Page 115 of The Love Operation

“Care to elaborate?”

“Do you want me to? It feels like you’ve already decided how this conversation ends.”

He inhales, and that firm jaw tightens again. Even now, it sends a flicker of desire low in my belly.

He’s trying not to break. I get it.

“Cord, I’m trying to be fair here, but you know how I feel about cheating. It’s the one thing I cannot tolerate. I refuse to go through that again.” His voice cracks, his composure slipping, and he runs a hand roughly against his forehead.

“That’s why I’m being honest with you, even if it hurts. But you need to know . . . I still want us.”

His eyes flick to mine. They’re guarded, but softening, and my heart aches all over again. I’m doing this to him. I’m hurting him.

“Every relationship has its issues,” I say gently. “Because people have issues. And Benedict is one of mine.” I take a breath. “I’m not excusing what I did. But if we’re going to have a future, you at least need to know what it is that I did.”

“Okay,” he says, resigned. It sounds like surrender.

“In college, I thought Benedict was the man I was going to marry. I was sure of it. But he decided he didn’t want to be with me.”

That truth still cuts. And now that he’s back—saying he never stopped wanting me—it hurts in a new, confusing way. The past said one thing. The present says another. I don’t know what to believe. And the not-knowing is eating me alive.

Admitting this to Isaac is terrifying because he could very well be sitting there wondering, What’s wrong with her? What would make someone leave her?

Isaac breaks the silence. “Why?”

One word. But it hits like acid in an open wound.

“He said he couldn’t see a life for us, and he held on as long as he did because he didn’t want to hurt me.”

That’s the official version, the part I’ve memorized. But I still don’t get it. How something could feel so right . . . then end so abruptly. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? The fact that I can’t see the why behind the action.

I pause, struggling to swallow the knot forming in my throat. I meant to deliver this like a case presentation—just the facts. But emotion rises anyway, like a sea monster.

There is no worse feeling than giving everything you have and still falling short. Still being told: It wasn’t enough.

“So,” I continue, taking a breath and commanding my emotions. “He left. And then he showed up in my clinic Monday afternoon with his dad.”

“You said you operated on him,” he recounts, like he’s fact-checking.

“I did. He needed it.” I don’t want to tell him this next part, but I don’t see a way around it. “Benedict told me he wanted to get to know me again. He asked me out. I told him I was dating you, and I was clear that I wasn’t interested.”

Isaac’s expression doesn’t change, but his voice sharpens. “So, he disregarded your wishes?”

“No, he apologized. He backed off. And then his dad suggested we go to dinner. Everything I told you was true.”

“But then you told me the dinner was canceled because you had surgery. Did you actually have surgery?”

“Isaac . . .” I say, weary of his skepticism, even though it’s at least partially warranted.

“Well,” he says, emotion finally surfacing, “I’m just not sure what to believe, Cord.”

I force myself to stay grounded, then tell him the rest. I tell him about Benedict meeting me after work, how we ate in my car, how he came to my house to meet Tad Cooper. It doesn’t sound as innocent as it had felt last night.

“I shouldn’t have let him come over. I was tired. I wasn’t thinking.” And he’d been there with exactly what I’d needed when I’d needed it.

“Yeah. I know how you are when you’re tired.”

I reel back at the insinuation. I want to be angry, but mostly I feel exhausted. Exhausted from not being who people expect, or apparently want, me to be.