Vivian cried most of the night.

She must have fallen asleep at some point because she woke up as the sun started to stream in through her windows. She managed to open her eyelids, although the bright light hurt her aching eyes.

There was one moment of blurred enjoyment, when the world felt mostly like it should have felt. Then she remembered what had happened the evening before, and everything became raw and wrong and painful again.

She couldn’t believe Jeff had dumped her, that he didn’t want her enough to give her a little more space, make sure she was really ready for this relationship.

It was hard enough to process this, understand that Jeff had already given up on her.

But it was even harder to wonder if it was mostly her own fault.

Maybe she should have just told him she loved him too—even though the moment had been so terrifying that the words had strangled in her throat.

She’d felt it. Her heart last night had been as full as it had ever been.

But saying the words would have changed everything—about her, about her life, about the person she’d always been. Naturally, it was scary. It would have been scary for anyone.

If she couldn’t say the words, she should have at least agreed to go public with their relationship.

She wasn’t even sure why she’d resisted.

The resistance had been real and strong and overwhelming, but maybe she should have just pushed through so Jeff wouldn’t have felt that kind of rejection.

She knew all about how rejection like that felt.

She was feeling it now, deeply, so much so that the grief and pain lodged in her gut like a rock.

Sometimes the thing that made you cry felt less big, less painful, when you woke up the following morning. And sometimes you were just too tired to cry.

Neither one of those things was true for Vivian at the moment. She lay in bed, blinking against the morning light, and she felt her eyes swelling up again, burning as all the emotion of the previous night came rising up again—into her heart, into her throat, into her eyes.

She blinked back the tears and made herself sit up.

She couldn’t lie in bed and mope all day today. She wasn’t at home. It was the end of her company retreat. She needed to get up, get dressed, go down to breakfast, put on her game face for the staff as they wrapped things up.

Maybe she could get a ride home with Mel. She wasn’t sure she could face being alone in a car with Jeff for even a few hours.

But she could make it through the morning. Then she could go home and hibernate for the rest of the weekend. And on Monday morning she’d be feeling better. She could return to the office, act like her old self, make sure no one knew how painfully Jeff had broken her heart.

Eventually it wouldn’t hurt like this.

Eventually she would feel better.

She prayed for a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling, asking for help, for strength, for God to somehow put her back together again.

She didn’t feel any stronger afterward, but she had to get up anyway.

She showered. Dried her hair. Put on a cute, sleeveless top and a pair of blue-gray capris. When a few tears slipped out of her eyes as she was putting on her shoes, she had to go back to the bathroom mirror and fix her eye makeup.

She smiled at herself in the mirror.

It didn’t look real to her, but maybe it would be convincing.

After all, people didn’t usually look at others very carefully. Everyone was always absorbed in their own thoughts, their own issues.

She wondered what Jeff was thinking, feeling today.

When she finally concluded that she could make it through breakfast, she opened the door to her room and stepped out into the hallway.

It was empty.

There was no sound from Jeff’s room next door.

She didn’t knock on it as she normally would have. She just walked to the elevator and went down.

She ran into Rachel and Garrett in the lobby, and their cheerful greetings were a relief. She responded to them naturally, even managing to smile. She could do this. She could act normal.

She could make sure no one knew what had happened to her last night.

They were in the dining room, filling their breakfast plates at the bar, when Jeff came into the room. He must have been outside walking because there was a slight sheen of perspiration on his skin and his thick hair was windblown.

He was quiet, sober, strangely cool as he came over to join them and get a plate of his own. He shot Vivian one quick glance—as if he couldn’t help himself—but then he avoided her eyes.

She knew because she kept watching him.

He wasn’t looking at her.

He wasn’t smiling.

He wasn’t saying anything.

And it was all so completely wrong. As wrong as anything had ever been.

Rachel and Garrett—and the others when they trickled down from upstairs—didn’t seem to notice anything was unusual about Jeff or Vivian. They all chatted cheerfully, going over their impressions about the center from the past week they’d spent and making plans for another retreat.

Everyone seemed to have had a great time.

Jeff had been right that the retreat was good for the staff.

It could have been good for Vivian, too, if her heart hadn’t been ripped out of her chest on the last day.

She managed to respond mostly appropriately whenever someone brought her into the conversation, but Jeff didn’t respond at all. Eventually the others seemed to notice his absolute silence.

When Grace asked him a direct question and he didn’t even seem to hear her, Vivian saw Grace and Mel frowning at each other in confusion.

“Hey, Jeff,” Garrett said, leaning over to try to catch the other man’s eyes. “People are talking to you.”

Jeff looked over, blinking as if he hadn’t realized anyone else was even present. “What?”

“Are you sick? Don’t you feel well this morning?” Mel asked, her smile fading in a kind of maternal concern she always showed the rest of the staff.

