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“Yes, because you hurt me. Because you’re running away.” I stood breathing hard, my face burning hot. Eric turned his palms up.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to face me and tell me the truth.” I set my hands on my hips, my anger mounting. “You’re running away from us, and I think you’re scared. I think something happened, something in your past, and it’s made you shut down. It’s made you closed off. Sam said the same thing, and so did your ex. That you never opened up to them, that you—”
“My ex?” Eric’s brows shot up. “You talked to… which ex?”
I flushed. “Safire Rose, and we didn’t talk. She said it in an interview, that you were surface-level. That you wouldn’t open up to her.”
“We only dated six months.”
“And how about Sam? You’ve known him twenty years.”
“I can’t do this,” Eric said.
“You can’t dowhat?” I threw my hands up, frustrated. “What’s the big secret? Don’t you know I’d be there for you, whatever it is? We’d get through it together. We—”
“I was only pretending.”
I froze, all the blood draining out of my face. Pretending… with me? It couldn’t be true. The way he’d looked at me, the way he’d held me — the way he’d choked up shooting my death scene. No one could fake that. Not even Eric. He’d felt something for me, and I knew he still felt it. I could see it in the tension across his broad shoulders, the way he dipped his head to avoid my gaze. He was lying to my face. Lying about lying. What secret could be so bad he’d hurt me this way?
“I thought it would be easier,” he said, and he shrugged. “I thought it’d go faster if we had fun, but now the fun’s over. It’s time to move on.”
“Look at me and say that.” I forced the words out through my clenched teeth.
Eric turned his back on me. “I’ve said all there is to say. Let’s not make it worse.”
I laughed. “Make it worse? You’re standing there lying, knowing you’ll hurt me,seeingme hurt, and you still can’t be honest. What could be worse than that? What? Come on, tell me.”
Eric exhaled harshly. “Please, please don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?”
“I tried to leave it on a high note. You just kept on pushing.”
I opened my mouth, then I closed it again. I’d said all I had to say, played all my cards. It was Eric’s move now, and if he wouldn’t make it, if all he could do was walk away from the game…
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I never wanted that. I hope one day you’ll forgive me, and we can be friends.”
My hand twitched with the urge to fling sand in his face, but I’d already tried that. I’d tried all I could. I brushed the tears off my lashes and turned away.
“Goodbye, then,” I said. “Have a good life.”
I trudged back up the beach without looking back, expecting at every moment to hear Eric behind me. I heard running footsteps in the wind, in the surf, in the clunk of a loose pole in a bamboo fence. Chatter rose down the beach, and I heardwait, Lacey, wait.I stopped and waited, but Eric never came. The sun rose overhead and it took my hopes with it, burning them off like night mist at dawn.
It didn’t matter what Eric’s secrets were, or that he had them.
All that mattered was, he hadn’t trusted me enough to share them.
All that mattered was, I wasn’t enough. I’d have given him all of me, but he didn’t want that. He’d rather crush my heart than give me a chance, rather cast me aside than simply be honest.
After all that we’d been through, I wasn’t the one.
CHAPTER 21
ERIC
Istill sometimes reached for her six weeks later, turned to tell her when I thought of something funny. But I sat alone between takes, alone in my limo. I slept alone in my dreary Vancouver hotel room, listening to rain on the dark street outside. We’d begun the proceedings, or our lawyers had, drawing up the agreement that would sever our fates. We’d divorce without fault and without penalty, each walking away with what we’d brought to the marriage.Painless,Sam had called it, with a sigh of relief. If he’d been in the room with me and not on the phone, I might’ve throttled him or punched his lights out. Shown him exactly how painless I found it.
