While I appreciated his remark, I struggled to accept his compliment. After the past few months of being scrutinized by fans from the reality show, my self-worth was in the toilet, and I didn’t feel deserving of his kindness.
“Never have I ever been in love.”
“Never,” he firmly stated.
“You said that awfully fast.”
“That’s because I’m confident I haven’t.”
“So, no girlfriends, just didn’t feel it?” I pried, unable to help myself.
“Nope.”
He popped Smarties in his mouth nonchalantly as if I shouldn’t be so surprised, but I was because he struck me as a man with so much to offer a partner.
“You don’t believe me?”
My mind was splintering. One part of me felt sad that he hadn’t experienced a non-familial love, but if he hadn’t experienced a storybook love, then he hadn’t experienced heartache.
“Hmm, what was that?”
“I said, you don’t believe me?”
“No, it’s not that.” I sighed. “Love is . . . I feel like love is an enigma, one that makes one question the sanctity of the conviction.”
“You’ve had your heart broken, I take it.”
I pressed my lips into a hard line and nodded. “There was a time not long ago I thought I’d found it, but it wasn’t genuine, at least on his part.”
“Is that why you’re here in Sutton River?”
“Partially.”
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
“No. I can say with absolute certainty what I felt for him is dead and long gone. What we had wasn’t real.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Everything I thought we had and experienced was based on a fake reality. It was all for show and street cred on his part to boost his brand. The lies and manipulation—I was vulnerable after my sister’s passing and got caught up in the fairy tale I was thrust into.”
“Do you still believe in love?”
“I do; it’s just that the biggest hurdle has been learning to love myself first. That’s part of the reason for coming here, to find the person I used to be before life threw one too many curveballs my way.”
“Curveballs aren’t always a bad thing. They teach us resiliency.”
“Isn’t that the truth! What about you? Do you believe in it?”
“Absolutely, my mom and dad were a shining example of it. Their love was truly one of a kind.” His eyes closed as a smile warmed his cheeks. “There was no breaking their connection, even at the end.”
I shifted my body and moved across the bed to sit beside him. With his back resting against the trailer wall and his legs outstretched in front of him, I curled my arm around his and leaned my head on his shoulder, offering support from the pain free-flowing through him, choking his emotions.
While my parents—who were coming up on their thirtieth wedding anniversary—and I no longer had a relationship, I wouldn’t exactly give them five stars as a glowing example of what love should be like. My dad’s long hours meant they weren’t together often, and things felt off when they were. My sister was always the buffer, their common ground. The sun only revolved around her, leaving me to claw my way alone through the darkness.
Boden leaned forward ever so slightly, curled his hand under my knee, and prompted me to bend my legs. Once I brought them up to my chest, his left arm draped around them. There we sat intertwined, sharing the same space, with him dropping anchor around my legs and me clutching his muscular arm like a life preserver. The bond we shared strengthened as only it could with someone who had experienced a life-altering loss. Someone who felt they were drowning in sorrow internally but did what they had to in order to keep their head afloat.
“Do you ever feel guilty for being alive?” A lone tear rolled down my cheek.