“I’m fine,” he said, clearly making an effort to relax his face. “Just tired.”

“Did you stay up too late last night? What were you doing?”

Jeff didn’t answer Rachel’s casual question. It was clear that no one suspected anything that had happened between Jeff and Vivian. They were just wondering about Jeff’s strange behavior.

He wasn’t as good at a game face as Vivian was.

He hadn’t had nearly the practice.

“I’m just tired,” he said, focusing on his coffee cup until the others realized he wasn’t in the mood to talk and just left him alone.

Vivian’s heart was in an uproar.

This whole situation was horrible. It wasn’t just her personal pain—or Jeff’s. If they couldn’t get it together, then the whole staff, the whole company, would be affected by a rift between them.

She had to do something.

She had to somehow make this right.

Breakfast felt like forever, but eventually it ended. They all dispersed to return to their rooms and finish packing.

Jeff had gotten away from the others before Vivian, but she managed to catch up with him in the hallway outside their rooms.

“Jeff,” she called, just before he opened his door. “Jeff, wait.”

He stopped, staring at her as she hurried down the hall toward him.

“We’ve got to do better than this,” she said, slightly breathless because the sight of him, so rumpled and serious and masculine as he stood before her, made her heart stretch in absolute yearning.

He frowned. “Better than what?”

She gestured downward to indicate the dining hall. “Better than we did over breakfast.”

His frown deepened. “Better at what?”

“At pretending everything is normal. We’re still business partners, Jeff. If we keep it up, we’re going to destroy everything.”

A flicker of grief crossed his face before it went cool again. “It’s already destroyed, Vivian. I thought that was clear last night.”

She gulped over the pain of those words. She wondered if he’d ever even had any doubts, or if the end of what had seemed so good between them was a simple decision for him. She managed to say, “I meant the company. I don’t want to destroy that too.”

It was nearly impossible for her to keep pretending that she was in control of herself, but it was felt incredibly important that she do so. She didn’t want him to know how he’d crushed her.

She didn’t want anyone to know.

She’d always been confident, self-sufficient.

Falling in love with Jeff shouldn’t have changed that.

So she added, slightly hoarse, “That’s the most important thing.”

He stepped back automatically as if she had struck him, and she realized she had.

She’d just told him that the company was more important than their relationship.

Was more important than him.

She didn’t mean it, but he wouldn’t know that.

He licked his lips, his body held very still.

Then he turned away without saying a word, opened the door to his room, and stepped inside.

The door closed behind him with a soft click.

***

Vivian ended up going home with Mel.

Jeff didn’t make another reappearance, and it seemed very clear that he didn’t want to talk to her or be around her. She made up an excuse about Jeff needing to make a stop on the trip back home so she could have a reason for driving back with Mel rather than Jeff.

She assumed Jeff would have taken care of everything with Cecily and Balm in Gilead since he was responsible for the retreat and for the company’s finances, but it felt rude to leave without saying something to Cecily, so she stopped by the other woman’s office on her way to the car with her luggage.

Cecily greeted her with her typical smile—courteous, genuine, but with a controlled gentleness that seemed her approach to everyone and everything. Today she looked as prettily prim as always in a pale green sheath dress and her hair in a low bun.

“I hope you were happy with your time here,” Cecily said. “I’ve loved having you all.”

“Thank you, yes,” Vivian said, fixing on a smile that she thought was probably convincing to someone who was mostly a stranger. “Everything was wonderful.”

“Jeff has already taken care of everything, but is there anything else you need from me?”

“No. We’re all starting to leave now. I just wanted to thank you. We might post something on our site about this place and our time here if that’s okay. It will all be complimentary, of course, and it would be great exposure for you. We have a pretty big audience.”

“I know you do. I follow you regularly, and I really appreciate the work you do.” Cecily’s eyes seemed to see more than they should. “Are you sure you had a good time here?” she asked in a different tone.

Vivian wondered what in her expression had clued Cecily in that something was wrong. “Yes. It was exactly what we were looking for here. I’m…” For no good reason her voice cracked. “I’m glad Jeff talked me into having the retreat here. You and the entire staff were wonderful. Even Zeke was really helpful, once we figured him out.”

Cecily laughed. “I’m glad to hear that. Zeke is…” Something changed in her expression, as if a feeling hit her unexpectedly and altered what she was going to say. “Zeke is an acquired taste. But he’s also a really good man.”

“I believe it,” Vivian responded. She couldn’t help but think about Jeff.

Also a really good man.

And one she’d almost, almost had.

It hurt so much she couldn’t breathe for a minute.

Cecily didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she asked softly, “Did something happen last night?” She was a counselor by education and training, and so it was probably second nature for her to ask questions like this.

Vivian opened her mouth to deny this, to sustain her semblance that everything was normal, everything was fine.

