Stripped Bare (Stripped #1)(79)

“That's completely unfair,” I muttered.

Except, it was entirely true. And it stung. I could feel the sharpness of the truth as it crawled across my skin, forcing the hair on my arms to stand on end.

“Not to mention there has to be something wrong with him because he's so perfect.” She was on a roll. “I mean, come on. Hot, successful, wealthy, good in bed? He has to be a serial cheater or something equally outrageous because it's impossible to find a guy who is all of the above and faithful and committed.”

I squirmed.

“So, to sum up, yes. That's the excuse she's using because she's not willing to delve into herself and see all the shit she's making up inside her head to justify her irrational fear of relationships.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. See, that was the problem with a lifelong best friend. You couldn't hide shit from them.

She'd basically just ripped my soul out of my body, flipped through it like a book, and gave a very public reading.

And hearing it out loud, from someone else, even without judgment in their tone? How stupid did it sound? How completely and utterly irrational was my brain?

“It's a viable excuse,” I said weakly. “It's a long-ish distance relationship.”

“It's a bullshit excuse,” Lucie responded, matter-of-factly.

The evidence apparently supported that. I didn't really have another argument to make. Allie had summed up everything I'd been thinking in the past two weeks in less than five minutes, completely ripping my thought processes apart.

Jaz and Lucie had helped there too. Bitches.

“Now I'm not saying it is,” Allie said, twirling her wine glass between her finger and thumb. “In a roundabout way, it makes sense.”

“Don't encourage her!” Jaz nudged her.

I glared.

Allie rolled her eyes and flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder. “West is a big risk. Long distance relationships require almost more work than ones where you're together. I'm pretty sure that when Joe went away for work for a month last year it was the hardest time in our relationship, and we currently have Family World War One being hosted right here in San Diego. So, yeah. He's a risk, and the dedication they'd both need is insanely crazy.”

“Thank you.” Finally. She was seeing it from my side.

“But, Mia...” She sighed and looked at me. “I don't think it matters. I think that if you really want him, that stuff won't matter. It's only time, and time flies. If two people are meant to be together, neither time nor distance will keep them apart. If two people are meant to be together, then they will be, no matter what distractions or issues or disagreements rock their world. I love you, and I know you're beating yourself up something mad right now, but, babe, he's right when he says you need to think.”

Jaz glanced at her then leaned forward, more serious than I'd maybe ever seen her. “Don't think whether or not you can do it. Don't think about how badly you want him or how hard it'll be to make it work. That won't give you the answers you need.”

“She's right,” Lucie added, her tone gentle and soothing. “You need to think about how you'll feel if you don't try. You need to think about how West makes you feel, and if you can live without feeling that way ever again. If you can, then you can't do it. But if you think even a day without it will be too hard... Then you might have to take the risk.”

I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth and looked down at my wine glass as they paused just a second before they changed the subject to Allie and her family, making her groan in exasperation. The pink alcohol swirled as I twisted it, desperately trying to occupy my hands. There was too much sense in what they'd just said, and I both loved and hated them for making sense of the situation when I couldn't.

That was the sign of the best friends a girl could have. They could make sense of every mess in your life in less time than it'd take you to get into the mess, and they'd sure as hell give you the answers you needed, even if you didn't think you had any questions.

They'd given me the answers I didn't know I needed, but the new problem was that I now had more questions than I knew what to do with. It wasn't even that I had a lot, it was that the questions I had to answer were bigger and more important than I'd thought.

How did West make me feel?

That was an easy one—like everything. He had the craziest power over my emotions and my body, able to set me alive with only the barest glance. His touch burned me in the best way, exciting me and soothing me simultaneously. Each time he held me it felt like I could fly, and every kiss had me drowning, losing myself within the beautiful chaos that we were.

He made me feel like I was the most beautiful—and only—girl in the world. Like I was the center of my own universe and the entirety of his.

And he did it all without trying. He only had to be. It was thrilling and terrifying and completely insane, but it was, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I couldn't change it or stop it. I could only live it and breathe it and allow myself to be consumed by everything that he was.

He consumed me even when I didn't allow it.

If we weren't meant to be, why did we feel so good? Why did my fingers fit perfectly between his? Why did my face tuck into his neck just right?