I’d forgotten myhusband.
I’d forgotten about the man I’d sworn vows to, both the public ones we’d said in front of our friends and family, swearing to love and honor each other until death did we part, and the private ones, too. The ones that Rene’s heart-stopping request should have reminded me of even before he’d asked about Blair, because they echoed so closely the promises I’d made when Blair and I had been alone together.
Blair had been so different from Rene, but now I knew why Rene reminded me of him: they both needed the same thing.
On his own, Blair had been a bit of a loose cannon. With him, taking charge had calmed him down and given him the steadiness he craved. And when he’d begged me to, it had been the easiest promise I’d ever made—it had been why Blair and I fit so well in the first place—because being that rock for him had been whatIcraved.
It had made me feel fulfilled in ways that nothing else ever had, before or since. In ways that I’d felt hollow without, ever since I lost him.
Rene was different. I suspected thathewould never need to be held back from being too impulsive. Never need someone to settle him down and quiet his ceaseless chatter. Never need to be physically restrained, todelightin it, just to keep him from bouncing off the walls.
But he still needed the same thing as Blair had—he’d just asked me for it, for Christ’s sake—but for Rene, it was for the opposite reason.
Rene, based on what I’d seen so far, needed someone to take charge so he could have steady ground under his feet, so he could let himself open up and bloom, so he could feel safe and secure and cared for.
And I’d been so overwhelmed by the satisfaction that his trust had given me, so determined to be worthy of that trust after our rocky start, so focused on his timid beauty and all the parts inside me that just being near him had woken from a half decade of slumber, and on how alive I felt each time he responded to my words… to my touch… to my voice…
It had been intoxicating.
And wrong.
A knock at the door jolted me into motion again, and I opened it to find a young woman in a logoed polo shirt on the other side with a rollaway cot.
I accepted it. Tipped her. Set it up with extra bedding and mechanically changed into the lounge pants I’d brought to sleep in.
And then, finally, the bathroom door clicked open.
Rene’s eyes darted to mine for a split second before they dropped to the ground, then he rushed for the bed, a blur of long limbs and dark hair and soft blue cotton.
“SorryaboutbeforeI’mjustgoingtogotosleepnowgoodnight,” he said, diving under the blankets and pulling them almost all the way over his head as he turned his back to me and huddled down into stillness.
His words had all run together so fast that it took me a moment to make sense of them.
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. He was apologizing tome? He had, as I’d told him repeatedly, nothing at all to be sorry about. I was the one in the wrong here. First, for freezing up on him when he’d just shown me a vulnerability that I ached to nurture, and second—
No.
Shit.
What waswrongwith me?
I’d gotten it backward.
First—always first—was Blair. I’d failed him,again, this time by getting so wrapped up in the pleasure of taking care of Rene that I’d let him slip from my mind for a moment. Andsecondcame the way I’d failed Rene, too.
I needed to make this right, but how was I supposed to do that, to make up for either one of those transgressions, without exacerbating the other?
I honestly didn’t know, so—much to my shame—I took the coward’s way out.
“Goodnight, Rene,” I murmured, slipping into the bathroom for a moment with my toiletry bag and then, when I came back out and saw that Rene still hadn’t moved, flicking off the lights and crawling onto the cot to try to sleep.
Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d wake up in the morning and know what to do.
Because I sure as hell didn’t right now.
* * *
I didn’t haveuntil morning.
