Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,106

But I left her there to have that affair. I wasn’t around. We didn’t have a connection anymore. But I was arrogant enough to think that my money was going to keep her with me.”

“Did you cheat?”

He shook his head. “No. I probably would have, though. Eventually. My life was split in two pieces. Everything I did at work, everything I did at home. And the work piece just got bigger and bigger. I forgot why I was doing all of it.”

He cleared his throat, shifted behind her.

She wanted to look at him but she was afraid of what would happen if he did.

Afraid he would stop.

Afraid he would continue.

Eventually, he did. “When the kids were little, and we were poor, I knew exactly who I was and why I was working like that. To make a better life, for our survival, for their education. But eventually it became all about me. It was like a sickness. Being the best. The most aggressive. The smartest. At every meeting. Always early. My blood pressure was sky-high. I probably would’ve keeled over before I managed to cheat on my wife, if I’m honest. I was going to have a heart attack before I was forty.”

His breath was heavy, jagged. “I can get mad, and I could blame Katie for making the kids hate me, but I made the kids hate me. I was a stranger, so it was easy for her to tell them who I was, and how I felt. They didn’t know me well enough to know what was true and what was a lie, and that’s my own damn fault. I’m angry. I won’t pretend I’m not. But I’m mostly angry at myself. I had the real thing. When it was gone, I realized how little the rest of it mattered. She didn’t even take my money, you know. Tad has money of his own. But that’s how much she wanted to be rid of me. Everything that I worked for in that marriage... In the end, she didn’t even want that. I would have felt better if she would’ve taken my money from me.”

Suddenly it was like she’d switched to the other side of the diner counter, and she saw what they were, what they’d been to each other so differently. She’d thought he was being there for her.

All this time, he’d been lonely. All this time, she’d been there for him.

Just by being.

“Adam, I’m so sorry. But, you know, people heal rifts all the time. They can. They do.” She thought of her mother, her sister. They would fix it. They would fix it because they were family. Family always would.

“I hope so,” he said. “But the thing is, even if we do fix it... I’ve only seen Jack a handful of times since he was eleven. And Callie... She goes to her room every time I come over. At first, I took my weekend visitations, but as they got older they started making their own choices. By the time Callie was sixteen she wouldn’t come anymore. I tried to keep things going, but I couldn’t. Well, I came here three years ago. I haven’t been back. Not for more than their birthdays.”

Rachel could only give thanks, in that moment, that as difficult as things were with Emma sometimes, they weren’t there. And she didn’t see them being there anytime soon. No, they wouldn’t let it get there.

And she was thankful again for Jacob, and the relationship they’d had. Which would always be a part of who she was. He was part of what had knit her together. An integral thread that made her...her. And he always would be.

She couldn’t have banished him even if she’d wanted to. Not without unraveling herself.

She turned over and moved closer to Adam, her eyes on his mouth. “I’m sorry.” She kissed him, and somehow that kiss opened up something inside of her. Made her chest expand.

She felt something. More than something.

She felt raw and confused. Wounded. On Adam’s behalf, because she considered the man a friend, and knowing he’d been going through so much pain...

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I’m sorry I didn’t know.”

“We never talked about your stuff.”

“Yeah, but you knew what I was going through, and I always felt like you didn’t talk about it out of respect for me. You gave me a place to go where the fact that my husband was dying wasn’t the biggest thing. You were... You were my lighthouse, Adam. You kept