I wanted to ask what her decision had been but didn’t want to press my luck. I doubted she’d betrayed him. If she had, he wouldn’t have any trouble saying so.
But I heard the pain in his voice, and I had to ask the question that had me on edge.
“Do you still love her?”
“No,” he said softly. “I still care about her and think of her fondly, but I’m no longer in love with her. I don’t regret breakin’ things off. She wouldn’t have been happy with me, and now she’s with a man who can give her what I couldn’t.” He paused. “She’s happy.”
“What about you?” I asked.
He slowly turned to look at me. “Are you askin’ if I’m happy?”
“You have your tavern, your crew who adores you, and Carter. Are you happy?”
“For the longest time, I didn’t think I deserved to be happy,” he said, pain filling his eyes.
“And now?”
“Now, I’m starting to think that maybe I don’t deserve it, but it’s okay if I am.” Something in the way he looked at me suggested he was talking about me, but then, I couldn’t let myself believe it. I was still stuck on the fact he’d loved a woman only three or four years ago. A woman he’d loved deeply enough to give up his own happiness for.
I reached up and cupped his cheek. “Make me a promise, James Malcom.”
“You’re demandin’ a lot of promises tonight,” he grumbled, but there was fondness in his eyes. “I will if I can.”
His readiness to offer me assurance peeled a protective layer off my heart. “Don’t ever make a decision for me. If we do this, we’re partners, so you don’t get to decide what’s best for me. We make decisions together.”
He reached behind my head and pulled my face close to his. “I promise,” he said, earnestness in his eyes.
I kissed him tenderly, letting my thumb trace his cheekbone. “Come to bed with me, James.”
His mouth quirked up on one side. “For the record, in the future, if you want me to go to bed, that’s the way to make it happen.”
Chapter 12
Once we were in bed, James fell asleep within minutes, making me kick myself all over again. He truly had overdone it tonight. Tomorrow, we needed to take this slower and in shorter stretches.
I lay on my back, listening to his soft, steady breathing, thinking about what he’d told me. I was still surprised he’d opened up so much. Sure, he’d held things back, but I understood why. Some secrets weren’t his to share. It made sense that if the woman he’d been in love with wasn’t from his world, he’d want to protect her.
The more I thought about it, the more surprised I was he’d told me at all.
I couldn’t help wondering who she was and how he’d kept running into her. He’d met her at his pool hall, but they’d crossed paths often enough that they’d eventually fallen for each other.
Someone who wasn’t from his world…
An icy dread washed through me.
He’d called her an innocent.
One woman’s name kept surfacing when I’d dug into James’s recent past, a woman who didn’t make sense in his orbit.
Rose Gardner.
And every time her name came up, James turned defensive, like he was protecting even the mere mention of her name.
I knew in my gut that it had to be her.
James had been in love with Rose Gardner.
I took a moment to take that in. I wasn’t sure why I was so shocked. From the first time I’d heard her name linked to his, I’d wondered if there’d been something romantic between them. I’d decided it was too preposterous, but she was a stereotypical good girl, and he’d played the role of the bad boy. It was a tale as old as time.
