Time to put all his cards on the table and stop hiding like a pussy.
“Could’ve fooled me,” she mumbled.
“I tried,” he admitted. “I tried so fucking hard to hate you.” Charleigh paled and stepped back and he knew before he was done he was going to wreck her if that one small admission made her look like he’d sucker-punched her. “You wanna know why I went to your wedding? Because I thought watching you vow your life to another man would make me stop loving you. I thought that when I heard you say the words to Paul I desperately wanted you to say to me, I would finally hate your guts. But it didn’t work. I hated that prick with everything I am but I couldn’t stop loving you. I went to two barbeques at your house for the same reason. I thought seeing you with him would help me get over you. Seeing you pregnant with his child would finally kill what I felt for you. It killed all right, it killed so fucking bad, I broke. He had everything I loved. He had you and his baby and the life I wanted with you. He had everything and I had not a goddamn single thing that was worth a damn.” Holden stopped and tried to gather his composure, but now that the words were flowing he couldn’t stop them.
Good or bad, he had to get them out—purge the poison that had been eating at his innards for so long he couldn’t remember what it was like to breathe clean. Before he could process the look on Charleigh’s face, more poured out of him.
“He got you. He won. He had the world in his bed and what did he do? Fucked every available piece of pussy he could find, and he did it in front of me. He rubbed my nose in it and taunted me. A silent dare for me to go to you and rat him out so he could deny it and make me look like a crazy fool. You were at home with his kid in your stomach and he was getting blowjobs in his truck. Stupid motherfucker. And if that shit isn’t whacked enough, the prick had to go and die. His last words on this earth were him giving you back to me. He had the balls to ask me to take care of his wife and child. His, Leigh-Leigh. His wife. The woman I loved more than my own life belonged to another man. I will go to my grave hating that fucker and loving you. For years, I tried everything I could to stop thinking about you, stop loving you, stop my body from craving you, stop my hands from remembering the way your skin felt.
“Nothing worked. Not women, not alcohol, not seclusion, nothing could make me hate you. And straight up, baby, I tried. I wanted to so badly. I tried hard. I blamed you, Faith, Paul, God, anyone and anything I could, but the truth is, all of it is my fault. I did this to us. I walked away when I should’ve stayed and talked to you. So, no, this isn’t a fucking game, woman. I’m not jacking you around or making promises to Faith I don’t intend to keep. This is me fighting for what should’ve always been ours.”
When Holden was done, his chest heaved like he’d run fifteen miles in the sand but it was the tears streaming down Charleigh’s cheeks that left him breathless. He’d been so caught up in his furious attempt to clear his conscience, he hadn’t stopped to think about the blows he was delivering.
Fuck.
“Leigh-Leigh—”
“I knew,” she snickered. “I knew he was stepping out on me—like you said, he didn’t hide it. Though I didn’t hide I was in love with a man who was not my husband. I couldn’t stop myself from lying in my marital bed and crying. I was married to a man I barely knew, was in love with you, and I was pregnant with a child I wanted to be yours. You think I care he was getting blow jobs in his truck? You think I care he was out carousing? From the day I married him I was emotionally cheating on him with you. And not that it’s any of your goddamned business, but I don’t blame him.”
What the hell?
“He told you he was fucking around and you didn’t care?” Holden asked in utter shock.
What