Page 26 of Promise

[Trinity]

Isputter and cough, although nothing comes out of my mouth. Not one of the complicated questions racing around my head.

How?

Why?

What?

“I sent you the divorce papers,” I eventually state, certain I’d had the correct address of the arena where he practiced.

“And I never signed them.”

I stare at him, like I didn’t hear him correctly. He couldn’t possibly be as blasé about the situation as he sounds. My shoulders stiffen, but my heart hammers away, knocking at my rib cage. I can’t draw in a breath. He cannot be serious.

“What do you mean you didn’t sign them?” The disbelief in my voice should say it all, but the clench in my belly knows the simple truth.

He didn’t sign them.

For half a second, something a lot like longing and relief leaps to my throat, but I swallow it down, knowing the emotions are dangerous. The bile is more a warning not to trust him than to believe him.

“When I called you Forever, I meant it.” His whiskey eyes turn to flames. Devotion in the flicker. Dedication in his words. He wasn’t letting me go. He never really had.

Slow your roll, sister.

He already left you. You shouldn’t believe him. You can’t trust him.

“You left,” I remind him.

“And I asked you to come with me,” he tosses back, the volley serrated like the edge of a key.

He had asked. Practically begged. He thought a change for him would bring a change for us.

Maybe it would have.

But I was still me. Not that having a baby was all about me. He never felt that way. We wanted to fill those upper bedrooms, but I had become a woman crazed. One determined to make it happen.

Sex was scheduled. Temperatures taken. Failure not acceptable. We could do this. The physical connection so prevalent in our marriage had taken a back seat to function and mechanics.

Mentally, I was psyching myself out, almost repelling the thing I desired most.

Biologically, it just wasn’t happening.

Dart started turning down sex, rejection that stung soul deep. Like my gut literally twisted because he wouldn’t touch me, didn’t want me. The last miscarriage pushed him over the edge. He believed he’d lose me permanently.

Then, he sprang on me the idea of joining a race team, moving, and making a fresh start.

I knew he’d been back at the local canyon, racing in circles to let off steam, but I never thought it’d go as far as it went. And I hadn’t wanted any part of it.

Because he appeared to have moved on to a new dream, a new goal, for him, and I . . . felt like I had nothing.

As the silence drags between us, Dart finally clears his throat. There is no sense in rehashing an old argument.

The one where he asked me to go with him, and I refused to leave.

“I’m not leaving again.” He drives that determination into the vacant lot of my heart. Braking a second, he lifts his head and levels me with conviction. “This is our house. You are my home.”

He jabs at the dining table to emphasize his point.