Free Finding Forever by Christina C Jones Page B

How many times have you come in here, talking to me about how frustrating it was when your program gave you matches that just didn’t feel right to you?”
    “I don’t know. Dozens, maybe,” I admitted.
    “Exactly. So I don’t care about what the program said, or any of this extra stuff you’re trying to tell me. Answer my question. Did Rafael feel right to you?”
    I swallowed hard before I responded, with a whispered “No.”
    “Then why , Victoria? I could see sleeping with him, but you saw fit to marry this man. I left you alone about it before because that was your husband, but I want you to make me understand why you made that decision.”
    With my elbows on the counter, I rested my chin in my hands. I wasn’t sure I knew for myself why I had married Rafael. Yes, I loved him. I wasn’t so naive that I thought love was the only thing you needed to make a relationship work, but at least we — well, I — had that. And good times, followed by good sex, whenever he bothered to give me his attention. But that was part of the problem right there, I had to bother him to get what a man who loved me should have been willing to give freely. Then again, who could blame him? I liked to have fun, but I wasn’t exciting , or wild, or crazy like the other young celebrities Rafael met on a daily basis. I’d known I couldn’t compete with his glitzy lifestyle from the beginning, but that’s part of what had attracted me to him. I was bored. And lonely. God, I was so lonely.
    “Timing.” I answered. The week before, or the week after… maybe I wouldn’t have given a second thought to turning Rafael down, as I did with other clients who tried to hit on me. However, that particular week— the day before he came in, actually— I’d gotten one of the worst phone calls I’d ever had to endure. One of my first clients, the first ones to trust me, passed away. The wife was the one who called to tell me, through heart-wrenching sobs, that her husband, who she’d only had three short years with, had been in an accident he didn’t make it survive. It was devastating news, and my heart broke for her and their child, but in the back of my mind, all I could think about was the fact that I would never know the kind of grief she was feeling, because I’d never known that kind of love. What kind of crazy ass person is jealous of someone’s bereavement? That made me feel hopeless, and scared, and… desperate.
    “You’re telling me Rafael was in the right place at the right time?”
    I shrugged. “Basically. I was in the right frame of mind to be completely reckless. If it weren’t him… it would have been the same disaster with someone else. That’s what my entire dating life has been, a series of disasters. I’m over it.”
    “So you … give up?”
    Turning to her, I nodded my head. “Yep. I give up.”
    I was relieved when the timer went off on the oven, and like clockwork, I heard my dad and sister’s voices entering the front door.
    “Hey,” Lynne said, gently grabbing my hand as I stood. “I know you’re a grown woman now Victoria, but I want you to listen to me, okay?” When I nodded, she continued. “I was a lot like you, Sugar. When your daddy came along, a man was the last thing I was worried about. I had just escaped Mel’s daddy, and I was happy my little girl and I were alive. My heart was closed up like a fist, to everybody except your sister, but your daddy tried his damndest to pry his way in. I almost missed a good thing because I wouldn’t open my heart. You’re still hurting, Sugar, I get it. But you can’t walk around all locked up and expect to have a happy life. That’s not how it works.”
    I gave her a small smile. “Thanks for the advice, Lynne.”
    She shook her head, knowing I was going to lock her words away with the rest of the ‘shit parents say’ files. “You’ll remember it when you’re ready. But in the meantime… help me feed your greedy