Carolyn didn’t give me a spare moment to wallow all weekend. A silver lining, at least. And my insurance company called to tell me that the check for my burned-down house would be disbursed in thirty days or less.

Those two things mean that when I arrive at the office on Monday, I’m not a complete wreck.

My heart is hollow, wasted, empty, but my mind is clear—well, clearer, at least.

I’ll do this job for long enough to get out of it.

Adam is already at his desk when I stride past, head held high. Nobody is going to know that I got involved with my client. Nobody is going to know that he shattered my heart into a thousand tiny shards and left it there for me to sweep up.

The only saving grace is that I don’t have a meeting scheduled with him today.

The next few weeks are going to hurt like a motherfucker.

This is exactly why you don’t date clients, I think, settling into the chair behind my desk and wading into a million reminders about Christian and his lies. His name is on every document and my computer is filled with press pictures.

I spend the morning sending bright and chipper responses to charity after charity, shoving my heartbreak deep down where it can’t touch me.

It works…for a while.

By noon, I’m trying to tread water while waves of turmoil suck me under the surface.

Thank God for Carolyn.

I switch off my computer screen and breeze out past Adam. “I’ve got a lunch date,” I say to him with as much of a smile as I can force onto my face. “Be back in an hour.”

Carolyn meets me at a hole-in-the-wall Thai place halfway between the HRM offices and her boutique. The service is lightning fast. It seems like the waiter brings the food out as soon as we’ve handed back the menus. Normally, that kind of speed would be cause for suspicion—can a kitchen at any restaurant cook anything that fast?—but I’m so desperate to unload some of this heaviness from my heart and soul that I don’t care. I dig in.

“What’s on your mind, Q?” Carolyn says between bites. I haven’t said a word about Christian yet. I thought I was playing it cooler than that.

Guess not.

I search for the words as I swallow a bite of pork noodles.

“I’m not over him.” My voice comes out low and strained, and Carolyn frowns.

“It’s only been a few days. Give yourself time.”

The feelings I’ve been struggling to keep at bay all morning crash through me again.

How can I be so conflicted?

What Christian did—is still doing—is unforgivable.

I open my mouth to tell Carolyn what he did, what he revealed to me last week, but I choke on the words.

Even though he’s in the wrong, and even though I’m furious with him, I can’t bring myself to betray him.

Not entirely.

I close my mouth again and shake my head, then I lift another bite to my lips. It turns to tasteless mush in my mouth. I force myself to swallow anyway.

Carolyn puts down her fork and leans back in her chair. “What happened between you two?” She gives me a hard look, and I wait for her to put her hands in the air between us, to tell me that we don’t have to talk about this.

She doesn’t.

“He—he admitted something to me that is unforgivable, so I left. I turned my back on him and left.”

I expect Carolyn to look confused, but instead her eyes narrow, and she looks to the side, her jaw working. “So he cheated on you. God, what an asshole. That is so typical—”

It would be so convenient to let her believe it. It would be an answer everyone would accept, expect even, but I can’t let it lie. I cut her off.

“He didn’t cheat on me.”

Now confusion does settle in over her features. “Then what was it?”

This is my opening, my big chance. But I’m looking across the table at Carolyn, who has known Christian since they were teenagers. She was among his closest friends in school. If she doesn’t know already, it’s not my place to tell her.

“I can’t tell you, Care.”

She looks a little pissed off with me now.

“Seriously, Q? I’ve known him for years. What are you going to tell me that I don’t already know?”

I shake my head. “I can’t tell you. Please. Trust me on this.”

She sighs. “Fine. But Q—” she leans forward again, into the table, and picks up her fork. “You’re a mess. You had a blank look in your eyes all weekend, and now you look like you’re about to cry.”

As soon as she says it, a tear wells up in one of my eyes and squeezes out onto my eyelashes.

No. I am done crying over men. I wasted enough tears on Derek, that scumbag.

I snatch up my napkin and carefully collect the tear, then flatten the paper back over my lap.

“I’m not going to cry over him. Not anymore, Care.”

“Okay,” she says softly. She searches my face for the truth behind the words, then she looks back down at her plate.

We eat in silence for a little while longer.

“Could you blame me if I did, though?” I finally choke out. Carolyn is my best friend in the city—maybe the entire country, at this point.

“No,” she says, “I wouldn’t blame you.” When she looks at me again, her expression is a mix of concern and curiosity. “But Q—was it something you can’t look past? I know Christian is a player, but underneath all the womanizing and partying and the cocky attitude, he’s—” She pauses, biting at her lip. “I thought he was a good guy.”

Her words crack something open inside me, and then she lands the final blow.

“I’ve never seen anyone so excited to be with another person as you were about him, Q. If you’re ready for it to be over, then I respect that decision. But if you’re not? If you’re not convinced you can spend the rest of your life without him? Maybe he’s worth a second chance.”