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CHAPTER

ONE

Fable

“I just can’t do this anymore!”

I lean back in my overstuffed chair, tucking my knees underneath me as I cuddle with one of my many blankets, using it more as a shield than something to keep me warm. I feel my body tingling, which means I’m getting overwhelmed. I’m not surprised since Chad is yelling and moving my things to get to his.

I like my stuff where I put it. While it’s a mess and never in order, it’s mine, and I know where everything is. Chad, well, he’s a tornado of anger, and I worry he’ll move something. He may think I’m flinching at his words, but it’s more that I’m worried he’ll knock over one of my trinkets. He’s so mad that I’m sure, in doing so, he wouldn’t pick it up, and there is no way I can get up right now.

Nope, my blanket is keeping me safe.

I try to rub my aching feet, not to only alleviate the ache from skating all day, but also to calm my need to run and hide as my boyfriend—er, I mean ex-boyfriend—storms through my apartment to collect the many things he has here. He never “moved in,” but he’s stayed here more than he did at his mom’s. I know what you’re thinking; I’m dating a momma’s boy, but I’m not. He lives in her pool house, but my place is closer to his office. “It’s like I’m dating a robot!”

His words don’t sting. I’ve heard them time and time again in my years of dating. Some call me a robot on the fritz because I can get a bit chaotic, but then I shut down and nothing bothers me. I can disassociate like a pro. Like now. I press my lips together he gathers his books from my shelf. While I don’t think he’d steal my stuff, I keep a close eye since my books are better than his.

As I watch him, I realize that we made it longer than I thought we would, almost a whole year before he got tired of me. Everyone always does, and today is no different. I watch as he moves, his wavy blond hair brushing along his shoulders as he stuffs boxes. His brow is furrowed, and his usually light-blue eyes are dark, full of anger and annoyance.

He wants me to fight.

But I won’t.

When Chad told me he loved me, four months into our relationship, I said it back because it was expected and because I assumed one day I would. Almost a year in, I now know that’s not true, and I wish I felt bad about that. Chad is a super-successful IT guy at a Fortune 500 company here in Chicago. He is everything my parents want for me. Smart, successful, good-looking, and comes with a silver spoon hanging from his lips. “You know, sometimes it feels like you’re nothing more than an impostor.”

I shrug. Makes sense since I have impostor syndrome, and he knows this. I confided in him after my last therapy appointment. Jackfuck. I don’t give him the satisfaction of fighting back. I only watch as he moves a box toward the door. “You are tatted and pierced, but you don’t like sex? Like, come on.”

Now, I’m pissed. “My need to express myself has nothing to do with my sexuality. You knew that going in. I was honest from the top.”

“You said you thought you were asexual, not that you never liked to fuck.”

“You can’t get it up but once a month. I thought we were on the same page,” I throw back, and his eyes burn with fury. “We got along without the sex, I thought.”

His body is visibly shaking with rage as he kicks my end table that’s made of steel. He grimaces, and I fight back a smile. That’s what you get, dumbass. I don’t say that out loud. Instead, I look down at where I rub my feet and refuse to feel like shit for what he says.

I know I’m different. I know that I’m not someone anyone would ever want. Not even my parents wanted me, throwing me off to my grandma so that I didn’t get in the way of running our hometown and my mom’s need to save the forest. As a child, I was too loud, too out there, and too much to deal with, according to my well-bred parents. Even though my grandma is cut from the same cloth—old money, well-bred—she loves me. Instead of trying to change me, she nurtured who I was. She gave me skating. Showed me how to express myself with my body and how to lose myself to the ice and the music, not to my brain. Unfortunately, my parents’ words and actions have haunted me ever since I could understand them. No matter how much my grandmother loved me, I never felt like enough.

Gotta love childhood trauma, because when I allow myself, I’m kind of funny.

At thirty-six, I was diagnosed as neurodivergent. A touch of ADHD and a tiny bit of autism—you know, a fun little cocktail of mental illness that has the world telling you you’re the problem. It’s insane how I went so long thinking that when, really, my brain just works different from everyone else’s. Years of being told to sit still, not to talk, of being told I can’t eat the same thing for a week when it’s all I wanted.

I never really understood my peers growing up. I wasn’t like them. I was focused on skating and didn’t want the normal things teenagers did. So, I tried to be like them, but it was all a lie. I convinced myself that I could be them because being myself wasn’t enough. It took twenty years of therapy and a couple diagnoses to realize there wasn’t anything wrong with me. I just wasn’t meant to fit into the box society deems to be “right.”

And that’s okay.

At thirty-seven, after I had another failed relationship because he couldn’t get me to orgasm no matter what he did, my therapist suspected that I was asexual. In my ex’s defense, I can’t even get myself off regularly, so really, it’s not his fault. My therapist, though, dug deeper, and then we realized I’m not usually attracted to anyone. Not even when I was a young teen did I have the phase of boy crazies. No, I only cared about skating. As that thought crosses my mind, as I’ve been doing with my therapist, I know I’m lying.

