“Never,” I’m sure I hear him mutter, but when our eyes meet again, his face softens. “You know divorce is final, right?”
“Yep.” I pop the ‘p’.
“So you wouldn’t be my wife anymore.”
“Haze, I haven’t been your wife for three years.”
“Technically, you are on paper.”
“You have to let it go.”
“It looks like you have.”
I take a sip of my martini, fuck knows I’m gonna need it for this conversation. “Austin, you know we’re not good together. We need to leave the past in the past.”
He shrugs. “You brought it up.”
“I brought it up because we’re still married.”
“So what? Why the hurry anyway, you lookin’ around?”
“Hurry?” I laugh. “Jesus, Aust, you really work in slow motion.”
He snorts, taking a long gulp of his drink, then orders another. This man can drink a Russian under the bar with his own damn vodka. “A man can’t rush these things?—”
“Yes, he can. Sign them, and then you’ll be free of me.” I ignore the way my stomach drops when I say it.
His voice drops an octave. “You know I never wanted to be free of you.”
I hold up a hand. “Not here, not now, not today.”
He runs a hand over his face and, for the first time in a long time, I wish I knew what I saw there. Haze is an open book, but when it comes to me and him, sometimes I get completely lost.
“Babe, you know we need to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t. You’re the one who said we needed a break.” I shake my head, tears springing to my eyes.
“I regret that,” he says, muttering. “I wanted more of you, and that was selfish of me. I know what your job means to you, and I couldn’t get in the way of your ambition.”
The words cut me now as much as they did then. But I wasn’t the one who walked away, and he needs to damn well remember that.
“You’re an ass.”
He looks genuinely surprised. “Why? Because I told the truth?”
“You think I loved my job more than… more than…”
“What, Willow? Spit it out for once in your life,” he says, his gaze pinned on me.
I swallow hard. I guess when it comes to feelings and emotions, I’m like my dad in that way. “More than you?” I let the words hang.
We stare at each other as he slowly nods. “Yeah, I do.”
Tears prick my eyes, and I know it’s not all him. It’s me. I’ve had a shit day, on top of a shit week, on top of a shit year. The last thing I need is to go digging up the past.
My voice is barely a whisper when I say, “That isn’t true.”
He tucks a lock of hair behind my ears and I hate how my body hums, even though it’s barely a touch. “Yes, it is, but it’s okay.”
