Page 60 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

Tess goes quiet.

There it is. The actual problem.

Not the woman in the parking lot. Not the sessions or the money or whether peonies fall under some premium aftercare package I somehow failed to notice on the website.

Soren told me I was different.

And some part of me would rather find evidence that he was lying than risk believing him and discovering later that I was wrong.

"I think I wanted her to prove it," I say.

Tess frowns. "Prove what?"

"That I'd imagined the whole thing." I roll the stem of my glass between my fingers. "I saw her and immediately decided I knew exactly what it meant. Then Soren stood there telling me the opposite, and somehow that made me angrier."

"Because?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

I give her a look.

She smiles sweetly. "You called me, remember? This is what happens when you voluntarily request the friendship package."

I hate her.

Unfortunately, I also know she's right.

Tess stays until the wine is gone and the conversation has moved on to other things. By the time she leaves, nothing is solved, but my head is quieter than it was before she arrived.

The question she left behind isn't.

Why was it easier to believe I meant nothing to Soren than to believe he might actually want me?

I sit with that longer than I want to.

Daniel comes to mind first, although blaming one mediocre ex-boyfriend for the entire architecture of my personality seems generous. Then my mother. Bree. Richard. Different people, different relationships, all of them tied together by the same thing.

I know exactly where I stand when somebody needs me.

My mother calls because something has gone wrong and I'm the person who makes it manageable. Bree calls because there's a problem she doesn't know how to solve. Richard drops something on my desk because he knows I'll make sure it gets done. Even with Daniel, I spent years being the person who remembered, organized, anticipated and fixed.

There was always something I could do to justify my place.

Soren took that away from me almost immediately in the best way possible.

He didn't want me arranging anything for him. He didn't need me to make his life easier, remember his appointments or anticipate what he wanted before he asked. Every time I tried to make myself useful, he stopped me.

And somehow he still wanted me there.

That should have been easy to accept. Instead, it terrified me. Somewhere along the way, I learned to make myself useful before anyone had the chance to decide whether they simply wanted me. Being needed felt safer; if someone relied on me, at least I understood why they kept me around.

I'd spent so long confusing being needed with being wanted that I'd almost forgotten there was a difference.

And suddenly I understand why I left.

I didn't run because I thought Soren was lying.