Page 39 of My Favorite Mistake

At least, that’s all he’d said initially.

The following day…after a night of no sleep, after she’d been on the road for two hours, while she was speeding through a torrential downpour, just as she was smack in the center of a treacherous interchange in Houston, attempting to reach I-10 towards Louisiana…thathot mess of circumstances was the moment Connor decided to call for the first time in three weeks.

“What the fuck are you doing! You can’t come here, Lizzie!”

“But, Connor, I’m already on my way there. I really need to—”

“Turn your fucking car around and go home! Do not come here!”

“Why not? I really need to talk to you, and I have to do it in person.”

“I can’t see you in person. You need to go home. I can’t do this anymore.”

“What the hell do you mean, you can’t do this anymore? What about everything we planned? What about me moving there? What about you saving up for your own place and then coming to get me? This isn’t when you get to decide that youcan’t do this anymorebecause we have a big pr—”

“God dammit, Lizzie, I have a new girlfriend! That’s why you can’t come here!”

As soon as the words drifted from the phone into her ear, the highway signs Liza had been staring at disappeared along with essentially all her surroundings.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. I hooked up with a girl about a week after I got here. And then my dad got pissed about some other stuff and kicked me out of the house. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I moved in with her.”

Liza had perceived honking and tires screeching from somewhere outside the car, but none of it registered. Nothing registered exceptgirlfriend. The girlfriend that wasn’t her. And it was all such a violent punch in the gut that she was stricken blind.

“I’m really sorry, Lizzie, but that’s just the way it is. You can’t come here. Donotcome here. Go home. The constant calls and messages from you are pissing her off. Sorry I had to tell you like this. It’s over.”

Her throat had expelled a single, involuntary sob, and she’d managed to utter,“What?”

And then he’d hung up.

Ten years ago, the month of January had begun with the two of them—Connor and Liza. Shortly thereafter, the two of them became the three of them—Connor, Liza, and the baby he never knew about. And then, due to no choosing of Liza’s in any way, shape, or form, Connor was gone, and so was the baby.

Connor said he was sorry he had to tell her like that. That was fine with Liza. She wouldn’t tell himanythingbecause there was no longer anything to tell him.

Their relationship was over. And she would take their short-lived secret to her grave.

A haze enveloped Liza for weeks. Somewhere in the midst of it was the realization of how utterly catastrophic the situation was; how thoroughly Connor had fucked her, and not in the same way that had resulted in the secret she’d never had the chance to tell him.

And like a ghostly reminder, the phantom dull ache in her lower abdomen would periodically return over the ten years that passed, souring her stomach and serving as a reminder that she couldn’t believe in or trust anyone in this world but herself.

Recalling all of it from the privacy of Ophelia and Scott’s bathroom, Liza white-knuckled the counter, and swallowed bile, and dry-heaved. Her skin was clammy, but her mind continued to attempt to put the ten-year-old pieces together.

The cataclysmic shift in Connor ten years ago probably had something to do with the person he’d lost and the depression he was in. Something awful had happened to him. And rather than reaching out to Liza and drawing close to her for support, he found a new girlfriend.

Connor latched onto that new girlfriend. He latched onto Brennan. He latched onto Jimmy and the record label. He latched onto Scott and Ophelia. And then, he found hope and healing in the birth of Caroline. Scott and Ophelia’s child. Not Connor and Liza’s child, because their child was never meant to be. Nothing between Connor and Liza was meant to be. Everything that had seemed so significant and life-altering when she was twenty-one suddenly struck her as silly and immature.

Who actually finds the love of their life at such a young age? Nobody. That’s just naïve. And the six months upon which Liza had hung all her hopes and dreams and believed was the foundation for her future was nothing more than a whirlwind fling; a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of life.

And that’s how she needed to force herself to see it. That’s obviously how Connor saw it, and in his eyes, Liza was nothing. She became nothing ten years ago when she’d kissed him goodbye in her car, and he disappeared in her rearview mirror as she pulled away from the barracks at Fort Hood.

Young, stupid, naïve love snuffed out by circumstances that were way bigger than them both.

She needed to remember that.

As much as he’d hurt her, Connor obviously had his own hurt. She couldn’t be bitter at him for not seeing her as significant enough to want her by his side while he reeled. They’d simply never been on the same page, and that was just the way it was, and that was just going to have to be okay.

Someone tapped on the bathroom door.

“L.,” came Brennan’s gentle voice. “You sound sick. Do you need some help?”

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