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I closed my eyes. “You say that like it’s easy.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

He kissed the top of my head. “But every decision you made before you met me brought you here.”

My throat tightened. “Some were probably good.”

He laughed. “And some were probably terrible.”

I laughed against his shirt. “Thank you.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“Some of your decisions probably hurt people.”

My body went still.

“But you learned.” His hand continued moving over my back.

“You grew.”

I swallowed.

“You became this woman.”

He pulled back enough to look at me. “And I really fucking like this woman.”

My eyes filled again. “Can you stop?”

“No.”

“I look ugly when I cry.”

“You look regular.”

I gasped and he laughed and pulled me close again.

He knew there had been a relationship. He knew there had been trauma. He knew I had ended a pregnancy because the situation wasn’t healthy enough to bring a child into.

What he didn’t know was whose child it had been. What he didn’t know was that the man had a wife. What he didn’t know was that I had knowingly loved that lady’s husband for three years.

Standing inside his arms while he told me my past had shaped me into a woman he admired— I realized that the closer Nash got to loving the woman I was now, the more terrified I became of introducing him to the woman I had been.

18

Blair

BEFORE

Caleb texted me at 8:03 that night.

Caleb: Can I come by around ten tomorrow? We need to talk about next steps for the baby.

Next steps.

I stared at those two words until they stopped looking like English. It was the kind of language people used when they were trying to remove emotion from something that had already become nothing but emotion.