“What did he say?” I ask.
Marcus laughs bitterly. “That he couldn’t. No explanation. Just…‘I can’t.’ I said Dad needed him. That it wasn’t about whatever the hell happened between them or with you. But he still wouldn’t come.”
I grip his hand tightly in mine, his fingers stiff between my touch. “Oh, sweetheart.”
I hate that he felt he had to take on that responsibility, something that should have been mine to bear. But by that point, I was too lost in my grief, knowing I was about to lose my husband. I could barely function. Hell, I’mstillfinding my way.
He pulls in a shaky breath. “He should have come.”
Wrapping my arms around him, I wish I had an answer to give him that would make him understand. A way to explain Jayson’s actions. There’s so much our children don’t know about what happened between Jayson, Ryder, and me…or about my life and what happened that night. So many secrets were buried. Ryder and I thought it best to keep them that way. Why expose our children to the trauma of those horrors?
“Jayson had his reasons. We just don’t know what they are yet.”
It’s difficult to swallow back the raw pain clawing its way up my throat when it comes to him. I think about the man who walked away and about the man who came back and stood on my doorstep last night. I want to hate him for disappointing my son. For breaking his promise about Elizabeth Ann. For not being there for Ryder.
But I can’t.
Because IknowJayson.
Jayson loved Ryder. Too much. And for someone like Jayson, loving someone that much and knowing he was losing them—he couldn’t handle it. So he ran from it, just like he ran when he lost me to Ryder. It wouldn’t make sense to Marcus or to anyone else if they heard me say it. ButIunderstand. If Jayson wants a lifeline, I’m sure as hell going to throw him one.
I try my best to put on a reassuring smile. “Come inside and eat before you go to work. Fallon and Charlotte made special pancakes.”
“Give me a sec to wash up, and I’ll be right in.”
Fallon is waiting for me out on the back steps when I walk up. Barefoot, tousled hair, in blue jeans and a tee that stretches across his muscular chest. He looks just as good dressed down as he does in a suit.
I go straight into his open arms, and serenity settles over me, like a feeling of coming home.
“You’re my home, Kitten. You always have been.”
My home is here—in this house, on this land where Ryder is buried, and with my children. But as Fallon holds me, I realize something I never expected.
“Just so you know, you’re my home, too.”
His arms tighten around me, and he buries his face in my neck, his lips a whisper against my skin when he says, “I love you, Elizabeth. Just so you know.”
He could never have said it. He didn’t need to. Fallon has shown me every day since the morning I showed up on his doorstep and asked him for help that he loves me.
I want to say the words back, to finally give him that piece of me. To make this thing between usreal. Permanent. But I can’t say them. Not yet. Not until I talk to Ryder…and to Jayson—the two men who hold the other pieces of my heart.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
JAYSON
Demons
Wrapping a towel around my waist,steam billows out into the king-bed suite from the bathroom when I open the door. Picking out some clean clothes from the suitcase I brought with me, I rifle through the folded items and choose a dark gray T-shirt and my favorite pair of ripped blue jeans. Funny how your current existence and everything you own can fit inside four cubic feet of space.
For not getting any sleep last night, I don’t feel tired. Too many thoughts doing somersaults in my head that a therapist would have a field day trying to process.
And the mayhem swirling around my brain is focused on one person: Liz.
Seeing her again after three years was gut-wrenching. But seeing how she looked at me with wounded eyes, seeing the pain I caused her manifested on her beautiful face, was devastating. When Liz looked at me last night, she only saw the man who had failed her too many times and not the reformed, repentant man I am now.
I’ve hurt the people I love the most because of my weakness and my pride. You never truly know how far down the demons have pulled you into hell until it’s too late. And those demons cost meeverything.
The hell I’ve been imprisoned in was my own damn fault. I made bad choices and laid the blame for my problems at everyone else’s feet. Liz doesn’t owe me anything, least of all her forgiveness, but for some reason she is giving me a second chance. She agreed to talk. It’s more than I deserve.
