“Oh, sweetie.”
Shit, now she was actually crying. “It’s fine,” she said through a sniffle.
“It’s not. Damn it, I’ll kill him.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“You really like him.”
“I do,” she sobbed. “And I told him it was no big deal. I told myself I wouldn’t try to complicate this with feelings.”
“Well that was stupid. Everyone has feelings.”
“I just wanted it to be simple.”
“Love rarely is.”
“I didn’t say anything about love,” she snapped, and Hope laughed gently.
“I know. But liking someone…that’s really just a test run, isn’t it? To see if it might grow into more?”
“But we know better than to think…” She trailed off. Except Hope had found true love. And it had been rocky as hell. “What made you take a chance on Ryan?”
Hope didn’t answer right away, and Liana pressed the phone closer to her ear. So hard it hurt, but she needed to hear the answer—if it was the answer she thought it might be. “Because when I looked at him, and when he looked at me, the world felt lighter. I’d been alone for so long, and he’d been through so much, but we could be a refuge for each other. Does that make sense?”
Liana nodded before remembering Hope couldn’t see her. “Yeah.”
“Doesn’t mean it was easy.”
Another useless nod. “Right.”
Liana didn’t know all the details, but she knew that after Hope had fallen in love with Ryan, she’d left Pine Harbour for a period of time. If you love someone, set them free… And it wasn’t until she returned that they finally admitted just how much they needed each other.
But Liana didn’t need Dean.
This wasn’t like that.
She didn’t need anyone. She shoved the tears off her face with the heel of her hand. “I gotta go.”
“Don’t do anything rash,” Hope said. “Give him time. These men…they’re so independent, so tough, but they’re bred to be fearless. And that’s stupid, because we all have fears. Give him time to wrap his head around whatever’s going on, and I bet he’ll come back to you. He’s a good guy.”
He was.
And she wouldn’t do anything rash.
Not yet.
Chapter Nineteen
HER showthat night was incredible.
Raw and bittersweet, but from the tweets Dean was following, people were calling it her best set yet.
It blew his mind that there were people out there in the crowd who’d followed the tour for the entire leg. Bought tickets to show after show, some to blog about it, some because they were die-hard fans.
But those people knew her better than anyone, really, and they knew there was something different tonight.
Because he was an ass.
