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—”

“We both were. Please, Ryan. I need you to understand that I don’t blame you for anything that happened to me. I never did. It took a lot of work before I was able to stop blaming myself, and I don’t want you to carry that burden, either.”

He watches me for a long time, and I try to convey as much genuineness as I can in my expression. Eventually, he closes the distance between us and kisses me gently.

“Okay,” he says into my lips. “Thank you for telling me.”