Page 87 of The House Guest
We ate in silence for a bit until he finally put his fork down. “I know we don’t have that much time. So I’d like to ask you some questions, if that’s okay?”
Moving my plate aside, I licked the corner of my mouth and cleared my throat. “Okay.”
Dorian took a deep breath. “Will you tell me more about your relationship with Casey?”
I swallowed. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how he turned out to be someone you didn’t end things with out of fear, like all the other guys before him, except me. Is it more than just your daughter? Or is she the main reason you’ve stayed with him?”
He definitely wasn’t wasting time. These were questions I didn’t have clear answers to, questions I’d been battling internally for some time, especially with theimpending wedding. How was I supposed to admit things to Dorian I hadn’t been able to admit to myself?
Suddenly feeling a bit reckless, I decided to be as honest as possible. “I can’t say whether he and I would still be together if I hadn’t gotten pregnant. But I’ve never felt stuck with him. If I were unhappy, I wouldn’t have stayed. At the same time, I no longer have anxiety over getting hurt because the worst has already happened to me. In a weird way, you broke the pattern. After you left, it wasn’t possible for anyone to break me any more—I was already broken. And I guess losing that fear allowed me to stop sabotaging things.”
Dorian lowered his gaze to the table. “Wow.” He scratched his chin. “That’s very interesting.” He exhaled and stared up at the ceiling for several seconds before he looked at me again. “You alluded to the fact that you’re notunhappy, but I don’t understand what that means.Notunhappy. Not being in a state of unhappiness isn’t exactly a state of joy.”
Fidgeting a bit, I felt myself getting flustered. “What are you needing to hear from me? I gave you my honest answer, even if it’s not black and white.”
“I guess what Ineedto hear in order to leave Ohio in peace…is that you’re truly happy. So happy that you don’t have regrets about anything, and nothing I could ever say or do would change that. But I need you to mean it and not just say it to get me to leave because you’re scared.”
He’d hit the nail on the head. It would’ve been much easier to downplay my feelings for him in order to get him to leave. But was that what I wanted?
After a moment, he crossed his arms. “This situation is hard for me, Primrose. Because I don’t even know what my goal is. I don’t want to break up a family. But I’ve never stopped loving you. I need you to at least know that so that whatever you do with your life, you make an informed decision. I can’t help how I feel, how I’ve felt this entire time. There wasn’t one day when I wasn’t in love with you. Not one day when I didn’t hope that by some miracle I could find my way back to you and have another chance. But…” He paused. “When I found out you had a child with Casey, I realized I had to be prepared to lose you forever. I debated for a long time whether I should even come to you. But ultimately, I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you the truth. I’m sorry if my decision has turned your life upside down.”
I shook my head. “I don’t fault you for coming. There’s no reason to apologize.”
Dorian let out a frustrated breath. “Fuck, Rosebud. I just need the truth.” He looked around. “No one else is here. It’s just you and me. Nothing you say to me right now will ever leave this room. I want to know what’s going on in your head and how you were doing before you knew I was here. Rewind to last week before I showed up. Pretend I’m a fly on the wall. Tell me what your life isreallylike.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Please.”
The look of pain in his eyes gave me no choice but radical honesty. “My life…is that I’ve pretty much dived headfirst into being a mother. It makes it easier not to deal with the things I haven’t wanted to.”
“Like?”
“Like the fact that things aren’t perfect in my relationship. I love him, but it’s different from what you and I had.”
Dorian tilted his head. “Different in what way?”
“Less passionate. But I trust what I have with him more than I’ve trusted anything. My feelings for Casey have grown authentically and gradually over time. So has my trust. Sometimes things that grow fast end just as fast.”
Dorian nodded. “You believed that I’d abandoned you. So safety was what you were looking for. I understand.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why have you waited so long to get married?”
“I wasn’t sure marriage was really necessary.”
“But you ultimately decided it was?”
“I ultimately decided it would be best for my daughter if her parents were married.”
“What about what’s best foryou?”
“I had no plans to leave him, so I figured there was no reason to keep putting it off.”
I cringed.Hadno plans? I needed to be more careful with my word choice.
“But you’re not sure you want to be married?”
“I’m not a hundred-percent sure it’s the right decision.” I swallowed. “But that could also just be fear of failure. A marriage can’t fail if it never happens.”
