Somehow it was the right thing to say, yet the completely wrong thing she needed to hear. At the same time she wanted him to admit and acknowledge that it was weird, beyond coincidence, scary, she didn’t want him to. Because Gabriel had his own baggage. Adding hers to his created a set too heavy to haul around. It might be the very thing that would make him definitively pull away from her. Literally and figuratively.

“I know. And I can’t bear the thought of anyone knowing, of dealing with the fallout from that. Do you understand that?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I get that. But this changes everything.”

“What does it change?” she asked, a sick churning in her gut kicking into overdrive. She relaxed her hold on him. She couldn’t bind him to her by pure desperation and want. That would make her no different than Rochelle. Seeing, forcing what wasn’t there. If he wanted to pull back, she had to let him.

Even if she had fallen in love with him, which she suspected she had.

That knowledge hit her harder than she would have expected. Hadn’t she known she was in love with him? Maybe she had, and she’d chosen to ignore it, pretend that it was lust, attraction, interest brought about from their circumstances, their close proximity. Because maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe she was like Rochelle, having feelings that were false, spinning fantasies about loving him and being loved in return.

But she didn’t believe that. She knew what she felt, knew it was real, knew that she loved him clearly and poignantly for the man he was, whether he would ever return those feelings or not.

It wasn’t wise to love him, not at all self-protective, fraught with the danger of getting her heart trampled, her feelings lacerated, but God knew she couldn’t control it. That was what the last year of her life had taught her—control was elusive. She couldn’t manipulate or change certain events in her life, but she could choose to accept and live the best she possibly could. The search for control, for answers, had landed her in rehab. Sometimes there were no answers.

She had to live with that.

And if Gabriel wanted to walk, she would gather herself and move on. If anything, she had learned she was a survivor.

“This changes the respect I had for you. I thought you were lovely before, Sara, but now I think you’re truly the most amazing woman I’ve ever known.”