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When she finished, she left her cases by the front door. Then she followed Bryan out to the balcony.
He was leaning back in a chair, his eyes half-closed against the brightness of the sun. The beer bottle dangled from his fingertips. He flicked a look in her direction before going back to staring out at the view.
Cassie sat on the chair next to him.
“Do you love him?” he asked before she could say anything.
Her hesitation must have answered for her.
“Does he love you back?”
“Not enough,” she whispered.
He gave a raspy laugh. “I should be happy about that.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the story of my life.”
She blinked. “I loved you.”
He slid his gaze her way again. “Not enough.”
“What?”
“Cassie, you needed me far more than you loved me. You didn’t love me the way I loved you. Not the way you lovehim.”
Anger punched her in the gut. “You’re saying you slept with Stella because you didn’t feellovedenough?”
He tipped his head back, closing his eyes. “I slept with Stella because even though I knew you didn’t love me the way I loved you, I still wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”
It took her a few seconds to get the words out through the tightness in her jaw. “So, you were punishing me for not loving you the way you thought I should?”
He shook his head. “It had nothing to do with punishing you. I never wanted to hurt you, Cassie. But just for once, I wanted to feel like I was enough. And that was easy with Stella because she didn’t want anything more than a good fuck. And I was good enough for that.”
The air left Cassie’s chest in a rush. She leaned back in her chair and stared out at the view too, matching his pose. She didn’t understand him. This person who had once been her closest friend. Now he was a stranger. Why hadn’t he ever said anything to her about how he felt? Because he hadn’t wanted to face what was wrong in their relationship?
“Do you love Stella?” she asked eventually.
His laugh was harsh. “No. But at least with Stella, I know we both feel the same way about each other.”
The anger boiling inside her faded. What was the point? They were over. This whole part of her life was over. While it made her sad that she was losing the person who had been an essential part of her life for so long, she didn’t wish it were different. She couldn’t anymore. “I’m sorry if I made you feel you weren’t enough.”
“I know you didn’t mean to. I used to think it was just the way you were. Because of your mom. That maybe you could never love someone with your whole heart. But when I saw you with him, I knew the truth. It wasn’t you. It was us. It was that you didn’t belong with me.”
She nodded, and the silence stretched out between them as they both looked out at the view.
“I should go,” Cassie stood.
Their eyes met, and in his churned a mix of sorrow, pain, guilt, and even relief. He may have gone about it the wrong way, but she was grateful things had ended between them before they’d tied themselves to each other and ended up miserable. Because she doubted he would have ever told her how he felt. Stella would have been just the start of it. The start of him taking the easy way out and finding validation in other women. She may have needed him too much, but he’d needed her just as much. Too much to just let her go. Like the words she’d written months ago, they’d been too entangled with each other to see the truth that need doesn’t equal love.
How ironic that she’d ended up falling for a man who didn’t need her at all.
And now she didn’t have him either.
For the first time since she was fourteen, her life was completely her own.
It was up to her to make of it what she wanted.
