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“I’m here to talk to Ryan and to apologize. My wife had nothing to do with today.”
“If she wasn’t here, you wouldn’t be, and you wouldn’t have hurt one of the kindest men in town,” Sarah said.
“It’s fine, Sarah. We’re okay,” Ryan said.
“I can call the sheriff.”
“Don’t. Wolfe and I can handle our problems, right, Wolfe?”
“It’s why I’m here. I’m not looking to cause any kind of trouble.” He held his hands up, showing the both of them he wasn’t planning on hurting anyone.
“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Sarah stormed off down the street.
“You’ve got all the women chasing you,” Wolfe said, looking up at Ryan.
The other man looked as bad as he did.
Ryan also didn’t cower or look scared.
They were both completely in control.
“What are you doing here?” Ryan asked. “I don’t think it’s wise for you and me to be near each other.”
“Do you want to have this conversation on the doorstep or in the privacy of your own home? I promise I’ll keep my distance.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Wolfe. You’re the one who lost your temper today, not me.”
“You were chasing after my wife.”
“I love Rachel. Can you say the same?”
He stared at the man who thought he could take Rachel from him, and he was a little pissed.
Wolfe laughed. “You know, everyone seems to be under the impression I don’t love my wife.”
“How can you pretend to love her otherwise?”
“What makes you think my feelings are pretend?”
“I know her. I’ve hung out with her a lot over the past couple of years. We’ve become really good friends, and if there’s one thing I know about her, she’s a hard woman to walk away from. I can go a weekend, but come Monday, I’ve got to see her smiling face. She always has a smile on and is always helping others. She’s a selfless woman. How could you not want to be with her when she is everything?”
Wolfe stared at Ryan.
“I do love my wife.”
Ryan snorted.
“Can I come inside? I don’t want to have this conversation outside.”
“I’m not letting you into my house. I’ve got no problem with my neighbors hearing my business. Do you?”
Wolfe gritted his teeth.
“You fought me today because I admitted the truth. I told Rachel I loved her. I would do anything for her, and yes, I’d love to have her as the mother to my son, but you fought me today. Why the hell should she stay with you when she’s got me? A man willing to love her, to be by her side when her real husband does not?” Ryan asked. “Tell me, Wolfe, why should I walk away? Why should I stop fighting for her when you so clearly haven’t been doing that for the past few years?”
Much to Wolfe’s irritation, the man had a point. There was no point over the past five years when he’d even convinced his wife he loved her.
“I love my wife more than anything else in the world. I met her five years ago. She was so young and so … innocent to the world. All she ever wanted was her fairy tale ending. I told her I was the guy for her. I had my own agenda, obviously. Who doesn’t? I didn’t start out loving my wife. I wasn’t even attracted to her. She was a means to an end. Someone I had to get to fall in love with me to get what I wanted.”
“And you call that love?”
“I’d never been in love. I’ve never taken my time to get to know a woman. With Rachel, it was the small things. I know her favorite color is purple. She’s always drawn to those colors. She loves the rain, but it has to be a warm rain. Not the kind in the dead of winter where ice strikes you hard. She adores the snow. Loves it. She even likes playing in it still, and now she has a kid, she can make excuses for being out with the snow.”
He smiled, remembering the laughter as she dragged him outside to play with her. It was the first time she’d built a snowman as her parents had always kept her from going outside, catching her death of cold. “I love the blue of her eyes. They’re like an open book to the woman inside. She cannot hide what she thinks or feels, even as she tries so hard to do exactly that. Her laughter. I missed it so much. It’s infectious, and even if you’re having a really fucking shitty day, hearing her laugh, you know everything is going to be okay. She’s on this planet, and knowing that, you can’t hate the world, or what it represents. She wants to be completely loved by someone, and she is. She just doesn’t know it yet. I love my wife more than anything else in the world, and you know, I am a fuck-up. A giant, stinking fuck-up, but I will do anything for her, because even though she doesn’t realize it, she owns my heart. My entire life is linked to hers, which is why I won’t let her go. If you think these past five years have been easy for me, you’re wrong. They’ve been the hardest of my life because she realized what an asshole I am, and well, rather than step out of my comfort zone, I let her believe it. I am an asshole, but with Rachel, I couldn’t hurt her.”
