Manhattan’s maze of one-way streets forces me to take a wide detour. Waiting at a red light that’s so long I swear it must be broken, I drum my fingers on the steering wheel, looking around the street just to pass the time. I don’t often come to this precise part of town. Although . . .

Huh, that tea shop looks familiar.

A slow smile uncurls on my lips. It’s the place where I bought Noah our Japanese teapot as a housewarming gift. I still remember that night, the first in our new shared penthouse. The teapot was a peace offering. An acknowledgment that we weren’t in harmony yet, but we could get there if we tried—and I was willing to try.

God, and I’d been so nervous that night. Moving into a shiny new penthouse apartment with a man as gorgeous and sexy and bold as Noah. When I remember the careful way he agreed to go slow and nurtured a tender make-out session between us, it seems almost comical.

Warmth floods my chest and I have to laugh out loud. I kept totally missing the picture, so fate had to smack me in the face with it. It’s almost ironic that such a simple coincidence tells me what I should have realized so long ago.

I’m in love with Noah.

Somewhere between our shared childhoods and the first time we slept together, I fell hard for that wonderful, maddening, passionate man, with no hope of ever coming back. And even when I was so angry at Noah I could spit, I was still in love with him. I guess Dad was right about love always being there . . . although that’s probably not the way he meant it.

But my euphoria soon deflates. No matter what I feel, I still don’t know where we stand. No matter how generously I try to see things from his perspective, no matter how many times he says he made a horrible mistake and he’ll never, ever do it again, nothing can erase the fact that he lied to me. He withheld vital information from me in order to control how I feel about him.

I didn’t tell you something awkward because I was afraid to lose you is an understandable human weakness, but it’s still manipulative. And the memory of seeing him in our bathroom with that needle still gives me goosebumps.

So even if I do love him, I have no idea what to do with this information. Or even what I want to do. My heart is still split between hating Noah and missing him, so badly it feels like a piece of me has been torn out.

I let out a huff of frustration. Whenever we’re together, I immediately find myself gravitating toward him as if nothing bad ever happened between us. Our attraction is a force of nature. Opposite magnetic poles that have always been, and will always be, drawn together.

And it’s not just my body—although God knows I can’t keep my hands off him, no matter how hard I try. Our minds and personalities fit into each other’s gaps. Our business strategies weren’t quite enough on their own, but when united, they pulled the company out of the red. And when I was suddenly called away from the party, I automatically trusted Noah to handle everything. Me, the control freak who took forever to learn how to unclench and delegate to her own best friend.

We complete each other. So perfectly, I can’t help but wonder . . .

Maybe there’s a way we can make this work after all.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been doing what I always do in hairy social situations—repressing the hell out of my emotions by immersing myself in work, like an ostrich burying her head in the sand. I had hoped that, with enough time and space, my feelings would naturally settle enough to let me articulate and sort through them.

But that tactic clearly hasn’t worked. Putting my emotions on ice was just a poor excuse for procrastination—it wasn’t a real problem-solving strategy. I just didn’t want to deal with the problem at all. A relationship isn’t the kind of thing that can solve itself with a little percolating. Geez, this marriage thing is hard.

And my other favorite strategies won’t work, either. I can be hyper-logical and organized, I can list pros and cons all day, and it still won’t help me get to the heart of the matter. Everything ultimately boils down to my choice. My messy, scary, no-safety-net choice.

If I love him . . . will I wind up hurt one day?

I hate how vague and painful everything feels. I’m so used to cold, hard numbers, to having something objective to grasp onto, to letting facts and figures and statistics point me toward the right answer, or at least help guide me part of the way. Now, I’m all on my own.

Well, actually, I’m not. I have a partner in all of this. Which is part of the problem, but also part of the solution.

Complete forgiveness is one thing; I still don’t know if I’m ready for that. But right this moment, all I really need is closure. I need some sense of where we’re headed, because I can’t stand living in this awkward limbo any longer. I can’t go about my daily life, trying not to look at or touch the man whose workplace I share all day and whose bed I share all night. Sleeping curled up tight, facing opposite directions, the few feet between us feeling like a frigid mile.

We can’t keep drifting through this uncomfortable space, peering nervously over the edge of the rift between us, waiting for something to either drag us away or tip us into the abyss. We need to take a step under our own power. We need to hash things out and make a well-considered decision that we can stick to.

As for what that decision might be . . .

I don’t want to end our relationship. The only alternative is to continue it, and that will take a leap of faith. Would it really be the end of the world if I gave Noah another chance?

I almost have to smile. Yet another trial period—our relationship seems to have a pattern going here. Although this one might be the most important of all. Can Noah transition from my crush to my frenemy to my happily-ever-after?