Page 39 of Mistletoe Misses
“You have nothing to apologize for. I ambushed you.”
“And surprised me.”
“You’re surprised I still have feelings for you?”
His eyes, green in this lighting, dart to me and hold, searching for the truth. I hope he finds how much I mean it.
“Well, yeah. We haven’t spoken in a very long time.” A deep breath showcases how much that day haunts him. “I thought you forgot about us,” he confesses, giving me a dangerous sliver of hope that our story isn’t over yet.
Without thinking of the repercussions, I reach for him, my hand falling onto his forearm to make my point. He doesn’t jump at my touch, like he did in the truck, and it means so much. “Maddox, I could never forget. You were my everything.”
He skewers me with a sharp gaze. “If that were true, why not try to make it work long distance?”
Something akin to panic with a dose of desperation settles in my gut. This conversation took a sudden grim turn, and I’m terrified he’ll shut it down before I can have my say.
“That’s the same question I most often ask myself.” Too many times, I’ve relived the events leading up to my decision and wondered how I ever said goodbye to him. Those same questions only spiraled out of control since he waltzed back into my life. “And I have no explanation other than being a stupid, selfish kid who didn’t know how good she had it until it was gone.”
If he was upset before, he’s the embodiment of raw, unfiltered fury now. His breathing has quickened, and he can’t bringhimself to look at me—something he had no problem doing just moments ago. The message is clear. He believes that if my career had flourished, or if Sadie hadn’t come to me, I would still be gone with no regret over breaking up with him.
Saddened that I make him wonder about my love for him, I find a way to set the record straight. “Maddox, I’ve always felt this way, not just after everything fell apart. We’d always been together, and the second we weren’t, I missed you desperately. I couldn’t share my joys or burdens with you or poke at you with endless questions about your day. Knowing you were hurting and not being there to hold you—it was torture.”
His hands wring together, knuckles turning bone-white under the strain of his frustration. “You could have changed that,” he says, his jaw clenched tight and pulsing.
“I thought I was doing what was best for you.” It’s a pitiful excuse, but an honest one. “I didn’t want you to waste your life waiting for me to chase my dream. But after getting my first job months later, I realized the dream meant nothing if you weren’t there to share it with me.”
“Nine years, Carmen. You had nine years to tell me this. Why didn’t you reach out?” His body shudders in a fight for calm amid his pain and mine does the same.
I feel his every emotion as if it were happening to me, and I hate doing this to him. Hate how much I’ve damaged him and continue to do so just by being here.
“You were overseas then, and by the time you returned, I assumed you’d moved on and found happiness with someone else. I didn’t want to upset that or you.”
“Why not ask someone? My entire family knew the truth.”
The truthgrinds its way through like a dull knife. The truth that he spent years despising me for what I did, hurting alone.
“I heard pieces here and there, but I didn’t want to accept it. It broke me to think of you unhappy, and I had Sadie and myparents counting on me.” I sigh out my frustration and slink away, cold emptiness filling me instantly without the feel of him to warm me. “I’m not proud of it, but I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Seeing you with someone else, even though I prayed for you to find her.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I wanted you to be happy.”
“Being with you made me happy.”
My chin quivers from a dam of emotions pushing against my wavering strength, but I can’t stop now. He’s finally opening up, allowing our exploratory conversation to venture further. “Have you dated?”
He stares at me, surely questioning if he should answer, and I have to wonder if I’m properly equipped to hear it. “Not really. I was married to the service and then to my job.”
Although he doesn’t ask, he deserves to know everything. “I tried.”
“I know.”
“You do? How?”
“I followed you on social media for the first two years.”
