It Started at Christmas...

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do.” Cecilia pulled another strand of hair loose, coated it in dye, then wrapped it.

“He was in love with a woman who died. I can’t compete with a ghost.”

“She’s gone. She’s no longer any competition.”

“Cecilia!”

“I don’t mean to be crude, McKenzie, but if he’s in love with a woman who is no longer around, well, she’s not a real threat. Not unless you let her be.”

“He never even mentioned her to me.”

“There are lots of things you still haven’t told him. That’s what the rest of your lives are for.”

“He and I agreed to a short-term relationship.”

“You didn’t have a signed contract. Terms can change.”

“Ouch!” McKenzie yelped when Cecil

ia pulled a piece of hair too tightly.

“Sorry.” But the gleam in her eyes warned that she might have done it on purpose. “You could have kept seeing him. You should have kept seeing him.”

“He didn’t want to go beyond our two months any more than I did.”

“Sure you didn’t. That’s why you’re miserable now that you’re not with him anymore.”

“I’m not miserable,” McKenzie lied. “Besides, I see him at work.”

“How’s that?”

“Awkward. Strange. As bad as I was afraid it would be. I knew I shouldn’t become involved with a coworker.”

“So why did you?”

“Because...because I couldn’t not.”

Cecilia’s face lit with excitement that McKenzie had finally caught on. “Exactly. That should tell you everything you need to know about how you feel about the man. Why you are so intent on denying that you miss him makes no sense to me.”

“I miss him,” she admitted. “There, does that make you happy? I miss Lance. I miss the way he looks, the way he smiles, the way he smells, the way he tastes. I miss everything about him.”

Cecilia spun the chair to face her straight on, her eyes full of sympathy. “Girl, how can you not see what is so obvious?”

McKenzie’s rib cage contracted tightly around everything in her chest. “You think I’m in love with him.”

“Aren’t you?”

McKenzie winced. She wasn’t. Couldn’t be. She shouldn’t be.

She was.

“What am I going to do?”

“Well, you are your mother’s daughter. Maybe you should grab the happiness you want instead of being afraid it’s always going to be just outside your grasp.”

All these years she’d not wanted to be like her mother, but her mother had been happy, had been choosing to be single, but not out of fear of love. If her mother, who’d borne the brunt of so much hurt, could love, could trust, why couldn’t McKenzie?