Page 117 of Bloom

And then, after the smallest of reprieves, a flip switches. It’s like I breathe the wrong way and my lungs start burning, and the tears return with a ravaging force.

Hunched over with a hand clamped on my mouth, I sob so quietly, it takes Lux a full minute to notice, only doing so when she finds the change of clothes she’s hunting for and turns back to me. Without hesitation, without a word, she climbs onto the bed beside me and tugs until my head hits her lap, and I become a pathetic, shaking ball that she curls around protectively.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Lux says again and again and again. “You don’t deserve this, and you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did,” I try to say, try to protest, try to explain, but I can’t. Even if I could do anything but wail, I’m not sure Lux would let me. She’s so fierce as she assures my innocence, unwavering in the comforting mantra.

Her words are the last thing I hear before I fall asleep—or maybe I pass out. I’m not sure. I do know, though, what the last thing I think is.

Bright side; Alexandra Winona Jackson.

35

He sits beside him for a while.

The other man who let Caroline slip through his fingers.

He says, “I really think you should leave her alone.”

He truly, physically can’t.

“You're shaking.”

I jerk at Lux's voice, so startling against the silence that’s settled in her bathroom, only previously broken by the sound of the tap steadily filling the bath with water. The soft rasp of candles being lit. The crinkle of a bottle being squeezed, distributing lavender-scented liquid bubbles into the tub. Glancing down at my hands—which, sure enough, are shaking—I tighten them into fists, squeezing until my nails bite into my palms. “I’m okay.”

I don’t have to see her to know what she’s thinking;bullshit.

She doesn’t say a word though as she sinks down on the tiled floor, crossing her legs to mimic my position, leaning against the side of the tub while I’m propped up by the closed door. In the back of my mind, I recognize that this is how she treated thosebeloved rescue horses of hers. Careful, distant silence, letting them come to her.

Turns out, her methods work pretty well on people too.

“I slept with him,” I admit, my voice a harsh rasp. “In his bed. We didn’t…” I trail off, not flustered because I’m talking about sex, but because I'm talking about sex with a married man. Sex that I, in the heat of the moment, really wanted to have. Sex it feels like I did have; that doesn’t matter if I had, because we still didsomething. “I helped him cheat.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I—”

“Because,” Lux cuts off my protest, “I don’t think he cheated. I don’t think they’re together; I think he’s telling the truth about that.”

I don’t admit that my gut instinct says the same thing. “Then why is she here?”

“Desperation, maybe.” Lux frowns, picking at the distressed hem of her jean shorts. “Makes people do funny things.”

Funny. Nothing about this isfunny.

“I think it’s complicated,” she continues. Stretching out a leg, she nudges her foot against my bent knee. “I think he’s an asshole of the highest degree for not telling you. I think you’d be well within your rights to never speak to him again. I think if you want, I can have him off my land within the hour.”

I don’t think I want that. I don’t know what I want. I don’t think I can be trusted to decide.

“Idon’tthink Hunter would be camped out on my porch right now if he felt anything for that woman.”

I hate that my ears perk up. I hate that my first freaking instinct is to agree, to swoon, to get up and go to him. I hate that, “That womanis his wife,” is a real, true sentence that leaves my mouth.

Lux doesn’t disagree. She doesn’t try to pacify me with sweet words, comfort me with affirmations she has no way of knowing are actually true. Instead, she scoots closer until we’re side by side and leans her head on my shoulder. “He’s a dumbass.”

With a shaky exhale, I slump against her. “What am I gonna do?”

“Take a bath. Eat. Sleep. Figure it out tomorrow.”

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