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I shook my head. “No. I haven’t dated at all.”

Something flickered across her expression.

“Are… are you?” I asked, terrified for the answer.

It was an excruciating moment before she replied. “No. I haven’t.”

There was a second of… something. But it didn’t last. The conversation ended and we just sat there, quiet.

It was amazing how much this hurt.

It was like the universe wanted to let me know that no, I wasn’t over it, and no, I didn’t have it under control. No systems I could put in place could make this better. Nothing I did could change how absolutely shitty this felt.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

I scoffed dryly. “Are you sure you want to know?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

I took in a deep breath. “I’m thinking that I’m happy to see you, but this just stirs up a lot for me.”

She nodded slowly. “And?”

“And I kind of wish you didn’t come.”

I watched this hit her.

But I meant it. What was the point? I didn’t want to catch up. I wanted what I couldn’t have. What she wasn’t capable of giving me. I didn’t want her here on a technicality, I wanted everything.

She apologized. Then she got up to leave.

CHAPTER 47

EMMA

I came knowing he probably didn’t want to see me, knowing I might not like what I found when I got here. I came knowing a door could be slammed in my face or not opened at all.

But I came anyway.

And now Justin was sitting back in his chair across from me, staring at the baseboards and he’d just told me he wished I hadn’t come.

He was in a hoodie. His hair was messy, the way I liked. I’d almost forgotten how much I missed looking at him. How handsome he was. But his gentle brown eyes weren’t happy to see me.

When I pulled up across the street from his house with Sarah, I sat there for a moment. I could see his bedroom window from where I was parked. The one he’d peered out at me from once when I showed up in the rain the night I’d decided to stay.

Home is something that’s always there, I realized. No matter where you are in the world, you know it’s where you left it, unchanged and waiting. Only now that I was here, I saw Justin was neither unchanged or waiting.

He was cold. Short with me. And not glad at all that I was here.

I’d planned to go right into what I’d come to say, but now I didn’t even know how to start or even if I should.

It’s one thing to go to therapy and learn skills. It’s very different to have to use them in real life. And I did need to use them.

I’d felt myself start to get small the second I got here. My old coping mechanism triggered by his obvious unhappiness at seeing me. The plucking at the edges and the need to withdraw and turn inward. My old knee-jerk reaction begged me to get up and go before this did any more damage.

But I’d held my ground. I held it for as long as I needed to, right up until he told me he wished I hadn’t come. And now it was time to go.

I wish I would have known that the last time he’d looked at me with love in his eyes was the last time. I would have savored it. It was so hard to see what I’d lost.