“I handle some paperwork and plan a fantastic gourmet dinner for you for when you get home from work.”
He rolls onto his side, facing me. “Block his number on your personal phone. Right now.”
I pull out my phone and show him the screen as I do it.
“Can you block him on your work phone?”
“Once I’ve put in my notice, yes. I pay for that phone out of my own pocket—the firm doesn’t own it. Unfortunately, there are legit reasons he might need to contact me for work right now.”
He nods. “Once you’re out of there for good, he gets blocked.”
“Absolutely.”
“And on social media, e-mail, all of that, too.”
I call up my accounts on my personal cell and start doing it, letting him watch me.
Then he holds out his hand for my phone and I hand it over. I watch him without interruptions while he rolls onto his back again and starts combing through my social media accounts, the private message features for them, my text messages, and my personal e-mail. After about twenty minutes, he nods and returns my phone.
“Okay,” he quietly says.
“I’ll give you all the logins,” I tell him. “I won’t change the passwords without telling you.”
He rolls onto his side to face me once more. “I don’t want to be like that,” he quietly says. “I don’t want to bethatguy, a jealous, petty creep. I want to get back to a point where I never need to look at your phone because I know there’s nothingthereto lookat.”
Silently, I nod.
“When we were together,” he softly continues, “I never doubted you. Not once. There was never a time in my mind I ever wondered if you were where you said you were going to be, or if you were lying to me. I never felt jealous when you had to travel for work. The only fear I ever had was that you stayed safe while you were away, not that you might be screwing around on me. Then you left.”
This guts me but I don’t speak. I deserve every bit of this.
“You were the one constant in my life. You were my safe harbor. My rock. My anchor. Fill in the blank with whatever metaphor you can imagine. One of the reasons I loved you so much was because you were alwaysthere. Like the moon and the tides, I knew even if I couldn’t see you, your love still flowed and tugged me in the right direction.
“Trying to build a life without you in it when I wasn’t even sure if you were ever coming back or not was torture. Trying to keep up appearances around our friends so they didn’t start hating you. I never bad-mouthed you to anyone. I would defend you, especially early on. They grew increasingly angry on my behalf, and that drove me farther from them so I didn’t have to work so hard to hide my pain. Does that even register with you?”
I nod.
He sits up and stares at the far wall, his hands stroking Jester’s back where the cat now lays across his lap. “I wondered what was wrong with me that you didn’t want to come back. Why money was more important to you than our love and relationship. Wondered if you’d always planned to leave.” He looks at me. “Why I wasn’t good enough for you. And now I need to figure out how to get past thatandthe additional worry that you’ll do it to me again, and that maybe I’m being an idiot by giving you this chance.”
I sit up and cup his cheek. “It was never about you, baby. I swear. I screwed up. I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’m sorry I put you through all of that.” Leaning in, I kiss him, a long, sweet kiss I wish could transfer all the regret in my soul into a concrete proof he can use to see I mean forever without reservation now.
We sit there like that for a long moment, his brown gaze staring into mine. “This wouldn’t have hurt or be so hard if I didn’t love you so much.”
“I know, baby. I’m grateful for another chance.”
“I won’t tolerate any nonsense from your mom. You’re thirty-six years old and a successful attorney. That’s well beyond any need to be afraid of your parents.”
“I’ll defend you and put her in her place. They’re done guilt-tripping me.”
He snorts. “I doubt they’re done.”
He’s likely right. “I mean, I’m done letting them guilt-trip me. They can try all they like but they won’t like it when I start ignoring them until they knock it off. I could write them a check right now to pay them back in full for my entire undergrad and law school costs. It’s their fault they won’t let me and try to use that against me. Not falling for it anymore.”
“Okay,” he quietly says. “I’ll trust you until you give me a reason not to. Please don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t.” Jester maows at us, giving us one of those slow blinks cats do, and I reach over to pet him. “I think he’s forgiven me, at least.”
Tom scratches him under the chin. “He’s easy. Little peanut butter fiend.”
