After I Saved Him My CEO Said We Were Strangers Chapter 17
He was right.
I didn’t love him.
All those years of loving Reed felt like they had burned up everything I had to give.
What I had left was composure, boundaries, and a sharp instinct for self-preservation.
That was the most important lesson Reed had ever taught me.
After that, I dated a doctor, an architect, and a university professor.
They were all good, decent men.
But every time a relationship reached a certain point—the point where the other person started talking seriously about the future, started turning “you” and “I” into “we”—I would pull away.
I never even felt a flicker of regret.
Slowly, I realized I preferred being alone.
Weekends at the Getty. Hikes in the Santa Monica mountains. Curling up on the couch and reading all day.
That was a good life.
As the years passed, the people around me all said I had changed.
Megan, my old coworker from Blake Group, came to Los Angeles on a business trip and met me for dinner. She stared at me for a long time.
“You seem so much lighter now.”
“You used to be wound so tight, like you were always chasing something.”
I smiled.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
People always say love makes you glow.
But in the two years I was with Reed, no one had ever said anything like that to me.
Maybe I hadn’t been happy at all back then.