“That’s why it took you until a week before the wedding to call it off. Because you stayed with her, since you didn’t know the alternative. Love looked like obligation, not like some—” she paused, as if hunting for a word, “— incandescent thing.” That word hit him hard in the gut. Like a revelation. He’d called her incandescent in an email. It wasn’t a word you heard often. But it was the fitting adjective to describe the difference between how he’d felt for Aubrey, and how love was supposed to be.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding, and he felt just the tiniest bit lighter. With her insight he understood his own motivations. His worries. His fears. He hadn’t wanted to wind up like his parents, but he didn’t know any other way to be, so he did what they did. “I guess I didn’t. But I must have been doing the same thing. I never thought about it like that.”

“It’s my job to help people see things in a new light. In a light that might help them understand,” she said, and she seemed to be returning to the woman he went to Paris with, not the shrink. He wanted to reach out to her, hold her, ask her if they were going to be okay.

But he had to focus on Michelle, not on himself. “You’re not mad that I kept this from you? That I didn’t tell you right away?” he asked, the worry roaring back into him that once again he’d taken a misstep. A big one.

She shook her head. “No. I understand that it was difficult to process. That you had to tell me in your time, and in your own way.”

“And you don’t hate me for not loving her?” he asked, his shoulders feeling lighter, his heart freer again. Because of her.

“No. That was your normal. That felt normal to you. It took you a while to realize it, but you did come to that on your own. You did realize that love doesn’t have to be based on obligations. That takes a lot of guts to call off a wedding, when you realize you’re not in love.”

But, but, but. There was still that big overhang. There was still that empty ache in his chest that guilt had set up camp in. He might understand why he’d stayed with Aubrey now, but that didn’t exonerate him from the damage he’d done. He inhaled deeply, exhaled, and said the hardest thing of all.

“But it’s my fault she died,” he muttered.

She shot him a sharp look, as if his statement didn’t add up. “I’m going to be blunt with you.”

Blunt was good. He could handle blunt. He needed blunt. No more circling around the cold, hard truth. Dive in headfirst. “Please. Be blunt.”

“Get over yourself,” she said firmly, her eyes fixed on his. She was intensely serious. It was a command. It was an order, and it floored him.