Page 101 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“What are you talking about?” I demanded in a tone that sounded a lot like more like an irascible Arthur McLachlan than the quiet and temperate woman Brett was accustomed to.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he replied, still somber, still grave, still sokindthat I thought my heart might break. Ever since I’d run out of that dinner at his family’s house, fleeing his generous affection and my realization that I could never live up to it, my heart had been on this cusp.

The words he’d spoken to me that night haunted me the way the ghosts of my past never could:You know how I feel about you.

You know. You know.

It was true. I did know. I also knew that to accept the gift he was offering me was unforgivable. Not when I couldn’t repay it, not when the only thing I had to give in return was half of the life he’d been promised. That half of a life wasn’t fair to anyone, least of all someone I cared about as much as I cared about Brett. I understood that now. There was more than one way to break a heart.

And there was more than one way to heal it.

My hands went limp in his, and I used his suddenly slack grip to make my escape. That was a trick Greg had taught me and Maisey—part of an impromptu course on self-defense we’d demanded after he and Mateo made that big show of learning how to physically subdue a man. In all my wildest imaginings, I never thought a book club could transform willy-nilly into a fight club…or that I’d happily participate in the exchange.

Then again, there was a lot about this particular book club that I hadn’t been expecting. Including a conversation likethis.

“I know I’m not a very exciting companion,” Brett said as he tucked his hands in his lap, his gaze fixed on the glittering extravagance of my ring. “No, don’t say anything, Sloane, please. I’m not an idiot. I’ve seen what’s been happening to you these past few months.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I wasn’t aware that I was any different with you.”

A soft, wry smile touched his lips. “You aren’t. That’s the whole point. When you’re with me, you’re the same Sloane Parker I first fell in love with. Quiet and reserved. Uncertain of herself. Predictable.”

None of those were particularly complimentary, but I wasn’t about to take offense. I was all those things with him because that was how Iwantedto be with him. Since the moment we’d met, I’d balanced myself on a tightrope and done everything in my power to keep from falling.

“You think I’m predictable?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He lifted a finger to my cheek but didn’t make contact. He hovered on the brink. More electricity passed through that non-touch than I could remember ever feeling in the rest of our relationship combined. “I think youusedto be. Do you know my favorite thing about you?”

He shook his head before I could answer. “Never mind. Of course you don’t. It’s that whenever I walk into a room with you in it, I know exactly what I can expect. Everything in the world moves fast except for you. I don’t want to use the word ‘quaint’ but…” He rolled his shoulder in an apologetic shrug. “It’s the truth. I liked that about you. Ilovedit. You were the one thing I knew would stay the same no matter what chaos was happening around you.”

The moment of electricity passed, leaving me alone in the car with nothing but the sensation I’d imagined the whole thing.

“Only you didn’t, did you?” Brett said. “You changed. With Arthur.ForArthur.”

I cast a quick, nervous glance up at the hospital, as if the mere seriousness of our conversation gave it legs to stand on and scale those walls. But that was fanciful, of course, and Brett hated fanciful things.

“Not me,” I said, unaware until the words left my lips that I was speaking aloud. “Ilikefanciful things.”

“Do you?” he asked, again with that wry smile. “I didn’t know that. I’m beginning to think I don’t know a lot of things about you.”

My throat hurt from holding back the things I wanted to say to this man—not just in the moment, but in the many years leading up to it.

“If you go up there, he’s going to yell at you and threaten to throw his bedpan, isn’t he?” Brett asked.

“We’re doing better with the threats of violence lately, but, yeah. Probably.”

“And you want that, don’t you? You’ll yell back until you have him twisted around your little finger, and then you’ll talk about books for hours and…what, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Such a vague answer wasn’t fair to Brett, who was being open with me for what was probably the first time in our entire relationship, but it was the truth. Ididn’tknow what was going to happen when I was with Arthur. Sometimes, I got to be exactly as soft as Brett liked, sitting for hours in one position without doing much of anything at all. Other times, we argued about classification systems or ate Maisey’s reheated leftovers. There was always a chance that someone would pop by or that Arthur would need to be talked into doing something he was nonsensically against. And always, always, there were books.

It was the same thing I loved about working at the library. On the outside, it was a place of whispers and stillness. But inside—oh, what marvelous depths there were to explore.

“He reminds me a lot of my sister,” I said. Brett knew only the bare bones of my past but he seemed to sense the importance of what I was about to say. “I know that seems weird considering he’s a retired professor in his seventies and my sister died when she was twelve, but it’s the only way I can explain it. Our life together—mine and Emily’s—was a small one. It had to be. We never did anything exciting or grand, never went anywhere farther than a few blocks from home. In fact, we spent most of our time snuggled up inside a blanket fort. But I was more alive in the eight years I spent with her than in all my years since.”

Brett was silent for a moment. “Because you loved her.”

My eyes flooded with sharp, sudden tears. “Yes.”

“And you love Arthur, too.”