Page 30 of Falling For You

Part of me wanted to leave it there—the short version, the clean version. But I'd been carrying this alone for weeks. I didn't have anyone else, and Diana was holding my hand.

"No. I think I should talk about it." I took a breath. "I'm glad you're here."

She smiled and nodded.

I told her. Not every detail. Not the bathroom mirror or the tears on the floor. Just the bones of it. That my boyfriend cheated on me. That he'd asked me to keep the relationship a secret for four years, and when I found out about the other woman, he twisted the whole story to make it my fault. That he told me the soft parts of me weren't real. She listened to all of it without interrupting.

When I finished, she sat back and shook her head.

"Sergeant Handler."

"Don't tell Doug, okay? Please, you cannot tell Doug."

"I won't." She squeezed my hand. "And even if I do, he'll forget about it in a week. Your secret is safe with me."

I huffed a laugh.

"Thank you."

Diana was quiet for a moment.

"That guy was an asshole, Andy. You deserve better than that."

I smiled. It was the first time anyone had said it out loud, and it felt amazing to hear it from Diana, especially.

"Only small men diminish women that way." Her voice dropped. "He looked at everything you are and the only thing he saw was a threat. That's not your problem. That was never your problem."

Diana said it like a woman who knew. She'd married a man who made her feel like the most important person in every room.

"He didn't deserve you, Andy." Her eyes stayed on mine. "You deserve to be with someone who doesn't feel small in your brilliance."

That night, I unpacked the vanilla candles.

They came with me when I moved. I packed them, brought them to my new place, and never took them out of the box. Every time I thought about it, I heard him. The candles, the baths, the romance novels. I watched you try, Andy. It was never you.

But Diana's voice was louder tonight. So I took them out of the box I'd packed them in, set them on the ledge of the tub that I hadn't used since I moved in, and lit them.

The flame caught and the vanilla filled the bathroom. For the first time since I moved in, the place felt like mine.

I pulled the TV close, settled into the water, and picked up where I left off.

He reached across the table and turned her face toward him. She let him. That was the thing about him. He never asked for more than she could give, but he always asked for exactly enough.

"Stay," he said. "Just for tonight. You can go back to being careful tomorrow."

The romance novel was supposed to be the escape. Someone else's love story drowning out the noise in my own head. It worked for a few chapters. Then the hero smiled at the heroine from across a crowded room, and the face I pictured wasn't the one on the page.

Blonde hair. Blue eyes. That grin I couldn't get rid of no matter how many times I told myself I wasn't interested.

I closed my eyes. Tried to shake it. He had no business being in my book. I opened my eyes and kept reading, but the words swam and his face kept replacing every description I landed on.

He slid the strap off her shoulder, his mouth following the curve of her neck. She whispered something against his ear. "You have no idea," he said, "what that filthy mouth of yours does to me." He looked into her eyes⁠—

And I saw Wyatt Brooks.

I turned off the TV.

I stepped out of the bath, wrapped myself in a towel, and sat on the edge of my bed to catch my breath. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror across the room.