Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 78464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“Did you expect me to forget everything in a couple weeks?” I turned to look at him head on.
“No,” he said calmly. “But I hoped you would realize how sorry I am. You would realize that I’ve changed—for good. I’ve made amends with your husband, not just for you, but because I’ve grown to respect him. If I could choose any man in the world for you, I would choose him.”
My arms crossed over my chest because a draft had filled the room after Axel stepped out. It took a minute for it to reach me, but when it did, the bumps formed.
“You’re my entire life,” he said, his eyes filling with emotion, his voice matching it. “And now that I don’t have you…it hurts every day. I should have let Axel take the business and opened that restaurant with you. I should have taken you on a trip to Paris so we could visit all the bakeries you like. Instead of breaking necks and doing backdoor deals, I should have spent my time with you. I should have shielded you from this life rather than tried to groom you for it. If you can never forgive me for what I’ve done, I understand that. But could you please accept this is who I am now…and give me another chance.”
“I—I feel like I don’t know you. Everything we had before was a lie. How can I trust anything you say?”
His eyes flinched in pain before he retreated and looked away.
“Lies after lies…after lies.”
“That’s not who I am anymore—”
“Then I’m meeting you for the first time,” I snapped. “I’ve never really known you.”
“I may have lied about things to manipulate events, but I’ve never lied about my love for you. All of that was real. You know that.”
I looked down at my hands again.
“Sweetheart…please.”
“I’m glad Axel has started a new relationship with his parents. I’m grateful that you gave that to him, and I appreciate everything it took to make it happen. But I’m not sure if that’s right for us.”
My father inhaled a deep and painful breath, the kind that nearly made him choke, like he sucked on his cigar too hard and directed the smoke into his sinuses instead of his mouth. A sheen moved over the surface of his eyes, and instead of being the strong man he always displayed, he succumbed to quiet tears.
He bowed his head, doing the best he could to hide them.
It killed me to see him like this. It hurt so much that I couldn’t tolerate it anymore. I left the couch and moved around the opposite way, avoiding his stare as much as possible until my back was to him. Then I walked out the double doors and joined Axel on the wet pavement.
He looked at me, and with just a single glance, he figured out what had happened. “I hope you change your mind.”
I lay in bed beside him, waiting for him to speak his thoughts on what had happened with my father. It’d been a quiet drive home, the air heavy with tension, and when we got into the bedroom, it became worse.
Now we were in bed, lights off, lying together in the dark.
“Are you mad at me?” I whispered, looking at the ceiling.
“No. Why would I be?”
“Because I didn’t bury the hatchet with my father.”
“Just because I disagree with it doesn’t mean I don’t support you. If you aren’t ready, you aren’t ready. Simple as that.”
He let me off the hook, but somehow, I didn’t feel better.
“But I admit I thought you would be touched by the things he said.”
“Such as?”
“Retirement. Prioritizing the things that matter. You basically have your father back, the version of him that you deserved in the first place. Keeping your distance and hiding behind your grudge seems like a waste.”
“Even if it is, I’m just not there. I can’t move past his betrayals so easily.”
“I never said it was easy.”
“Well, you sure make it look it.”
We lay there in silence for a while. It was one of the rare times when we didn’t have sex before we went to sleep. There was too much heaviness in the air for that. My thoughts were on other things, not my husband.
“Time heals all wounds,” he said. “Perhaps you just need more of it.”
“Maybe…”
He moved to me, scooping me into his arms and spooning me from behind, hugging me the way a grizzly bear would hug a cub. His face moved into my hair then he lay still, ready for sleep.
I lay awake for a while longer until I fell asleep.
I was jarred awake by something. Just wasn’t sure what.
Axel had jerked upright in bed, his breathing escalated.
I thought I’d heard a gunshot, but maybe I’d just heard him. “What—what was that?”
He jumped out of his bed and snatched his phone off his nightstand. He never answered me.