Della sighed and poured out all the grizzly details of the incident. From the rainy driving lesson to the fogged up windows to the kiss and the next one. How shocked Tucker had looked and how he’d told her she shouldn’t have done it.

Selena listened, nodding her encouragement whenever Della faltered. “You like him?” she prompted when Della ran out of words.

“Yeah.”

“I mean you like him, like him.”

Della nodded. She might as well get it all out, and frankly, unburdening her secret felt good. “I guess you could say I’ve had a…crush on him for a while now.”

“How long?”

“Maybe the last year?”

“And do you think that’s reciprocated?”

“No.” Della shook her head emphatically, laughing at the absurdity of it, but stopped abruptly as she reconsidered that look they’d shared. “He told me he didn’t feel that way about me. But…”

“But?” An elegantly shaped eyebrow arched in inquiry.

“He looked at me differently. Just before I… There was a kind of…I don’t know…vibe between us, and he…looked at my mouth. He definitely looked at my mouth. I mean, it lingered, you know?”

“And that’s why you kissed him?”

She cringed. “Yeah.” Man had she read that wrong.

“And now you regret it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But you do like him.”

Depressed by the thought, Della nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“And you’ve not considered him as dating material?”

Frowning, Della sat forward in her chair. Was Selena suggesting what Della thought she was? “Well, yes, of course. But…apparently he doesn’t feel that way about me.” She winced inwardly just repeating those words out loud.

“Do you think you read it wrong?”

“No.” Della shook her head as she sifted through the images in her mind again for the minutiae of that moment. “But…” Who knew? She was hardly an expert on this stuff. “I’m not really practiced at reading men.”

“In my experience, women who’ve suffered at the hands of a violent partner are exceptionally good at reading men.”

Selena made a valid point. Della had gotten very good at gauging Todd and his moods. Sometimes just a word or a look would have her antennae pinging wildly. Have her scrambling for ways to defuse things before they went to bed.

Sometimes it had worked.

“I guess I don’t really have a lot of instincts where men are concerned anymore. I think maybe I never did.” How else had Todd slipped past her radar?

Selena nodded. “That’s common for someone who’s been through what you have. But instincts never really go away—just our faith in them. Maybe you should start trusting them again?”