Page 41 of My Girl to Take

One by one, the board members begin to leave, murmuring quietly. The tension dissolves into something more manageable, more controlled, until it’s just us.

Garth. Logan. Me. Garth looks between us, his gaze knowing and gentle.

“Talk,” he says simply.

And then he leaves.

⁎⁎⁎

The door closes behind Garth, leaving only silence.

I don’t move at first. Neither does Logan.

“I’m sorry.”

The words leave him first.

I look up. He’s already watching me, his expression no longer guarded, no longer cold, just…open in a way I haven’t seen since before everything fell apart.

“I should have trusted you,” he continues, his voice quieter now. “I let the past get in the way of what was right in front of me.”

“You had an email,” I say.

“I had an email that meant two things, and I knew it meant two things while I was reading it.” His jaw works. “I sat at that desk for twenty minutes knowing it could go either way, and then I got up and drove to your office and picked the one that hurt less.”

“That hurt less?”

“Being right about people is easier than being wrong about you.” He says it flatly, like it’s a thing he’s had four days to work out and doesn’t enjoy. “If you’d betrayed me, then I was correct about everything since I was eighteen, and I never had to find out what happens if I let somebody all the way in.”

I don’t have anything to say to that.

“You gave me the fees,” he says. “You handed me the thread, and I used it on you. I’ve been sick about it since Thursday.”

My chest tightens. “I should have told you about her,” I admit softly. “Wednesday. You asked me, and I didn’t.”

“Why?”

And here it is.

“Because I’ve been counting,” I say.

He goes very still.

“You say interim about eleven times a day. The chair, the apartment, the flight you haven’t booked.” My voice isn’t as steady as I’d like. “So I’ve been counting. I don’t know what the number is, but I know it’s a number, and my mother had already taken nine years of my life, and I wasn’t giving her any of what I had left of yours.”

Something happens to his face.

“So I didn’t tell you,” I finish. “Not because I was hiding her. Because I was hoarding you.”

A pause. Then he steps closer.

“So, we both messed up,” he says.

A small, fragile smile tugs at my lips. “Looks like it.”

He stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him again. Close enough that the distance from before feels like it never existed at all.

“I don’t want to fight you,” he says.