Page 204 of Dream On, Liar

“My relationship with my dad.” I hesitated before continuing. “He had started trusting me. He was giving me more responsibility. I was finally in the position I had worked for all those years.”

“And you didn’t want to lose it.”

“No.”

My voice cracked slightly on the word. “If I left the team or asked for a transfer, I would be throwing all of that away.”

She nodded slowly. “And if you stay?”

I looked down. “There isn’t a way around my rule.”

“So there’s no point.”

The sentence sounded final as soon as I said it. Empty, too, as though I had already decided the outcome and was merely explaining it to myself.

“There isn’t,” I said.

Samyra stared at me for a long moment. I forced a small smile, but it did not reach anything.

“Maeve.”

“What?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Convincing yourself that because something is difficult, it’s impossible.”

I looked away, my chest tightening painfully. “I can’t lose everything again.”

“You wouldn’t be losing everything.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.” She reached for my hand again.

“That’s different.”

I squeezed her fingers, needing something solid to anchor me, and repeated the words firmer. Like the decision was made. “I don’t want to wake up one day and realise I ruined my career for someone I couldn’t even keep.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she spoke carefully.

“And what if you wake up one day and realise you walked away from the person you loved because you were too scared to find out whether you could keep both?”

I stared at her.

The question no longer felt like a question. It felt like something that had already been living inside me, waiting for someone else to say it aloud.

Maybe that had been the problem all along.

I wanted a world where choosing him did not cost me anything, where love could fit neatly around the life I had spent years building. But I had spent my whole life learning that the things that mattered most always came with a price.

I just had not decided yet how much I was willing to pay.

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