Page 100 of The Truth About Love

I watch her face as she does the math, working out how long after she left for the rehab centre that Cara and I got married.

Her eyes fly open. “Ten months?” she fumes, nostrils flaring in blazing fury. “Ten fucking months?”

She advances on me, her eyes wild. She comes to a stop in front of me and beats her tiny fists against my chest. I stand stock still and let her do it. If she needs to hurt me for the pain I’ve caused her, then she can. I deserve it.

Hell, I deserve more.

But even in the midst of her madness, she holds herself back from using too much force. She’s strong, I know that. She always has been. If she wanted to, she could hit me hard enough to actually hurt me, but she doesn’t.

Even with all the pain I’m putting her through, she’s resistant to return it.

It makes my betrayal feel even worse.

“How?” she screams, drawing the curious eyes of city goers as they pass us on the sidewalk, but I don’t care. “How could you do this to me?”

God,I hate this. But I hate myself more.

Truth is, it was easier to live with what I’d done when I didn’t have to face the consequences. Maybe that’s why I never told her. Because it would have made it all real. And now, there’s no escaping it. I have to live with my decisions and the guilt they bring me, the pain they cause the last person I’d ever want to hurt like this.

“You told me you’d wait for me,” she sobs. “Did you even wait at all?”

Taking a deep breath, I look to the skies and pray to a higher power that I’ve never believed in for a way to make this better.

“I tried,” I say quietly, my voice trembling.

“You tried?” she blinks. “You tried?Tell me how marrying your ex-girlfriend ten months after I left is trying?”

Fuck, I can’t do this. I shake my head. “You don’t understand.”

She scoffs. “Of course, I don’t fucking understand.”

“Summer-Raine, please,” I beg, though I don’t have the right and I don’t even know what I’m begging for. For her to stop crying? For her forgiveness? Or just for all of this to end? “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Why?” she whispers, finally looking me in the eye. The hurt and betrayal I see in them sucks all the air from my lungs. “Why did you do it?”

“Because I had to.”

The truth is as simple as that.

“Was I too hard to love?” Her bottom lip shakes as she speaks and her gaze dips away from me again, her anger gone now and replaced by choked desolation.

I can’t help myself. I tilt her chin back up with two fingers, letting them linger there as I say my next words. “Loving you was never the hard part, Summer-Raine. That’s always been as easy to me as breathing. It was never a choice or a decision I made. I fell in love with you because my heart didn’t know how to do anything else. Loving you was the only thing that ever made any sense to me. Please don’t think you were hard to love, baby, because that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

She blinks away tears. “Don’t call me that.”

Confused, I think back over what I just said with a furrowed brow, understanding dawning as I realise the slip-up I made. Even now, after all I’ve done, calling her baby is as natural to me as the soil in the earth and the clouds in the sky.

I let my fingers fall away, remembering that I have no right to touch her anymore.

God, how differently I pictured this day going two years ago. Driving back from the rehab facility after dropping her off, I imagined us reuniting with incredible smiles and tearful eyes. She’d have run to me and I’d have scooped her up, wrapping her legs around my waist as I kissed her like I’d never kissed her before.

I was going to propose.

And then everything changed.

“Sorry,” I rasp.

She rolls her eyes. “You can stop saying that too. Sorry doesn’t change anything.”

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