Page 192 of The Clinch
I look at her.
“Not fair?” I repeat.
“No. It’s not fair.”
I move closer before I can stop myself, anger dragging me across the room. “You know what isn’t fair? Being treated like a problem men need to solve while everyone around me nods along because the intentions are good.”
“That’s not what happened,” she says sharply.
“That’s exactly what happened.” My voice rises. “Travis used to decide what I needed, what I could handle, what I should know, what would ‘upset me unnecessarily.’ Leo just did it with better lighting and legal paperwork.”
I stop short.
The second his name leaves my mouth, something twists hard in me.
I hate that.
I hate that fury is not the only thing in me.
Eden sees it. Of course, she does.
She gentles a notch, which only makes me angrier.
“Liz,” she says more carefully, “those are not the same thing.”
“They felt the same.”
Because they did. The room goes silent. I look away first, heat stinging my eyes.
The apartment is clean, still, full of warm lamplight. Everything looks offensively normal: a folded throw on the couch, two mugs in the drying rack, the stupid ceramic lemon bowl on the counter. My whole life is sitting here intact while something in me still feels flayed open under fluorescent lights.
Eden comes farther into the room, moving carefully. “Okay,” she says. “They felt the same. I’ll give you that.”
I fold my arms across my middle so tightly, it almost hurts. She leans against the back of the dining chair and studies me.
“But they weren’t,” she adds softly.
I laugh, a short, ugly sound. “You really believe that?”
“Yes.”
That takes me aback enough that I actually look at her. Eden is many things—warm, funny, occasionally chaotic. But when she plants her feet like this, she doesn’t budge.
I should know; I’ve watched her go toe-to-toe with Nate, with her brother, with people twice her size and ten times as loud.
She lifts one shoulder. “You can yell at me for not telling you. You should. But I’m not going to stand here and let you turn Leo into Travis. He isn’t.”
I have to work to get anything past my teeth.
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
I look away.
Because yes, it is what I was saying. Intellectually, morally, practically, I know the difference. But some old, damaged part ofme still goes feral at the idea of a man making a call about my life without me in the room.
“He decided for me.”
