Page 109 of Rejected Heart

His bed for eight years was in a hotel.

No home. Liam had no real home for eight years.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Layla, please stop crying,” he urged gently. “You’re breaking my heart.”

Hearing that, I wanted to cry harder, but I didn’t want to cause him even more pain. I took a few deep breaths, my breath hitching several times as I made the attempt to settle myself.

I pulled my face from his chest. “Why are you living here?”

His sad eyes roamed over my face before he revealed, “I didn’t intend for it to be this long. Initially, I just wanted a few days away and on my own. But as time went on, I didn’t want to return to my parents’ house, and I had no desire to move out and find a place of my own. I don’t know. I guess in some twisted way I looked at buying my own place as a sign that I was moving on. And there was this part of me, this part that’s been longing for you, that refused to go anywhere without you.”

My limbs felt so unbelievably heavy. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry for days. The guilt I felt over what I’d done to Liam consumed every inch of my body. “You should hate me.”

“I don’t.”

“But you should.”

We were on our sides, facing one another, and Liam lifted his hand to my cheek. He stroked his thumb lightly over the skin. “I love you, Layla. Even when I was so angry with you, I loved you. That’s never going to change.”

“I’d always assumed that you’d be okay. I never doubted that you’d be hurt by me leaving and turningdown your proposal, but I suspected you’d be alright in the end, because you had your family and friends around you. But this… I thought I was alone all these years.” I closed my eyes and sighed. “It was you who was alone.”

“I’m okay with that, though, because I didn’t want to move on with anyone.”

Although his words were meant to be reassuring, there was a hint of devastation in his tone that made me replay them over and over.

“Why does your voice sound like that?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Like your heart has been shattered all over again by being here with me.”

He shifted his head against the pillow. “It’s nothing.”

Oh, it was something. It had to be something tremendous, too. “Liam, tell me.”

The silence hung heavily between us for a long time before he finally caved. “You were gone for a long time. Over the years, opportunities arose for me to move on. I was approached on more than one occasion by women who were willing to hook up randomly for a night or to find something serious with.”

Here it was—my punishment.

As much as it was going to kill me to hear about it, I had no choice but to accept it. This was the mess I’d created, and I couldn’t have expected that Liam wouldn’t have found some sliver of happiness for himself.

“In those moments, my thoughts drifted to you. But I wasn’t sitting there thinking about how I wished it was you approaching me. I sat there feeling sick about you,wondering about you and your new life. And I couldn’t do it. The thought of being with anyone else was never an option. But I spent so many nights in this room speculating. Wondering where you were, what you were doing, and who you were with. I thought about the future I had wanted for us, and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the woman you had grown into. I was constantly curious about who you’d be when you got old, and I was worried about who the man would be to steal your heart.”

Tears had filled his eyes, my heart breaking at the pain he’d endured. He’d been so lonely for so long. And it was all my fault.

Liam wasn’t done. “I think it was far more excruciating to live through that than it was to deal with you rejecting my proposal. In the beginning, there was the hurt and bitterness and frustration. There was the sadness. But as time went on, there was the hopelessness. And that was the worst of all. Knowing you had moved on, knowing you’d find someone else, and being in agony that I wouldn’t ever be able to share those years with you. I wouldn’t be able to see you walking down the aisle toward me in a white dress. I wouldn’t see you becoming a mom. I wouldn’t be able to see you with a full head of grey hair and a face filled with wrinkles from laughing too much and still think you were the most beautiful woman in the world. I was going to miss your future, and that killed me. It still does to know it wasn’t me who made you happy these last eight years.”

This man.

This man was an absolute treasure.

I placed my hand on the side of his face. “Liam?”

“What?”

“I can’t undo these last eight years, and trust me when I say that, if I could, I would.” My thumb traveled down his cheek and toward his lips. I ran it lightly along the bottom one, and when I reached the opposite side, I shared, “But I need you to know that even though I walked away from you, moved to Manhattan, and found a new apartment, job, and friend, my heart was always yours. There was never anyone else, Liam.”

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