Meet Your Match (Kings of the Ice, #1)(83)

“So you do get it.”

She squeezed my hand. “I do. But listen, you want to know the difference between the people who end up alone and the ones who end up with the love of their life?” She leaned in on a smile. “The former never open themselves up to love again because they’re too afraid of the pain that might come with it. And the latter understand that love is worth it, and that they’re strong enough to survive whatever comes before they find it.”

I nodded, eyes bubbling over again. “You do realize how stupid that sounds coming from someone who has told me dozens of times that love is a construct, right?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” she said, quickly waving me off. “I get my kicks in different ways. But baby girl, you are in love. And if I was ever in your shoes, I’d want you to smack me and shake me until I saw it and listened to you, too.”

“You haven’t smacked me yet.”

“I’m close.”

I chuckled, leaning my head on her shoulder and thinking about the night I spent with Vince and his family. They were so lovely, so different from James’s that it had knocked me for a loop. With James, he made me feel like we were invincible, but his family only made me feel like a bug that needed to be squashed. Vince’s family only spent a few hours with me — one night — and somehow, they made me feel like I’d been in the family for years, like I belonged there with them.

The words his dad had said to me before they left made more tears pool in my eyes as I recalled them.

“I wondered when my boy would give his heart to someone. I’m glad he waited for you.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, the tears were released, my bottom lip quivering.

“I want to, you know,” I whispered. “Trust him. Jump in. Try. I just… I feel frozen. I feel… scared. I’m so fucking scared, Livia. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, and the sickest part of me keeps saying it’s better to feel this now than later, that losing him today will be easier than a year down the line.”

“Probably true. But what if you didn’t have to lose him at all?” She nudged her shoulder up until I lifted my head and looked at her. “What if he stayed? What if you made it?”

I covered my heart where it fluttered at the thought. “I felt this way once before, you know. I thought I was getting married, I thought we would be together forever.” I shook my head. “I think that part of me is broken now. I don’t know how to access it.”

Livia frowned, and we were both quiet for a long moment before her eyes widened and she lit up. “Oh, my God. I’m a genius.”

She jumped up from the couch before I could ask what the hell she meant, and then she ran back to my bedroom. I heard her rummaging through something, and then a curse before a loud thump rang out.

“Liv?” I called, dragging my ass off the couch to go get her. But she swept through the living room before I had the chance, a familiar box tucked under her arm as she grabbed my wrist and tugged me toward the sliding glass door that led to my back yard.

“Come on.”

“Livia, what are you doing with that?” My chest was even tighter now in the presence of the box.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said, plopping it on my outdoor table. She tore the lid open. “You are.”

“Wha—”

“Here,” she said before I could ask anything, taking out the first item she found and shoving it into my hand.

I froze the moment it touched my skin.

It was a golf ball, neon orange, from one of my first dates with James. We’d gone putt-putting, him showing off and me letting him because I liked that he wanted to show off for me. At the end of the night, he’d drawn a black heart on the ball he’d won with, and I’d kept it in my purse for longer than I’d ever admit.

“Okay…” I said, staring at it.

“Throw it.” Livia said, pointing across my yard toward where my compost bin was. “Or stomp on it or light it on fire or get a sledgehammer and destroy it.”

“A sledgehammer?”

“Listen to me,” she said, grabbing my shoulders in her hands. “You’ve cried over this fucker. You’ve gone to therapy. You’ve picked yourself up and you’ve started building a career and you’ve moved on. But you can’t let go of him, of what he did to you, until he’s no longer taking up any space. Not in your head, your heart, or this stupid box you keep shoved in the top corner of your closet.” She pulled out a picture frame of me and James next, pressing it into my chest. “It’s time to break shit, bitch.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she pulled out her phone and thumbed through it until Limp Bizkit was playing that exact song she’d just referenced, and she gave me a nod of encouragement, bopping her head to the beat.

“Livia, this is—”

“BREAK SHIT, BITCH.”

I let out a long sigh, because I did not see how this was going to fix anything at all. But I took the frame from her anyway, and when I looked down at it, I paused.

It was a photo of me and James at the beach, my head on his shoulder, his arms wrapped around me, both of us smiling. That was the night he’d asked me my ring size. We’d spent the weekend with friends, and it was one of those perfect kind of weekends when the weather is gorgeous, and the days are long and lazy, and the nights are hot and wild. It felt like a turning point in my life. The man I loved had asked for my ring size, and we were joking about how many kids we wanted.