Page 60 of Requiem for Love

A good man.

Agreatman.

Her folks never approved of him, likely because they couldn’t make a social media post about his wealth and accomplishments that would make their friends seethe with envy. They were hesitant about Dmitri until, in the middle of dinner, they Googled him.

However, losing Joel hadn’t been enough; she’d topped the hurt she’d caused with more pain after the Kofi fiasco. Pain he didn’t deserve, and she truly never apologized for. And while she hadn’t shown it, watching him fall for someone else nearly ended her.

She’d seen it before him.

She’d watched them on the beach in Malibu, and knowing Joel for as long as she had, she knew what it looked like when his feelings started getting involved in a situation. The day he called when she was in Maui with Ayesha and the boys, she’d known. Joel Lattimore had gone from infatuation to full-blown love.

At first, she cried.

She talked to her folks, her sister, and friends outside of the team, and they’d all said the same thing:

“Joel never deserved you.”

That was when she knew it was all bullshit.

Everything he’d done for her during their on-and-off sixteen-year relationship, and that was what they’d come up with? That Joel Lattimore didn’t deserve her? Joel Lattimore, who would have walked across hot coals to make her happy, didn’t deserve her because he didn’t kowtow to her selfish request?

Bullshit.

So, eventually, she stopped crying.

She started looking for who her real friends were, the people who would tell her the things she didn’t want to hear because they genuinely cared about what was best for her, and Ayesha stood out like a beacon.

Yet, what did she do?

She’d grilled her.

Being with Dmitri, though rocky in the beginning, was what she’d been searching for without realizing it. Her relationship with him reminded her of her relationship with Ayesha right down to Xara. He challenged her, supported her, and cared for her in an honest way.

With him, she grew.

However, when she walked in and saw Ayesha in Joel’s bedroom, the thing that had concerned her wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d already known Joel was in love with Ayesha. What she’d feared was that everything Ayesha had told her, from the tough love to the gentle support, had come from Ayesha’s feelings for Joel—not because Ayesha had cared about her.

While she was close with everyone, she’d started seeing Ayesha as her closest friend after that trip to Malibu. It didn’t matter that Ayesha and Joel were together; what mattered most was that Ayesha and Joel getting together hadn’t been Ayesha’s ulterior motive in splitting them up.

She needed it to be that Ayesha still cared. That their friendship wasn’t a ruse. That nothing would change now that Ayesha and Joel were in a serious relationship. Perhaps that would have been the case had she not blasted into the training room with raging hormones and misplaced anger.

None of the questions she asked Ayesha were what she’d felt, and she’d clearly understood what she felt. Had she tried, she would have easily been able to articulate it:

“Ayesha, you didn’t lie to me, right?

Everyone else lies to me.

Everyone else acts like I’m perfect or the prize, which drives me crazy.

I mean, how do you stay perfect when you were never perfect in the first place? How do you accept your flaws without living in fear that you’ll let everyone down if you show even one of them? How do you live when you fear that one mistake will remove all the ‘love’ in your life?

That’s what happened with Joel.

I messed up, and I get that. Although I’m happy with Dmitri, I can admit that I understand it now.

But here’s the thing, Ayesha.

Guess what I fear the most?

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