She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it, thinking about her life these last few weeks. The day after the wedding, Stuart had driven her to the airport. She and Maddie had decided that was best. In fact, she hadn’t even let herself look back as she and Stuart left the hotel. She and Maddie had said good-bye as if it were something temporary, as if she were going on a trip, not leaving forever. This had happened by unspoken agreement. They hadn’t had that deep talk, not at the wedding, and not after during the long, passionate night they’d shared. They both knew nothing they said would make any of it better than before. So they had one last fantastic night together, and she’d come home. They hadn’t talked or contacted each other since.

She’d known she was acting different after she came back, and she’d known Ted was likely to call her on it eventually if she didn’t get her life together, exactly as he was doing right now. But the enormous divide between wanting to be back to normal, back to herself before Maddie, and the way she felt right now was currently unbridgeable. She had no idea how to cross it, or even attempt to beyond what she’d been doing, trying not to think about it.

She finally met Ted’s eyes, which were sympathetic and warm—perhaps the only comfort she’d gotten from anyone since she’d come home. Stuart had stopped calling, too, after she dodged his attempts for weeks. She’d left for New York and essentially left that part of her life behind forever.

She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly parched, and when she spoke, her words were hardly audible. “I don’t know what to do.”

He grabbed her hands and squeezed them. “Like I said, I won’t tell you what to do. I know what I would do, but I won’t even tell you that. You have to figure it out for yourself. And I know you, Ryann. Maybe not as well as Stuart or any of your close friends, but we spend a lot of time together here at the office, and I know you’ve been suppressing all of this. You’re trying not to think about it, which means you’re not really thinking at all.” He let go of her hands. “So I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I want you to go home, right now, and let yourself think. Let yourself have your feelings and think your thoughts, just for the day.”

She was tensing up, which must have been visible, as he squeezed one of her hands again. “It’s only one day, Ryann.”