hitch started in the back of her throat. The one that made her voice catch and the only way to fix it was to talk faster. Talk louder and somehow at this high pitch. She tried clearing her throat, but it was useless. The pinch in the back of her throat remained. “He found another waitress. Knocked her up. Married her. Broke up with me through email.”
    “Through email?”
    Even with the rain cooling the temperatures, it was getting sweltering hot. “Yep. We played phone tag for a couple months. Or I did. He was just avoiding me. Managed only to ‘have time’ to call me back during my busiest times at the diner when I couldn’t talk. Hard to find time to talk to your girlfriend around your pregnant wife, I would imagine.”
    “You’re shitting me.” His lips remained parted.
    She shook her head. This was good so far. At least, he seemed unbelieving. She hoped it was over Marc’s actions to her. Not that she’d hidden this for all this time. “Flora and Gretchen have known since the beginning. That’s it.” The tears were stupid as they watered her eyes, but she blinked ferociously fast and cleared her vision. “I’ve wanted to tell you for months.”
    “I can’t believe you’ve pulled off this lie for this long. And everyone just believes it? Hell.” Her rubbed over his face. “I guess I did too. I can’t believe you kept the lie going this long…to everyone.”
    She nodded. “Gretchen and Flora backed me up on everything. In the beginning it was easier. It was humiliating. The man I told everyone I loved and would marry had married another woman and they were having a family before I even knew. I lost him because I didn’t want to leave here.”
    The fingers that had been caressing her arm stopped. “What?”
    “Before he left, he offered to move me where he was stationed. We could get married. Start our life somewhere new.” She looked back at that water stain. “My life is here—our life was here. My aunt had given me the diner to deal with not long before he left. It took months before I finally figured it out, had a big reopening, got steady customers. I was making money. I didn’t know what to do. I was twenty with a successful business to run that I’d been in and out of working since I could walk. I looked at the future and saw us moving around wherever the military wanted to send us for four short years before he got out. Then we’d be back home and to what? It seemed smarter to stay home, have somewhere for us to live when he got out where we were financially sound. I was an idiot.”
    “Because you didn’t move to wherever he went, you lost him and you’re the idiot?”
    She frowned. “No. He’s the idiot for cheating on me. I’m the idiot for believing he wouldn’t.”
He stood up from the table. “And I’m the idiot for thinking you were smart.”
Wait…what?
He got up and walked toward the door.
    “Trent?”
    He didn’t answer. Didn’t look over his shoulder. She got up and ran after him, but he was too far ahead and with his long legs, by the time she was at the door, he was sprinting across the yard between their trailers and at his door. She yelled over the rain. The rain wasn’t that loud. There was no strong wind or even thunder. Not a storm. Just a spring pouring. He had to have heard her.
    He didn’t look back. She yelled again and the answer she got was his trailer door slamming closed. “Shit.”
    Not what was supposed to happen. He was her best friend. He was supposed to understand. Not walk out. He had been understanding for a while. What the hell just happened? Barefoot, she sprinted across the