“I’m here because I take full responsibility for my actions, please, make no mistake about that.” Dylan paused and took a deep breath. I watched as several emotions played across her face. “It felt like I was falling in love for the first time when I met you. After struggling for so long it felt like my whole life was finally falling into place. I’d never felt so connected to anyone like I did you.”

“And that’s exactly why your actions made no sense to me.” I pleaded with her. Deep inside I needed her to give me a reason to believe, something to justify my inability to accept that she never loved me.

“I was tied to him.” She offered halfheartedly in her defense, almost as though she didn’t fully believe it herself.

“Tied to him how?”

“Danny rescued me from myself more times than I’d like to admit.” Dylan replied reluctantly, “I made some bad choices in the past, not least of all an expensive drug habit. It goes without saying that I’m not proud of what I was and Danny is the one who got me clean.”

“I understand why you’d feel grateful to him for helping you but is that loyalty really your justification for attempting to sue me?”

“No, it’s just the tip of the iceberg, a lot of things happened, Helena, many of which I just can’t explain to you.”

“Why did you ask me here tonight?” The tone in my voice did little to hide my rising levels of frustration.

“I wanted to see you again.” Her response was filled with a blatant honesty, “While I never thought it would happen, I always told myself I’d do anything I could to fix the mistake I made.”

“If you truly want to fix this, then please, tell me why you did it.” I pleaded.

“Because Danny threatened to take away everything I’ve worked for if I didn’t go along with him.”

“So you elected to ruin my reputation to save your career?” I began to wonder if I’d ever actually known her at all.

“It wasn’t just my career, it was everything.” She responded and was clearly uncomfortable with the continuing discussion.