“Oh, did you?” she asked, anger spiking now. “You knew? You just sat on that bit of info and kept inviting him to dinner and all our vacations even though you thought I wanted him?”
“Then tell me it’s not true. Tell me you didn’t want to sleep with him.” The denial stuck in her throat, and Will’s eyes widened. He’d been angry, he hadn’t actually believed his own accusations. Now he did, though. “You did, didn’t you?”
She let out a breath. “I didn’tdoanything with him when we were together.”
“But youwantedto. That whole time.”
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t. I was attracted to him, and I didn’t acknowledge it. I pushed it away. Because you matter more to me. But then, when I didn’t have an obligation to you anymore, when you were the one who said that we should see other people…”
“He’s mybest friend.”
“Yeah, well, are you mad at me, or are you mad at him?”
“He didn’t say anything. I texted him during the summer. I…”
“He was respectingme. The fact that he knew that I didn’t have any contact with you. He didn’t bring you into what was happening between us. Because you didn’t need to be involved. You know what, you still don’t. He doesn’t want to be with me. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m in love with him.”
“I feel like you’re going to regret this,” he said. “Breaking everything apart for Logan.”
He didn’t understand. He still didn’t understand her.
But she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life with him, not anymore.
So she didn’t need him to.
And that, well, that made her feel free.
“I’m not breaking everything apart for Logan,” she said. “I’m breaking it apart for me.”
THIRTY
They didn’t leave things on a good note. But it was done.
She knew that someday they would be okay. She knew because they weren’t passionate enough to despise each other. He would see that. He was mad because he had made a decision, and she had disrupted it. But he clearly hadn’t been pining for her enough to not sleep with other women.
Or maybe she had broken his heart. But the truth was, he had never broken hers.
She spent two days writing about it.
The story didn’t have a happy ending, but it had a lot of truth in it.
In the absence of happiness, she’d take truth.
So, she took her broken heart and walked it over to Elysia’s, where Whitney met up with them as well.
“I’m single,” she said. “And not at all ready to mingle. But here we are.”
A cheese board was thrust her direction, and then a can of soda. She started to cry, because it was all a little bit much. Then she couldn’t stop.
“So you told Will,” Whitney said.
“I told him. I told him I was in love with someone else. And now he knows it’s Logan. But Logan…he doesn’t want to be with me.” She couldn’t bring herself to say he wasn’t in love with her, because she suspected that in fact he was. It was just that he couldn’t cope with it.
“I’m so sorry,” said Elysia, rubbing her arm.
“I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine. I’m experiencing my first major heartbreak, at forty-one. Yay me. But you know what, the fact that Will isn’t my heartbreak tells me a lot.”
“It does,” said Whitney. “I really hope that you don’t feel too broken.”
