Page 170 of That One Night in Vegas: A Lesbian Romance

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nurtured instead of denied, could turn into something else. She

wanted more than attachment. She wanted to date Cassia. She

wanted to be able to go out and hold her hand. She wanted the

world to know she’d fallen, and it happened hard and fast and

that after nearly a lifetime she finally knew what it meant to

use her entire corroded, shrivelled, terrified heart.

It all came down to what it meant to be happy to her and if

she thought that outweighed everything else. The questions

Cassia had asked her, everything she’d said, stayed with

Adalynn. They’d bubbled up all night. She’d tried to fight

them at first, but then she’d stopped. It wasn’t complicated.

She was making it complicated herself. She was digging her

own hole, deeper and deeper and deeper, when she could just

set down her shovel and bask in the sun.

Sitting at her desk as the first watery rays of dawn crept up,

Adalynn knew she was going to post the video she’d just spent

an hour recording. She didn’t bother editing it. There was no

point. She wanted it to be raw and unfiltered. As raw and

unfiltered as the feelings coursing through her that she’d

finally let herself feel.

This was probably the first time in her life that she’d felt

comfortable with being herself. She had been so lost in all the

politics, all the years, all the worries and concerns, her

marriage, reputations that weren’t just hers, and everything

else, that she wasn’t even sure who she was anymore. The first

time she’d felt like she’d been even close to figuring that out,

to feeling just an ounce like the person she was and wanted to

be, was that first night in the lounge when she’d dropped into

the seat across from Cassia and started blurting out long buried

truths for no apparent reason at all.

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