She couldn’t.

She just couldn’t.

“Jeff looked like he’d been through a war when I talked to him this morning,” Cecily continued. “I hadn’t seen him like that all week. He’d seemed so happy. You both had.”

“We were,” Vivian admitted.

Cecily waited, as if checking to see if Vivian wanted to say any more. When she didn’t, Cecily said, “Well, I hope you both will wait until you’re home before you make any real decisions. Things don’t always feel real here—since you’re so cut off from your everyday world. If there’s a real foundation, you built it back at home. Wait until you’re home, and I think you’ll see what you really want.”

“I know what I want,” Vivian said, speaking the absolute truth to this woman she barely knew. “But he has to want it too.”

Cecily nodded, meeting her eyes with deep, clear sympathy. “Yes. That’s a hard truth about relationships, and I know it better than most.”

***

Vivian was afraid that Mel was going to want to talk the whole drive back to Raleigh, but the older woman was quieter than usual. It was a relief, although it left Vivian too much time to be trapped with only her own thoughts.

She was relieved when she finally got back to her own apartment, and she closed the front door behind her, feeling with strange intensity like she was finally safe, like she could finally close out the rest of the world.

She took a shower and changed into cotton pajamas. Then she turned on her television and sat down on her couch with her phone and a cashmere throw blanket.

She tried very hard to drown out all her chaotic thoughts and feelings for a few hours.

It usually worked—the kind of distraction that movies and social media provided—but it didn’t work this time. She kept lowering her phone, muting the television, staring at an empty spot in the air, thinking about Jeff.

Wondering what he was doing, what he was thinking, whether he was hurting like she was.

It was getting dark when she got a Skype notification on her phone.

Seeing it was her parents, she had a brief thought that maybe she wouldn’t take the call. She didn’t have the will or energy to keep her game face on this evening.

And she wasn’t sure she could stand anything else hurting her right now.

But she felt guilty for the idea of treating her parents like that, so she grabbed her tablet, since it had a bigger screen, and pulled up the Skype app.

Before she connected, she took a few deep breaths and tried to put on a smile.

“Hi there!” she said brightly.

Her mother was obviously about to return the greeting, but she stopped before a full word came out. “Vivian, honey, what’s wrong?” she asked, her face clearly reflecting concern in the video image.

“Nothing,” Vivian lied. “I’m just tired. I got back home from the retreat today, and I’ve already taken a shower and washed off all my makeup.”

She really should have checked her face before she took this call. She’d always done so before.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” her mother asked again, obviously not believing Vivian’s attempt at a light excuse.

Both her parents were staring at her through the screen, their expressions sober, clearly searching her face, waiting to hear what was wrong with her.

And everything was wrong.

Everything was so incredibly wrong.

Vivian had to twist her features to hold back a wave of emotion. “It’s… I don’t know.” Her voice broke. They would obviously know she was close to tears.

It would worry them even more.

“Tell us what happened,” her mother said.

Vivian opened her mouth and tried. She really tried. But she couldn’t get any words out.

“Is it something with Jeff? You seemed different about him than you ever had before, so I’ve been wondering about that.”

“You said the other day that you’d believe I could be serious about a man when you saw it. You said I wasn’t cut out for marriage.” The words—the truth—closed down around her like a vise. “You were probably right.”

“Well, I obviously wasn’t right if it’s hurting you like this. So you really love him?”

Vivian nodded, still incapable of speaking.

“And he loves you?”

“He said he did. But then he said he didn’t think it was going to work.” Vivian had no idea why she was admitting this. She never told anyone something so personal, so intimate.

Jeff was the only person in the world she’d ever talked to in perfect nakedness.

“And you’ve told him how you feel?” her mother asked, still frowning in reflective concern.

“I…” Vivian cleared her throat. “I’m supposed to tell him now, after he’s broken up with me? When he’s made it clear there isn’t any hope?”

“It’s the truth, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t you say it?”

Because it would humiliate her.

Because it would make her utterly helpless.

Because she just didn’t do that.

Vivian sat without speaking, trying to make her mind work, trying to breathe, trying to get her throat, her chest, her whole body from hurting like this.

Her parents were obviously thinking in silence too.

No one seemed to know what to say.

Finally Vivian heard herself saying, “I feel… I feel not good enough.” She had no idea how or why she was admitting that.

Her parents glanced at each other on the screen, and her mother’s face twisted with emotion. “Oh, honey. Do I make you feel that way?”

Vivian tried to deny this, but holding back the tears took all her focus.

“I’m so sorry, Vivian. We never would have wanted to make you feel that way. You’re so different from us—from your brother and sister. But we’re so proud of you.”

Then her father burst out, “We love you. We’ll always love you. No matter what.”

Vivian started to shake, and the tears that had been swelling in her eyes for a while now all streamed down without warning.

