Page 97 of Running to You

But… “You believed him?” Sam tried to keep his tone even.

“I had no reason not to.”

“You could have believed in me.”

“But it was Kylee,” she said, “and I’d seen you—”

“I loved you, Eliza. You really think I could marry another woman that soon? What kind of a man—?”

“But don’t you see? From my perspective, you’d lied to me about having lunch with her. And it was the first time you’d gotten caught, but how did I know it was the first time you’d been out with her? Maybe you’d been seeing her for months. I believed a lot of things that weren’t true. I can’t blame the Kellers for most of it. I just…I always knew I wasn’t good enough for you. I decided you wanted to break up with me. I mean, you’d been pulling away—”

“You were the one pulling away.”

“So were you.” She pressed on through his denial. “I remember now, the time after the New Year’s Eve party. You claimed that you did everything you could to keep us together, but that’s not true.”

“What did you want me to do? You were the one planning to leave.”

“After I learned about the layoffs, yeah. I was reeling. Questioning every decision I’d ever made. Not just you. Not just the sale of the business. Everything. But after I resigned and it was over… Mom and most of the employees blamed you. And the more they did, the more I realized the truth. You found a great buyer, and you warned Mom and me what could happen. You gave us all the information and let us make the decision.”

“I did. I tried to make it clear what could happen.” He hadn’t thought it would, though. He was new to the business, and too trusting. He could see past people’s lies now. See their motivations better. Sometimes see things they didn’t know themselves. Lessons he’d learned the hard way.

“Mom and I took the deal because…well, it was a lot of money. A great price for what Dad had built. It felt like a way to honor him. And Mom was worried about how she was going to make ends meet. The money solved her problems. So we took the chance.” She lifted her hands, palms up, and then let them drop in her lap. “It didn’t work out.”

“Not the way you wanted it to,” Sam said. “But all those employees found other jobs. You and your mother split seven figures. It was a good deal.”

“You’re right. The point is, at the time, the more everyone railed against you, the more I defended you. I knew, I knew, that you weren’t to blame. Even so, things were different between us after that. It was like…like you were pulling away from me.”

He flashed a look at her. “Eliza, you were pulling away from me.”

“I wasn’t. That Easter, Mom was being her typical annoying self, and I was just trying to shut her up before you got back. When she said all that stuff about you, how you were a playboy, how you probably swindled us—”

“You agreed with her.”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t agree. I was saying, ‘I know what you think, and I’m not having this argument again.’”

“I’m supposed to believe that.”

“You could have asked me about it. You could have been honest with me.”

“Why? So you could…” He clamped his lips closed.

“Reject you?” The words were soft and gentle. And ticked him off. “The point is,” she said, “I felt you pulling away. I tried to talk to you about it. Do you remember? We were on the trails behind your old house. I asked you if there was something wrong? If you were upset with me about something. And you said no. You said everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine.”

Yeah, he remembered. “What was I supposed to say?”

“The truth, maybe?”

“The truth? Was that what you wanted? The truth was that you couldn’t buy a pack of gum without getting someone’s counsel. You were never looking for my advice, though.”

“There was nobody I looked to more than you.”

“Until the layoffs.”

“That’s not true. I asked—”

“You took that job in Portsmouth, and you didn’t even tell me about it beforehand, much less ask me what I thought. But I’d put money on the fact that you asked your mother.”

And…now she went quiet.