Page 401 of Faking the Goal

It takes me a moment to answer.

"Get scared when things are too good."

The room goes completely quiet. "It's stupid. Whenever something really good happens, there's always this part of me that can't just fucking enjoy it. I start waiting for something to go wrong." My fingers curl tighter around Caroline's. "Like if I let myself be too happy, somehow the universe is going to notice and decide I've had enough."

Saying it out loud makes my throat tighten.

"And today..." I glance down at the white dress spilling around me. "Today is probably the happiest I've ever been."

My voice cracks on the last word.

Fuck.

"I'm marrying Kentaro." A shaky smile pulls at my mouth. "I'm marrying the man I love. Everyone I care about is here. Everything is exactly how I wanted it, and I should be running around screaming because I'm so fucking happy."

I blink rapidly when my vision starts to blur.

"But there's this stupid voice in my head that keeps telling me not to get too comfortable. Don't trust it yet. Don't be too happy, because what if something happens? What if somehow it gets taken away?"

I press my lips together, trying to hold myself together.

"I've spent so much of my life losing things that sometimes I think I still don't know how to have something good without being terrified of losing it."

And there it is.

The actual reason I've been pacing a hole into the fucking carpet all morning. I'm fucking terrified because I'm happy.

Because I have so much now.

Kentaro. Friends. A family I somehow built out of people who chose to stay. A career I love. A life that younger me wouldn't have even known how to dream about.

And when you've spent enough years with empty hands, finally having them full can be terrifying.

Because now there's something to lose.

Caroline is quiet for a moment, her thumb moving slowly over the back of my hand while I stare down at our joined fingers. She doesn't immediately rush to reassure me, which somehow makes me listen even more closely when she finally speaks.

"Taylor," she finally says, "having something to lose doesn't mean you're going to lose it."

I look at her, but before I can come up with an argument—and I'm usually pretty fucking good at coming up with arguments—she continues.

"And being afraid won't protect you if something bad does happen. It'll just make you spend all the good days worrying about the bad ones that haven't happened."

Well, that's annoyingly reasonable, and judging by the little twitch at the corner of her mouth, she knows it too.

"I hate when you make sense."

Her mouth twitches. "I know."

"I just don't know how to turn it off."

"Then don't." Caroline shrugs. "Be scared. Be nervous. Check the flowers another seventeen times if you absolutely have to."

"Please don't encourage that," Miho mutters.

Caroline ignores her. "But don't confuse being scared with something actually being wrong."

That gets me, because apparently my emotions haven't already done enough damage to me this morning. My eyes start stinging again, and I blink quickly, determined not to ruin the makeup that took an ungodly amount of time to put on my face.