Page 21 of Falling Madly
“I mean it.”
Something stirred in my chest, and I tried to breathe through it. I couldn’t open that door. That night had been pivotal in my life, but I’d never thought it meant that much to him. “I get youwanted to quit smoking, that’s great. But what do you have to regret? You got the job and the payout. You’re set for life.”
“I took the easy way out.” His voice cut through my thoughts and every layer of clothing. “I had this ill feeling about ye working with Gavin… I told you that, right?”
I nodded.
“But I knew how much it meant to you. Ye told me,” he continued.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“I did what was easy. I did what served me. It wasn’t fair to you. I thought I was protecting you, but I could have protected you by being therewithyou.”
I forgot to breathe and my mouth dried as I stared at him, my heart in my throat. I’d never expected him to say those words. I hadn’t even known Ineededto hear them until now.
His fist squeezed the steering wheel, skin tightening over white knuckles. “In the end, I was a coward, going with the flow because it suited me, and I did it behind your back. You didn’t deserve that.”
I finally resumed breathing, trying to process his words. I noticed we were both out of breath, panting like we’d just sprinted a hundred yards.
“Wow,” I finally said. “I don’t know what to say.”
Deep down, I’d thought I deserved it. That there was something wrong with me. I was a bit too much. Intimidating. Not fun to work with. Trevor might have been attracted to me, at least back then, but I’d genuinely believed he didn’t want to work with me.
“Don’t say anything. It’s me who needed to say something. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
My throat felt like I’d swallowed Trevor’s woolly scarf. “Maybe, but I know I’m not… likable. I don’t know how to playthe game. Or maybe I do, in theory. But I don’t want to because it feels inauthentic. You have to fake so much. It’s exhausting.”
He lifted a shoulder. “It’s part of the job, aye? Ye know how it is. We massage the truth until it takes a new shape and form. This incredibly attractive?—”
“Lie.”
“Sometimes. But I get so swept up in the work that truth becomes almost meaningless. It’s never about the product. It’s about crafting that emotional response. That takes skill.”
I nodded, recognizing the feeling. “It’s an addictive game. It’s weird that we can put all this effort into selling an organic cola that tastes like dishwater and somehow that doesn’t bother me. I mean, it’s irritating, but nothing compared to people being fake or two-faced. That gets me every time.”
“No wonder you hate me, then.” He let out a sad laugh.
“I don’t hate you,” I insisted. “I told you, we’re good.”
It had been more than a year. None of this was fresh, and I didn’t particularly want to dwell on it.
“Dragonfly. That night at the pool, we weren’t just ‘good’. We were on fire.”
He left the sentence hanging in the air, and I didn’t know how to respond. I still thought about that night sometimes. A memory would surface, out of nowhere, of something he’d said, or I’d told him. We’d been so vulnerable. So naked.
“You know we can’t go back to that, right?” I said. “I appreciate your apology and it’s amazing you’re making positive changes… But we can’t be like that ever again.”
He huffed. “You sound like my therapist.”
“You talk about me in therapy?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“It’s all confidential. He says something else, though.”
“What?”
“That even if you can’t get back what you lost, ye can build something new.”
The town sign of Cozy Creek caught my eye, and I pulled in a sharp breath. I wasn’t ready for this.
