Page 66 of When to Call a Blitz

“I agree,” Briar says, her voice low. I furrow my brows in concern, and when she looks at me, she simply shakes her head.

“The journey to find someone is really weird, isn’t it?” I say, leaning forward just a little.

“It takes time to find good ones,” Zara says with a shrug. “There’s a lot of bad ones out there. A lot of divorces, too. It’s never worth it to settle, believe me. I’ve seen some of the worst in the courtroom.”

My lips pucker as I contemplate this.

Sure, I’m at the tail end of my twenties. My parents were married when they were both twenty-one, and they had me by the time they were twenty-three. I’m doing everything so much later than them, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t insecure about it.

Like I didn’t feel like a failure.

“I feel like I’m just getting too old?—”

Amara slaps me on the back. “Babe take those words out of your god damn mouth right now. You’re perfect. You have passions. You still have great tits. Your ass is perky, and even if it isn’t, ass is ass. I know you and you’ve barely tried to date.”

I sigh. She’s right. Emmett is the first man I’ve been interested in in a long time. I’ve barely been on any dates at all.

“I just wish I was good enough. I don’t really have anything to offer, you know?”

“Heidi you have plenty to offer,” Isla says, resting her head on my shoulder.

I shake my head. “You had a whole apartment?—”

“That my brother paid for. That Owen bought from him. I barely paid my own bills, Heidi. I just got lucky.”

Amara wraps her arm around me from my other side, pulling me closer. “You know what we’ve told you about this comparison game in the past, right?”

They’ve told me that nothing as it seems.

And it isn’t.

I know this.

Briar had an abusive ex-husband that literally kept her from having a stable job for years. She’s always had the confidence of one of the most beautiful women in the world, and she even looked the part. But she and Leo had originally entered a fake relationship to repair his image.

She did it because she was left with nothing, and she wanted her daughter to be set up. She didn’t even tell her own brother, Owen, about her struggles.

Isla was living her dream, but it was bought and paid for by Leo.

Izara has been working most of her life away in law school only to start hating it more and more as time goes on.

Amara has had a rough relationship with her family growing up, and often spent time at my house.

And finally, Mila has always looked for assurance in the men around her, and I don’t think she’s really ever found it.

We all have our own issues. Our own stories, and our own paths.

When it comes to me, I lost the most important person in my life, and have grown up looking for validation in everyone, which is particularly hard when you’re in any kind of creative field where you’re compared to literally everyone around you.

I could be so much further in life right now if I had just bucked down.

I should have just been a dentist like my mom suggested in eleventh grade.

I should have done so many different things that would have led to…

Probably the same outcome.

“Do you think he doesn’t want me because of her?” I whisper, and Briar immediately reaches over Isla to place her hand on my thigh.

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