When the door shut behind him, Yvette sank onto the bed. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer.

This was wrong. This was all wrong.

Nothing was going according to plan. He wasn’t supposed to love her. He shouldn’t love her.

Why not?

Because that wasn’t what she wanted. He wasn’t what she wanted.

Wasn’t he?

She hated that voice, and she hated herself. In that moment, she barely recognized herself. Her gaze focused on her legs. These skinny jean-clad legs that couldn’t seem to hold her up any longer. She didn’t recognize these legs.

Her gaze shifted to her hands. These stupid, trembling hands. She held them up, realizing distantly that she was in shock. That had to be why she felt like she was watching herself from afar. Maybe that was why a sick feeling had taken over her stomach and was spreading through her making her feel weak and disgusting.

Her hands shook more as she held them in front of her as if that little act required too much strength. These were not her hands.

Darren had been right about her artwork. There was strength there. And vulnerability. There was strength in vulnerability. She’d always understood that with her painting. Each time these hands had started on a new work it was like slicing open a vein… in a good way. It was healing and cathartic, exposing her inner self to the world through the paint, through the process. It made her feel strong, powerful.

So what the hell had happened to her? She found herself asking that of her hands, as if these shaking, trembling appendages might have the answer.

Her chest hurt. It ached. No, that was her heart.

She shook her head. She had to get a grip. This was not like her. She was not this person.

Then who was she?

Burying her face in her hands, she tried to evade the question, but it was no use. It was a bizarre sensation to feel years’ worth of walls come tumbling down around her. All that was left was questions.

Who was she?

She wished she could block out Darren’s voice but he’d gotten inside her skull. Sarah. It was just a name, so why had it hurt so badly to hear it from his lips? At what point had she started hiding behind her new name and her new clothes and her new hair color and her new image as a player?

And yes, that was exactly what she’d become. She’d flitted from one guy to the next, always crying and blaming them when they did some completely expected dickhole move like dump her via text. But she’d always known it was coming.

She wanted it to come even though it stung.

Why? Because a sting to her pride was better than having her heart stabbed and crushed and broken.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she tried to get warm by burrowing under the covers. But it was no use, this shaking wasn’t a chill, it was the truth finally hitting home. It was years’ worth of denial giving way and revealing the weak idiot she’d been hiding from herself.

A knock on her door broke through her epic wallow session. “Come in.”

Kat poked her head in and her eyes widened with panic at the sight of her. She must have looked as bad as she felt.

Her friend rushed over and pressed a hand to her forehead. “Oh, honey, are you all right? Are you sick?”

She nodded. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Kat’s forehead creased in obvious confusion. “You don’t know? Do you feel sick?”

Yvette could feel her lower lip trembling under the weight of Kat’s motherly, concerned gaze. Tugging on her friend, she made Kat sit beside her so she could burrow her face against her side.

The sobs came hard and they wracked her body.

She’d cried a lot over the years, but usually when she was drunk and upset over something stupid. Like some asshole standing her up. But in those cases the asshole never actually meant anything to her.

Those tears were nothing compared to this…this tidal wave. That’s what it was. A tsunami of grief.

Kat held her close, shushing and murmuring words of comfort that barely made it through her self-imposed cave of crying.

When the sobs passed and she was weakened but done, Kat gently removed herself from her death grip and helped her into a sitting position. Only after she’d force-fed her some of the coffee and pastries that Darren had left did she even try to get her to talk.

“Okay, what’s going on? Darren came to our room and said I should check on you but he wouldn’t tell me why.” Kat looked so concerned, Yvette felt a stab of guilt.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m sorry for losing it like that.”

Kat raised one brow, her lips tugging up in amusement. “No offense, but you are so not fine.” She crossed her legs on Yvette’s bed and sat up straight. “I am not moving from this room until you talk about it.”

Yvette sighed, making flaky croissant crust flutter out of her mouth in a super attractive way. What the hell? She had to own up to her crap eventually, might as well do it with the most supportive sounding board in the world at her side.

So Yvette did what she’d successfully avoided doing for roughly ten years. She took a good look at herself, she opened her mouth…and she opened a vein.

In a blubbery voice, it all came out. Kat listened patiently as she started from the beginning, telling her all about the high school boyfriend. Yeah, that’s right. This story went that far back.

It wasn’t a new story, or even a particularly interesting one. Girl likes boy, girl falls in love, girl thinks she’s found the love of her life until she finds out that he’d been cheating on her for years with just about every skanky ho in town.

Yeah. Super awesome story.

Kat listened with varying degrees of empathy and anger on her behalf. With a sniffle, Yvette explained her logic all those years ago when she was just a freshman in college and had decided to reinvent herself. Sure, she’d taken it a step further than most by adopting a new name in addition to a new look and a new attitude, but reinventing oneself in college wasn’t exactly groundbreaking stuff.

“That’s totally normal,” Kat said, as if to prove her point. “Starting fresh, forging a new identity. I think we all did that to one extent or another.”

Yvette nodded and accepted a tissue that Kat handed her. It was roughly the tenth one to join the stack of wadded up, used tissues on her nightstand. “Yeah, it is normal. But I think I started up some unhealthy patterns.” Yvette raised one brow and she sniffed in indignation at Kat’s obvious shock. “What? I read self-help books.”

