Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,99

he bit out.

“No. You didn’t. So what were you doing? When you weren’t in my bed, where were you?”

“In my office, writing. Or at the church seeing to issues with the congregation. I was seeing to my work, Anna, not betraying our marriage.”

“You know that’s not the question I’m asking you, Thomas. I don’t need an accounting of what you did with your time. What happened to us?”

“I didn’t change,” he said. “I’m everything that I showed you that I was from the moment we first got together.”

She stared at him, and she realized that he believed it. More importantly, she realized it was true. He had always been polite, but not overly impassioned. Had always been a steady presence, rather than an intense one.

And she had imagined in her head that some of those things would change. Because they had been chaste prior to marrying, she had assumed that he’d been holding something back, but now she wondered if he had been.

She took in every detail of his face. So handsome. So...impossible to read. “Are you attracted to me?”

He drew back, and the strangest thing of all was that he looked...embarrassed.

“As much as I am to anyone.”

“What does that mean?”

His throat worked. “Desire is not a huge factor in my life.”

She frowned. It wasn’t like she lived under a rock. She understood that people had different sex drives, and that some people didn’t really have them. But it had never occurred to her that...her husband was one of those people.

That he simply didn’t want...her. Or sex at all.

“So you’re just not that into sex?”

“This entire thing is about sex for you?” He looked flustered. Uncomfortable. Things he so rarely was.

“No. But it’s a symptom. A symptom of everything I thought was wrong with me. Of everything I thought was wrong with us. It’s why...” She swallowed hard. “Thomas, I’ve only been with you. Before Michael, I’d only been with you.”

“I’ve only been with you.”

“I know.” This had to come out, for her own soul more than his. Because she’d tried to show him with actions what she’d felt and she’d asked—in a basic sense—for more. But time had given her a clearer understanding of what she’d been missing and she needed it said.

“And during our marriage I told you that I thought you were an attractive man. I took pleasure in being with you. And I wanted you to do the same with me. But when you quit being interested in touching me at all, I just felt like I was broken. And I felt like it meant you didn’t love me, because for me...that’s part of being in love. Desiring someone. Being desired. I can’t separate those things. And it would never have occurred to me to. So when another man came in and started telling me that I was beautiful, that he did want me, it felt like...more than what we had. And it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for you to stand up in front of the congregation and make me out to be the one who was weak. It’s not a temptation for you, apparently. You don’t...miss that. But you were perfectly happy to have me miss it for the rest of my life. To have me...dying up in that bedroom by myself at night wondering what I had done to make you fall out of love with me.”

“Anna...” His voice was uncharacteristically rough, and he sank into the chair across from her, looking genuinely upset. “When I was young, I thought...marriage was the path that I would take. Because it seemed to be the path that everyone expected me to take. And the younger I did it, the better. That was especially the opinion of my mentor. Because what you don’t want is for a young pastor to be constantly pursued by every woman in the congregation.”

He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t tempted. But... I thought perhaps that spoke of my spirituality. That I wasn’t led into temptation. By the time I realized that perhaps I wasn’t all that suited to marriage—”

“We were already married.” She tried to smile.

“And had been for a while. I’ve always cared about you. I loved you. And I was... I was upset by you sleeping with him.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Well, I guess there’s that.”

His eyes met hers and she felt...nothing. Not anger. Just a strange kind of wistfulness that you might feel looking at old yearbook photos. The love she’d felt for him once was a