of me even though we hadn’t seen each other for a decade, the talent he has, the success he’s earned.
The way he looks at our daughter like she hung the moon.
It twists my stomach every time I see it. It adds another layer of regret.
But I can’t keep harping on those things. At some point, I have to move forward. The truth is out now, and while I can’t go back to change the past, I can make changes going forward.
That damn hindsight thing creeps up on me again. If I’d known back then what I know now, how different would our lives be?
It doesn’t do any good thinking about it since it’s not our reality.
“I ran into Lexi Weber the other day,” he says.
“The girl from that reality show?”
He nods. “We’ve remained friends. Well, it took a little convincing on my part since she was pretty mad at me after she found out I didn’t go on the show with the right intentions, but we’re close now. Anyway, I told her everything that happened between us, and you know what she said?”
“What?” I ask, dumbfounded and more than a little curious where he’s going with all this.
“She said I have to decide if I can get over the past or if I can find a way to move forward. She told me I have to decide if you’re worth it.” He pauses, and he leaves me on the edge of a cliff.
Well?
Can you get over it?
Am I worth it?
I know Luna is. That goes without question. I see that much when his eyes focus on her.
But what about me?
He blows out a breath just as I draw one in and hold it. “I want to, D. I really, really do. I want to put all this shit behind us, and I want to focus forward.” He reaches over and rests a hand on my thigh, and holy shit but every single nerve in my body seems to fly right to the spot where his hand touches me. “I just don’t know if I’m there yet.”
I exhale as I close my eyes. Disappointment lances through me, and I don’t move an inch even though every instinct in me is telling me to grab his hand and hold it tightly in mine.
“I understand. And Tyler?”
He glances over at me and I look at him, too. I smile a little sadly.
“I’m there. My heart has been there since we reconnected in Milwaukee. It just took my head a little time to catch up. And I’ll wait until you’re ready to join me.”
He squeezes my leg. “Thank you,” he says softly.
A few minutes of comfortable quiet pass between us, and then as we turn onto his street, he asks, “When is your divorce final?”
“There’s a mandatory hundred-twenty day waiting period in Wisconsin,” I say, “but from what we’ve learned, it can take anywhere from six months to a year. It varies but it’s an uncontested, joint petition. We neatly split our assets and I pretty much just bowed out and gave him everything. He doesn’t have rights to Luna, so in the eyes of the court, at least, that makes it all pretty easy.”
“And for you?” he asks, and I’m a little surprised he’s asking.
His hand is still on my leg, and that’s when I finally reach for it and hold it in mine. I lace my fingers through his, and I hold my other hand over the back of his. I study it, from the long fingers to the little freckle right below his pointer finger to the way they’re strong and lean with the veins raised above his skin.
I hold his hand tightly between mine. “It’s what’s right. I never should have married him. But that doesn’t make it easy.”
He brings our joined hands to his mouth, and he presses a small kiss to my knuckles. My heart practically beats out of my chest at the movement, at his lips on my body, at the gentle, sweet touch.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
His words are so simple, but they carry an enormous amount of weight.
It feels like, for the first time, we’re in this together. Even though I’m the one who left him in the dark, it feels like he realizes it was because of his actions that I did what I thought I had to do at a time when I was desperate, and desperation changes people. It causes them to act in a way they might otherwise not.
He clicks open one