Page 91 of Take What You Want

“I can’t trust him. If he once made me feel so loved and safe and secure that I felt comfortable enough to tell him that I loved him, only for him to completely reject me, how can I trust that he won’t do it again?”

“You have a good point.” Hallie nods cautiously. “But no one can predict the future. There’s no telling that it won’t happen again. But there’s also no telling that itdoesn’thappen that way again. That maybe this is the time he reciprocates it.” Hallie straightens in her chair and holds one hand up carefully. “Now, I don’t want you to get mad that I’m bringing this up…”

Oh god…

“But I’m truly just trying to understand your hesitation here and as your best friend, I need to ask the hard questions.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Do you think that what happened with Liam is also giving you pause?”

I open my mouth to refute it but she cuts me off.

“Think about it for a second,” she pleads. “Getting cheated on is a major breach of trust and a betrayal. And I’m so proud of you for how you picked yourself up and kept on going afterward because I don’t think I would’ve handled it with as much graceas you did.” I brush her off but she shakes her head at me. “No, I’m being serious. You did. And I know you’ve moved past that situation and from Liam, but do you think you’re projecting any distrust from that relationship onto Nikolai?”

I do as she says and lean back, chewing over what she said. Getting cheated on was a betrayal and it definitely has given me pause at times with even my friendships and relationships with other people. If my partner, the person I’m supposed to trust the most and love me, can betray me like that, who’s to say someone else won’t?

And the way Liam made all of my old insecurities about my body rear their ugly heads definitely hasn’t gone away, either. Some days, I can ignore it, other days, all I can think about is the way my stomach protrudes from my waistband and how I cover my arms even in the summer.

But I know that my hesitation with Nikolai is not getting confused with my hurt from the dissolution of my relationship with Liam. If anything, Liam was a bandage. A distraction. A balm to the burn.

“No,” I finally answer. “I’m not taking anything out on Nikolai caused by Liam. If anything, Liam was the one I took things out from Nikolai on. And at the time, I don’t think I even realized it.”

Hallie looks deep in thought as she asks, “What do you mean?”

“Liam never had a fair chance,” I whisper. The admittance tastes sour because it not only makes me realize how much time I wasted with him but also how unfair I was all along to him.

“But you loved him,” she says. “At the time, at least. I know you did.”

I agree. Only a complete psychopath would spend seven years in a relationship with a person they didn’t love.

“I don’t know…I guess it just felt safer to love him.”

The moment the words hit the air, they hit me full force like a tidal wave as realization crashes over me. Hallie stays quiet as she watches me process the weight of everything I just finally admitted.

“He felt like a safe choice to love because in my heart, I knew that while I loved him, I was never in that deep, all-consuming, in-love feeling with him,” I say, expelling the ugly truth that makes me feel two feet tall. “I think I knew that even if it all came crashing down with him, that it’d be okay. I could stomach the thought of it. But thinking back to how I felt with Nikolai…” I trail off, choking on emotion clogging my throat. “That was devastating. And the idea of going through something like that again?”

I look at my best friend to see tears in her own eyes as she grabs my hand, giving it a squeeze.

“I can’t even fathom it,” I admit.

I wouldn’t survive another heartbreak from Nikolai again.

The break-up with Liam in retrospect was more about the upheaval it did in my life. When you spend so many years with someone, all of the parts of your life become entangled with them. Friends, bills, living situation, families.

It was a rough transition, but looking back on it, I never felt that deep, empty, clawing void inside that I felt when Nikolai denied me those three words all those years ago. It was like he robbed me of all the oxygen I breathed, all the peace and comfort I had ever known. Every nerve ending was raw and exposed and getting out of bed in the morning felt nearly impossible most days.

It wasn’t like that when I broke up with Liam. Sure, there were tears, and some days, I did simply rot in bed and contemplate what I was going to do next. But some of that, I have to admit, was due to my bruised ego of being cheated on and not the fact that Liam and I were done.

“Who’s to say this isn’t the time it works, Jane? That these years you two spent apart were for a reason and regrowing your friendship has led to you reconnecting?”

“How am I not supposed to imagine the worst-case scenario when that’s all I’ve ever experienced?”

Hallie chews on the inside of her cheek and looks at the movie screen, which has long since turned off.

“Exactly,” I say, taking a sip of wine.

“Just because that’s what’s happened in the past doesn’t mean the same lies ahead for your future.”

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