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“How long, Jules?”
“H-How long what?”
“How long?”
He touched her soft, soft cheek. He was cornered; there was no way out of this except to lie—and that was pointless. She might remember it all in ten seconds. “Now,” he answered in a tired, broken voice. “Just now. ”
She frowned. “Just now what? I’m thirty-nine years old, that means my—our baby is sixteen. You don’t mean …”
“Just now,” he repeated quietly.
Tears filled her eyes, magnified her pain until it seemed to suck the air from the room. “You mean … you never came back for me? In all those years, never?”
He felt the sting of tears in his own eyes. “I was young and stupid. I didn’t know how special it was between us. It took me a long time to grow up. ”
“Never. ” The single word slipped from her mouth, toneless and dead. “Oh, my God. ”
“Kayla, I’m sorry. ”
“No wonder I forgot. ”
“Don’t look at me like that. ”
“Like what?”
“Like … I’ve broken your heart. ”
She tried to wipe her eyes, but her effort was a failure; she slapped her own cheek. “I guess you did that a long time ago—and lucky me, I get to experience it twice. Oh, Jules. ” She sagged into the pillows. “I love you so much. But it’s not enough, is it?” She turned her head and closed her eyes. “I wish I’d forgotten you. ”
“Don’t say that. Please …” He wanted to kiss her tears away, but he had no right. He had hurt her again, as he’d known he would, and he regretted it more deeply than he would have thought possible. Suddenly he saw all the chances he’d lost. For the first time, he wanted the years back, wanted to have become the kind of man who knew how to love.
She rolled awkwardly onto her side. “Go away. ”
“Kayla, don’t—”
“Go away, Julian. Please. ”
If he’d had Liam’s courage, he would have known what to say, but as it was, he was empty. He turned away from her and headed for the door.
“I want to see my daughter,” she said.
He nodded, saying nothing, not knowing if she even knew he’d answered. Then he left.
She wanted to curl into a small, safe ball and close out the world again.
He never came back.
She couldn’t seem to grasp that. It broke her, pure and simple. For a long, long time, she lay in her lonely bed, trying to wrap her arms around a truth that was too big to hold.
What had she been doing all these years? If things were normal, if she were normal, would she have laughed at him and told him to run along, that her love for him had died a long time ago?
That was the hell of it. She didn’t know who she’d become in the years after their parting. Everything she’d learned or touched or believed in was gone, along with all the memories that, when sewn together, scrap by scrap, made up a life.
And what about her daughter, her baby girl who hadn’t been a baby in years? She remembered a pudgy, brown-eyed toddler with a halo of jet-black curls, a little girl who could go from hysterical sobbing to laughter in a heartbeat. She remembered the feel of that baby in her arms, but after that, nothing. No images came to her of frilly Easter bonnets or lunch boxes or loose teeth. Fifteen blank years, as unknown as tomorrow.
She wished she could be angry; it was so much better than this aching, overwhelming sorrow.
In her heart, she was twenty-four years old and deeply in love with her husband. Only he wasn’t her husband and she’d had fifteen long years to heal the wounds he’d inflicted.
