Fuck. I did this.
“You’re so fucking stupid, Weston Basham,” she said, her voice full of rage as she started dashing the wetness off her face.
I took a step back, caught off guard by the venom in her tone. I’d forgotten about her temper, about how fierce she could be when she was pissed. She’d always been small and sweet, but when she was pushed too far, she became a force of nature.
Hattie squared her shoulders and faced me head-on, every inch of her vibrating with fury.
“Yes. I loved singing,” she said, her voice steadily growing louder as she got angrier.
“I loved performing and writing songs and all of it. But you know what? It didn’t hold a candle to what I felt for you.”
Her words were like a punch to the balls, each one more devastating than the last.
“We were supposed to get married,” she continued, her voice breaking again. “We were going to have a house full of babies and grow old together. We had plans, Weston. We had our whole lives mapped out. TOGETHER!”
I swallowed around the knot in my throat. “I wanted you to have your dreams, baby,” I said desperately, reaching for her.
She stepped back, shaking her head from side to side. All the fight seemed to leave her at once, and she deflated like a balloon with the air let out.
“You were my dream,” she whispered, brokenly. “You and the club and Granny Jean and Papaw Pete. The family I found here after I lost my parents—that was my dream, Weston.”
My brows shot up.
No. I shook my head. She’d lost her parents, and then I’d... fuck. I’d made her lose her family all over again.
I’d been trying to give her the world, but I’d taken away the only thing that really mattered to her. I’d done the one thing that was sure to send her running.
I pushed off from the post and went to her, my legs unsteady beneath me. When I reached her, I cupped her face in my hands, wiping away her tears with my thumbs.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Hattie,” I said, the words coming from the deepest part of my soul. “I didn’t realize—God, I’m such an idiot. I thought I was setting you free, but I was just being a selfish bastard who couldn’t handle the thought of you resenting me when you realized what you’d given up.”
She leaned into my touch, her eyes fluttering closed. “Never,” she whispered.
“Letting you go was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I confessed, pouring out my heart to her. “Breaking up with you nearly killed me. I never stopped loving you, not for a single day.”
She opened her eyes.
“Seeing you on TV,” I said, my voice cracking. “Watching you smile at that cocksucker the way you used to smile at me—it destroyed me. Every interview, every appearance, every goddamn time they showed you two together, it felt like I was dying all over again.”
“Then why didn’t you fight for me?” she whispered. “Why didn’t you come after me?”
I dropped my hands from her face and took a step back, suddenly unable to look at her.
“Because I thought you were better off without me,” I said simply. “You became everything I always knew you could be. You’re successful, you’ve got money and fame and everything anyone could ever want. I can’t compete with that.”
That was God's honest truth. I’d thought about going after her a million times, but I never could go through with it. She had the world in her hand.
She was quiet for a long moment. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she said.
I looked up at her, confused.
“All that success, all that money and fame—none of it means anything without someone to share it with,” she said. “I’ve spent the last eight years feeling like I was living someone else’s life, going through the motions of being happy while my heart was back here in Odin with you.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“I never loved Shawn,” she continued. “Not the way I loved you.”
The hope that had been building in my chest threatened to choke me.
