She sniffles. “It was so perfect. What happened? How did we end up in this nightmare?”

I smooth away a ribbon of dark hair stuck to her tearstained cheek, tucking it behind her ear. “Because Jean-Claude isn’t well. Because he doesn’t love in a healthy way. He may have started off with good intentions, or maybe his goal was always to possess you, but either way, that’s what it became—possession, control. Not love.”

She frowns at me, wiping away more tears. “Why does it sound like you’re speaking from experience?”

I kiss her knuckles, blinking away my own tears. “There’s . . . something I should have told you about Tod.” I swallow roughly. “And I hate myself for not doing it sooner, because what if I had? Maybe you’d have known the signs, maybe you’d have found it easier to believe me when I raised concerns about Jean-Claude.”

“Bea.” Jules scoots closer, knotting our legs together, forehead to forehead. “Tell me.”

I do. I tell her what I told Jamie, how it started so well and then I lost my bearings, how he gaslighted me, made me doubt myself, how, when we ended, I realized I hadn’t been loved—I’d been manipulated.

“God, I’m so sorry,” she says hoarsely. “Here I was, pushing you to date again, to open up, when you needed time, when you’d been hurt—”

“You didn’t know. Because I didn’t tell you. I was proud and embarrassed, and I wanted to move on.”

She laughs tearily. “Yeah. I get the wounded-pride thing. I get that real hard. Along with the bruised heart and the what the fuck can I trust? feeling that just makes me want to bury my head under this blanket and not come out for a very, very long time.”

Searching her eyes, I ask, “What happened? Since the party? All week, you were barely around, barely answering my texts.”

“We did a day trip the day after the party, and he was so hot and cold. He was still pissed I didn’t stick up for him in front of you. I told him I’d handled it, but it wasn’t enough.” She hesitates and wipes her eyes. “By the evening, it seemed better. I thought we’d smoothed things over, but then he asked me to go on his business trip this week. I had a pretty busy work schedule lined up, so initially I said I didn’t think I could, and then he just . . . lost it, verbally exploded, saying I was withdrawing, creating distance, that I didn’t really love him.