Page 90 of Promise

“You looked better. Happier.” He weakly smiles at me.

“Better?” I choke. I was dying inside. My husband was gone. The idea of future pregnancies gone. I had stopped considering adoption. I didn’t want to go it alone.

I wanted my husband home.

“That first time, I picked them myself. Thought I’d make a grand gesture in coming back.” He pauses, looking down at his boots. “But I don’t know . . . I just couldn’t do it. Start that cycle of pain all over again. I didn’t think you’d be happy to see me, so I just left them. Like a coward.”

I continue to stare at him, holding the island for support as my knees suddenly wobble.

Dart was here. He’d come back for me.

“Why?” I whisper.

“Just wanted to brighten your day,” he admits again, but his expression is full of sorrow, his brows lowered, knowing that it’d hurt instead.

“Why didn’t you come see me again?” I stress, clutching a fist to my chest while rounding the island, standing toe-to-toe with him.

Three fucking years. Three lonely years without him.

“Dart.” My voice cracks, my heart breaking in a new way. “I fucking missed you. I was so lonely without you. I wanted you to come back to me.”

Tears cloud my eyes.

Dart drops the flowers and tugs me to him, cupping the back of my head. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I know he means it. The anguish in his voice. The way he’s holding onto me. He’s sorry he left, but is he back? Is he really home for good?

“Dart, we need to⁠—”

Mirabelle cries out through the monitor app on my phone.

I don’t want to end like this. We have more to discuss. I need to know his plan.

“Dammit,” I whisper.

“I’ll get her,” Dart says, flowers still on the floor at his feet.

He runs his fingers along the side of my face, staring at me with so much sorrow in his eyes. Like he can’t get anything right. And I don’t want him to feel that way.

He stoops to pick up the flowers and silently hands them to me, then turns for the hallway, taking the stairs two at a time.

The pattern is heavy and familiar. A reminder that he’s in the house. The noise is a comfort more than an annoyance.

I bring the flowers to my nose and close my eyes.

He’d been so wrong. I wasn’t happier without him.

I was happier with him here.

26

[Dart]

After our second kiss, when I snuck to the hospital and kissed Trinity during her shift break, using some lame excuse when all I really wanted to do was see her again, we had a chance encounter on Marshall’s property before it was his distillery and Savannah’s lavender field.

Trinity was just standing there, like a ray of sunshine amid all these daisies in a field. Her hair was still strawberry-blond, and she somehow blended with the blooms around her.

I plucked a daisy from the field and held up the flower.