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Harper lowered her hand that held the piece of paper that had started everything. “I think if you sit in stillness for just a minute, and stop avoiding the truth for a second, you’ll know.”
I’d never looked forward to spending time with any man before Silas. I certainly wouldn’t have skipped work for anyone else. I’d never felt like I did in his arms. Like I was beautiful and cherished and loved.
“I like him, but love—” I winced.
Harper tipped her head to the side. “Do you want to see him with anyone else?”
The pictures of the women he’d had on his arm in media photos flitted through my head. The mere thought of him with another woman irritated me.
“Can you imagine being with anyone else?” Lily prompted from the corner of the room, where she was struggling with a single strand of lights that refused to turn on.
Even when I thought we were over, I had no intentions of finding anyone else. He felt like the one to me.
Harper’s lips twitched. “Are you figuring it out yet?”
“Even if I think he’s the one for me, it doesn’t mean he feels the same way,” I finally admitted, easing the tightness in my chest.
Harper lifted a champagne glass. “First, girls’ night, then we tackle Silas.” Harper put her arm around my shoulders. “What do you say? Are you ready to set these rules on fire?”
“Why are we doing this again?” I asked, feeling trepidation about letting go of those rules.
Lily moved to stand next to Harper. “To show that we don’t live by these rules—or any, for that matter. We fall in love with who we do, regardless of our backgrounds, experiences, and what’s expected by everyone else in our lives.”
“If you want to date your brother’s best friend, who can tell you what to do?” Aria added.
“Or your best friend’s brother,” Harper smirked, her arm tightening around me, and anchoring me in the moment. “It only matters what you think. It’s your life.”
“We only get one precious life. So, what are you going to do with it?” Lily asked with a brow raised.
She raised an interesting point. I wanted to be successful in business, and supported financially, but wasn’t there something even more exciting than that? What if there was more to life? What if Silas was my future?
I let Harper lead me outside where we had a picnic table and, apparently, a new addition of a fire pit, where a small fire was already burning. As we stood around the fire, Harper and Lily on either side of me, I asked the question that had been simmering in my gut. “What if Silas doesn’t feel the same?”
Harper gave me a sympathetic look. “We can’t control other people. If Silas has a problem with your brothers, then that’s on him.”
The thought of letting go of the control I’d held on to so tightly was scary, but the possibility of a future with Silas was flickering in the distance too.
Harper handed me the piece of paper, the one I thought would protect me and everyone around me from heartache. “Now, are you ready to burn this?”
I sighed, knowing I needed to address everyone who’d been so sweet to come here tonight and attempt to talk some sense into me. “Work has always been the most important thing in the world to me, but Silas helped me see that there’s more for me out there. That I can work less and make more. That I can relax, and my work only gets better.” Then I paused for a minute and rested my free hand on my churning stomach. “I think I love him, but I’m not sure he feels the same way about me.”
“All that matters is that we’re true to ourselves. If he’s the man I think he is, then he loves you, too. Are you going to do the honors?”
Aria stepped closer to us. “It should be you. They’re your rules, after all.”
I read over the rules one more time, wondering what I was thinking when I wrote them. “When I wrote these, I thought I could control everything around me. The tighter I held on to things, the easier everything would be. But I was wrong. All I did was hurt everyone in the process.” Aria was worried she’d lose her job when I discovered that she’d slept with Finn at the wedding venues while they were supposed to be working. Harper didn’t think I’d be friends with her once I found out she was in love with my brother. “But these arbitrary rules don’t mean anything. Not when love is involved.”
Lily handed out the glasses of champagne, and everyone held theirs in the air.
I raised my voice and the silly piece of paper in my hand. “To Happily Ever Afters. To not living by any set of rules. And to setting our own.” Then I smiled, a sliver of hope sliding down my spine. “As long as they make us blissfully happy.”
“Hear hear!” Harper cheered as I dropped the piece of paper into the fire.
As we watched it burn, I said, “No one can tell us how to live. We have to follow our own intuitions.”
“What’s your intuition telling you?” Harper stepped closer to ask.
“That I messed up.” I felt miserable admitting it out loud.
