had been so much easier to feel persecuted. To be the victim, yet again. To wrap herself in her own self-righteousness, her own martyrdom, and console herself yet again that she was the one who loved and was lied to, even here in Italy where she’d gone to heal from the last betrayal.
She’d gotten a lot of mileage out of that, hadn’t she?
But then Charlie had made her grab that headboard. And he’d taught her a very deep lesson about the reality of surrender. About what real meant in practical terms. About her own power and her own need.
Over and over.
Maya put her hands over her mouth to stifle the huge sob that had been lurking in her chest since she’d woken up in such a panic.
She was in love with him. God help her, she’d fallen hard, and she didn’t have the slightest idea how to crawl back out of that pit.
But none of that mattered, because the only love she knew how to give was shallow. If she’d loved Ethan deeply, or at all, she would have been broken now. Not...imagining herself in love with someone else. Not capable of arguing with Ethan on the phone as if they were debating where to get takeout. Not able to think about forgiveness for him or Lorraine ever, and certainly not so soon. How many times did she need to prove this to herself before she believed it?
Maybe the truth was that she was nothing but a sad, gray puddle reflecting bright colors she could see but not touch. But Charlie...
Charlie was like an ocean.
And Maya needed to get the hell out of here before she drowned.
TORONTO WELCOMED MAYA back with a bitch of a snowstorm, just in case she might have forgotten where she lived.
It was like a very cold kick in the gut. But then, leaving Italy had been a lot like peeling off her soul with her fingernails and then leaving the best parts of it behind, so what was a little Canadian weather next to all that?
She hadn’t waited for Charlie to wake up. It was more accurate, in fact, to say that she had snuck around to make sure he wouldn’t. She’d thanked her lucky stars that she was a light packer, because it was easy to throw her things together in the dark. She’d done it in a hurry, as if that drowning she feared so much was imminent.
She’d been hurrying down the old stone stairs toward the hotel lobby before she could think twice. And she’d been in a taxi headed for Naples before daylight had really broken over the sea.
Hurry, something in her had urged. Hurry.
If she slowed down, she would stay.
Maya didn’t let herself look back.
She’d flown to Rome, then got herself on the first flight she could find back to Toronto.
And all the while, her heart had kept hammering at her. That same panic had gnawed at her, not lessening in the least the farther away she got from the man who made her feel...too much. Much too much.
When she’d landed in gray, listless Toronto, it had been easy to convince herself that everything that had happened in Italy had been a kind of daydream. Something gauzy that couldn’t hold up against the grim approach of a long Canadian winter.
“I’m glad you finally came to your senses,” her sister said sternly when Maya turned up at her door. “I understand you had a shock, but it’s as if you’ve lost your mind these past few weeks.”
“Maybe I did lose my mind,” Maya agreed.
But she didn’t think she meant it in the way Melinda did. The truth was that she’d shut off her mind for a change, or Charlie had, and it was amazing how many things her body had found to teach her.
She knew better than to say something like that to her distressingly unimaginative and unromantic sister.
Instead, she set about the practicalities of separating her life from Ethan’s, because every day she remained linked to him felt like torture. And she didn’t really care if that seemed dramatic. She needed him unconnected to her by any means possible.
The snow was coming down hard and she was hideously jet-lagged, but she thought it was absolutely perfect timing to swing by the condo the morning after she arrived. Very early that morning. She let herself in with her key, letting the front door slam shut behind her. Then she walked into the center of the space she had so carefully curated to reflect the up-and-coming couple she and Ethan had been meant to be.
Looking around, it felt like she was standing in a hotel room. Or a stranger’s house. A place that had nothing to do with her and never would. She took a deep breath in and realized that it even smelled...off. Not like hers.
It didn’t take long for the two of them to emerge, looking sleepy and something like scared when they came out of the bedroom to find her waiting there in her own damned kitchen.
“Are you crazy?” Ethan demanded.
Maya smiled. “I own half of this condo, Ethan. I’m not crazy. I’m home.”
She was pleased she’d taken a little extra time with her appearance this morning. She had been trying to erase the signs of her international flight more than she’d been attempting to impress her ex, but no matter why she’d done it, it felt better to be dressed well. She knew she looked sleek and sophisticated, polished to a cool shine, while Lorraine’s hair was a tangled mess and Ethan blinked like an owl from behind his glasses.
“If you want to yell at us, just yell at us,” Lorraine said.
Bravely, as if she was prepared to suffer whatever was necessary for her great and abiding love.
Maya rolled her eyes as she unwrapped her scarf from around her neck. “I don’t want to yell at you. What would be the point? I have no desire whatsoever to play into this forbidden-love, martyr fetish you two think you have going on. Let’s be practical, please. You want to stay in this condo? Make me an offer.”
Lorraine looked as if she might cry but refrained. Ethan, on the other hand, glared.
This was the part where she usually backed down, she knew. Where she offered an apology to ease the tension and then started agreeing to things.
But she wasn’t that Maya anymore. She stared right back at Ethan until he was the one to look away. Then they sat down at the breakfast bar and started negotiating.
And a few hours later, they’d hammered out a deal.
When Maya staggered back out into the snow already blanketing her hometown and showing no signs of stopping, she let the cold shock her system, even bundled up against it as she was.
This is good, she told herself sternly. You need to freeze. You need to put out that fire however you can.
And over the next few days that was exactly what she did.
She stayed in her sister’s guest room while she arranged for her things to be moved out of the condo and put into
