“I know.”

She chose her next words carefully. “I know it’s not easy … to be vulnerable. But you’re allowed to have feelings. You’re allowed to be confused and hurt and angry. However you feel is valid.”

But I shook my head. “Every time I’m vulnerable, I get hurt. Every time I love, I lose.”

Ivy frowned, pinning me with a look. “You haven’t lost me. Mrs. Bennet. Your dad.”

“And trusting someone else is dangerous. Because the more I love, the more chances I have to get hurt. The more I open up, the more helpless I am. Why am I not allowed to protect myself against that?”

“Because you’re not protecting yourself—you’re running away. And those are two very different things.”

I had no response to that. My throat squeezed painfully, and I swallowed to open it up.

“I know you think you can plan for danger, but when you’re constantly looking for something to go wrong, it inevitably will. You become the master of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I have a little secret for you.” She paused, waiting until I met her eyes. “Uncertainty is part of life. You can’t plan for it. You can’t brace yourself. There was no way for you to have seen Wendy coming.”

Tears bit at my nose. “So what am I supposed to do?” I begged, my voice shaking and tight. “How am I supposed to react? Because I don’t know another way.”

She reached for my hand, covered it with hers. “You can’t run away, and you can’t fight it. You can’t freeze from indecision and overthink it to death. Sometimes, there’s no right answer and there’s no wrong one. The only way through it is to have faith.”

Faith. Complete trust and confidence, but in what? Life? Luke?

Life had not been kind, but it had given me so much too. My father’s words rang in my ears—sacrifice fear for hope.

“Whatever happens, Tess, it will work out. Luke wouldn’t have it any other way. You have to know that.”

I nodded down at our hands. “I do,” I said, the truth of it slipping over me, into me, warming my heart and setting a tear on a track down my cheek.

“You have to have faith in him,” she urged. “Believe that it will work out despite how much it hurts to get there.”

Hope glimmered quietly in me. I pictured myself letting go of my fear. I could see it, my admission of feelings, our reunion. I imagined how it would feel to see him smile, to see the relief on his face, to feel the relief in my heart and the weight of his arms around me. For all my indecision, for all my uncertainty and fear, one truth remained, unflinching.

Luke was all I wanted. There was no choice to be made—there never had been. It was clear and crisp for the first time after days spent wandering through soupy fog.

“I’ve got to tell him,” I said, reaching into my pocket for my phone. “Do you think he’ll talk to me?”