There was one guy I felt something with. A little burning in my gut. A flutter in my chest. And with one look in those dark-brown eyes, wetness gathered between my thighs. To this day, I wonder if it was all a figment of my imagination because I don’t get aroused.

But like everyone else, he threw me to the side the moment we had our gold medals.

Wow. My boyfriend is dumping me, and I’m thinking of him ?

I may need a drink.

“I just want you to want me!” Chad yells, pulling my attention from where I’m trying to figure out which bottle of wine I want to devour. “Like I want you.”

I blink up at him. He’s so beautifully good-looking, but nothing. I wait for the tears, I wait for the guilt, anything, but nothing comes. Maybe I am a robot. With a steady voice, I tell him, “I’m sorry.”

“So, you want this to end?”

I shrug. “I think it’s been over for a while,” I admit honestly. “I care for you, but it’s obvious I’m not giving you what you need.”

“Can’t you try?” he throws back at me, and I hold his hurt gaze.

I thought I was. The need to fix my wrongs burns deep within me, but I don’t know how. I quickly go through our relationship. Our nights of reading and watching TV. Sleeping in the same bed but never touching each other. The galas, the charity functions we attended together. The holidays with his family and mine. The countless times we had sex and I never got off. Was I even there?

I realize I’ve been living on autopilot, and this isn’t how I want my life to be.

Something has to change.

I haven’t traveled since I met Chad. Maybe I need to do that again.

One thing is for sure—this is over.

I lick my lips, and my body is begging me to look away, but I don’t. “I’m sorry I wasted your time, Chad. Truly. I am.”

He shakes his head, and when tears gather in his eyes, my heart sinks. “How can you be so calm about this while I’m dying inside?”

“Inside is a storm. I just can’t let it out,” I say, quoting my dad from whenever I’d get to be too much. It is the Temu version of “Conceal, don’t feel” from Frozen . Not wanting to think of my father right now, and since Chad is already down, I won’t admit that the storm inside me has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the fact that I just wasted a year of both of our lives.

“Yeah, there always is,” he mutters, shaking his head, and I wonder why I never noticed that he always did that. Undermined by my chaotic brain. But really, what do I expect? No one but my grandma ever cared.

Okay, this is not the time for woes, Fable.

But what if it is? I am getting dumped.

Nah, still not the time.

He hesitates for a moment before he tells me, “Fine. But if you let me leave, Fable, I won’t come back.”

“I know,” I say softly, holding his gaze. “I wish you well.”

He comes toward me and leans over to kiss my lips softly, surprising me completely. It’s awkward and chaste before he pulls back to look at me. “Have a good life, Fable.”

I swallow, resisting the urge to wipe my lips free of his kiss. I give him a soft smile, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “You too.”

He shakes his head, and I know he is trying to give me time to stop him. I won’t, though, because this moment just woke me up. I can’t keep doing this. I need a new tattoo, a new piercing, or maybe I’ll pull a 2007 Britney and shave my head. Wigs could be cool. A different color each day. When the door slams shut, I realize that he’s gone, and I’m left alone.

I wait for the loneliness to seep into my soul, but it doesn’t. Instead, I truly have the urge to go shave my head.

Maybe three glasses of wine would be a better idea.

I should probably make sure that Chad took his clippers with him before I give in to the urge to shave off all my long locks.

Nope, wine is a better idea.

Before I can get up to go to my wine bar, my phone rings. I know it’s not Chad since it’s my grandmother’s ringtone. I search for my phone that fell deep into the abyss of my chair and answer quickly. “Sorry, my phone fell?—”

I can’t finish my sentence, though.

My grandmother is sobbing.

“Kitty?” I ask softly, her nickname shaky on my lips. She never let me call her Grandma, said she was too young to have a grandchild. I wasn’t a fan, but it’s all I’ve ever known. She doesn’t even let my dad call her Mom; everyone calls her Kitty. Her broken voice pulls me from my thoughts of how weird that is, and then she’s choking on a sob.

“Fable, he’s gone,” she sobs. “Grandpa passed away.”

I fall back onto the coffee table and cover my mouth.

Pain laces her words as she tells me, “They think it was a heart attack in his sleep. He said he wasn’t feeling well, kissed me, and then didn’t wake up. He’s gone. My love is gone.”

A sob I wasn’t prepared for leaves my lips, and I close my eyes as the tears burn down my skin. Phillip Winthrop didn’t have the patience for me, but he sure did show his love for me when it came to my skating. He was a man of few words, but his actions screamed his love.

God, he loved my grandma—and me, in his own way.

Could this day get any worse?

“You have to come home. I need you. Please.”

Yes. Yes, it can.

Home.

Thistlebrook, Tennessee.

A place I have refused to step back into for twenty years.

Yup, shaving my head is looking like a mighty great plan.