Page 119 of Bloom

“My marriage was embarrassin’. It wasn’t happy or healthy. But I was stubborn and proud and I didn’t want to just leave. To give up.”

The admission strikes a chord with me. Softens me up, ignites understanding, because isn’t that exactly what I do? Keepeverything about my dad to myself because I’m embarrassed? How can I hold—

No. I cut off that train of thought before it continues too far. It’s different. My secrets, my lies, don’t hurt people. And I told Hunter—the worst thing in my life,I told him.

The tiny tendril of anger snaking through my blood, I grasp with both hands. Hold it tightly. Use it to bolster myself, to not buckle as I meet his gaze again. “You thought I would… what? Judge you?Me? Really?”

“I don’t know what I was thinkin’. Iwasn’tthinkin’. I just…” Hunter trails off, his turn to look away. “I left my entire life to get away from her. My friends, my family. I didn’t want to give this up too.”

I hate the bitter resentment that floods me, makes me shrug off the hand still on the back of my neck and snark, “You didn’t wantthis, remember? Youcouldn’t.”

A long, defeated noise leaves the man beside me. “You’re right. Not for the reason you think you are, but you’re right.”

I can’t dissect that; I don’t have the brainpower. Curiosity, though, I have in spades. Sick, masochistic curiosity. “How long were you married?”

His throat bobs with a nervous swallow, and he hesitates before answering. “Almost five years.”

Five years.

Deep down, buried beneath the myriad of emotions plaguing me, something ugly rears its head. Something ugly and green and nauseating that hits me far too strongly that it has any right to; I’m jealous of the awful, drop-dead gorgeous woman who got a piece of Hunter for so long, a piece he doesn’t seem willing to give anyone else.

“Do you…” God, I don’t want to ask, I don’t want to know, but I have to. “Do you have kids?”

“No,” his response is quick, firm, practically gasped. “Jesus, Line,no.”

“Did you want them?”With her?

This time, he hesitates. Answers softly, “Yeah. I did.”

I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. Seeking answers I don’t really want, that won’t make me feel any better. Asking things I know are going to hurt. And God, do theyhurt. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Yes,” he says, and call me naive, but I don’t think it’s a lie. “I just wanted it to be over first.”

“Was I—” My breath catches, the mere idea of what I’m about to ask inspiring a sob I choke on. “Was I payback? Were you just trying to get back at her, like she said?”

In my peripheral, I see a hand reach for me, only to pull back at the last second when I tense. It drops to the sliver of porch between us, twitching fingers fisting in a tight ball. “No. You were…”

Hunter exhales raggedly, inhaling slowly like he’s winding up for something, and I brace for impact.

“Cheryl called me last week,” he starts, slow and pained, and my lungs stop working. “Before I got home the night you stayed at my place. She called to complain because they served her the divorce papers while she was at lunch with her friends, so she couldn’t pretend I was travelin’ for work anymore. She called to chastise me for being so dramatic, for playin’ games, for not gettin’ over it already. She called to sayshe’dforgivemeif I got on the next flight back to Georgia. I hung up on her. I got so fuckin’ mad, and then I got madder because I hated that she could still get to me.”

He pauses. Shifts to face me. Cups my knee and squeezes until I turn to face him too.

“And then I got home,” he continues, softer than before. “And I saw you, and I stopped being mad. I could breathe again.Because you are like coming up for air, Caroline. Those pretty flowers you fill your life with? You’re that for me. You’re bright and you’re happy and you’regood.”

I blink. Swallow. Drop my head to stare intently at the bitten edge of my thumbnail. Pick out the one piece of that speech I heard with any kind of clarity. “You’re really getting divorced?”

“That’s why she’s here.”

I read between the lines; she’s here to contest. To convince him to come home. Because she doesn’t want to be divorced. She wants her husband. And it’s wicked of me, so very vicious, to hope with everything I have that her husband doesn’t want her.

“You should talk to her,” I force myself to say. “Okay? It’s—”

Not only do my words get cut off, but my attempt to stand, to leave, does too. A hand wrapping around my thigh pulls me back down, holding me in place while another curves around my neck, a familiar firm hold that I make no attempt to escape. When Hunter pulls me closer, I don’t stop that either. Forehead to forehead, his nose brushes mine, he breathes me in, and I blink back the tears I feel like only just stopped flowing.

Another apology glides across my skin. So real, so heartfelt, I feel it in my chest. “I’m sorry,” he says again and again, peppering the words along my cheekbones, beneath my swollen eyes, near the corner of my mouth. “Please, honey. I’m so sorry.”

I know he’s sorry. I know I could forgive the lying; I’ve forgiven far worse. What I can’t give him, though, is anything else. I can’t be in the middle of this. “I can’t break up a marriage.”

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