“Um…” Iimmediatelyhesitate.
“No!” She flicks the side of my head, and I swat her away. “Just speak!”
Fuck.
“This is stupid,” I say, tightening my arms across my chest.
“You’re being a child. Grow up and face your feelings. You love Bo. You’reinlove with Bo. Admit it.”
“No!”
“Why?” she yells.
“I washurt, Sarah. I was hurt so badly, and you don’t even know the half of it.” The moment the words leave me, all the breath in my lungs goes with them.
“Sotellme, Win. Fucking tell me so we can work through it. I’ve been asking foryearswhat happened.Or tell someone. Anyone. A professional, preferably. Or, Bo, maybe—since heshouldknow.”
“He made me feel small” is all I manage to say, tears threatening to pour. “Jack made me feel small and stupid and incapable, and Ineverwant to feel that way again. I gave him my self-esteem on a goddamn silver platter, and like a fucking idiot, I was surprised when he took it and ate me whole.”
“Jack is a fuckwad who will burn every bridge he ever builds. You arenotany of those things, Win.”
“Yeah, I know thatnow.It took me all these years since Jack to remember who I am and what I’m not. I don’t… I don’t want to forget again.”
“You won’t.”
“I might! Because I keep forgetting a lot of things, apparently! Like, for example, the fact that Bo is most likelystillin love with your sister-in-law. That night we spent togethermeantsomething to us both, but that’s just it. It was anight.He was with Cora foryears.And even though she broke his heart and left him during the worst possible time of his life, he still cares for her. Still. That loyalty. That… type of connection… I can’t expect him to feel more for me after just a few months of being thrust into this situation together. I can’t live with the thought that he might wish I was her. That I was just the available option.”
Sarah sighs, her eyes held on me as her chest falls. “Win…”
“No, it’s fine. I’ve got it handled.”
“Win… you’vegotto talk to him.”
“I can’t,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “I can’t do it again. I can’t talk to him. I can’t put my heart on another platter and expect a different result.”
“Just, tell me this. Whatisyour worst-case scenario?” she asks, her eyes heavy and lips pouted in concentration. “A year from now, you wake up and…” she adds, waving me on.
That’s the scary thing. At first, I wanted to answer that it was letting Boin,just to be proven right. A type of right I’d never want to be. That he’d be careless with my heart and my feelings, and that a year from now, I’d wake up and realise I’d done it again—fallen for the wrong type of man. But that’s no longer it.
Theworst-case scenario is not having found out what being with Bocouldbe like.
“Seeing Bo in love with someone else. That he’ll have a beautiful girlfriend who loves my kid too, and they’ll take them for walks on the beach, and dance in his dining room, and—and I’ll be somewhere else. Alone. Missing him. Missing whatcouldhave been. Realising that he was ready to move on… and I wasn’t his first choice.”
“Do you really think Bo would let it play out that way if he knew? Because, from where I’m standing, that man looks at you like you hung the moon. More than that. The sun too. I’ve never seenanyonelook at another person like that.”
“I don’t think he’d intend to hurt me,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “But we don’t know if he feels the same. I don’t know if it’s just… attraction.”
“It’s not lust in his eyes, Win. It’s so much more than that.”
“What if it’s just hormones? What if it’s just some primal, lizard part of my brain telling me to stay close to the man I procreated with? What if I pop this baby out, and suddenly, he’s some intolerable toad?”
“Do youseriouslythink that, Win? That women are just skin suits operated by poor instinct and hormones?” She rolls her eyes, sitting straighter—in a man’s wide-spread posture. “Women aretoo emotional,” Sarah says in a deeper voice. “They can’t be in charge when their bodies make them go crazy once a month.”
“No,” I say pointedly, glaring at her.
“And why are we acting likehisemotions should dictate yours? I’m asking whatyoufeel. Not him.”
“Right. Yeah,” I respond weakly.
