Page 125 of The Right Kind of Wrong

She leaned back against the booth’s soft, cracked leather and pinched the bridge of her nose. A deep breath didn’t provide any relief.

If there was one thing that she despised, it was feeling like she was in a free fall.

Blake—this entire week—had turned everything upside down.

And her annoyingly illuminating conversation with Denny had highlighted something important.

She did want to take Blake out.

Not only for herself, but for Blake, too.

She didn’t deserve to be secreted away.

Maybe they didn’t need to call it a date, per se, but she also didn’t like the idea that they were sneaking around like they had something to hide.

The line between privacy and secrecy was razor-thin, and a town like Cypress Falls only made it more complicated.

Plus, the pathetic truth was that she’d just been talking a lot of shit for someone who, at the end of the day, was in a very similar position to Denny.

Her words about the way he was living his life were an admission to herself more than anything else.

The reality of her and Blake’s circumstances had been borne and solidified with agreement from Blake—legitimately—out of Monroe’s need to find her footing as the parental figure in Maisie’s life.

She groaned quietly. Was she using her niece as an excuse?

Time was going to march on regardless of how deep Monroe buried her head in the sand.

She looked toward Maisie, who was still happily shooting zombies, not a care in the world.

The rock that settled in Monroe’s stomach gave her the answer she didn’t want to admit, even to herself: Monroe Lockhart was being a chickenshit because she was too scared to get her heart bruised.

So, yeah. She knew where she stood finally.

But would Blake be okay with the idea of people knowing about them, even just that they were becoming close to one another?

So far, the signs pointed to yes.

Monroe knew that, intellectually.

To give herself something to keep her fidgety fingers still, she swirled her straw around in her empty cup, the ice cubes clinking against the glass. She watched them melt as she provided more friction, and it felt a lot like a metaphor for her own life.

Introduce tension. Connection. Anticipation.

Melt all of Monroe’s hard edges until she was nothing more than a softened mess.

Blake had never turned down the offer to spend time with Monroe, regardless of whether they were at Monroe’s house or at one of the town’s many events. And definitely not if Maisie was involved.

But they hadn’t done any of those things since they’d started sleeping together.

That changed things, right?

Even if Monroe had promised herself—made Blake promise, on top of it—that it wouldn’t change anything.

It had, though. For Monroe, at least.

And now, on top of raising Maisie, she was being confronted with all of these feelings that she didn’t know what to do with.

That was the rub, really.