And Thomas? He was never happy. He used to laugh, make jokes, and tell funny stories—but that night, as I lay next to him in that fourth-floor walk-up studio where our bed was a mattress on the floor, I realized that his humor always had a slant to it, a dark edge or a mean vibe.

He never thought anything good about anything. There was always an angle, someone wanted something from him, or someone was going to try to screw him over for something, or he wasn’t going to be able to get something done because someone always had something more. More money, more power, more connections. Stripped down to the naked truth, he was mean.

I used to think abuse was someone getting hit.

Now I know it’s anything that makes you double over with pain, that makes you question anything and everything about yourself that you knew to be true. It’s anything that tells you that you’re only good if . . .

I felt a drop of water splash onto the back of my hand, and I realized that while telling this story, which I rarely shared with anyone, my eyes had filled with tears. Shocked, I looked up to see Chad and Logan watching me, their own eyes filled with sympathy.

“I’m so sorry.” I sniffed, snatching up a napkin and wiping my face. “I don’t know what happened there. Truly, I didn’t mean to go on so.”

“You didn’t go on, it was—”

“Seriously, I’m so sorry, I never talk about that stuff, it’s ancient history.” I hurried on, dabbing at my nose, horrified to find that it was running. What the hell was I doing, spilling my guts to two men I just met?

“Natalie.” Logan covered my hand with his. “Stop.”

I looked up at him through still-teary eyes, shaking my head. “I should have never—”

“Shut the hell up and let two gorgeous men hug you,” Chad interrupted, no nonsense. Surprised, I laughed, still wiping my face and knowing I must look a fright.

But I let them hug me. And I realized that sometimes strangers can make for the best company ever.

When Chad and Logan dropped me off at Roxie’s a while later, I felt wiped out. Emotionally drained. Wasted.

I hated revisiting that stuff, so I don’t know why it all came out today in a blubbery mess in front of two people I barely knew.

I thought about Thomas from time to time, of course. Not intentionally, but sometimes he’d flash across my brain when something about old New York architecture would come up, or someone would be talking about their dissertation.

Or the time I was sitting in a booth behind some couple and the guy started telling the girl that she’d had enough to eat and she shouldn’t get dessert, and by the way my mother is coming over for dinner next weekend and don’t you think it’s time you learned how to make a decent coffee cake?

That time was bad. I had to leave the table to hide out in the bathroom for a few minutes while I got the shaking under control, and then I had to leave the restaurant entirely when I poured a pitcher of water over that asshole’s head and was asked to leave by the manager.

But not before I gave the girl all the cash I had in my wallet and my card, and told her to call me if she needed a place to stay for the night.

She never called. I knew she wouldn’t. But I was glad I gave it to her.

I stood outside on Roxie’s porch now, watching the taillights of Chad’s car disappear into the early evening, and took a moment to banish all bad thoughts from my head. I was good at it by now; visualization was the key. I could take about ten deep, cleansing breaths, visualize Thomas’s rotten stupid stinking face, and poof! Gone.

I took the breaths. Poof. I opened the front door and let myself in.

“Yo. Rox,” I called out, climbing the stairs two at a time. All bad thoughts gone, I was already moving on to the night ahead and seeing my best friend.

She was just emerging from the bathroom clad in a towel, with a plume of steam following her. “Hey, girl, thanks for understanding about tonight. Sorry you had to take a cab over.”

“No worries; what happened? Your texts were strange, to say the least. Something about wedding velvet?”

“Kind of. If I didn’t think saying the phrase there was a cake emergency sounded as ridiculous as I think it does, I’d tell you about how my afternoon went.”

“There was an actual cake emergency?”

She nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Oleson’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. She always bakes for him—has baked for him each anniversary for the other forty-nine. But this afternoon her oven quit on her and she needed a red velvet cake like they had on their wedding day. What was I going to do?”

“You’re a good egg, Roxie. You’re also dripping, by the way.”

She looked down at the puddle that was forming and headed into her bedroom. “Come in, I just need to dry my hair and I’ll be ready to hit the town!”

“I feel like if we actually hit the town, Bailey Falls may never recover.” I snorted, taking a running leap at her bed, displacing pillows right and left.

Roxie slipped into a robe and started combing out her hair. “Your skin looks fantastic. I think it’s the mountain air. Or maybe the amazing water. Or it could be the altitude.”

“Yeah?” I preened, smoothing my fingers over my cheeks. “That’s funny, Olga told me the same thing the other day.”

“Who’s Olga?”

“Esthetician. She’s been sucking my pores for the last five years and she said there was, and this is a direct quote, a sixty-six percent reduction in the amount of schmutz in my pores.”

“Schmutz?”