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My spirit moaned for him, and a spike of protectiveness rose from the deepest place inside me. Who the hell would cheat on this man?
Shame pinched the corners of Ezra’s brown eyes. “And it was no longer encouragement and grace and support that I was giving her, Savannah, but ultimatums. I told her if it happened one more time, I was leaving and I was taking the kids with me.”
The loss of faith. I’d felt it so many times. The kind of betrayal that stung in the most excruciating way.
And it wasn’t pity that I felt. It was communion. Lost in his sea of suffering. Swept from the safety of the shore and into the turmoil of his past.
“How could you blame yourself for that, Ezra? She was cheating on you. Acting reckless. You were protecting your children. Your family. Yourself.”
He didn’t deserve that kind of treason.
Ezra hugged me tighter. “No, Savannah.” His voice grew hoarse, scraping in emphasis. “Because the truth is my love for her was thin. Flimsy and weak from the start because when I rolled up on her car on the side of the road after she’d crashed three weeks later. I found her completely trashed, there was no sympathy or sadness. It was just—disgust.”
The shake of his head was hollow, some of that disgust riding through, then a snort of disbelief huffed from his nose that I somehow felt was directed at himself. “I took my kids to my mom’s the next day. She’d always put Brianna on a pedestal. Always was going on about how lucky I’d been to find someone who loved me the way Brianna did. Encouraging me to foster and cherish it. You can be certain when she claimed she loved Brianna like a daughter, she’d meant it.”
Regret heaved from his nose. “I honestly think she turned a blind eye because she didn’t want to believe Brianna could be up to no good. I couldn’t stomach tainting that for her, and I had no fucking clue how I was going to tell her I was leaving Brianna and filing for divorce.”
My breath was shallow. Every picture I’d conjured of Ezra’s wife, of their past, of their relationship, had gotten smashed into a thousand pieces.
I kept tracing my thumb over the angles of his face while he blinked a thousand times, caught in the memories. “I told her Brianna was going to be working extra shifts and both of us were going to be flat out that week, so I asked her to watch the kids to buy me some time to figure out the best way to handle the situation. My mom had been more than happy to and had suggested we carve out time for ourselves in the middle of it when I’d already known it was over.”
“Ezra.” I pressed my palm closer to his cheek, trying to hold a piece of it for him.
The agony that rushed from him.
The grief that tormented him.
“Brianna kept begging me for another chance. Promised it would be different, and I told her I hoped to God it would be, that she’d make a change for both herself and for the kids, but it was too late for us. I packed a bag and checked into a motel in Poplar to keep the gossip from spreading through Time River.”
“You were still trying to protect her.” I searched him, this good, good man. He was. Somewhere, somehow, I knew he was different than any other person I’d met.
Displeasure rode out on a huff. “No, Savannah, I wasn’t protecting her. I was too fucking relieved at breaking free.” Grimness filled his voice. “She had to have called me at least twenty times a day during that week. I answered the first couple of times, trying to talk her down, but when she started rambling the same paranoid bullshit…I stopped answering. I was just so tired of it. Fed up.”
“No one can blame you for that, Ezra.” My words were hushed. Desperate. Because I could feel his pain. The way he was bleeding out.
He might not have believed he was suffering, might not have believed he had a right to grief, but I could taste the sourness of it on my tongue.
“No one could blame me, Savannah?” Ezra took my hand and splayed it over the tattoo on his pec, self-loathing filling his voice. “You want to know what this is?”
“Yes. I want to know you.” My admission curled through the room, nothing but a plea.
“This was the moment I was fucking some girl I’d met at the bar next to the hotel in Poplar. The moment Brianna called me for the last time. The moment I ignored it because I was too busy seeking pleasure, too busy forgetting her, and she was leaving a message that she was afraid. That she was in trouble. I found out two hours later she was dead.”
