“Not good, because you loved soccer. It had to have crushed you when you didn’t make the team.”
“You’re finding fault with me because I didn’t cry over it?” Britt asked.
“I’m finding fault with you because you wouldn’t open up and let us help you with your hurt.”
Britt gaped at her. She was strong. So what?
“Remember how much you wanted that apprenticeship in France that you applied for first? You told me all about the master chocolatier you’d be working under and his chocolate empire and his awards and even where you’d live. And then you weren’t chosen for the apprenticeship.”
“I’m not really enjoying these particular memories—”
“You swept that rejection under the rug like it didn’t matter.”
“I got another apprenticeship. It worked out fine.”
“And then,” Maddie continued, “when Olivia died, you were the one patting our backs and handing us tissues.”
“Somebody needed to.”
“Nobody needed to. We could have all been heartbroken together.”
“I beg to differ—”
“Don’t even get me started on how you acted after your kayaking accident. You could hardly sit! You could hardly walk. Yet trying to force you to accept help from Hannah and Mia and me—”
“And all the other people you recruited.”
“You have a lot of friends!” Maddie set her palms on either side of her plate. “Trying to force you to accept help was like trying to turn back the tide of the ocean.”
Scowling, Britt brushed crumbs from the table.
“I could go on and on, listing example after example,” Maddie said.
“Of what, exactly? My independence?”
“Take any positive attribute to its extreme, and you’ll find something negative.”
“How can independence be a bad thing?”
“It’s a bad thing when it costs you the love of a man who would do anything in the world for you.”
Britt opened her lips. Closed her lips. Opened them again. “You don’t know that Zander would do anything in the world for me.”
“Idoknow that he’d do anything in the world for you. We all do. Me. Hannah. Mia. Your sisters. Your parents. Zander’s brother. Zander’s aunt. And you know it, too. Here.” Maddie leaned across the table and lightly tapped the area of Britt’s heart. “But you’re scared.”
“Scared?”
“You’re the most courageous person I know. Except about this one aspect of your life.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“To love Zander is to lean on him, to a degree,” Maddie said. “It will require you to forfeit some of your freedom, Britt. You’ll have to let him in and trust him more than you’ve ever trusted anyone ... with all of it. Your joy and your pain. Your successes and your failures.”
The idea of blubbering about her pain and her failures to Zander sounded awful to her. He appreciated her self-sufficiency! He’d told her so.
“I’m simply trying to say,” Maddie said in a calm, reasonable tone, “that a romance with Zander will demand vulnerability.”
“You’ve been dating Leo for five months and now—”
