But here, I’m having connection and it still feels light. It feels simply good.

“So, I think that’s why you broke up with me. If I had to guess. World closing in on you.”

“I’ve never been proposed to. You know, if I’m honest, I have … these feelings for you that I can’t quite figure out. And I feel like a fraud, because this isn’t actually my life. Even if no one truly believes me, even if you want to but you can’t completely. I know this isn’t my life, but I am so drawn to you. And to Kiera. Not in the same way.”

He gives a small laugh at the delineation. “You’re not a fraud.”

I let out a deep, unsteady breath. “I never feel like this. Ever.”

He stares at me, that muscle going in his jaw again, and I breathe through a chill of desire.

“Me neither.”

I actually shouldn’t be as mystified as I am by how badly I want Cillian. I’ve had one-night stands with less context. It’s the intensity of the desire that’s surprising, because I’ve always felt more apathetic than I’ve wanted to in the past. It’s also the fact that it’s more than mere desire.

Whatever I feel for him has a heavy base to it. It’s kind of like the first time I held an Academy Award. I never won one, of course, but I’ve held one and those fuckers are heavy. Nothing like the hollow, plastic trophies given to every participant in my recreational basketball league when I was a kid. An Oscar is dense, heavy, and hard to knock over.

Like that, there’s an unexpected solidity, a satisfying density to how I feel about Cillian. All the fakes before the real thing have been hollow and the seams have shown. The real thing is undeniable.

So how has this other version of me managed to let him go? Is it simply the shameful fact that she knows he loves her so much that she cannot truly lose him, so she risks it and pushes him away, not believing he’ll go? And then it got messy, messy, messy?

I know that no matter how much someone loves you and you love them, there’s no guarantee that they will always be there. And I guess the version of me who didn’t lose her best friend in a horrible car wreck hasn’t learned that lesson. Takes relationships like these for granted. Whereas in real life, I just don’t build them at all.