Once she was gone, Cian asked, “What did she say?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.” I stood from the table, taking our dishes to the sink. “What did you need to talk to me about?”
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected him to say. I knew he was angry with me. That I should never have told him about his birth parents. What I didn’t expect was what he said next. “It’s time you moved back to your house.”
I spun around and glared at him. “What?”
“You need to move back to the house. The files have all been removed. No one has been back there in weeks. It’s safe.”
“It’s safe? That’s it?” I questioned. “What happened to‘I’m never letting you go’?What happened to‘you’re mine now’? Was that just bullshit so you could fuck me again?”
“Caity,” he sighed. “Things are different now.”
“Different how? Because you know who your birth parents are? What difference does that make?”
“It makes all the fuckin’ difference. You aren’t safe with me. You and Maddie both.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, my hands on my hips. Wasn’t this just perfect? I promised my daughter that I would give her father a chance. That I would let myself be happy, let myself have the one thing I’d always wanted, and now he didn’t want me.
“What did you tell me, Caity? That you couldn’t be with me because your father would kill me? Even after he was dead, you still wouldn’t be with me because divorce was a fuckin’ sin. Those were your words. Well, I’m telling you the same thing. We just weren’t meant to be together I guess.” He shrugged.
He fucking shrugged.
I stared at him, not believing what he was saying. He stood in front of me saying the words as if changing his mind was no big deal. As if I hadn’t walked away from the only bit of independence I’d ever had because he asked me to trust him. Because he made me a promise. A promise he was now breaking.
“Fuck you, Cian.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Caity
I grabbed up the files Maddie had brought and stuffed them in my purse and glared at him as I waited for the elevator doors to close. Half expecting him to rush forward and put his hand in the way. I’d never hated an elevator more, knowing I couldn’t slam the door behind me as I left.
I hit the button for the lobby, and as the car began to move, I clenched my fists and screamed.
What would I tell my daughter? That I failed? That her father decided he didn’t really want me after all?
The doors opened to a smiling Walter. He was such a sweet old man, and I was reminded that this was one of the things I loved about Cian. Very few buildings had doormen anymore. No one wanted to pay someone to do what a security system could do.
Walter was eighty years old, and Cian told him he’d have a job as long as he wanted it. Knowing that just made me angrier, but I plastered a smile on my face for Walter.
“Good evening, Miss Caity.”
“Good evening, Walter.”
Walter held the door open for me and once I stepped outside and got lost among the crowds on the street, I let the tears fall. I could have hailed a cab, but I wanted the walk. I wanted to cry silently and get it out before I got home. I refused to wallow in my home.
By the time I reached my front steps, I was angry again.
When I’d stepped into the elevator after Cian told me to move out, I didn’t think I’d ever been angrier than I was then. By the time I made it to the street, the anger had turned to grief.
I was mourning what might have been. What we could have had. I’d made Maddie a promise: to let myself be happy. To let myself love the man who had always held my heart.
I hadn’t expected to have the rug pulled out from under me. Though that had always been my life. Every time I thought my life was taking a turn for the better, someone would come along and knock me off my feet.
This time, I’d let myself believe that I was being swept off my feet, instead of being knocked down. I should have known better.
I stared at my front door.
