Page 50 of When You Were Mine

He was just so…familiar. Beneath skin that had aged from years of filming under a Scottish sun and dark hair now threaded with silver, she still saw the boy she’d loved with all her heart. The boy she’d thought was her soulmate.

And she couldn’t stand it. “Why are you just standing there? You wanted to talk. Talk.”

“You’re so different.”

He’d dropped a lit match at her feet, and she burst into flames. “Youthink?You mean I’m not the same girl who trusted with her whole heart? Wholovedwith her whole heart? Who believed every word the man shemarriedsaid to her? Wow, Trevor, I’m sorry if I somehow changed when, forty-three minutes after hearing myhusbandtell me I’m his best friend, his lover, his peace, his motivation, his inspiration, his North Star, and the love of his life, he walked out the door and never talked to me again.” She punched the air with her fists. “You think that might fundamentally change a girl?”

Anger sparked in his eyes. “I tried to talk to you again, remember? And you blew me off.” He held up both hands in an apologetic gesture. “That doesn’t change what I did, and I’m sorry, Elz. I’m so sorry for the way everything turned out.”

“You’re sorry for the thirteen movies you made? For the son you had with another woman?”

He shook his head with conviction. “No. I can’t be sorry for my son. He’s the best thing I’ve ever done. But I am sorry for the way he was conceived, and I’m sorry for hurting you.” He reached for her, but she jerked away. “I’msorry.”

That was it? After exposing herself so completely—letting him know she’d memorized his stupid, empty vows—all he could say was, “Sorry?” “Well, cool. Apology accepted.” She shouldered past him.

But he caught her upper arm. “No. You’re not running away.” He was so close the warmth of his breath gusted on her cheek. “In all these years, our paths haven’t crossed. Not once. Untilnow.” Gripping her shoulders, he turned her to face him. She allowed herself to be handled as easily as a rag doll. “Listen to me. I have missed you every minute of every day. I dream about you at night. You have never,everleft my heart. And now that we’re together, we have a chance to?—”

“To what, Trevor? You’re gettingmarried.” She wrenched free of his hold. “Does Darby know I’m ‘still in your heart’? Does she know you dream about me? If not, you should tell her. She deserves to know this little fact about her future husband.”

The man looked tortured.Well, good. Because it was killing her to stand this close to him and hear him say things likeYou have never, ever left my heart.

With a fiery cocktail of rage and desperation burning inside her, she didn’t know whether she wanted to beg him to tell her how he could’ve left her so callously or punch him in the balls so hard he dropped to his knees.

But the bastard had a steel rod for a spine. “No,” he stated firmly. “She’s not part of this. We need to talk, just the two of us. When I left, I knew I’d hurt you. I knew you were angry, but I never thought it would end us. Do you think I’d have gotten on that plane if I’d known you’d never speak to me again? I thought you’d yell at me, but that we’d get through it.”

“Well, then, you were delusional.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I was desperate to manage the kind of problems a twenty-year-old had no business fixing.”

“Oh, you figured that out, huh?”

“I realized it after my parents died. And believe me, that was a tough lesson to learn. I fucked up, Elz. No question about it. But we’re here now. We have a chance to?—”

“No. The only thing we can do is dredge up a past we can’t change. Nothing you say will ever fix the pain I live with every single day of my life.”

His eyes turned glossy, and his lips pressed together. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, and to know I hurt you that deeply…” His eyelids fluttered shut, and he took a slow breath. But when they opened, he radiated a steely resolve. “I think you’re wrong. I think talking can heal us both. Can we start by getting to know each other again? I want to know how your life turned out. There’s nothing about your personal life on the internet.”

“That’s because it’s no one’s business.” He didn’t get to know anything about the life he’d chosen to leave. “My story is a privilege for the people close to me, who’ve been there for me. You are not either of those things.”

She would never expose herself to this man again.

“This isn’t going to work,” he muttered.

“Now, you’re catching on.” She sounded so snarky, so detached, when really, it made her unbearably sad that he’d give up so easily.

“That’s not what I mean.” His tone was strong, confident. “When I left, I believed I was doing the right thing. I thought you’d get it when I paid off the farm and your dad’s debt. That everything would fall into place when I bought us a ranch in Calamity.”

“You bought that ranch for yourself. And your son.”

“If I wanted what was best for my son, I would’ve built a house in Riverton so my parents could help raise him. But I chose Calamity because I never gave up believing we’d find our way back to each other.”

“How, Trevor? By magic? Don’t feed me bullshit lines from a movie. Because I never heard from you.”

“That’s not true, and you know it. I wrote you letters. I flew back home. You know that. You know how hard I tried to talk to you.”

Mortification washed through her as she remembered how childishly she’d behaved. “I don’t know what this has to do with having a baby two years after we broke up. Can you see how your words sound empty when your son is out there in the world? You said I never left your heart, but Trevor, you had ababy.”While I was still curled up in my bed bawling my eyes out.“You had sex with another woman.” Her voice sounded raw, but that was because each word came tearing out of the deepest reaches of her soul.

“You want to know that story?”

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