I understood that he had to pull away because I left him no other option. I understood I had given him nothing to keep fighting for, but the loss still hurt. I knew that space he made for himself inside my life and my heart wouldn’t be filled with anything else and I became achingly aware that alone and lonely were two different monsters.

Even as bad as being alone felt, it couldn’t hold a candle to feeling lonely.

Alone was empty and cavernous. It yawned wide inside of me, never ending, and the pain of it echoed hollow and dull.

Lonely was the exact opposite. Lonely filled me up to the point of bursting. There was so much of it that I had no clue about how it wasn’t pushing through my skin. Lonely screeched loud and infinite between my ears. The shrill cry was an ugly mélange of blame, want, fear, and fury. There was also nothing dull about lonely. It poked hot, so hot, in every tender place it could find. It prodded all those wounds now open and weeping as they bled everywhere, and I was finally forced to do something about them or end up bleeding to death.

I wanted to be the girl who I was when I was with Zeb all the time. She was who I was choosing, and even with that decision made, I wasn’t exactly sure what steps I needed to take to keep her around forever.

I knew I was going to have to put on my best battle gear for the final court appearance. It was the first time I would be seeing Zeb in weeks, and he wouldn’t be alone. Both his mother and sister were tagging along to hear the final verdict, so I felt outnumbered even though we were all on the same side of this particular fight. I knew I needed to let the woman I was trying so hard to be take the lead if I was going to get through the hearing with my poise and professionalism intact. I bought a new outfit from the same jealous saleswoman who had been hovering over me and Zeb on the day we shopped for sheets, and took an inordinate amount of satisfaction in the fact that she begrudgingly told me the vibrant purple hue didn’t look good on many people but I could pull it off. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head when I bought a startlingly yellow shirt to go underneath it. Maybe it was too much, too eye-catching, but I didn’t care . . . and that felt freeing.

I also decided my long, simple hairstyle had to go. All I ever did with my hair was tie it up or pull it back. I wanted it unfussy. But I deserved some fuss. I wanted some fuss. I made an appointment to chop inches off, and while I was at the beauty salon decided to thread as many different shades of blond as I could find through the heavy mass. The end result was eye-catching and trendy. Far more showy and flashy than anything I had ever tried to wear before.

The mask was all the way off, and the woman who was facing the world without it might not have everything figured out just yet, but she was getting there. Even if it was through baby steps like colorful new clothes and a chic new hairdo.

When the day of Zeb’s final custody hearing rolled around, I offered to do the precourt meeting in my office with everyone, as we had previously done, but Zeb turned me down and told me that he and his family would all just see me at the courthouse. He sounded like a stranger. None of his easy humor or sexy innuendo could be found anywhere in his deep voice. He was talking to me like all my other clients did and it stung. There wasn’t a hint of our previous relationship or anything personal in his tone.

Having him turn my own tactics on me felt a little bit like being dropped into a deep lake with frigid water. The shock of the impact was jarring and my limbs quickly went numb. I deserved it but the chill still shook me. It was so much easier not to feel, to pretend not to care. The tide of emotions was free and there was no escaping them as they ebbed and flowed inside of me, drifting and rising around Zeb like he was the gravitational pull that controlled them.

When I got to the courthouse I saw Zeb’s Jeep already parked along the street and it made my heart kick. I couldn’t recall a time in my life when I wanted to see someone so badly. Not even when I moved to Denver and had started to search for Rowdy. I just wanted to look at Zeb. I wanted to see him and breathe him in. I wanted to be in the vortex he created around himself that felt so secure and safe. I wanted to hear his voice rumble and watch his hands stroke his beard while he thought about things. I missed all the big things about having him in my life, but the little ones, the special things that made Zeb, Zeb . . . I was dying for a dose of those.

I was walking around the front of the building when my cell phone rang. I paused to dig it out of my bag in case it was the office calling about something I might need before court, but I almost dropped it when I saw the familiar Seattle number flash across the screen. I juggled my bag back onto the crook of my arm and put the phone to my ear.

“Nathan?” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice.

“Uh . . . hey, Sayer. Been a while.”

That was the understatement of the year. I gave him his ring back, told him I was moving to Colorado to find my brother, and hadn’t spoken to him since. It had been a year since I last heard his voice.

“Is everything okay? I’m heading into court for an important case. I don’t have much time to talk.”

He chuckled with no humor in it and I was reminded of why we would have never worked out. “You are always headed into court for an important case. Some things never change, I guess.”

I didn’t like that he was trying to belittle me or what I did, still, but I had broken the guy’s heart, so I figured he was allowed to be a little bit of an ass.

“What do you want, Nathan?”

“Well, I know it’s a long shot, but I’m in Denver for a few days to meet with a potential new client. I thought you might like to get a drink and catch up.”

I nearly tripped over my own feet at his words. I tightened my fingers on my phone and looked toward the front of the building. It felt like I was standing at the crossroads of my past and my future, and if I took one wrong step I would end up losing one and falling dangerously into the other.

I paused for a second instead of blurting out an automatic acceptance to be polite. I hadn’t particularly enjoyed hanging out with Nathan when I had been involved with him. It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with the guy, he just hadn’t been as interesting as my work, and I hadn’t particularly missed him at all since we had been apart. It wasn’t like I was dying to reconnect and spend an awkward hour while he asked what I had been up to and I had to explain that I was exactly where I was when I left Seattle except for the fact that I now had a brother I loved, a roommate I would protect with my life, and a man who owned me but I was too scared to love back. I blew out a breath and replied honestly and truthfully.