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“It doesn’t take magic to read facts,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But it does take a special skill to know how to fix the mess you’ve made.”
“And you think I can just make it go away?” I asked sarcastically.
“Of course not, that’s impossible,” Madame Dorota says with a wave of her hand. “The only way to fix the mess you’ve made is to start on one end and start cleaning.”
“This isn’t a dirty room, you know. It’s going to take a lot more than that. In fact, I’m almost sure that it can’t be fixed.”
“Everything can be fixed if you approach it right, Blake. You just have to believe.”
I don’t even bother to stifle my growing.
“Believe that everything will be okay, and then it will be?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know where you get all this magical bullshit from.” Her crass words pulled me up short. “I’m talking about you. You have to believe in yourself.”
I blink at her.
“You have to believe that you are good enough. That you are worth fighting for. You have to believe that you have a choice in the matter. Just because your father treated you wrong doesn’t mean you have to be the same. You are Blake Ford. Everyone has a definition when they hear the name. But how do you define yourself?”
I stare at her. I don’t know how to answer that question. I’ve always defined myself by what happened to me before.
“The past is behind you, Blake. You can choose to keep looking back, or you can look forward.”
It’s not that simple,” I say.
The fortuneteller shrugs. “If it were simple, we wouldn’t need advice.” She turns around and started walking.
I want to call after her; I have questions. I wanted to ask her about my dad and my mom. I wanted to ask her about Rachel. But the next moment, she’s gone and I’m not sure she was here at all.
I shake my head, trying to figure out if any of this is real. When I touched my cheek, this scrape stings. The fall was real. And the advice she gave me…
The earphones that fell out of my ears still lie on the ground, blaring the music I was listening to. I pick them up and put them back in, continuing on my run.
Her words keep mulling through my mind. But it’s really not as simple as choosing, as leaving the past behind. If it were that simple, I would have done it thirty years ago, when I left my parents. That was when I left my past behind.
Now that my anger has disappeared, replaced by confusion, I don’t want to run anymore. My legs tremble with the exertion and my breathing comes in ragged gasps. Instead, I walk the rest of the way, doubling back through the park to find my car.
My heart aches. Now that I’m not running to get rid of my emotions, I’m very aware of them.
I miss Rachel. I want to be with her. I want to talk to her. But I don’t know how. I can’t trust her—what if she tells someone else my secrets again?
Not that I have any secrets left. The whole world knows everything now. There is nothing to me that isn’t transparent anymore.
But that doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t change that I put my faith in her, trusted her to catch me when I fell, and she dropped me.
I’ve always done my life alone. I don’t need someone in it. For a while, I wanted Rachel in it, and right now, it hurts that she’s been ripped away. But if I try hard enough, I can keep doing this alone. The pain will fade, and I’ll go back to being fine without anyone by my side.
I just have to keep putting 1 foot in front of the other. In time, everything gets better. Time heals all wounds.
And with Rachel, specifically, I hope to God that’s true.
Chapter 28
Rachel
The next two weeks, all I do is hunt for clients. I have to make a living somehow, and being a wardrobe consultant is what I do. I don’t want to go into a different career. I don’t want to give up on my dream.
It’s harder to find someone when I have to do it on my own—I don’t have positive word of mouth or Ruby Blue to or back on. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to give up.