“Oh, honey,” her mother said, her face contorting with a matching emotion. “Please don’t cry. You’re going to make me cry too.”

Vivian grabbed a tissue and mopped up her face, trying to pull herself together so she could at least finish this conversation. “I love you both too. And it means a lot that… that you love me. But I just don’t know what to do about Jeff,” she said when she was able.

“That’s okay. I don’t think anyone really knows what to do in such situations,” her mother said. “You don’t have to know. You don’t have to do it exactly right. You don’t have to always be perfect. Just tell him the truth. Even if it doesn’t fix things, at least you will have tried.”

Vivian nodded, still wiping tears away.

Her mother was right. And what was more, her mother clearly cared about her and wanted to help. Both her parents did. They weren’t perfect parents, but they loved her. She knew without doubt that they did.

“Okay,” she managed to say. “I better do it now, or I’ll never have the courage.”

“Let us know how it goes,” her mother said. “We’ll be waiting and praying.”

Vivian closed down the Skype app and sat breathing deeply for a minute. When she realized she was trying to put back on her game face, she stopped doing it and picked up the phone.

Maybe it would be better to talk to Jeff in person, but he lived a half hour away. And she wasn’t sure her courage would hold out that long.

Instead, she pulled up his number and connected the call, listening to it ring, wondering what he was doing right now.

It rang so many times that she felt a drop in her stomach, thinking he wasn’t even going to take her call.

She was just about to hang up when his voice was suddenly on the line. “Hello?”

“Hi,” she said, her heart leaping up into her throat.

“Hi.” He sounded brusque, subdued, not at all like himself.

“You… you got home all right?” It was a stupid question, but she had to say something, and she couldn’t seem to blurt out the main thing, the most important thing.

“Yeah. You too, I guess.”

“Yeah. Mel took me.”

They were both silent for a moment.

The silence was terrible, painful, unnatural.

She couldn’t let it continue—not with Jeff, who had always seemed to understand everything about her, even without her saying it.

So she blurted it out after all. “I love you.”

The quality of the silence changed, but she wasn’t sure exactly how.

When he didn’t say anything, she said it again. “I love you, Jeff.”

She heard him take a ragged breath. “Okay.”

She blinked, her heart, her whole body, completely frozen. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“That’s what you’re saying to me?”

“I’m not sure what you expect me to say.”

She made a sound she thought was impatience, frustration. But it came out as more of a sob. “I thought the problem was that I wouldn’t say it.”

“That wasn’t the problem.”

“Then what’s the problem? Please, Jeff, just tell me what the problem is so I can fix it.”

“The problem is you’re just trying to fix it.”

She was so surprised and so hurt that she literally couldn’t breathe for a moment. “I don’t understand,” she said at last, her tone uneven, wobbly.

“The problem is you’re doing what you’ve always done—you’re trying to do the right thing, to fix the problems, to be who everyone expects you to be. And I just want to be with you for real.”

“I want that too.” she gasped. “I want that too!”

He paused for a several moments before he finally said, “I wish I could believe that.”

“You don’t believe…” She was crying again and trying to hide the sobs from her voice.

“I really wish I could,” he said again, this time in almost a whisper.

She was crying so much that it was a minute before she realized he’d hung up the phone.

She sobbed for a few minutes, completely devastated by this complete rejection from the one person she’d always trusted without reservation.

When she’d managed to calm down a little, she thought about what had happened, what he’d just said.

He didn’t believe her, and when she got past the pain and betrayal of the words, she started to see why that might be.

He knew her too well.

He knew how she’d always approached the world. With her game face on. Trying to ensure that she did everything perfectly, that everyone always loved her.

And now he thought she was doing the same thing with him.

He didn’t know.

He just didn’t know.

And she wasn’t sure how to make him know that this was different, she was different, that what she wanted more than anything was to be with him for real, to go through the world with him beside her.

That she needed him—nakedly, completely, no-holds-barred.

She realized she might not be able to fix this, but she wanted him to know the truth anyway. He was as broken as she was—in different ways but in ways that made this just as hard for him as it was for her. He deserved to know the truth at least so he wouldn’t think he’d thrown himself into another mistake, another woman who just didn’t want him.

She thought for a long time, staring down at her phone.

Finally she got an idea.

It was a crazy idea—and not something she ever would have seriously considered if she hadn’t been stretched to her breaking point.

But the more she thought about it, the more it felt like the only way to express the truth in a way Jeff might understand.

This was her, after all. Vivian Harper. The queen of fabulousness.

She glanced at herself in the mirror and saw that her face was pale and tear-streaked and completely free from makeup. She didn’t look good. At all.

She wanted to reach for her purse, for her makeup—at least put a little mascara on.

She didn’t though. She just opened her laptop and switched on the camera.

Then she started to talk.