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She twisted around on the couch and leaned on the back of it. "Go ahead." She'd take his interference over the noise in her head right now.
He raised his brows. "I specifically told myself to back off and let you do your thing."
"My thing feels like a failure right now," she said honestly. "I'd welcome your input."
He still hesitated, then finally put his knife down. "Fear is a bitch."
She raised her brows. "Fear?"
"Yeah." He shifted restlessly. "Fear is like a vise around your soul. It strangles you."
She stiffened. "I know."
"Here's the thing." He leaned on the counter. "Most of the time, fear isn't real. It's that voice in your head telling you to stay where it's safe and familiar. The brain craves familiarity, and it will lie to you to keep you where you are."
She lightly rubbed Angel's fur. "I don't love where I am." But his words were literally what she'd been thinking.
"I know. That's why fear is a bitch. She knows you're not fully where you want to be, but it's good enough that she can keep you there." He paused. "Your comfort zone is a bad place to be, because you can stop moving forward. It's okay, it's safe, it's enough. But it's not enough, and you know it."
She chewed her lower lip. His words made sense. They did. "My mom was stuck in fear her whole life. I don't want to let her down by staying stuck. I don't." But still she sat there. Still the email sat on her computer, unsent.
"Can I ask you something?" He was still in the kitchen, not coming toward her, but a sudden tension had come into his voice.
Piper looked at him, her heart started to race. "Yes." Anything other than thinking about how she was letting her mom down.
Declan didn't say anything.
She turned all the way to face him. "What?"
He finally looked at her. "What if you could have a relationship with a man who didn't trap you? One that lit you up, set you free, and inspired you to live the life you want? If you had that, would you still want to stay single?"
Her heart started to speed up at his low tone. "That's not what a relationship is."
He walked around the counter and strode up to the couch. He crouched behind it and rested his arms on the back of the sofa, so his face was inches from hers. "What if falling in love gave you everything you'd ever dreamed of? What if it set you free?"
"Love is a trap," she whispered.
He took her hand. "Let's pretend for one moment, that it's not.Let's pretend that love makes you whole, and that it's fun, and beautiful, and wonderful. Would you want it then? If it was safe?"
She swallowed. "Um…"
"Just pretend."
Her mind was racing with his question. Fear was shouting at her that love could never be safe, that a relationship could never set her free, but she fought to ignore the shouting. She tried to listen to that part of her that was quiet, the part of her that wasn't screaming at her to run away. She took a deep breath. "I watch Maddie and Lucas, and I can see how beautiful it is."
Declan raised his brows, but he didn't interrupt.
"I think," she said slowly, "that if I had what Maddie found with Lucas, that it could be okay."
He laughed softly. "Just okay?"
"Well, wonderful, but admitting it might be okay is a big step for me." She paused. "What about you?"
"I believe in love," he said immediately.
She smiled. "Of course you do."
"My struggle is whether I believe in hurling myself into a meadow full of knives and flowers, being willing to risk landing on the knives instead of the flowers."
