Page 102 of The Moment He Saw Her

“I know I shouldn’t say this, Libby, but what your father did, freezing your bank accounts, was really shitty,” Nina said as Zoe dropped down beside Phoebe.

“It was,” Libby agreed. She sat in a soft beanbag on the floor. It cocooned her in an embrace of small foam balls. She liked Nina’s house; it was an eclectic mix of styles with splashes of color, and she wanted to one day decorate her house just like it.

Nina was clearly one of those people who could make a space look good with ease, unlike Libby, who tended to overthink things. Her rooms in her father’s house were bland and colorless, which was no one’s fault but her own because she could have changed them.

“But it wasn’t my space.”

“Pardon, Libby?” Cill said.

She hadn’t realized she’d said the words out loud. “Nothing.”

“Sounded like something to me,” Zoe said.

That anyone related to Ryder would want to be near her had surprised Libby, considering she’d lied and hurt him.

“I’m sorry,” she said into her wineglass. “I never meant to hurt anyone.” She blamed the wine; it was making her chatty.

“By anyone, do you mean my brother?” Zoe asked.

“Down, girl,” Nina said. “She just said it wasn’t intentional.”

“So how about you tell us your story, Libby? It might help you through some of the turmoil you are clearly experiencing,” Birdie said.

Could she talk to these people she hadn’t known long but felt like she’d known forever? People she would never see again after she left.I don’t want to leave.The words slid into her head so fast, they made her dizzy.

Ryder was here, and she’d hurt him, and Libby doubted he was going to forgive her, which meant staying wasn’t an option.

“So talk,” Zoe said.

“You all know who my family is?” They nodded. “I was to be married to Andrew. Our families have known each other for years, and we’ve always been friends and gotten along well.”

“Well?” Nina demanded. “You don’t get along well with the man you’ve chosen to live your life with. It’s both hell and heaven, or so I’ve heard,” she said, looking at the loved up women in the room for confirmation. They nodded. “It’s never just well or comfortable, Lib.”

Libby and Andrew had been comfortable. Not too much emotion and mutual respect, which sounded boring now.

“When you see them walk into the room, you think, yes,” Birdie said, “he’s mine.”

“They frustrate you, and you want to slap them six ways to Sunday some days, but the others, they’ll look at you or see you across the room and smile, and you think, there he is,” Phoebe said.

“When you’re feeling like shit because it’s your monthly and you’ve had a fight and he walks in loaded down with supplies like chocolate and soda and puts on your favorite movie. Then he drops down beside you and says, ‘We done fighting?’” Zoe said, smiling.

“When you’re exhausted from working and one of your kids is sick and you’ve been up all night, so he gets up when they do and lets you sleep, then brings you breakfast in bed,” Cill added.

Libby felt the tears leaking out of her eyes at their words. This was love, the bad and the good. She would never have had that with Andrew. They never fought, and their lives would have been perfect.Perfectly empty.

“I walked out of my wedding because my fiancé pulled me aside at the church and told me to avoid any photos not taken by the professional photographer because he could remove any trace of this before printing.” She touched her scar.

“That bastard!” Phoebe said.

“Are you serious?” Zoe demanded. “Who does something like that?”

“I think I’d been feeling nervous and not realizing it. Feeling like I was trapped for days with no way out but didn’t know who to talk to about it. So his words were the catalyst for making me run,” Libby said.

“As you should have,” Phoebe said. “That was a lousy thing to ask of you, Libby. You know that, right?”

A knock on the door had Nina rising. It was Jonathan. He staggered in carrying a tray.

“So Caleb has gone to Ryder’s, and I’m here because we needed to know what was going on in both houses. Are you all right, darling?” he said to Libby after handing the tray to Nina. “Need a hug?”

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