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coming alive on his tongue. She was right. The food was really good.
    “Been there, made a fool of myself,” she said. “Thought he cared more than he did. He left, and I kept calling, you know…” She trailed off. “Did she ask you not to call?”
    “She said she needed space. I wanted to convince her otherwise, thought she was just freaking out.”
    “That she didn’t know what she wanted.”
    He nodded. Maybe she did understand. “Yeah, something like that.”
    “How many messages did you leave before she called you back?”
    He didn’t want to tell, because he’d lost count. When you loved someone with everything you had, Jake didn’t understand how you could just let that person walk away. “Probably one too many.”
    “You do know there’s a line you can’t cross, and you may not even be aware of it. Sometimes it helps to have someone else point it out to you, because when you’re emotionally in it, you can’t see the road ahead. You’re lost in this haze, you know? So I’m telling you because I’ve been there. My advice is to walk away.”
    “So answer me this: Why do women always go back to the guys who treat them like shit?”
    A slow, sad smile drifted across her face. “Because at the time we’re so in it that we don’t realize we’re just repeating the same pattern over and over. We go back to what we know even though it may not be what’s best for us. A woman with a broken heart who’s still reeling from some betrayal isn’t anyone you should be getting involved with. She needs time to heal, figure things out, get her head on straight. When you put yourself in the picture, became a shoulder for her to cry on, of course she fell right into you. But her heart was still with your brother.”
    “Well, she’s with him now.”
    She shut her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jake. I hate to say this to you, but you gotta know there’s no future with a girl like that. Coming between you and your brother, she had to know. Of course she knew. That’s shitty.”
    For a minute, his instinct was to defend Jill, but when he opened his mouth, the words fell away. “She may be pregnant.”
    “Oh.” Chris paused with her fork in midair. “Yours?”
    He felt his face warm. Of course it would be his, wouldn’t it? If she was pregnant. She hadn’t denied it.
    “Oh, Jake, take my advice or not, but I’m going to give it anyway. Walk away. It sounds like a very messy situation that can divide a family. I don’t know your family or your brother, or this girl, but there isn’t anything you can do. She’s walked away, avoided your calls. That’s the coward’s way of saying, ‘Get lost.’” Chris lowered her gaze to her plate and pushed her half-eaten salad away. “Done?”
    “Yeah,” he replied. Instead of feeling good talking with Chris, he felt like crap. He had some hard thinking to do.
    She started to reach into her bag for her wallet.
    “No, I got this.” He pulled out his wallet and lifted out cash, more than enough to cover the bill, and stood up. “Ready?”
    She bit her lip as she stood up and started out of the restaurant ahead of him. Then she stopped, and for a minute he was positive she was about to say something else, but her expression changed, and she pulled open the door and walked out.

Chapter 7
    The funny thing about soul searching was the incredible ache that went along with it. Jake had been grateful to Chris after their lunch the week before—and after the few times they’d stopped for coffee after practice since. He realized in one of his dark, lonely waking hours that she’d been the best sounding board he’d ever had. Maybe that was because of her own experience. He’d yet to get her to talk about what made her understand him so well.
    That was all fine and great, but there was something about the ending of any personal relationship that was especially devastating. He couldn’t help but envy those who could just shake it off and move on. Jake