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“It’s not really about her…”
He let out an irritated sigh.
“It’s about you.”
“Do I compare myself to your ex-husband? Do you think I feel insecure that you loved someone enough to marry them? I don’t.”
“Wow, you really have no idea.” He couldn’t return my feelings because he didn’t even know what they were. This man was brilliant, but he was also oblivious. “Looks like you don’t know all my tells after all.”
His gaze hardened before he looked away.
“I’m in love with you.”
His eyes remained averted before they slowly made their way back to me.
For just a tiny moment, I prayed he would say it back, hoped it would be written in his eyes.
But he said nothing.
“I think you already knew that…even though you pretended otherwise.”
“I don’t want this to end, so no, I didn’t acknowledge it.”
He should have just punched me in the face. It would have hurt a lot less. “Wow…okay.”
“Don’t act like I’m the asshole here.”
“Then what are you?” I snapped, hiding the hurt in my voice by sounding angry instead.
He stepped closer to me, his eyes furious. “The first night we met, you laid down the law. You said it was a meaningless relationship, and if I ever tried to make it more, we’d be done. Now you’re breaking your own rules, rules that I agreed to. I’m the asshole? You came to me under false pretenses.”
“Things change—”
“That’s bullshit. Your kids will be in the house for more than a decade. That hasn’t changed.”
“I’d be willing to bring you into our lives—”
“No.”
He could have stabbed me, and that’d still hurt less. “You wanted to marry Camille and have a family…”
“That’s different.”
“Different because you love her and not me?” How could we be so close and he feel nothing? How could we have the most passionate relationship of my life and it was unremarkable to him?
He looked away, refusing to answer the question.
“So you are still in love with her.”
“No.”
“Then how is it different?”
“Because I want my own kids.” He looked at me again, his face tinted with red. “I don’t want to be a stepfather. There, I fucking said it.”
That hurt most of all.
Grave turned away, his arms shaking he was so mad. “This was supposed to be a meaningless relationship, but you pulled the fucking bait-and-switch trick on me. I thought I was getting a no-strings-attached fuck-a-thon with a woman who couldn’t want something more, and you fucked me over. You think I want to say these things to you?”
