I didn’t care. I’d be gone, and I’d never be back. Coming here had been a mistake. Thinking I’d end up married and in love had been naive. Settling for a quiet life and some sort of arranged companionship had been misguided and ridiculous.
An arm snatched me around the middle, and then I was flying through the air. Gideon spun me around, planted me on the ground, and turned me so I was facing him. My heels stabbed the soft earth and sank in an inch. He kept his arm around my back, fusing the front of his body to mine. His chest heaved with every breath, his eyes burning as he stared at me.
“Let go of me,” I demanded. Humiliatingly, I followed it up with asniffle.
“No.”
“No?”
His lips flattened. “No.” He tightened his hold on me, and I pushed my palms against his chest. It was like shoving a brick wall. Gideon grunted, then said, “Not until you listen to me.”
“Why should I?” I sounded petulant, and I didn’t care.
He lowered his face so all I saw were his eyes. Furious, dark eyes, holding me in their unbreakable spell. “Because you aremy wife.”
The words echoed through me, vibrating in my bones. My bottom lip trembled. “Am I?” I spat out. “Maybe you should tell that to your ex.”
“You want to do this?” He backed away an inch, and I could breathe. But he didn’t let go. “You want to do this right now?”
“Were you with her that night?” The question burst out of me before I could stop it. A hot tear rolled down my cheek. I was so embarrassed I wanted to die, but now that the question had been posed, I had to know the answer.
Gideon stared at me, not understanding. “What night?”
“Ourwedding night!” I screamed. I dropped my voice again, knowing there were people all around. “Were you with your ex on our wedding night?”
“What? No! I haven’t seen her in five years.”
I scoffed. “Let go of me.”
“Sadie.” Something in his voice made me stop struggling against him. When I looked up at him, the fury in his eyes had faded, and there was an edge of panic. Fear. “I wasn’t with Lenore. I wasn’t with anyone. Not—not like that.”
“So where did you go?”
“Portland,” he said.
My shoulders dropped, and I clicked my tongue. “You wentto freaking Oregon and were back by morning?” Did he think I was stupid?
His lips twitched. “Portland, Maine, babe.”
I blinked. “Oh.” Maybe I was stupid.
“I’ll prove it.”
He stroked my cheek, catching a tear, then shifted a step back while keeping his arm around me. We walked toward his car, and he put me in the passenger seat before getting behind the wheel. He turned on the car, but instead of driving off, he pressed the screen on the console until “recent trips” showed up. He’d gone to the Maine Medical Center in Portland. A two-and-a-half-hour drive.
I frowned at the screen, then at him. “Okay? Did you have an appointment in the middle of the night?”
He rubbed his jaw, his other hand kneading the steering wheel. “Sometimes, I…” He gulped. Kept his eyes on the beam of the headlights shining over the trees behind the garage. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, stretching his jaw before he continued, like he had to push the stress out of his body with physical effort. “Sometimes I go to the burn unit,” he said, his voice full of gravel. “The nurses aren’t supposed to let me in, but they know me. I…sit there. With the patients.” His hand kept moving over the steering wheel, clenching, releasing, shifting, over and over again. His body was made of tension. “When I was getting treatment for my burns,” he said, “I couldn’t sleep. The pain and the discomfort and the drugs…there was so much time where I just sat in that bed feeling like I was in hell. So sometimes I go there, and I try to make it easier for the people who are going through what I went through. That night, when I thought I’d pressured you into… I needed to feel like I wasn’t a piece of shit.” He let out a breath. Turned to face me. “If you don’t believe me, we can drive there now and the nurses will vouch for me.”
A breath slipped past my lips, and I shook my head. I felt unsteady, like I was balancing on a high wire suspended over a gorge. One gust of wind would make me fall. Blinking at Gideon, I tried to make sense of what he’d just told me. What it meant for him, for me, for us.
“I wasn’t with my ex, Sadie,” he said, his voice a warm, low rumble. “I promise.”
“I believe you,” I croaked. A wave of shame washed over me, bitter and familiar and suffocating. I couldn’t look at him, so I leaned my elbow against the doorframe and put my head in my hand. “I’m sorry. I just saw you put your arms around her, and I felt… She said… I thought…”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Memories assaulted me, dragging me down into the darkness.
“She just went through a divorce, and she just—she was crying. When you walked out, I hugged her, but it didn’t mean anything. I swear.”
