Page 132 of Pinch of Love
The man who couldn’t love ended up with a woman who needed love more than anything.
Maybe that was the problem.
I knew I wasn’t easy to love, or maybe it was that I didn’t believe I should be loved.
If my own parents couldn’t find it in their hearts to love me, why would a total stranger fall for me?
I nodded to myself, realizing that was precisely it. After all the schooling, all the therapy, all the helping others, I finally realized I didn’t deserve to be loved.
Or at least that was what I had thought.
Until Cash.
And the thought downright scared me. I never had to give anything to Rob because he didn’t want it. He didn’t want to listen to my problems or hear about my feelings.
Cash did.
Whenever I opened my mouth, Cash dropped everything and acted like what I had to say was the most important thing in the world.
It wasn’t.
But he believed it was.
My heart felt like it was going to burst.
How had I not seen this until now?
I looked for emotionally unavailable, bordering on sociopathic, men who wouldn’t hear me, who wouldn’t do anything but use me to make themselves feel better.
Was that what I did to Cash?
He’d been vulnerable with me, let me see the sad with the happy. And I’d walked away.
My shoulders deflated.
Who was I kidding?
Our relationship felt alarmingly close to something that could last forever, and it had barely begun.
“And I threw it away.”
“Pardon me?” the driver asked.
“Oh, sorry. Just talking to myself.”
Our time together had been beautiful.
So why make it ugly?
“I hate to do this,” I said to the driver, “but can we turn around?”
The woman winked at me in the rearview mirror and nodded. “Absolutely. Where are we headed?”
I glanced down at my phone and drew a deep breath in and gave her the address.
The one thing I hoped for more than anything was that I didn’t screw it up forever.
But if I did, at least I knew why, and I was ready to make a change from within.