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I had to let him go. “Enjoy your family.”

“Tammy?”

“Yeah?”

“Consider yourself on paid sick leave until otherwise cleared.”

I frowned. “But I’m not sick.” Media coverage couldn’t be considered sick, right? Unless it was sick in the head.

“You have a knife wound in your arm, do you not?”

Well, there was that.

“Come back when you feel it’s time,” he said over the sound of a child’s giggles. “We’ll hold your place for you.”

I thanked him, and we exchanged our goodbyes before hanging up, but I barely heard myself. Because all I could think was that Rob saying we’ll hold your place for you might be the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.

Because to have a place, somewhere I belonged . . .

It was what I’d always wanted.

“Why are you crying?”

I spun, not having heard Talbot come out.

“Why’d you sleep in the chair again?” I countered.

His lips twitched. “A question for a question?”

“Something like that,” I murmured, wiping the tears that had finally emerged after all the stinging.

“I slept in the chair because I wanted to sleep in the bed.”

I’d been studying the clouds again—a boa constrictor was floating over the hills—but his words brought my gaze back down. “What are you talking about?”

“I like you, Tammy,” he murmured, closing the distance between us and stroking a finger down my cheek. “A lot.”

“What does that have to do with you sleeping in a chair?”

“Everything.”

That made no sense, and yet, it made perfect sense.

“I’m crying because, like a stupid idiot, I’ve finally realized that spending my life trying to find my value in everyone else—hoping they would see something I couldn’t even see when I looked in the mirror—was a fucking waste of time.” I threw my hands up, paced across the enclosed space. “It’s so fucking lame because I’ve always wanted to belong, to be part of something, but I’ve never felt that I belonged, even to myself. And without that, how could I possibly hope to fit in anywhere else?”

More hot tears escaped, ones prompted by my past, my failures, my never finding what I wanted in other people. Because I had a giant hole inside me that would never be filled.

I was the key all along.

I lifted my chin, my gaze on the sky overhead. “It started with me,” I whispered. “And it had to end with me.”

I needed to fill that hole first.

I had to be the one, otherwise all the other pieces given to me by the wonderful people in my life—Maggie and Aaron, Rob and his wife, Melissa . . . Talbot—they would continue flowing out of me like sand flowing through an hourglass, drifting away into a useless pile that would then flow out all over again when the hourglass was turned over.

“My dad didn’t give me what I needed after my mom died,” I said, knowing Tal would hear it, knowing that he needed to hear it. “I searched for it in my brother, in other men, in my ex-husband, but it’s in me. I’m the one who needs to find it.”

A long stretch of quiet.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said, standing beside me. “This isn’t me trying to take away from what you’re saying, not at all. I just . . . I spent a long time trying to find my worth in other people, and that never felt good. It never felt like I could be completely happy because I was trying to absorb everyone else’s feelings for me, instead of understanding my own.”

Yes.

That.

I turned my head, studied his profile. “How did you find it in yourself?”

“Truth?” he asked, gold eyes coming to mine.

“Yes.” I held his gaze. “Always the truth.”

Emotion flickered across his face. “I can do that.”

“Well?” I nudged his side with my elbow when he didn’t immediately tell me. “What’s that truth?” I asked.

“The truth is I’m still working on it,” he said.

Which made me feel a whole lot less like a failure. “Yeah?”

He smiled that Hollywood smile, only this one had a touch of something I hadn’t seen in his films, something that I was hoping very much was only for me. “Yeah.” My lips turned up, and I focused back on the clouds.

An anteater. Another elephant. Or maybe a goose with a few extra feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Finding animals in the clouds,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Well, that and trying to be happy and completely content with myself.”

“So, small things.”

I laughed.

“Come here.”

“Where’s here?” I asked suspiciously.

“What’s it with you glaring at me in gardens?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said innocently. “I’m just looking at four-footed geese transforming into adorable corgis.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” he said. “That isn’t a corgi. It’s a giraffe.”

I gasped. “No freaking way. Look, there’s her adorable heart-shaped butt and the long body with short legs.”

Teasing gold eyes on mine. “I don’t know what sky you’re looking at—”

“Excuse me—”

He kissed me, hard and fierce and laced with affection.

And then I was in Talbot’s arms, my back to his chest, his hands resting on my waist. “Tell me again where your mysterious corgi is,” he murmured, the words a gentle whisper in my ear, his voice a heating pad on my stomach, easing the heavy pains on my insides. “I promise I won’t be distracted looking at your ass again or be doing my level best to annoy you so you send those sexy, dark looks my way once more.”

“You what?”

He nipped my earlobe. “You’re glaring again.”

“You can’t even see my face.”

“But I see you, beautiful. I. See. You.” Another nip. “And your beautiful glares.”

I started laughing. He joined in.

And then I found a sense of belonging.

Only this time, it wasn’t just from him, from another person, from his hold and his words and his body.

This time it was from me, too.

And that was pretty fucking great.

Chapter Nineteen

Talbot

“What’s a role you’ve taken that you wish you hadn’t?”

I glanced over at Tammy, her arms resting over the edge of the hot tub. She was wearing a sports bra and a