Instead of coming to the arena and introducing yourself, you’d watch and run away. You’re upset because you never gave me a chance to get to know you, and now that I’m here, and want to know you, you’ve decided it’s too late.”

She stopped abruptly, hands balling. “It is too late!”

“You’re upset,” he continued calmly, “not with me, but with yourself. You wish you had the cajones to go out with me, but you are still afraid to actually live. Far better to fantasize your way through life—”

“I don’t have any grand fantasies about you! For your information, you’re not on a pedestal, and I don’t think of you as a superhero.”

“Maybe not a superhero, but I must have been some kind of wonderful for you to want my baby.”

Sadie had no answer for this. She glanced away, jaw grinding, temper stirred.

“Maybe it’s time to stop running,” he said quietly.

“Not running anywhere,” she answered tightly, staring at the courthouse with its dome glimmering in the sun. “If anything, I stopped running. I gave up flying. I’m staying put so that I can have the life I wanted—”

“This isn’t the life you wanted. Let’s at least be honest about that. You had feelings for me long before you got it in your head to have my kid. Being a single mom was never your dream.”

“Stop acting like you know what I want.”

“I do. Because I was there at those arenas, and I saw how you looked at me. Darlin’, I wasn’t a sperm donor. I was a man, your man—”

“You have such an ego.”

“So it was all a game? Showing up at stadiums and arenas, making me feel as if you were there for me—”

“It wasn’t a game. I was there for you! I went to see you.”

“Then why write me off without even giving me a chance?”

“That’s not how it is,” she protested, heart hammering, hot tears stinging the back of her eyes. “I’d never write you off. I couldn’t.”

“But you won’t even talk to me, or have lunch with me.”

“It’s called self-preservation, Rory.” She looked at him now, pain splintering her heart. “I made you such a big part of my life, and it was too big. You took over my life, and it wasn’t healthy.”

“Is that why we can’t even be friends? According to this new leaf you’ve turned, you can’t even talk to me.”

“I’m talking to you now.”

“It’s like pulling teeth.”

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I don’t know how to be friends with you.”

For a long moment, there was just silence. Rory’s gaze narrowed and he glanced at the ornate façade of the old Bank of Marietta, one of the first brick buildings constructed on Main Street in the 1880s. “Have you even tried?” he asked, his deep voice pitched low. “Or am I really going to be dead to you?”

Pain rolled through her, making her ache all over because he knew far too well what dead was, and loss felt like, and it hurt her to think that she might be hurting him. “Please don’t say it like that.”

“Maybe you discovered I’m not who you thought I was. If that’s the case, just tell me. I’m man enough to handle the truth.”

Sadie felt as if she’d swallowed something sharp. Her insides hurt. Her stomach cramped. How could she lie to him? It was impossible.

“There’s nothing about you I don’t like, Rory,” she said hoarsely.