Page 11 of Inevitably Yours

They shared a half-hearted laugh at the latter.

“I’ll see you in four days, and we’ll eat junk food, just don’t tell my mother hens, and we’ll have that talk, okay?”

John gripped her cheeks, turned her forehead toward his lips, and dropped a lingering kiss there before he pushed away from her.

Gus watched him walk out the door and down the drive. She leaned against the open door long after the taillights faded into the night.

Sometimes she felt like a pushover for not being able to hold onto her anger whenever she saw that intensity of pain in someone else’s face. What others didn’t understand was, more often than not, she was protecting herself by letting it go and parting with kind words, more so than sparing them.

Even though she said the words she felt others needed to hear and spoke of forgiveness, she didn’t let it go like they believed she did. No, she took her pain and theirs, tucking it into her heart and carrying it around with her. As much as she made John believe things would be the same between them, it wasn’t even remotely true.

The dream she’d invested in was just that, and their reality would be affected by it. She would need to open herself up to the possibility of a relationship with someone other than John if she ever hoped to find love and happiness and have a family of her own.

That hurt the most.

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