Goes by Kelley Armstrong

Author:Kelley Armstrong [Armstrong, Kelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I spend the rest of the morning in bed. Laila calls at ten, and I don’t answer. Right now, I don’t care about anyone else’s problems.

Paul knew about my past. He’s known for months, and that is what ended our marriage. My lies.

This was a possibility I never foresaw, and now that I do, I realize what a monumental mistake I made in not telling him from the start. If I’d done that, he’d know that marrying him had nothing to do with hiding or seeking sanctuary. But he’s right that nothing I say now will matter. I never stopped to see it from his point of view. Even if I had, I’m not sure I could have anticipated how he’d feel.

Yes, he wasn’t the sort of guy I usually dated. Yes, we didn’t seem to have a lot in common. And, yes, God help me, I never noticed him coming into the bookstore café, because he wasn’t the kind of man I noticed.

Guys like Paul didn’t usually end up with girls like me, and that’s no insult to him. We move in different spheres, and there was no point noticing a guy like him because he wasn’t going to notice me back. He’d look for a woman like Gayle. A stable, competent fellow professional. Maybe, if I’d finished college and found a career in tech, it’d be different, but I’d been a twenty-five-year-old with a high school education, working in a bookstore. I had not been wife material for a man like Paul. And yet he married me, had a child with me, and I’d felt blessed.

I have hurt a man I loved. A man I still love.

I’ve deeply hurt him. Dealt a blow to his pride and his self-confidence but worse, I betrayed him. Betrayed his trust.

Whenever I’ve grieved over the loss of my marriage, I’ve fortified myself with the knowledge that Paul had been unhappy, so ending it was the right and noble thing for me to do. He had indeed been unhappy . . . because he thought his wife married him as a safe haven, a security blanket. When I suggested it wasn’t working, his quick agreement had stung to the core. Surprised me, too, because I didn’t honestly believe he was divorce-level miserable. Just less happy than I wanted him to be. To him, though, my leaving only proved his point. He’d done the same thing I had—he set me free.

I spend the first two hours that afternoon writing him letters. Write. Rewrite. Rewrite again. I cannot find the words to prove that he’s wrong. I don’t know how, and when I try to put my feelings on paper, it sounds like the worst kind of fakery, over-the-top sentimentality worthy of a cheap greeting card.

I try to tell him my past, but that sounds like excuses. He’s a defense attorney—he’s heard truly tragic life stories, and mine seems weak in comparison.

Your mommy died when you were little. Your daddy killed himself when you were eighteen.

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