After a moment, Bill dropped my hands and stood up. “You’re making a huge mistake,” he warned, wiping the corner of his eye. He backed away and left as abruptly as he’d appeared.
I got up, closed the door, and dropped my forehead against it.
“You’re making a huge mistake.”
HadDavid slept with Dani after the masquerade ball? And if so, could I blame him? I wasn’t sure that I had any right to—after all, I’d gone home with my husband. But David had definitely denied it, and that was not something I could forgive.
Before my mind could conjure up the image of David and Dani together as it had many times before, I inhaled a soothing breath, returned to my desk chair, and closed my eyes.
This wasn’t me—it was the bullshit jealousy I’d learned from my mother.
My gut told me David wouldn’t lie to me. I was mildly comforted until I began thinking about the other things Bill had said.
They were logical. They made sense. And I couldn’t ignore them.
The truth was, I’d acted rashly. Whenever it came to David, my decisions were made based on emotion. And there were reasons, long ago, that I’d decided I would never allow that. It always led to pain.
Now that David had caught me, how long would he hold me? What rule was there that because I’d left my husband for him, he had to love me forever? I knew, I’d always known, there are no guarantees in love. More often than not, irrational love ended in pain. I felt suddenly ill . . . I’d let myself fall so deep in so little time.
My parents had been in love at one point, and they hadn’t lasted. Greg and Gretchen had had that out of control, burning love in college, and then he’d walked away without looking back for years. And up until recently, I’d assumed Bill and I would be together forever. I didn’t remember feeling one way or another about it, but I never imagined things would end.
Doubts began to tug at me. My father and his ex-wife, Gina. Gretchen’s parents. David’s sister and her husband. Now, Bill and me. Was there no such thing as forever?
Was Bill justified to say I was throwing everything away?
I believed David—thathebelieved he loved me and wanted to be with me. But he was a man who’d been living the life of a bachelor for a long time. And that meant acting alone. It meant that he might cut and run if things didn’t go the way he wanted.
The thought of David leaving menow,after only a few days, had me mentally curling up into a ball—how bad would it get if he changed his mind about me in six months, a year, two years?
Lucy had called me strong in the restaurant when I’d told her about David, but she’d been wrong. I’d only pretended to be. My stomach lurched with the harsh realization that I’d held Bill at arm’s length because I wasweak. The truth was, I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the pain of losing someone I loved. Or to handle my parents’ divorce. After all this time, I still couldn’t let it go. Because I was the weak one.
My instinct told me to flee. After a lifetime of hiding from these feelings, I knewthiswas the moment to get them under control—before they took me down. But for once, my emotions were unmanageable. If I tried to rein them in now, I’d fail.
I started when my office door opened, and David strode in. “What happened?” he asked.
“David,” I said, my mouth falling open as I stood. “Someone might see you here.”
“So what? Everyone’s at lunch, like you should be.” He took off his suit jacket and tossed it over the back of the chair where Bill had just been sitting. “What happened?” he repeated.
I groaned, dropping back into my seat as I put my head in my hands. “You saw him?”
“Saw who?”
I peeked up at him. “Bill . . . he was just here.”
“No, I didn’t fucking see him.” David took a step forward. “That’s why you canceled?”
“He needed to talk,” I explained. “And I’m sorry, but that’s going to keep happening, and you can’t get mad about it. He’s still technically my husband.”
David took a deep breath. “Get over here.”
I blinked, cautiously rounding the desk until I stood in front of him.
“I’m not happy,” he said.
“I can tell.”
“I don’t like you canceling on me and then turning off your phone.”