Kat looked like she was holding in a laugh but she nodded encouragingly. “What kind of unhealthy patterns?”

Yvette was certain her friend already knew but she needed to say it aloud. She had to own it. “I started separating sex from love,” she said, feeling for all the world like she was on some lame reality show about interventions. In her case it would be a player intervention as opposed to a drug intervention, but still, the premise was still the same.

She made a mental note to pitch the TV show idea to Caleb. He was always threatening to leave acting to produce and she might just have a hit on her hands.

Kat interrupted her brainstorming session. “And?”

Yvette licked her lips as the full force of her cowardice hit her. “I think I’ve been dating all the wrong men because I’m afraid of falling in love again. I’m afraid of getting hurt again.”

Kat nodded but she wasn’t done. It was all coming out whether she wanted to hear it or not.

“I sleep with guys who I know won’t get too close. They can’t hurt me.”

Kat made a murmuring sound of understanding, even though Yvette was pretty sure she was more messed up than all of her friends put together. She’d put all her courage, all her strength into her career and her artwork. In that world she never let rejection stop her—and as an artist, she’d suffered more than her fair share of rejection.

But in her love life? She’d made sure that no one could ever really reject her. Oh sure, guys might dump her but she didn’t care. Not really. They were only capable of hurting her pride.

“I’m such a wuss,” she moaned.

Kat pulled her in for a hug. “You’re not a wuss, you were just doing what you needed to do to protect yourself.”

And in doing so, she drove away any chance of love. Just like she drove Darren away.

I’ll always come back.

She started tearing up all over again as his words struck her again. She didn’t deserve him. He was too nice, too good, too…everything she was not. He was strong enough to fight for her, to keep coming back even when she pushed and pushed.

Even when she’d tried to use sex as a weapon.

God, she was messed up.

“I think I screwed up,” she whispered.

When she pulled back from Kat’s hug, her friend pushed her hair out of her eyes. “With Darren?”

She nodded.

Kat gave her a small smile. “Sweetie, I don’t think that’s possible. He loves you. It’s totally obvious that he’d do anything for you.”

Even after admitting to all her fears, that didn’t stop her stomach from jumping into her chest at the use of the L-word again. “I don’t know if I deserve him.”

And there it was. The truth. He was a good guy. A nice guy. A guy who hadn’t spent the past decade sleeping with anything that moved just to keep his heart intact. A guy who had his life together and knew what he wanted.

And he wanted her.

She shook her head at the thought. But he deserved better!

Then she would be better.

That thought scared the crap out of her, but she clung to it. She couldn’t keep going on as she had been. Not now that her eyes were open to her ridiculous cowardly coping mechanisms. There was no going back to being blind to her old ways.

Because when all was said and done, she did want love in her life. She wanted what Kat had, even though the thought of it made her want to hide under a bed.

Falling in love meant being vulnerable, it meant being exposed, it meant leaving herself open to having her heart broken again. But she was older and stronger now. She was a grown woman, damn it. If the worst happened and her heart was broken, she’d be crushed, yes, but she’d survive. She’d have Kat and Caleb to lean on and her art to help her heal.

And that was the worst possible scenario.

The best possible scenario was almost too painfully positive to think about. She could be happy. Really and truly happy in a healthy relationship that made her try harder, that expected more from her then she’d ever given before, but that also gave her so much more in return.

If a relationship with Darren was anything like the time they’d spent together so far, then it would be worth the risk of pain. They might not have had a lot of time together, but every second of it had been precious. It had been real. She’d felt alive in a way she’d never known she could.

Her heart picked up its pace just thinking about the way she felt around him. Like she’d woken from a dream world. No, not a dream world, a superficial world. Her life had become tediously superficial outside of her art and her friendships. Her love life for the past ten years had basically been the romance equivalent of an amusement park. All fast rides and fun diversions but at the end, she left with some crappy souvenirs and a vaguely queasy feeling from the fried food and roller coasters.

She was ready for more. She was ready for different. She was ready for real.

Her mind flashed on a certain serious face with adorably dorky glasses. She was ready for Darren.

Or at least, she hoped she was for both their sakes, because he deserved the best. And while she might not be the best just yet, she was willing to try.

That had to be enough for now, she supposed.

Kat was watching her carefully, probably afraid she was going to start wailing like a banshee again. When Yvette met her gaze, her friend smiled and pushed back her hair again. “So what now, Yve?”

She sniffled. “Sarah,” she said. “I think it’s time you guys start calling me Sarah.”

Sarah was everything she’d never wanted to be when she first came to college in the big city. She’d been the naïve idiot, the fool who’d been taken advantage of and duped by a world-class player. She was the girl who’d sworn off love, choosing to be the player rather than the played.

But not anymore.

She looked up at Kat. “Do you think you can give me a ride into town? I need to see Darren, and it can’t wait.”

Kat nodded. “Of course.” Then her eyes flickered over her. “But Sarah? There’s no way in hell I’m letting you out of this lodge looking like you do.”

She let out a hiccup of a laugh. “That bad, huh?”

Kat grimaced. “Yeah. That bad.”