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Rage swamped her and she slammed her hands palm down on the table. Bad move. It gave him the opportunity to reach out and cover one of her hands with his, his soothing touch too warm, too comfortable.
But she didn’t shrug him off. She couldn’t, because somehow with that one touch he broke something inside her, some inner reserve of animosity she’d been harboring against him ever since he’d walked out of Rainbow Creek and hadn’t looked back.
And she didn’t want to resent him or be bitter or hold onto grudges. She wanted a real, honest-to-goodness explanation, a reason that would finally set her free so she could move on.
“Cam, look at me.”
He squeezed her hand gently and she gnawed on her bottom lip, blinking furiously. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She couldn’t, for she had a feeling once the flood gates opened she’d cry enough tears to fill Port Phillip Bay.
Taking a deep breath, she raised her eyes to meet his, her heart clenching at the sincerity blazing in his.
“I was selfish in marrying you. I wanted you so badly I was blinded to anything else. You were only nineteen and had spent your whole life in that small town.” He shook his head. “I took advantage of you.”
He rubbed his free hand over his face but it did little to wipe the anguish off his face. “We were practically kids. And the way we did it? Eloping? Blowing off your parents? Going against their wishes? What were we thinking?”
“None of that mattered. I married you because I wanted to,” she said, her voice tremulous, and she swallowed several times to stop it cracking completely. “You were my world.”
Pain, deep and irreversible flickered in his eyes, turning them stormy pewter as he gripped onto her hand like he’d never let go.
“Same here, sweetheart, same here. But you wanted to follow me and hit the road to goodness knows where while I scrounged work, when you had your own dreams to follow.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the café next door. “That’s your dream right there. You wanted to live in the big city and run your own place, you’ve done it. And that’s great. You couldn’t have done that if you’d traipsed around with me to the ends of the earth and back. I couldn’t let you do it.”
Something niggled in the back of her mind, something about her parents, but she ignored it for now, needing to concentrate long enough to make sense of what he’d just said, to absorb the emotional impact of it all.
For there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Blane meant every word, that he truly believed he’d done the right thing. But at what cost? Her heart? The wonderful life they could’ve had together?
“You couldn’tletme?” She shook her head, hoping she could get through this without dissolving into a teary mess. “It wasmychoice to make. Mine, not yours. At the very least we should’ve discussed it…” she trailed off as a light bulb flashed in her mind, illuminating what she’d been trying to put her finger on a few moments ago. “How did you know I was going against my parents’ wishes? They never spoke to you about what they wanted. You didn’t even see them the week after we eloped.”
Guilt clouded the strong, rugged features she’d once loved with all her heart and her hand shook with the effort not to reach out and smooth the indentation between his brows.
“I went to see them after we eloped, to try and explain how we really felt about each other, how I’d never try and come between you and them.”
“Bet that went down a treat,” she muttered, struck by the irony of the situation. In leaving town, he’d catapulted her into a life-changing confrontation with her parents, resulting in an estrangement she couldn’t breach.
“They gave it to me straight and I knew then I couldn’t put my needs ahead of yours. It wasn’t right or fair. And they were right about one thing: I had nothing to offer you. You had a comfortable life there, a way of building a financial future before following your own dreams and I couldn’t take that away from you.”
A harsh snort burst from deep within and she took advantage of his momentary surprise to ease her hand out from under his. She had to, before she turned hers palm up and hung on for dear life.
“You leaving ended up being the catalyst for me running from Rainbow Creek as fast I could.”
Shock widened his pupils. “Why?”
Camryn took a sip of water, instantly transported back to that day in her folks’ kitchen: the tantrum, the accusations, and the awful truth.
“I lost it. Blew up at them big time. Mom lost it too, we started arguing, then she hurls in my face that my flightiness was the very reason she was keeping Nan’s inheritance from me until I turned twenty-one.”
She slugged the rest of the water, hoping to wash away the bitter taste of her parents’ deception lingering to this day.
“Turns out, I could’ve had the money when I hit eighteen. Imagine how different our—my life could’ve been.”
And that’s what rankled most. If she’d had the money when she’d been entitled to it, maybe they would still be together. Blane wouldn’t have had to scrape by from job to job, town to town; they could’ve had a healthy start to their marriage with enough capital to do whatever they wanted.
But her parents had robbed her of that opportunity, had stolen the kind of life she and Blane had talked about while lying under the stars besides the river in Rainbow Creek, two young lovers daring to dream.
She’d never forgive them for that.
“I’m sorry.” He reached out and touched her cheek, a soft, comforting gesture all too fleeting when he withdrew his hand. “For everything.”
