My palm landed flat on his chest, and I pushed him back to a safer distance. “You wish.”
“You do. That’s why I’ll never take off my ring.”
“Never?”
“Never. It’s very special to me. I’ve never taken it off.”
“At tennis?”
He shook his head.
“What about when you were fuckingher?”
Jeremy’s eyes bugged wide, and his head snapped in every direction. No one else was nearby, and Matilda was busy introducing her bear to the meerkats. That didn’t stop him from hissing, “Jesus, Erin. We’re at thezoo.”
“Answer the question.”
“This irrational jealousy is beneath you.”
Irrational?I laughed in his face. “Answerthequestion.”
With his hands on his hips and eyes burning into me, Jeremy exhaled a long breath. “I didn’t take off my wedding ring with her. Okay? Are you happy now?”
My teeth nibbled on my bottom lip. “I…”
I wasn’t sure if that was the answer I wanted to hear. Would it have hurt less if he’d slipped off his matching platinum band? Would it be easier to know he’d walked into a hotel room, put his ring on the nightstand, and pretended he was a different man from the one who walked through my front door?
But worse than those confusing thoughts was the next realization I voiced. “She knew you were married,” I said.
Jeremy nodded.
“Oh… Is she?”
“No, she’s not.”
“And it was… just… You said it was only the one night, right?”
Jeremy’s eyes avoided me by watching Matilda dancing her little bear along the meerkat enclosure. “I…” He sighed. “The therapist said I should be completely open with you, but it’s difficult…”
“How many times were you with her?”
“More than once… That night was the first time, but…”
Pain hurtled into my chest and sucked the air right out of my lungs. “You’ve been with her since?”
“I was a man who desperately missed his wife. I rebelled against your rejection in the most hurtful way possible… I understand that now…”
Myrejection?
I pressed my palm into my temple and tried to distract myself from the throb by watching Matilda living happily in her magical toddler world.
“That’s not what happened. I never rejected you,” I said, scrambling for solid memories to latch onto. “You… you said I was ugly.”
“Ineversaid that.”
Okay, not in those exact words… “You said you weren’t attracted to me anymore.”
Jeremy shook his head. “I didn’t.”
