Her hands shook but she exerted admirable control over her emotions as she courageously faced him down.
“This marriage. You asked how long it would take to determine whether it would work. The truth is, it was never going to work. It’s taken me this long to realize it, but I deserve more. We both do. You deserve to find a woman you can love and that you won’t be manipulated into marrying. I deserve a man who adores me and wants to be married to me. Someone who won’t try to change me. Someone who accepts me, faults and all. Someone who loves flighty, impulsive Ashley and isn’t embarrassed by her.”
Tears clouded her eyes and her voice grew thick with emotion. “I thought… I thought I could make you love me, Dev. It was a mistake from the beginning to even try. It was a hard lesson for me to learn but I can’t be someone I’m not even if it meant you’d eventually love the new me. Because it wouldn’t be Ashley you loved. It would be someone I made up and all the while the real Ashley would be standing there, unloved. I can’t do that to myself. And I can’t do it to my child. I want to be a woman and a mother I can be proud of first. Before anyone else. I have to love and be at peace with myself, and you know what? I am. I liked me just fine. Was I perfect? No, but I was happy in my own skin and my family and friends accept that person. Someday there’ll be a man who’ll accept me, too. Until then, I’d rather be alone and true to myself than with someone who places conditions on his ability to love and accept me.”
So stunned was he by her declaration that he stood while she walked quietly toward the door. When he realized she’d already slipped by him, he whirled around, calling her name, the lump in his throat so huge that it came out as a mere croak.
But the door had already closed quietly behind her, leaving him standing there so numb…and broken.
Dread consumed him. The realization, the true realization of just what he’d done threatened to completely unravel him. Oh, God. What had he done?
His legs buckled and would no longer sustain his weight. He staggered back onto the couch and slumped forward, burying his face in his hands.
She was right and so very wrong all at the same time. The realization was as clear to him as if someone had hit him over the head with it.
He’d destroyed something infinitely precious and he’d never forgive himself for it. He didn’t deserve forgiveness.
Dear God, was this what he’d done to her? She’d come into his office and delivered the news of her pregnancy in a dispassionate fashion, as if she were telling him that she had a dentist appointment or that she was buying new shoes.
Where she’d once jumped up and down and squealed her joy over her cousin’s pregnancy and vowed she’d do the same over her own pregnancy, she’d related the news with dead eyes and a broken spirit.
He’d done that to her. No one else. Him and his high-handed, arrogant opinions of how she should act or not act. He’d taken something beautiful and precious and had spit on it.
He’d suffocated a ray of sunshine and sucked every bit of joy and life from her.
Cam was right. Eric was right. Ashley was right. He didn’t deserve her. They’d seen clearly what he’d blithely ignored. In his arrogance, he’d assumed he was right and that he knew what was best for Ashley.
He had tried to change her. And she was bloody perfect just as she was. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d missed all the things he professed to be annoyed over. The random calls at work just to say she loved him. The sudden attacks of affection when she’d throw her arms around him. Her exuberance around others.
She hadn’t cleaned and organized their apartment because she felt like it. She’d eradicated every hint of her presence there because she’d thought that’s what he wanted. She’d tried to become this image of the perfect wife to please him. He himself had thought he wanted her to.
The cooking. The endless trying to kill herself to please him. She’d gone from a vibrant breath of fresh air to a subdued, beaten-down shadow of her former self.
She no longer sparkled. All because he was the biggest ass on the face of the planet.
His pulse ratcheted up and the sick feeling inside him grew as he realized just how long it had been since she’d said she loved him. Since she’d demonstrated any outward affection for him. Since she’d simply smiled and seemed happy.
Tears burned his eyelids. He’d taken something so very beautiful and he’d crushed it. He’d rejected her love. The very gift of herself. He’d arrogantly told her in essence that she wasn’t good enough for him. That he knew better. That she wasn’t worthy of him.
A low moan escaped him. Not good enough for him? He wasn’t good enough to lick her boots.
In clear and startling detail, he realized what perhaps he’d fought from the very first moment he laid eyes on Ashley. He loved her. Not the new, subdued Ashley. He loved the impulsive, passionate, sparkly Ashley. And the very thing he loved the most was what he’d tried to kill.
Rafe and Ryan had nothing on him when it came to being complete and utter bastards to the women who loved them. Devon had surpassed any amount of sin a man committed against someone they claimed to care for.
How could he possibly expect Ashley to forgive him when he’d never be able to forgive himself?
She was pregnant with his child and she was leaving him.
He didn’t deserve her. He should let her walk away and find someone who adored her beyond reason and would never ever treat her as he had.
But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be that selfless.Headored her beyond reason and if it took the rest of his damn life, he would make it up to her for every wrong he’d done to her.
But first he had to make damn sure she didn’t walk out of his life forever.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ashley tugged the coat tighter around her as she stepped from the cab in front of her parents’ apartment building. She had no desire to face them today but she needed to get it over with and she wanted the comfort only her mother could provide.
