“Oh, I know,” he interrupted. “I know your reasons. I hear them and with a little bit of distance, I can even accept that you were right about how if I’d known the truth, I’d have gone off half-cocked and quite possibly made the entire situation worse.”
She wrinkled her brow. “And yet you were still angry?” she asked.
He sighed. “Yes. Angry that you were put in that situation. Angry that you chose to handle it as you did. Perhaps what I was most angry at was what we lost. I raged against a past that never happened and a future that couldn’t ever be.”
She caught her breath. “No?”
“No, because we are both different people and a great deal has happened between us. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want our future to be a very happy one. Together. Do you understand my feelings?”
“Yes,” she whispered when she could speak. “And I’m so sorry, Lucien.”
He cupped her cheeks. “My love, I don’t ask for an apology. What I am doing is trusting you by giving you my pain. Trusting that you will protect the wound and help heal it now that you understand.”
“I would move mountains to heal it,” she whispered, awestruck by what he was saying and offering. “But does that mean you’ve forgiven me? That we can start over?”
He drew back. “Not exactly. You see, while thinking about my feelings, I also gave a great deal of thought to what I want. I keep telling you that I need your trust to move forward, but I never defined what that trust meant to me. It was unfair. But in talking to a good friend, I realized what it was I needed.”
Her lips parted. “And what is that?”
“You and I have known each other almost our entire lives,” he said with a soft smile. “I know you all the way up until the moment that you wrote that letter breaking me away from your life. And yes, I’ve reconnected with you since that happened. But I have no idea what has happened to you to shape you in that time. I have no idea of your suffering or even any small joys you took while you were in the prison of that marriage.”
She caught her breath. “You want…you want…”
“What I want, Elise, what I need, is to know what you went through. To know what happened to make you the person you are today. The person I married and pledged to share my life with today. Would you tell me that? Would you trust me enough to open up those guarded parts of your past?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Elise took a long step backward and a wild terror lit up in her eyes that Lucien had never seen before. She looked ready to bolt, but he knew if she did, they might never have a chance like this again. And he wanted that chance. He wanted to be free and to have her be free with him.
“Lucien, you don’t want to hear that,” she whispered. “And I don’t want to say it.”
He frowned, watching her lips tremble, feeling her pain pulse just beneath the surface. “I asked, didn’t I?”
She turned her face, breaking the tenuous link between them. “For weeks, you haven’t asked,” she whispered. “And I’ve been glad of it. You know enough, don’t you? You don’t need all the ugly truth.”
“It isn’t out of a salacious need that I ask this of you now,” he explained, not rushing her or speaking sharply. “Or out of some desire to hurt or punish you. I want to hear your missing part, your broken story, out of…”
He hesitated. He hadn’t said this yet. He didn’t want to use it against her or manipulate her with it. But it mattered.
“Out of what?” she asked, her voice shaking as much as her hands.
“Love, Elise.”
She turned on him, her eyes wide, and she swallowed hard. “Don’t tease me,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”
“It isn’t a tease,” he reassured her. “I love you. And I need you to put your trust in that and in me.Please.”
“It’s too much, Lucien,” she said, and the pain in her voice stung like fire. She was on the edge of breaking down.
“I know it’s too much,” he said softly. “Let me take it. Let me help you carry it. Please.Please.”
She shut her eyes, and he could see her gathering herself, preparing herself. He prayed that she would give in to him, to what they could be and have. He prayed she would be his again, in every way.
“Are you certain this is what you want? Even though you can’t take it back once you hear it?”
He nodded. “It’s what I need, Elise. It’s whatweneed.”
“I was never Kirkford’s wife,” she said, her voice barely carrying in the quiet room. “I was his puppet. His toy. He brought me out when he wanted to show off that he had won. When he didn’t…well, I was put back on the shelf.”
