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“I was scared!” The words burst out of me like a mortar, rendering everything in their path silent.
“Scared? Of what?”
“Of you! I was scared of you.” Those pesky tears whenever I thought about that night pressed against my lids, and I kicked out of the covers, flinging my legs over the edge. I couldn’t look at him, not when I had more to say. I needed to find my center and allow the words to come.
“I would never hurt you.”
I bit my lip as a tear broke through my barriers and slipped down my cheek. I swatted it away. “You think I don’t know that now?”
“But what about then?”
I took a deep breath, but I was afraid if I opened my mouth, all that would come out were muttered sounds and sobs. I’d held this confession in for well over a decade. I never even told Shelly, though I suspected she knew before even I figured it out.
“My mom had just died. Marion showed up to her funeral as if it was okay she was there. That it was okay she stole my father away from us. And as awful as that is, I don’t even blame her for it. I blame my dad. He let her. He let her walk into my mother’s funeral as if they did nothing wrong. As if they didn’t equally betray my mother and me. He let her.”
More tears fell as the memories resurfaced, feeling as raw as the day they had happened.
“You know, growing up my father was everything to me. I was daddy’s little girl, and I loved it. My dad was a superhero. He was my idol, my favorite person. I loved him with every ounce of my soul, and he broke my heart. If my own father, my flesh and blood, can break my heart, how could I trust any guy not to?”
“I wasn’t just any guy.”
I turned, catching his gaze over my shoulder. His leg had drawn toward him, his body angling in my direction as if at any moment he would leap toward me.
“At the time, that didn’t matter. All I could think about was how my father had betrayed my mother and how he betrayed me. The one man who was supposed to be my rock was my biggest disappointment.”
I took a second to breathe. Laurent shifted, his warmth moving closer.
“That night when we…” I didn’t say the words. I didn’t have to. That night, we didn’t just sleep together. We had made love. “I looked into your eyes, and for the first time, I realized how much I loved you. How deep my feelings actually went for you, and that scared me. It scared me so much.” Tears poured down my cheeks now, and I didn’t even try to stop them. They waited a decade and a half to fall, so who I was to hold them back any longer?
“Leaving you was the easy part. It was the after that hurt like hell—the constant doubt I’d made the wrong choice. Knowing I couldn’t pick up the phone and call you. I missed you so much. You were my world for two years, and then you weren’t.”
“I could have been. I wanted to be.”
“I know and that hurt even more. I knew if I called you, you’d drop everything to come to me. I almost did. So many times.”
“Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just fucking call? We could have talked about it. You could have told me you were scared.”
I shifted my weight and angled toward him. Storm clouds darkened his eyes, but I wasn’t sure if it was fury or sadness. Maybe a mixture of both. “The longer I was away from you, the more I realized how much I relied on you. I needed to get my shit together. I didn’t want to end up like my mother. When my dad left, her entire world crumbled. If it wasn’t for me, I don’t even think she’d have gotten out of bed in the morning. It was more than being scared. I was terrified I would lose myself. So I did the only thing I could.”
“You ran.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded. “And I kept running from one country to the next. There’d come points whenI didn’t even know what I was running away from anymore, but I couldn’t stop. I just kept going farther and farther away… from you.”
He reached up, brushing his thumb across the tears on my cheeks. “Did you find yourself?”
“I did.” The words were barely a whisper.
“Then that’s all that matters.”
“No, don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Be all nice about it and act as if I did the right thing. I fucking left you in bed, naked, without as much as a goodbye note. You have every right to be angry with me.”
“Oh, I was. For a very long time. I couldn’t even hear your name without gritting my teeth. I wanted to hate you so bad, and I think I even convinced myself a few times I did, but the truth is… I could never hate you, Phoebs. At one point in my life, I loved you so much, and no matter how much hatred I felt, it could never fully darken that love.”
Whether it was his words or the emotional turmoil of the day, I broke completely. Sobs wracked my body, and I had no control over the ugly noises coming out of me. Laurent didn’t hesitate. He wrapped his big arms around me, pulling me close to his warm chest.
