Page 48 of Between Love & Ruin

“I don’t know, it is just hard to throw away such a long relationship and then jump into another one,” I add.

“Baby,” Laura says, and I scrunch up my nose at that nickname. “You will have to one day or the other. Don’t let numbers stop you from living your life. Sometimes people we have known our entire lives turn out to be something we never thought they would be. The amount of time you spend with someone doesn’t mean they are worthy of you.”

“Yes,” Summer agrees. “Haven’t you heard, don’t let your boyfriend stop you from finding your husband?”

Both Laura and I give her a confused look.

“That’s supposed to be helpful?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I tried.”

“What’s the worse that can happen, Sienna? Either you fall in love with the person who deserves you or you move on from the person who never did?”

I smile, but what they don’t understand is the fear in my heart.

Because I know Dominic is the kind of person I could easily fall for.

But he is also the kind of heartbreak I will never be able to survive.

Dominic Wolfe

“Roy,” I say while he drives me to the office, and he looks at me through the mirror. “Do you know how my parents died?”

“Yes,” he says, a little confused. “They died in a car accident.”

“Do you know how Sienna’s parents died? Car accident.”

He takes a double look at me, as if to check whether I am bluffing or not.

“That’s a weird coincidence,” he says, voicing out what I have been thinking. “Also slightly poetic if you ask me.”

“How so?”

“It’s almost like you two were interconnected from the beginning. Like you were always meant to meet at some point in your lives. I don’t know. I’m not the one who reads books, but it sounds painfully poetic to me.”

I chuckle. That’s one way to look at it.

I don’t know if I’m connecting the dots correctly, but I feel like there’s something much deeper to this than what we can see.

We never investigated my parents’ accident, but it all seems connected, just as Roy said. Maybe it was the universe’s fucked-up way of bringing us together from the start.

“Do one thing—try to find out if it’s connected somehow. Where did her parents die? Where did mine? How did it happen? Every possible thing you can.”

“Sure,” he says. “Can I ask you one thing?”

“Of course.”

“Do you like Sienna Hayes?”

I smile, as if that’s not obvious by now.

“Of course, I do.”

“I mean, you should like her enough to actually want her to stay in your life and be a part of it.”

“Yes, Roy. I like her more than enough to want her to be by my side every single minute of every single day.”

“That’s a relief. I thought you were going to die alone.”