He watched it fall, then kissed her eyelids. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” she said, because it was true.
She wished she could slide Jack back into the slot she’d reserved for him. But she’d fallen in love with a man who didn’t love her back. She had no one to blame but herself.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Blunt
He was a world-class asshole. He couldn’t do this to her. He was a ticking time-bomb, and he could explode at any minute. He didn’t trust himself. He didn’t trust his instincts.
Awake since four in the morning, he sat parked on the couch, his head in his hands. He’d worked for a few hours, pounding out answers to emails, dealing with business issues with Casey. He’d gone for a walk, leaving behind a note that jet-lag had beaten him and he would be back with bread and croissants. He had them in a bag on the coffee table, and now he was waiting for her to finish her shower. She didn’t know he’d returned, and he didn’t know what he was going to say. But he had to tell her the truth. She’d opened up to him on everything, and he’d given her nothing.
Soon, he heard the water stop running, then a few minutes later she emerged, her hair sleek and wet. A towel was wrapped around her body.
She smiled the second she saw him, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “See? Two mornings in a row. I’m still not a dragon.”
He could barely crack a grin in response. But he tried. For her. “And you still have ten toes.”
She wiggled them. “Have you been up for a while?” she asked and joined him on the couch, tucking her feet underneath her.
He shook his head, heaved a sigh, and bit the bullet. “Listen, Michelle,” he began, and she sat ramrod straight.
“Listen, Michelle is never a good way to start a sentence.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” he said quickly, trying to ease her concerns. He reached for her hand, clasping it between his, but she drew hers back. She pressed her lips tight together and motioned for him to keep talking.
He had no choice. This was it. But hell, this was why he came to see her in the first place. He hadn’t been able to get the words out with Kana. They’d circled it and danced around it, but he’d never told her about the chain reaction his lack of love had set off. “I need to tell you the truth about Aubrey’s death,” he said as quickly as he could. This was the only way he could manage. Heave it up. No doubt it wouldn’t be the first time she’d heard someone toss his or her distorted emotions at her feet.
Her eyes widened in shock, and her features froze. Oh, shit. She thought he did it? Well, he might as well have. She scooted away from him.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said, backpedaling faster than he’d expected to.
She jumped up from the couch, one hand clasping the ends of the towel. “I didn’t say you did. And I’m honestly not even sure why you would say that.”
“Because of how you reacted,” he said, pointing at her retreating from him.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she said crisply, and he understood the implication loud and clear. She was not going to let herself be vulnerable during this conversation.
She moved to her suitcase and pulled on a bra and panties faster than he’d ever seen a woman slip on clothes.
Fuck this. He wasn’t going to mince words. “I broke off the engagement fifteen minutes before she died,” he said blurting it out, and he wanted to scream from the pain. It was worse than ripping off a Band-Aid. It was like slamming his hand into a car door. Everything he’d held inside for more than a year was exposed, and it hurt like a motherfucker.
“What?” she asked, blinking.
Even with the ache all over, the open, bleeding wound, he had to keep going. Get it all out. “It was a week before the wedding,” he said, each word like gravel in his mouth. “I took her to the mountains for the weekend, thinking that would be the best place to tell her the news that I didn’t want to marry her.” The bitter sting of regret rose up again. How wrong had he been? He should have told Aubrey in her apartment. He should have told her at a park. Anyplace else.
“You picked the mountains because she was a skier,” Michelle said softly, seeming to understand as she tugged on a skirt and a shirt. But even if his choice had made logical sense, it was the wrong choice.
“The mountains were her favorite place,” he said, with a scoff directed at himself. “I wanted her to be near something she loved when I delivered the news. After I told her, she got on the slopes, tore down the hill, and hit a tree,” he said, getting the last part out as clinically as he could so he wouldn’t have to feel the fresh devastation of the moment he learned she died all over again.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, waiting for him to speak more.
“That part is all true,” he added, as he stood up and moved closer, but she held up a hand. This was as close as she wanted him to be. Damn. He knew this was how it would go. The second he’d opened his mouth around a woman and voiced the full truth, he’d caused more damage than he’d ever intended.
“Okay. Go on,” she said, scrunching her eyebrows together. “What part isn’t true then? Why you didn’t want to marry her?”
He shoved a hand through his hair, digging hard into his scalp. Is this what it would have been like to tell her in her office? As her patient? Maybe. He couldn’t know because he was someone else to her now. He was her lover who couldn’t even tell her how he felt. Frustration flowed thick in his veins. What he wouldn’t give to rid this guilt from his body. That was too much to ask, though. He sat on the edge of the table, and tore off more of the truth for her. “The image the media paints of me?”