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“Ugh,” she groaned. “I’m such an idiot.”
I didn’t disagree.
“Anyway, we just started chatting. Eventually, I told him about Jonathon. How he’d been cheating on me for years and how he was dying. Skip made me feel good about myself. As dumb as it sounds, he gave me permission to be mad at Jonathon.”
“Why wouldn’t you be mad at him?”
“Because,” she cried, “I knew I’d tricked him into marrying me and I believed what everyone in town thought—I deserved to be cheated on.”
“Stella,” I breathed out. “It takes two to make a baby, and he didn’t have to propose to you. Regardless, no one deserves to be cheated on. Jonathon should have been man enough to keep it in his pants or divorce you and move on with someone else. That’s on him. Not you.”
“But he loved me, or so he said,” she choked out.
“That’s not love.”
“I guess I’m just not meant for love.”
I leaned away and looked into her red, puffy eyes. “You are absolutely meant for love, but first you need to love yourself. Stop looking for a man to show you what you’re worth.” I pointed to her heart. “Please look in here. Or at least ask me first.” I tried to lighten the moment a little.
She gave me a hint of a smile.
“Stella, I love you. Quinn loves you.”
“I know,” she sounded grateful for that fact. “How did I get here?” she bemoaned. “With Skip,” she could hardly say his name. “This town is going to have a field day with this one.”
“No, they won’t. I made sure of it. But, Stella, even if they found out, you can’t let it ruin you. You have to quit worrying about what anyone else thinks about you. That’s how you’ve gotten to this place. That’s how the Skips of the world find victims.”
She curled into herself. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“That’s not a bad thing. Sometimes we have to feel the sting so we don’t do it again. You just can’t go down into a shame spiral and make it worse. You’ve got to get out of this unhealthy cycle you’re in.” Shame bred ills like worthlessness, codependency, anxiety, and depression. All things I’d seen in Stella. “Let me help you. Please,” I begged.
She squirmed for a moment, wrestling with her thoughts.
As weird as it sounded, sometimes the hardest thing to do is give up the things that hurt us. So, I understood her struggle.
“Okay,” she finally squeaked. “What do I do?”
“First thing is you need to seek professional help.”
“What?” she sounded horrified.
“A therapist can help you process and resolve your feelings. They can show you a way out of the shame cycle. Most importantly, they’ll teach you how to deal with your problems instead of running away from them and using things like money and men to hide from them. If you want, I’ll even go with you and hold your hand.”
She held so still, I wasn’t even sure she was breathing.
“I know it can be scary, but think of Quinn. What message do you want to send to her? She feels like she’s lost both of her parents.”
Several tears leaked out of Stella’s bright-green eyes. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“Then don’t.”
Stella met my eyes. “Will you really go to counseling with me?”
“Of course.” I hugged her, praying this time she would take the steps she needed. That I wouldn’t have to take down any more criminals. At least not on her behalf. If Jules ever needed me as backup, I was still her girl.
She wrapped her arms around me and held on for dear life. “Thank you for coming home.”
“Yeah, you owe me for that one,” I said with a smile.
