A moment later, Daisy said, “Well, I should probably get back to my Airbnb.”
“Okay,” Scott replied. “Have a good night.”
Tara exhaled sharply.
“See?” Stacy said. “He just turned her down.”
Then Daisy delivered the final line.
“You’re not going to walk me? I mean, a lot of bad things can happen.”
There was a pause.
Scott said, “Yeah. Yeah, all right. Guys, I’ll be right back.”
Tara opened the car door before Stacy could stop her.
“Wait,” Stacy said, grabbing her arm. “Is there even a point now? You think you know he’s a cheater.”
“I need proof.”
“Tara, I think you have it.”
But Tara was already walking.
She followed from a distance, staying half-hidden behind parked cars while Scott and Daisy crossed the street toward a short-term rental building above a row of closed shops. Daisy laughed and held the front door open. Scott looked back once, but Tara ducked behind a truck before he could see her.
Her heart pounded in her ears as she climbed the stairs after them. She told herself this was the moment everything would be confirmed. She told herself she had been right all along. She told herself that knowing would hurt less than wondering.
The apartment door was not fully closed.
Tara pushed it open and stepped inside.
Scott stood in the middle of the living room with his arms crossed. Daisy sat on the couch, no longer flirting, no longer performing, looking almost apologetic.
Scott looked at Tara and said, “It’s open. Did you know that?”
Tara froze. “What?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to come in.”
Her mouth went dry. “I’m so confused.”
“Actually,” Scott said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come in since yesterday.”
Daisy looked away.
Scott’s voice stayed calm, but Tara could hear the hurt underneath it. “I noticed you’ve been getting extra insecure lately. Whenever we’re out, you get jealous easily. You stop holding my hand. You get quiet. I never thought too much about it until yesterday when I was getting ready.”
Tara’s stomach turned cold.
“I went to use your laptop real quick,” he continued. “And when I did, I saw the browser tabs. Acting services. Local actresses. How to test if your boyfriend would cheat.”
“Scott—”
“I couldn’t believe it.” He laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “I was going to call you out right away, but I figured maybe I needed to show you how bad this looked from the other side.”
Daisy stood. “He’s telling the truth. As soon as we got here, he told me he knew it was a setup. He said he was just trying to prove a point.”
Tara looked at Daisy, then at Scott. The shame hit her so hard that her eyes filled before she could stop them.
“You’ve got a good one,” Daisy said softly. “Don’t let your fear turn him into someone he isn’t.”
She grabbed her purse. “I’m going to give you two a minute.”
When the door closed behind Daisy, the apartment became painfully quiet.
“I’m so sorry,” Tara whispered.
Scott did not answer right away.
“I can’t believe I let my insecurity destroy our relationship,” she said, wiping her face with both hands.
“Look,” Scott said finally. “I’m not happy about what you did.”
“I know.”
“You hired someone to test me instead of trusting me. You followed me. You assumed the worst. That hurts, Tara.”
“I know.”
“But I hope this showed you something.” He stepped closer, his voice softening. “I’m not interested in other girls. I don’t care what waitresses think. I don’t care what strangers think. I don’t care what anybody else thinks about our relationship. The only person I care about is you.”
Tara sobbed once, quietly.
“I love you exactly the way you are,” he said. Then, after a pause, one corner of his mouth lifted. “Well, if there was a version of you that came with a little less insecurity and crazy, I’d take that.”
Tara let out a wet laugh despite herself.
“I love you too,” she said. “I’m sorry for not trusting you. I realize you were right. If we don’t have trust, we don’t have anything.”
Scott opened his arms. Tara stepped into them and held on as if he were the only solid thing in the room.
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world,” he whispered against her hair. “I wish you could see yourself through my eyes.”
Tara did not magically believe him. In real life, insecurity does not disappear just because someone says the right thing under apartment lighting after a terrible mistake. But something in her shifted. Not completely. Not perfectly. Enough.
Enough to know she had to stop punishing Scott for wounds he had not made.
Enough to understand that jealousy could dress itself up as protection when it was really fear.
Enough to admit that if she wanted love, she had to give trust room to breathe.
A week later, Scott took her back to the same restaurant.
Tara nearly refused when she realized where they were going. Then she took a breath and reminded herself that she was tired of letting every pretty woman become a threat and every public place become a battlefield.
They sat in a booth near the window. The same waitress came over, still smiling, still pretty, still unaware of the emotional collapse her behavior had helped trigger.
“That salad is my favorite,” the waitress said when Tara ordered. “Great choice.”
“Thanks,” Tara said.
“And for your—” The waitress glanced at Scott. “Your girlfriend?”
“I’m his girlfriend,” Tara said, smiling sweetly. “And I know he’s handsome, but I’d appreciate it if you stopped smiling at him like that.”
Scott coughed into his water.
The waitress blinked. “Oh. I wasn’t—”
“And I will have the bacon cheeseburger with fries,” Tara continued. “Extra fries. And if you could hurry that up, because Mama’s hungry. Okay, thanks.”
The waitress left without touching Scott’s shoulder.
Scott stared at Tara. “What was that?”
Tara shrugged, picking up her napkin. “She should know better than to flirt with my man.”
Scott shook his head, smiling despite himself. “So we’re still working on the insecurity thing?”
“We’re working on it,” Tara said. “But I’m not dead.”
He laughed, and this time Tara laughed with him.
Outside, the city kept moving, noisy and bright and full of people who would always look, judge, smile, misunderstand, flirt, whisper, and walk away. Tara could not control any of them. She was beginning to understand that maybe she never had to.
She reached across the table and took Scott’s hand before he had to reach for hers.
That small move mattered.
Trust did not arrive like lightning. It came in small choices. A hand held in public. A question asked instead of an accusation. A fear admitted before it became a plan. A woman deciding, one hard moment at a time, that she would not let the cruelest voice in her own head write the ending to the best love she had ever known.
And across the table, Scott squeezed her hand back.
For now, that was enough.