“Forget it.” She waved a hand. “I’m so over it . . . over you.”
“I’m in SAA.” His tone was light.
“SAA? What’s that?”
He ran a palm over his nape, looked sheepish. “Sex Addicts Anonymous.”
“Ahh.” She leveled him a hard glance, trying to decide if he was serious or not. A sex addiction explained a lot.
“It’s a twelve-step program. I’m on step nine.”
“Which is?”
Raoul’s eyes seared into hers. “Make direct amends to the people you’ve hurt except where doing so would injure them.”
This was an unexpected turn of events. She paused, ready to hear him out. “Don’t try to charm me, please. Just say what you need to say.” She folded her arms over her chest, feeling suddenly claustrophobic in the wide-open space.
The sky seemed too blue, the beach too sandy. She could hardly catch her breath and she had a bizarre sensation of falling. She rooted her feet into the ground and took a deep breath.
Do not pass out.
“I have a sexual addiction,” he explained.
“So I gathered.” Her tone came out drier than she’d intended. “That’s your problem, not mine.”
“I know, I know, but you need to understand that what I did to you was never personal. My cheating was not your fault. Nor was it an intentional slight on you. I simply couldn’t control myself. Cheating is not something I willingly choose. I’m an addict.”
“I’m sorry you have a problem, Raoul.” She softened her voice, understanding him now. “And I’m sorry that you’re struggling, but I’m not feeling sorry for you.”
“No,” he said. “I do not want your pity. I screwed up my own life. I get that.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To make amends for the way I treated you.”
“It’s not necessary. That was five years ago. I’ve moved on. I have a great life in New York—”
“I heard,” he said. “Madison’s Mark. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She bobbed her head. “I’m going to go now.” If I can move. She’d anchored her feet so firmly into the sand her legs felt heavy as barbells.
“Please, don’t go.” He started to reach for her. “Not yet.”
She jerked back.
He tucked his hands into his armpits, looked sheepish. “I need to make amends to you, Madison. For my own healing.” He paused. “And yours.”
“Since when did you ever care about how your actions affected me?”
“Always. Forever.”
“You had a funny way of showing it.”
“As I said, my cheating was never about you.”
“Oh, well, that makes it okay then.”
“I know it does not make it okay.” He tugged at his collar with casual fingers, looking devastatingly insouciant.
The man was still drop-dead gorgeous, but Madison had learned to see past the handsome and she’d vowed never to be lured in by looks again.
Still, while Raoul was shallow and self-absorbed, he was trying. He was getting help. Attending meetings. That did mean something. Didn’t she owe him a chance to explain?
“Okay,” she said. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Thank you.” He pressed his palms together in front of his heart, bowed his head. “First, I am very sorry I hurt you.”
“I accept your apology.”
“Really?” A hopeful smile plucked at his lips.
“Yes.”
“I never thought you would forgive me.”
“I didn’t say I forgave you. I said I accepted your apology.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“I don’t know. You humiliated me with my sister on our wedding day. That’s a pretty big sin.”
“I was wrong, so wrong.” He did look contrite, but he’d always been pretty good at presenting what he knew she needed to see and hear.
“Yes, you were.”
“You were the best thing that ever happened to me.” Still clutching his hands to his heart beseechingly, he dropped to his knees in the sand at her feet. “And I threw it all away.”
“Look,” Madison said, backing away, “you figure out your life. Do the twelve steps, or whatever. I’ve got problems of my own.”
She headed toward the inn.
“Madison,” Raoul called. “Just know this one thing.”
She stopped, inhaled sharply, turned back around. “What is it?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to earn your full forgiveness. I messed up and I lost the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Just do better with the next woman, Raoul,” she said. “That’s all I ask.”
“Yes, yes, but, Madison, do know that I am truly, deeply sorry, to the bottom of my heart, that I had sex with your sister.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Gia
BLEEDING: When colors or dyes from one fabric transfer to another during washing.
WHILE MADISON WAS walking the beach, Gia lay sated and drowsy in Mike’s arms as the rays of dawn pushed through the curtains.