you just realized how unhappy you’ve been living across the ocean in that big fancy chalet and being the bigwig businessperson. It was fake and uncomfortable and not what you ever wanted for your life at all. Coming back here showed you exactly what you wanted. And you don’t like that it’s your fault you don’t have it.
Like he could hear her thoughts, he said, “You’re the one who left. I’ve been here all along.”
“You know exactly why I left. You did nothing to stop it. And nothing to make it right.” She felt her eyes flashing, and her words weren’t kind. Why not? This was the man she loved. Had loved. It felt like she still did.
“We could’ve worked through it together. We didn’t need your dad to be involved. We didn’t need his money. It was supposed to be you and me against the world. Not you and me and your dad.” His eyes had narrowed, and the first flush of anger crossed his face.
She hadn’t meant to make him angry. She didn’t want to. Or maybe she did. She wanted him to feel something. Something like she was feeling. She didn’t want him to be happy and content with his life and how things had played out. She wanted him to miss her. She wanted him to want her. She wanted him to need her. And it just seemed like he didn’t. Like she was the only one who was suffering.
If she was miserable, she wanted him to be miserable too, as unreasonable as that sounded.
“We hadn’t been able to work through it together, remember? We spent months trying to figure things out, and you refused every solution I offered. Your solution was to have no solution.”
“That’s not the slightest bit true. You’re exaggerating. We could have worked it out. We could have set up a payment plan.”
“And we would still have been paying on that. It was over a hundred thousand dollars, which was more money than either one of us might have seen in the last ten years. Unless something has changed?”
His jaw flexed, and a vein stood out on his forehead. She felt like she’d hit a nerve. She felt satisfaction. She also wanted to go over and put her arms around him.
She wanted it to be Reid and her against the world. Wanted that more than anything. Especially now, because obviously what she’d said had hit him and hurt him.
Even though that apparently was what she’d been aiming for, it wasn’t a good feeling to hurt the man she loved.
Why couldn’t she stop?
“Nothing has changed. You’re right.” His words were a little softer, but there was a much thicker wall between them now. There was no easygoing humor in his voice or on his face; it was completely closed off to her.
“Then you’re admitting I’m right.” It’s what she wanted all along. They’d fought and argued and discussed, and he’d never said that she was right. He’d always insisted, in his stubborn, bullheaded way, that things would work out.
They wouldn’t. She could see that plainly, and so could he. He just wouldn’t admit it.
“No. I’m not. You’re not right. You weren’t right.” His eyes narrowed. “A month might be too long for you to be here.”
Oh, that hurt. She straightened her back and put on her most serene business face. “You’re right. I don’t want to stay for month anyway. I’ll be getting a flight out of here within the week.”
His head went up and down, although his eyes didn’t meet hers, and his teeth grated, like that wasn’t what he wanted it all.
Maybe that was fanciful thinking on her part.
She grabbed her black carry-on bag from the table. Not even bothering to grab her purse out of it, she shoved the strap over her shoulder. She walked past him, brushing by without touching.
Definitely she couldn’t touch him.
“I’ve already talked to the Forrester triplets. I’ll be there this evening. You guys can go ahead and cook yourselves supper.” She put her hand on the doorknob, then turned, giving him her most serious look, even though he wasn’t looking at her, just in case he did, because she wanted him to know that she was dead serious. “You get the boys today. But I spend tomorrow with them.” With those words, she opened the door and strode out.
“YOU SAID WHAT TO HIM?” Daisy asked, hesitating as she approached the picnic table with a glass of tea in each hand.
“I know,” Emerson said as she