Page 55 of Not a Strong Enough Word

This is the first time either of us have broached the subject. It feels like a carefully designed question, dipping his toes into the waters of the past, and I imagine he’s working backward toward the day I left. Which is good. It gives me a chance to think carefully about how I want to tell that story when the time comes.

“This and that,” I hedge.

He pinches me, and I giggle. Smoothing over the spot with his thumb, he smiles softly. “Were you alone that whole time?”

“Are you asking me if I slept with anyone else? Because if we’re sharing that kind of history, you’d better be ready to fess up yourself.”

“No,” he says quietly, unwilling to play into my teasing. His tone quickly sobers my mood. His gaze drops to my lips, then back to meet mine. “I called everyone when you wouldn’t answer me. Trina, Mandy, Ava, Katherine…anyone who would have had any contact with you. None of them knew where you were. I went to your condo more times that I’d like to admit that first year. No one had heard a word from you. When I saw your condo was for sale, I finally gave up.”

“But you never stopped worrying,” I finish for him.

“No. I never stopped.”

He’s not wearing his glasses, and his face looks somehow younger and more vulnerable without them. Ryan has always been expressive, but he’s even more so now, without those dark frames to shield him. And the look on his face could break my heart.

“I’m so sorry,” I say on a shaky breath.

Ryan runs his hand soothingly over my side. “No, beautiful. None of that. That wasn’t what I meant. Of course I worried, but eventually, I lived my life. I’m just asking if you were able to live yours, too. I wanted that for you.”

“Well…” I chew on my lip, glancing at the wall over his shoulder. “Yes and no. At first, I left town. That’s why I was never at the apartment. I thought traveling would be a good idea, but I guess I was actually running away.” I take a deep breath and laugh humorlessly. “Shockingly, all my problems followed me wherever I went, and then some, because people would recognize me. I got very good at slipping out of places before anyone could talk to me. I can’t tell you how many times I stopped for a coffee or something and someone said, ‘You look like that writer. You know the one?’”

Ryan chuckles, and it gives me permission to smile, too, though mine is sadder than his.

“So then, I figured I’d come back, but I couldn’t go to the condo. Too many memories.” I finally look at him, then, wincing. “I gave up my old place, hired people to put a lot of stuff in storage, and moved into the place I’m in now.”

“What about your friends?” He almost tiptoes up to the subject, as if he’s afraid of what he might find.

I sigh, looking upward toward the ceiling and rolling onto my back. Ryan’s hand doesn’t lose contact with me as he rests his palm on my stomach. It makes me inexplicably uncomfortable to have his hand there, but its absence would be worse, so I let it go.

“Mandy had just signed her deal, as you know. She was…not happy with me.” I swallow hard. That’s all I can say about that; the rest is still too painful. “Ava and Katherine sided with her. My parents also couldn’t believe I left that money on the table, and even before that, they didn’t think writing was a stable career choice, as you know. I couldn’t deal with their disdain…so I didn’t. And everyone at JMP was only my friend because I had a deal there. Trina stuck by me. God knows why. I think it’s because my royalty checks kept coming, so she was still getting paid.”

Ryan moves his hand to cup my cheek and trails his thumb lightly over it. “That’s not why.”

I shrug as best I can with my body pressed into the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. “That might be why. But it doesn’t really matter. Once I realized I didn’t have anyone left, the full weight of what I had done sank in. I was probably depressed before, but the constant movement kept me going. A body in motion and all that…”

“But when you stopped, you really started struggling,” he guesses.

“Pretty much. So then there was therapy, medication, a lot of trial and error. And then research. Plotting. Outlining. Writing. And now.”

He studies me for a moment with those brown eyes. His eyesight is terrible without his glasses, but I’m close enough to him for him to see me clearly. I roll back to my side so we’re almost nose-to-nose.

“I won’t lie. That makes me feel slightly better.”

I huff a laugh. “Why? Because I didn’t mention sex with anyone else in my sad story?”

He chuckles. “No. Though now that you mention it…”

Scoffing, I smack him lightly on the arm which only makes him laugh harder. His laughter takes a little of the heaviness off my heart.

“I wasn’t exactly celibate these five years, though no one ever compared to you,” he says.

That hurts, but it’s not a surprise. Ryan is a catch. “I wouldn’t expect you to have been.”

“But what I meant was I spent a long time wondering if I had missed something huge. Something I could have fixed. If I didn’t take good enough care of you…” His emotion cuts him off.

It’s my turn to hold his face in my hands. “Please believe me when I say there was absolutely nothing you could have done. All of this was so far out of our control. That was part of the problem. I didn’t have a handle on anything.” I almost continue on to the end of the story, the part I’ve tucked away and hidden from for years, but he’s gone introspective now.

“I could have pushed them for less press or longer deadlines instead of more money. I was young and stupid—”