Page 124 of Just Killing Time


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“Why did you leave me, Caroline?” he asked, needing to know that before he decided what he was going to do.

Everything hinged on her answer. He’d realized that days ago, back when he’d been torturing himself by trying to stay away from her whenwithher was the only place he wanted to be. Because if her distrust of him hadn’t changed, then nothing ever would.

“Did youreallybelieve I betrayed you one week after asking you to marry me?” he asked, trying to sound merely curious, and not hurt, though he’d been nursing that wound for a very, very long time. Through other women and relationships. And tattoos.

She didn’t answer for a long moment. Then, finally, she tilted her head back and stared at him, her face lit by soft moonlight and her eyes glistening with emotion. “I did.”

A part of him died at her answer.

“I don’t now.”

He nodded, waiting for her to go on.

“Mick, I know now that what I interpreted as your inability to commit, to ever settle down and be faithful, was really my own out clause from our relationship.”

“Out clause?”

“I’d built in an easy escape. Deep down I never,everthought I’d be able to hold you. Any more than my mother could hold my father. Or any woman with a lousy outlook on love could hold a man who seemed to love everybody—” she rolled her eyes “—as often as possible.”

He laughed, unable to help it, amused by her droll tone. “We’ve been over that. And for the record, I’ve only everlovedone woman. As I believe I told you one night many years ago.”

She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth but didn’t press for more details. There were still words to be said before they could go down that road.

“The point is, I convinced myself you wouldn’t change. That I wasn’t enough to make you want to change.”

“That implies I was really in need of change. Was I that bad?”

“Before we got together?” She frowned. “Baby, the big bad wolf could have taken lessons from you.”

He winced. “Point taken.”

She curled tighter against him. “So, I prepared myself for the inevitable and when the first opportunity occurred, I convinced myself it was true and hightailed it west.”

He couldn’t keep the pain from his voice. It was eight years old, miles wide and unvoiced until this moment. “You didn’t even give me a chance to explain.”

She sniffed a little, raising her face to the sky so that he could see the tears on her cheeks. “I know. And I’m sorry. That’s the biggest regret of my life. That I didn’t have the courage or the self-confidence to get in your face and demand an explanation.”

If she had, how different might their lives have been? He had no idea, and it was a waste of time thinking about the past, now, when the future stretched out in front of them. At least, he hoped it did.

They fell silent again, just rocking in the moonlight, listening to the bark of the neighbor’s dog and the creak of the swing’s chain. And then, just when he’d thought she’d say no more, she added, “I’m sorry for doubting you. I know you’d never hurt me.”

That was enough for him, the moment he’d been waiting for.

And the moment he knew his future.

CARO WOKE THE next morning and slipped from Mick’s bed after a night of lovemaking like none she’d ever known. She’d expected frenzy, a hungry grasping of something that was slipping away and might very well be over when she boarded the plane the next day.

But there was none of that. There was long, slow, languorous loving that went on for hours, until she lost sight of who she was and who he was, where her body ended and his began. She moaned and she sighed. She came and she gave. She cried out and she sobbed. And over and over she whispered—if only in her mind—I love you, Mick.

When she got out of the shower, she found the bedroom empty. Mick had left her alone, obviously not wanting to watch her pack her things.

“So why didn’t you ask me to stay?” she muttered as she returned to her own room to gather the last of her stuff.

Why hadn’t he? How could he make such beautiful, perfect, tender love to her and never once even broach the subject of their future? “Maybe now that the past is reconciled, he doesn’t want a future anymore.” She stared at her own reflection in the mirror, hating that she’d thought the words, much less said them aloud.

“Caro, you’re going to miss your plane,” she heard from downstairs.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, growing angry now, instead of just hurt. She’d poured her heart out. Okay, no, she hadn’t poured her heart out. All those “I love you’s” had been shouted in her brain, but not even whispered from her lips.

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