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“It wasn’t the work, Everly. It wasn’t the job itself. That was fine. It was everything else. No one would talk to me because they were afraid I’d snitch on them to my father, and everyone said yes to anything I said because they were afraid of me. It was miserable. I felt like I was in a cage every day and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t wake up and do one more minute, let alone the rest of my life. And I know, I know that people would say that I’m just a spoiled little rich girl with rich girl problems, but I didn’t want that life anymore.” She’d been pacing around in a circle as she spoke and I let her get it all out.

“I didn’t want that life anymore,” she said, letting out a frustrated breath.

“I know exactly what you mean, and it doesn’t make you a bad person. You don’t have to live the life that was planned for you and that doesn’t make you a bad person. You can say ‘fuck it’ and do what you want.”

Ryan let out a laugh. “What the fuck do I want, though?”

I held my spare hand out to her. “Let’s figure it out.”

“You should talk to Honor,” I told her a while later as we made dinner together.

“Should I?” she said as she sliced peaches for a salad. She’d put some steak on the grill and was going to add the peaches to sear them. I was in charge of assembling the arugula and crumbling the bleu cheese on top, which was the easiest part of the job, but I wasn’t complaining. Ryan on the grill was sexy as hell.

“Yeah. Her mom had lots of plans for her and she followed them, like you, until she couldn’t take it anymore,” I said, pouring the washed arugula from the salad spinner into a huge bowl.

“You mean when she met Layne?” Ryan said, taking the peaches and heading out to the grill. I followed her.

“Layne was the catalyst, but something else would have happened eventually. You had your own catalyst,” I said.

Ryan snorted as she placed the peaches on the grill. “Layne told you about my ex, didn’t she?”

“She might have mentioned it,” I said, sitting in one of the comfy chairs.

Ryan set her tongs down and sat next to me.

“My parents kind of set us up, and I resisted at first, but she was beautiful and I thought we clicked. Both our families put a massive amount of pressure on us, and it just sort of happened. Before I knew it, we were engaged and planning the wedding of the century. One night, about two weeks before the wedding, she came to me in tears and told me that she couldn’t go through with it. I was completely in shock, but I think I took it better than my parents. They were devastated and begged me to do what I could to get her back. I tried, but she had already moved on. She eloped with one of our friends a few months later, and the day after I found out, I quit my job.”

“That fucking sucks,” I said, and she let out a little laugh.

“It did fucking suck. The worst part is that I don’t know if I really even loved her. We lived together, but we barely talked. She spent so much time at work or doing other things. We didn’t do things together. We definitely didn’t talk about anything serious. Now I don’t even know what was keeping us together.”

Ryan pulled the food off the grill and we assembled the salad.

“How am I doing at scattering the cheese crumbles?” I asked.

“Amazing,” Ryan said, stifling a laugh. “Excellent scattering. Almost too good to eat.”

“Almost,” I said.

We sat down to eat, and Ryan poured me some wine.

“This is really expensive wine, isn’t it?” I asked.

“It came with the house. There’s a wine cellar in the basement,” she said.

“Of course there is,” I said. “This house has wine cellar energy.”

Ryan snorted. “I can get a different house if you don’t like this one.”

“Ryan,” I said. “You don’t have to get a different house for me. Get one if you want to.”

“I might. Maybe I’ll rent a new one each week and find out what I like.” She said it so nonchalantly.

“Go for it,” I said. “Why not?”

“You’re right,” she said. “Did you have anything in particular you wanted to do tomorrow?”

“Other than sex, I’m open for anything,” I said.