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It was the truth she’d been avoiding all these months. Their love was gone, simply gone, extinguished as cleanly as candlelight, with the sooty scent of smoke the only reminder that it had ever burned at all. She couldn’t even remember those days, long ago, when they had been in love.
She couldn’t help grieving for the loss of that fire, and she was as much to blame as he. She’d spent a lifetime in the shadows, too afraid of failure or abandonment to reach for even the light of a single candle. Their marriage was what they together had created—and that was the saddest truth of all.
Blake wasn’t happy, either. Of that she had no doubt. He wasn’t ready to let go of Annie quite yet, but the Annie he wanted was Annalise Bourne Colwater, the woman she’d become after years and years of living in a rut of their combined creation.
He wanted back what couldn’t be had.
Faint strains of music came from the bedroom speakers. Blake stood in front of the baby’s bassinet, staring down at the tiny infant swaddled in pink.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a slim black velvet box. H
is finger traced the soft fabric as he remembered a dozen gifts he’d given Annie in the past, presents on Christmas mornings, on anniversaries, on birthdays.
Always, he’d given her what he thought she should have. Like her wedding ring. On their tenth anniversary he’d bought her the three-carat diamond solitaire, not because she wanted it—Annie was perfectly happy with the gold band they’d bought when it was all they could afford—but because it made Blake look good. Everyone who saw his wife’s ring knew that Blake was a successful, wealthy man.
He’d never given her what she needed, what she wanted. He’d never given her himself.
“Blake?”
At the sound of her voice, soft and tentative, he turned around. She stood in the open archway, wearing a beautiful blue silk robe he’d given her years ago, and she looked incredibly lovely.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Steeling himself, he moved toward her. “I know. ”
She stared up at him, and for a second, all he wanted to do was hold her so tightly that she could never leave him again. But he’d learned that holding too tightly was as harmful as never reaching out at all. “I have something for you. A birthday present. ” He held the box out to her. It lay in his palm like a black wound.
Tentatively, still staring up at him, she took the box and opened it. On a bed of ice-blue silk lay a glittering gold bracelet. The name Annie was engraved across the top.
“Oh, Blake,” she whispered, biting down on her lower lip.
“Turn it over,” he said.
She eased the bracelet from the box, and he saw that her hands were trembling as she turned it over and read the inscription on the underside.
I will always love you.
She looked up at him, her eyes moist. “It’s not going to work, Blake. It’s too late. ”
“I know,” he whispered, hearing the unmanly catch in his voice and not caring. Maybe if he’d cared less about things like that in the past, he wouldn’t be standing here, saying good-bye to the only woman who’d ever truly loved him. “I wish . . . ” He didn’t even know what he wished for. That she had been different? That he had? That they’d seen this truth a long time ago?
“Me, too,” she answered.
“Will you . . . remember the words on that bracelet?”
“Oh, Blake, I don’t need a bracelet to remember how much I loved you. You were my life for more than twenty years. Whenever I look back, I’ll think of you. ” Tears streaked in silvery lines down her cheeks. “What about Katie?”
“I’ll support her, of course. . . . ”
He could tell that she was hurt by his answer. “I don’t mean money. ”
He moved toward her, touched her cheek. He knew what she wanted from him right now, but it wasn’t really in his power to give. It never had been, that was part of their problem. He wouldn’t be there for Katie, any more than he’d been there for Natalie. Suddenly, he grieved for all of it. For the good times and the bad, for the roads not taken and the lives that had carelessly grown apart. Sadly, he gazed down at her. “Do you want me to lie to you?”
She shook her head. “No. ”
Slowly, he pulled her into his arms. He held her close, knowing he’d carry this image in his heart for as long as he lived. “I guess it’s really over,” he whispered into her sweet-smelling hair. After a long moment, he heard her answer, a quiet, shuddering little “Yes. ”
Natalie’s dorm room was cluttered with memorabilia from London. Pictures of new friends dotted her desk, mingled with family photos and piles of homework. The metal-framed twin bed was heaped with expensive Laura Ashley bedding, and at the center was the pink pillow Annie had embroidered a lifetime ago, the one that read: A PRINCESS SLEEPS HERE.
