Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
“Sorry, I really needed that,” I explain, catching my breath. “No, I don’t know about the cake, but I’m sure they’d both be delicious. You can’t go wrong, so follow your gut. Literally.”
She smiles brightly. “Thanks, Hope! I knew you’d know the right thing to say. And again, I’m really sorry. About everything.”
She is. It’s written all over her face, shining in her brown eyes, plain as day. I hope she stays that blissfully innocent forever and never has reason to question her wedding day, her groom, or their relationship. She deserves the absolute best, and she’s found it in her fiancé, who not only loves her but is also her partner in the true sense of the word.
After work, I stop at the grocery store, going through the aisles on autopilot. I’ve got a basket on my elbow with a dark chocolate bar, a tiny bottle of red wine, lavender-scented bath salts, and a new pack of colorful pens for my journaling, and I’m making the extremely important and difficult decision of which frozen pizza to buy for dinner tonight. Supreme or margherita?
“Hope?” a familiar and unwanted voice says.
I can’t stop the sigh that escapes. The last thing I need is another spectacle. Clean up in aisle twelve!
Rolling my eyes, I turn. “What, Roy?”
“I heard that Taylor guy left town,” he says, his face carefully neutral. But I can see the spark in his eyes. He thinks that’ll be enough to finally make me come back to him.
It’s not.
The problem is, I know exactly who Roy is. To his credit, he was at least honest about that. I just excused the parts I didn’t care for, pretending they didn’t exist as I molded myself to fit the image he had of a girlfriend, fiancée, and almost-wife while very nearly making that image my own ideal too.
But no. I don’t want to pretend like a naive girl anymore. Not with Roy, and not with Ben. I want it all—the good, the bad, the ugly—and I want it laid bare before me, with someone who trusts that I can handle it. In return, I’ll give him all my heart, trusting him to care for it like the fragile bird it is, despite it being encaged in steel.
“Listen . . . it wasn’t about him. It was about you and me—”
“Us,” he corrects, giving the word weight it no longer holds.
I swallow thickly, trying once again to find the words to make him understand. “Who we were once upon a time and who we grew up to be. I ran because things weren’t right between us. I think you know that, too, deep down. I should’ve talked to you sooner. Maybe we could’ve worked it out, but it’s too far gone now. I’m too far gone, Roy. I truly do want better for the both of us, and if we try to pretend like this”—I point from me to him—“is enough, we’ll waste our whole lives settling.”
“I just want you,” he answers, carefully inching closer.
“You don’t even know me, Roy,” I return, trying to be calm but not backing down. “Not because you didn’t try to, but because I didn’t know me well enough to give you that. But I’m learning. I’m figuring it out, and you will too.”
He dips his chin, and his eyes fall to my lips for a split second where I think he’s going to try to kiss me. But slowly, they trail back up to my eyes. “I hear you. I want you to know that. And when you figure things out, maybe I’ll still be here, because I do love you, Hope.” I start to argue and he steamrolls over me. “Or maybe I’ll have moved on. I don’t know anything right now. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry we aren’t married and eating dinner together tonight.”
He glances at the pizzas in my hands, then turns and disappears around the corner before I can formulate anything to say to that.
That was really insightful and heartfelt. Sure, it could be another ploy, a tactic to woo me back, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like Roy did actually hear me, maybe for the first time ever. He’s doing some growing of his own.
Decision made, I put both the supreme and margherita pizza in my basket. I’m going to cook them both and eat half of each. Because I’m growing too. Getting stronger and more confident, expressing myself with more clarity, and expecting more of life.
BEN
“These are great, but . . . ,” Sherwood tells Sean, Trent, and me as we finish playing one of the new songs we’ve written. I never asked, so I’m not sure if Sherwood is his first or last name, or if he changed it to something “unique” when he got into music. Not that he’s a musician. He’s so much worse—our AMM-assigned talent manager.