Page 183 of Love Arranged

“I hurt her.”

“What happened?” She jots more notes down on her tablet.

“How much time do you have?”

She checks her watch. “I’m all yours for another twenty minutes.”

I give Doctor Martin a quick rundown of my life, from my parents being accidentally killed to me running for mayor against the man who took their lives. I explain how Lily still doesn’t know because I have never figured out the best way to tell her, and now it might be too late.

“What do you mean by it beingtoo late?” she asks.

“She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Because you plan on moving away?”

I hesitate before saying, “Yes. Probably.” I run a shaky hand through my hair. “I’m still deciding, but it’s looking that way.”

“And if you do leave, she won’t move with you?”

I force a laugh. “No, and I wouldn’t want her to. Lake Wisteria is everything to her.”

“And what does Lake Wisteria mean to you?”

I pause, because shit. It feels like a far more nuanced question than I originally thought, so I hit her with a simple “I don’t know.”

I’m tired of that being my go-to response as of late. I used to be confident, but now I feel…

Lost.

Doctor Martin jots some more notes down. “Why don’t you think about it over the week and we pick back up with it next time?”

“Actually…could we meet twice a week? I need to work through my shit andfast.”

Her lips curl at the corners as she checks her calendar. “How does Friday at ten a.m. sound?”

I pull out my phone and add the session to mine. “I’ll see you then.”

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The paper a campaign volunteer handed me must be a joke because how can the latest polls look likethis?

I don’t want to believe it, but right there on the front page of today’s edition of theWisteria Weeklynewspaper is a picture of Trevor and me from the debate, along with a short tagline announcing how there was no real winner.

I couldn’t be happier about the polls included at the bottom of the front page because they’re the best numbers I’ve seen yet.

Sure, I may not be in the lead, but we aretied, whichis all the encouragement my team needs to keep pushing. We have to get out there and knock on more doors, visit town halls and attend PTA meetings.

I need to increase my overall appearances and talk to more people, giving myself as many opportunities as possible to refute Trevor’s points from the debate.

“Holy shit.” I drop the paper and shut my eyes.

This is really happening.

I want to share the news with Lily, so I call her without thinking twice about it.

“Is everything okay?” she asks with zero inflection.

I miss the way she used to answer my calls. She never shielded her emotions like this, and I took that generosity for granted.

“Lorenzo?” There’s that same flat tone again, reminding me once more how much I hurt her.