AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I keep quiet, sensing his pain, feeling it for him, deep down in the tips of my toes.
“Do they see her?”
“They’ve been to see her.”
“When?”
I avert my own gaze. “They haven’t missed a birthday,” I eventually say, knowing it’ll tell him enough—that they care for her. Maybe not as much as I’d like them to care, but enough not to forget her birthday.
And I know that fact will hurt him. I don’t say it for that reason, I’d never intentionally hurt him, not when I know how much his mum’s let him down already, but he deserves the truth.
“You didn’t have to make an effort with them,” he tells me after a while. “Thank you for that.”
“I didn’t do it—”
“No,” he cuts me off. “I know you didn’t. You did it for Ave.”
I give him a half smile.
He stares at me before chuckling. “Can you remember up on the balcony? It was the first night we spent together here. I said something…” I watch him ponder it while I pretend I haven’t thought about that night, him, all that came after, and every word he ever uttered to me, over and over, every day since he left. “I said something like… sometimes we’re allowed to presume someone is good.”
“You called me incredible.”
His eyes spark. “And I barely even knew you.”
Why did I say that?
I will myself to shut up as heat roars under my makeup.
“I just knew.” He smiles at me. “I’ll happily wear being a presumptuous witch, Scarlet, because I’mcertainyou’ve done an incredible job raising our daughter.”
My legs drag along the dirt underfoot, my body an unpredictable ball of energy. What do I even say to that?
“I don’t think we have to know everything to see that someone is good. Sometimes we’re allowed to presume—that was it.”
I shake my head, looking at my now dust-covered sandal. “Maybe.”
“You’re incredible,” he mutters, almost hopefully, and my heart all but stops.
I go to open my mouth and close it, not trusting my words. Knowing I should shut my damn mouth because… “You said that already.”
He twists his head away, but I know he’s smiling, and damn me for playing into this game.
I wait, wondering, yet knowing the words that will come.
“I’m just making sure you believe it.”
Word for word.
Seven years later. And he remembers. Word for word.
“I know I have a lot to put right.” I meet his eyes, panic flaring in my chest at the way the conversation is going. “I know you don’t trust me. That I did the one thing I promised you I wouldn’t when I left, and then I cut you off.” A shiver snakes down my spine, the hairs on my arms standing on end. “But I’ll put it right. I’ll make it right somehow. For both of you.”
I want to tell him it’s fine. I want to tell him there’s nothing to be sorry for and that I forgive him.
But I don’t.
Seven years ago, I’d have rolled over and told him it was okay. I’d have done anything to take his guilt away—just like I always did with Mase and my dad. But I’m not that girl anymore. I’m a woman. A doctor. A mother.
