Tears clump on her eyelashes. She lets her spoon fall into her bowl with a clank. I sit back so that we’re eye to eye on the couch. Candlelight flickers across her hair. The curve of her cheek.

My heart is pounding, and I don’t know why.

“I don’t know what it’s like to lose a parent,” I say. “But I do know how it feels to want so badly for something to have gone differently. It haunts you. It hurts.”

“It does.” Julia turns her head a little to look at me. “You know that’s part of the reason why I chose to keep this baby—because I lost my family, and this is a way of creating a new one. It won’t be the same, obviously, but maybe it’s not supposed to be. Maybe this is my chance to make lemonade.”

“When life hands you lemons,” I say with a tight grin because I can’t fucking breathe. “Right.”

“I’d actually prefer to use those lemons as a twist in an ice cold martini. But I guess lemonade is the next best thing when you’re pregnant.”

Can’t help it. I reach up and catch a tear with my thumb. I’m gripped by the desire to take her face in my hand. Hold her and kiss her and tell her, without having to say a thing, how much I admire her.

You’re devastating.

You’re stupid gorgeous.

You’re brave in all the best ways, and you’re making me want to be brave again, too.

Which is dangerous.

So fucking dangerous. I’m going to hurt one or both of us. All three of us.

But I still find myself leaning into the conversation anyway. Like I have nothing to lose.

Like I deserve another chance.

“Takes courage,” I say. “To put yourself out there again with this baby after losing so much. I’m in awe. How? Why?”

Her eyes bounce between mine. “Because I have to. What’s the alternative? Staying down? Living small and scared? Yeah, it takes balls to get back up after you’ve had your ass handed to you. When you’ve lost the people who matter most to you. But the people whose lives and careers I admire are the ones who kept trying. Who fucked up or fell short or lost again and again but still got up one more time. Maybe I’ve read too much fiction, but I’ve found that it’s usually that last ditch effort that turns things around. If it doesn’t, at least you go down trying, you know? At least you did the brave thing. The right thing.”

“But what if you didn’t do the right thing? What if you did something really fucking terrible?”

She looks at me. Waits for me to explain.

When I don’t, she continues.

“You learn from it. You take it as a lesson and try to do right the next time around. Just because you’re a villain in one story doesn’t mean you can’t be a hero in another. I happen to like characters with complicated pasts. Nuance is a big turn on.”