Free Between Sisters by Kristin Hannah

alongside her thigh.
    He was right next to her, and yet she felt alone. Here they were, in bed together, with the scent of their sex still in the air, and she couldn't think of a single thing to say to him.
    She rolled over and moved closer to him. Before she quite knew what she was doing, she'd cuddled up alongside him. It was the first time she'd done something so intimate in years.
    “Tell me something about you no one knows,” she said, sliding her naked leg across his.
    He laughed softly. “I guess you live in Bizarro World, where they do everything backward, huh? First you screw my brains out,
then
you want to know me. In the bar, you were practically yawning when I told you about my family.”
    She drew away from him, pulled back into herself. “I don't like to be ordinary.” She was surprised by how okay she sounded.
    “You're not, believe me.”
    He pushed her leg aside and kissed her shoulder. The brush-off. Frankly, she preferred it without the kiss.
    “I gotta go.”
    “So, go.”
    He frowned. “Don't sound pissed off. It's not like we fell in love tonight.”
    She reached down to the floor for her Seahawks nightshirt and put it on. She was less vulnerable dressed. “You don't know me well enough to know whether I'm pissed off. And frankly, I can't imagine falling in love with someone who used the term ‘ball handling' as often as you did.”
    “Jesus.” He got out of bed and started dressing. She sat in bed, very stiffly, watching him. She wished she had a book on her nightstand. It would have been nice to start reading now.
    “If you keep bearing left, you'll find the front door.”
    His frown deepened. “Are you on medication?”
    She laughed at that.
    “Because you should be.” He started to leave—almost breaking into a run, she noticed—but at the door, he paused and turned around. “I liked you, you know.”
    Then he was gone.
    Meg heard the front door open and click shut. She finally released a heavy breath.
    It used to take weeks, months even, before men began to ask if she was medicated. Now she'd managed to completely alienate Danny—
Donny
—in a single night.
    She was losing her grip. Life seemed to be unraveling around her. Hell, she couldn't remember the last time she'd kissed a man and felt something more than desire.
    And what about loneliness
? Dr. Bloom had asked her.
Do you like that, too?
    She leaned sideways and flicked on the bedside lamp. Light fell on a framed photograph of Meghann and her sister, taken years ago.
    Meghann wondered what her sister was doing right now. Wondered if she was awake at this late hour, feeling alone and vulnerable. But she knew the answer.
    Claire had Alison. And Sam.
    Sam.
    Meghann wished she could forget the few memories she had of her sister's father. But that kind of amnesia never overtook her. Instead, Meghann remembered everything, every detail. Mostly, she remembered how much she'd wanted Sam to be her father, too. When she'd been young and hopeful, she'd thought:
Maybe we could be a family, the three of us
.
    The pipe dreams of a child. Still painful after all these years.
    Sam was
Claire's
father. He had stepped in and changed everything. Meg and Claire had nothing in common anymore.
    Claire lived in a house filled with laughter and love. She probably only dated upstanding leaders of the community. No anonymous, dissatisfying sex for Claire.
    Meghann closed her eyes, reminding herself that
this
was the life she wanted. She'd tried marriage. It had ended exactly as she'd feared—with his betrayal and her broken heart. She didn't ever want to experience that again. If sometimes she spent an hour or so in the middle of the night with an ache of longing that wouldn't quite go away, well, that was the price of independence.
    She leaned across the bed and picked up the phone. There were five numbers on her speed dialer: the office, three take-out restaurants, and her best friend, Elizabeth Shore.
    She punched in number three.
    “What's