for me when I needed you.”
It wasn’t a question.
He flicked a look at her and she saw that his gaze was anguished.
“I’m sorry, Mac. I know you think I’m a selfish, pointless bastard, but I do love you. More than anyone or anything.”
She believed him, but his love was not the same as her love. Her love was all-encompassing and forgiving and resilient. Her love would have demanded that she sleep night and day by her lover’s side if he’d been in a life-threatening accident. If Oliver had been torn apart and crushed by flying metal, she would have moved heaven and earth to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that he was loved, that they would get through whatever lay ahead together. Then she would have followed through on her promises, because his happiness meant more to her than her own.
She stilled as she registered the thought, a little stunned by the insight she’d suddenly gained into her own feelings.
She was in love with Oliver. Profoundly so.
“What?” Patrick asked.
She shook her head. She wasn’t about to tell him she was in love with Oliver—Oliver should be the first person to hear those words, not her ex-husband. It was nothing to do with Patrick. At all. He was the past, and Oliver was the future.
An almost unbearable happiness swept through her as she absorbed the truth of the realization. It didn’t matter that Oliver lived in a different city in a different state. She could move, or he could. It was irrelevant. The important thing was that they’d found each other in this tiny sea-swept town on the edge of nowhere. Amazingly. Impossibly.
She glanced at the clock, wondering if it was too early to go next door and slip into Oliver’s bed.
“Another private joke, I take it?” Patrick said.
“Just private.”
Patrick’s gaze was searching. “You’re serious about this Oliver guy, then?”
“Yes.”
Patrick dropped his gaze to the floor. “I always knew it would happen sometime. That you’d meet someone else.”
He looked lonely and sad, sitting there in his seducer’s clothes. A beautiful, confused man who didn’t know what he wanted.
“It’ll happen for you, too, Patrick. If you want it to.”
His head came up. “You think I didn’t want it with you?”
She chose her words carefully. This wasn’t about them, after all. They’d been finished for a long time. “I think that we never really understood each other.”
His mouth thinned, his expression becoming bitter. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“You don’t?”
“I think that if you’d put half the energy into our relationship that you put into your career, we’d still be married.”
She managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Barely. Patrick had always considered her career the enemy, but it was an old battle and a pointless one and she wasn’t prepared to go there yet again.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” he said. “You can’t see it.”
“Patrick, I don’t want to get into this stuff. It’s late, I’m tired...”
Patrick stood.
“You’re a great producer, Mac. You know why? Because you’re fearless. You know what you want and you don’t stop until you get it. You don’t let anyone or anything get in your way. But you never believed in us like that. You always held back. Always.”
He left the room. Mackenzie stared at the empty doorway, feeling more than a little sideswiped. She’d put off Oliver tonight to help Patrick out—and this was her thanks? An unsolicited, sulky critique of her commitment as a wife.
She turned out the light and turned onto her side and told herself not to let him get to her. He’d wanted something from her and he hadn’t got it and he’d simply been striking out. She was not going to lie here and stew over what he’d said. She refused to play into his hands so readily.
Except...
On a very basic level, he was right. She had always held back with him. Even at the very height of their relationship, in the heady days when they’d decided to get married and were making plans for the future, she’d always made sure there were options available if she needed them. She’d loved Patrick, but she’d never felt safe with him. She’d never felt as though he would be there, no matter what. And so she’d always kept a small part of herself in reserve. And when push had come to shove, when she’d finally acknowledged to herself that they were fundamentally incompatible, she hadn’t gone to the mat to save her marriage.
Patrick was definitely right about that.
She stared