Page 65 of The Irresistible Distraction

I suck in a small breath, and despite myself, I feel a tiny stab of pain. I never got a proper proposal, much less a ring. Instead, there was the tearful pregnancy reveal and Adeline’s insistence that we marry quickly, before people talked. Maggie and Tyler were there, but other than my parents and Jesse’s parents, no one else was told, much less invited. I bought a veil from Walmart and a white dress that passed as bridal-adjacent for thirty dollars on Amazon. He borrowed his mother’s wedding ring for the ceremony, and I gave it back right afterward.

My fingers swelled throughout the pregnancy, and since we didn’t have money—at least not money that wasn’t directly attached to Adeline or Arthur—it just didn’t make sense to buy a ring.

Not buying a ring was logical.

And even though a small voice, Brody’s voice, whispers from somewhere inside my brain that logic and sex, and perhaps by extension logic and romance, have nothing to do with each other—it hurts, nevertheless. A private place I didn’t know existed shrivels and dies inside me.

“What happened?”

“I was going to propose over Christmas, make a big production, film it in front of her friends and family because Mackenzie likes that sort of stuff.”

I nod, even as I note likes, not liked.

Present tense, not past. Suggesting not engaged but also . . . maybe not completely done?

“I talked to Sebastian about it just to let him know it was a possibility, and he didn’t seem opposed.”

I nod again, amazed at my own composure—Sebastian, who hasn’t seemed right since the new year, who seemed to be bothered by something.

“But then I just . . . couldn’t do it. I’d make a dinner reservation, and then . . . she’d order fish and I’d think, Well, that’s not the smell I want associated with a wedding proposal. Or her friends would all be there, and I’d be gearing up to ask, but then one of her friends would make a big pronouncement. The time never felt right. We were both applying to new jobs, and I didn’t want her to think I was trying to tie her down. Also⁠—”

“Also?”

“I’m not sure Mackenzie’s ready to be a stepmother. When he was with us this past Christmas, Sebastian asked whether he’d have to call her Stepmom, and I could tell it freaked her out. She’s so young⁠—”

“She’s our age. My age.”

“Yes, but she’s obviously had fewer life experiences, given how focused she’s been on school. And I don’t think she ever thought through what it would mean to have a stepson.”

“Is that why you broke up?” Even as I ask the question, I shake my head, because the timing wouldn’t line up. Seba had asked her over the holidays.

Jesse sighs. “No. She found the ring and the receipt a few months later.”

“You kept the receipt?” My voice rises a little, thinking Maggie’s going to love this detail.

“It’s necessary, for insurance and warranty reasons. But the receipt had the date, and she was upset by how long I’d been . . . not exactly proposing.”

“Maggie’s going to love that wording.”

“Do we still live in a world where we have to tell Maggie every little thing?”

“I don’t know if we do, but I certainly do.”

“Tyler’s gonna . . .” Jesse pulls a face, because Jesse and Tyler were close in high school and have stayed at least semi-close, the way men who don’t live in the same zip code do, over the years. He sighs. “Before any of you give me any crap, you need to understand that it was a very expensive ring. I had to keep the receipt, I just probably should not have kept the two things together, nor in a place Mackenzie might see.”

There are a host of replies I’m tempted to give: that he should have thought through whether he really wanted to propose before buying the ring, that I wish he’d at least given me a heads-up. But I stick to the parts that are more directly relevant. “How did you get from Mackenzie finds the receipt to you suddenly want to reconcile with me?”

“I never told her I’d applied for the Lake Arrowhead position. She only knew about the Bay Area hospitals because . . . that’s where she’s going.”

It takes me only a second to process. “You never told me—or Sebastian, I’m guessing?”

Jesse gives a miserable nod.

“—that you were applying for hospitals in Northern California, meaning moving hundreds of miles away . . . and you never told her you might be coming back here.”

“Given how competitive it can be, especially for generalists like me, I had to interview broadly. But Mackenzie didn’t feel as though I could prioritize building a new family with her at the same time I was trying to salvage my old one with you and Sebastian.”

“It’s hard not to understand where she’s coming from.”