“Do you know,” Roxy began quietly, “what all those epic star-crossed lover stories get wrong?”
I stared at her. After divulging my heart and soul to her,thatwas her question?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Everyone always acts like,oh, I met my soul mate, and now everything is perfect, and our life is just so great.” Her mocking tone made me laugh. “Well, guess what? It doesn’t work like that, buttercup. All relationships take work.”
“I’m aware.”
“And I think that you and Harley just had so much going on back then that there wasn’t any room for a relationship.”
“And we do now?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,do you?” She stared at me hard, already knowing the answer to this. I hated dating. Sure, I tried it from time to time, but I wasn’t good at it. I wasn’t good at investing in relationships—not like I had been with Harley. And maybe it was that Harley had ruined that for me. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to trust someone like that again.
And maybe I was full of shit because, even after everything, no one else was Harley.No one else fit the way he did. I didn’t want them to.
“I know how I feel about dating,” I retorted, “but I don’t know about him. He’s got a kid now.”
“And?”
“And… he has a business?” I frowned.
“And?” Why the fuck did she keep asking?
”I don’t know! He seems happy!” I exclaimed, cracking under pressure. “He seems calmer and more put together, and he’s got this smile that he never had before. He was always kind of sad, you know? He actually seems happy now.”
“God, I want a man who knows my smiles,” Roxy muttered.
“What?” I shot back. “It was our thing! He was sad, I was angry, it worked.”
“Clearly not,” she scoffed. “So, he’s not sad anymore.”
“Exactly.”
“But what about you? Are you angry anymore?”
“No.”I’d let go of my anger a long time ago.It was the most grueling thing I ever did, but I was better for it.
“Exactly.” The smug look on her face irritated me. “So, maybe, this time, there’s room for a relationship.”
“You don’t know that,” I replied.
“And neither will you if you don’t do something about it,” Roxy said softly. “You keep worrying about what might go wrong, Mav, but you’re not thinking about what you’re going to lose if you do nothing. Sometimes the best thing in your life needs you to be brave enough to choose it.”
“I’m not good at being brave.” It was a hell of a thing to admit, but it was true. I was good at being safe and predictable. At stability and the known.
“I think you’re braver than you realize. You wouldn’t have gotten this far if you weren’t.” Roxy let the silence stretch on as I fell quiet, knowing better than to push me any harder. I leaned back in my chair and stared pointedly at my desk while her words tumbled through my mind.
For years, I’d built a life around the simple and the predictable. Work, family, community, and Duke. It was a rhythm I understood. Nothing changed, and that was okay. I liked it that way.
And then Harley walked into that barn.
Suddenly, all of that wasn’t enough. I changed my schedule to fill my time with him, with Aria, with their lives. It made sense as it slowly took over areas of my life that it shouldn’t have.
The idea of losing all of that… well, I didn’t want to think about that.
But Roxy was right: doing nothing was still a choice.
