Theo was having none of it. He captured her hand and led her to the bench. As they sat down, his thumb caressed her skin.
“First of all, I want to let you know that I have never broken our wedding vows, pixie. We’ve been officially married all these years, and I’ve respected that.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you had. Dina is beautiful and confident.”Unlike me.“If you wanted to take her up on what she was offering, I’d get it.”
“I won’t lie and say she hasn’t made a play for me, but I’ve never led her on. Even if I wasn’t married, I’m not sure I would have dated her.”
Her gaze moved over the rolling waves of the ocean. It felt like they were inside her.
“Have you?”
Waiting, she raised an eyebrow. “Have I…?”
He lifted a shoulder and looked away. “Gone out with anyone else? Like you said, it’s been a long time.”
“Oh, God, no. I took our marriage vows seriously, too. I barely even left the house.” The fact she’d barely left her bed many times wasn’t something she wanted to share. Would he be horrified at her health problems and push her away from their daughter?
“Except that trip to Europe, right?”
Her trip? “Europe? Are you talking about the trip I took in high school? That was before I met you.”
“Maybe we should start at the beginning. Like the week you left to go back home.”
Lifting her face to his, she waited for him to continue.
“You texted me as soon as you got home to tell me you arrived safely. I texted back that I loved you and couldn’t wait to see you again.”
“I got those.” The ridiculous tears started again.
“Then what happened? I didn’t hear from you for a while and got worried.”
“I told my dad that I’d met someone, fallen in love, and wanted to move back to Bar Harbor. Needless to say, he kind of freaked out. He told me to forget it, forget you.”
Theo took a deep breath in. “And so you did.”
“What?” Her eyes snapped to his face. His jaw was set, and his mouth had formed a thin line. “No, I’ve never forgotten you. I tried to call, but I had misplaced my phone and didn’t end up finding it until the next day. But as soon as I did, I called you. You never answered. I kept calling, and you never picked up.”
“Chelsea, I had my phone on me almost every second at that point. If you’d called, I would have picked up. And if for some reason I wasn’t able to, you should have left a message.”
“It never went to voicemail.” Which had left her wondering if Theo had turned that off.
“Well, yours did the few dozen times I called. I left more messages than I could count. I was frantic at not hearing from you, but I was still new at the Ranger Station. I couldn’t just up and leave.”
“I never got any voice messages from you, Theo. Only the text message.”
“Which text? Because I must have left a few thousand of them, begging you to call or contact me somehow.”
“You said it had been a fun summer, but don’t bother coming back. I was a great fling, but you needed to move on.” That message had left her emotionally devastated.
His expression grew thunderous. “I never sent that message, Chelsea. You were more than a summer fling. You were my wife, for God’s sake. I loved you.”
Loved. Past tense. A piece of her heart chipped off and fell away.
“The message was from your phone number. When I responded and asked why, you never texted back or answered any of my calls.”
Standing, Theo shoved his hand through his hair as his shoulders rose and fell. “You said you’d lost your phone. Could your father have gotten it? Tampered with it? Was he that controlling?”
Until recently, she would have said no, but now she understood the true extent of what he’d done, it all made sense.
