Page 46 of Along Came Amor
“I’m serious.” He dipped his head to look at her. “But I think I deserve a little background information.”
Her hazel eyes turned wary. “Like what?”
His jaw worked as he tried to figure out how to ask the question that had haunted him since their first night together. “Ava, did he... did he hurt you?”
She sighed and clutched his lapels. “My mother asked the same thing, the night he left me. But no, he never hurt me. Just my heart.”
He shut his eyes, holding her tighter. “That’s not nothing.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “You know how when something big happens, you remember the weirdest details?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Well, the part that always stays with me... is that he left his shoes on when he came home.”
“Ah.” Roman imagined her home was spotless, definitely a no-shoes zone.
“I noticed it, but I was distracted by him throwing his jacket—the one he woreon the subway—over the armchair, something I’d repeatedly asked him not to do.”
“Disgusting,” Roman murmured, thinking about how his mom used to respond when he sat on his bed in “outside clothes.”
“So that’s what I was thinking about,” Ava continued. “I was making a mental note to hang his jacket in the closet, like I always did after he tossed it where it didn’t belong.”
She released him and paced a few feet away, hugging herself with her arms. Her curls fell around her shoulders in perfect spirals. So pretty, and so remote. Like she was a million miles away. Her voice was hollow when she spoke again. “And then he said he wanted to talk about something.”
Roman’s eyebrows popped up. “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah, uh-oh. It put me on high alert. Had he lost his job? Was someone sick? Had someonedied?” She shook her head. “But it wasn’t any of those things. He just wanted a divorce.”
His heart twisted, both at the thought of someone hurting her that way, and at the dispassionate way she recounted the events, like she could have been talking about getting caught without an umbrella during a surprise rain shower. “That must have been devastating.”
She didn’t answer, just rested her hands on the railing and gazed out at the city. “I asked if there was someone else, because it was the only thing that made sense to me in the moment. And you know what the bastard did?”
He loved the fire that infused her voice when she said “bastard.” “What did he do?”
“He said, ‘No, babe. There’s no one else.’” She made a sound of disgust, her lip curling. “‘Babe.’ The absolute nerve, to call me ‘babe’ while ruining my life.”
Roman wasn’t particularly vengeful, but he was creative. He could think of a few nonviolent ways to ruinHector’slife.Like making political donations with the guy’s phone number so he’d be besieged by campaign texts for the rest of his days.
“Note to self,” Roman murmured. “Never call Ava ‘babe.’”
She shot him an amused look, but he noticed the way her fingers curled into tight fists, like they were cold. Roman shrugged out of his suit jacket and walked up behind her to drop it over her shoulders. Her smile was grateful, and he caught the way she inhaled deeply. Breathing him in? He liked that idea.
When she continued, it came out quieter, like she was running out of steam. “We had a plan. And even when it changed, I never envisioned a future that didn’t have him in it.”
Roman ached to take her in his arms, but he held back, giving her room to finish. “What did you do?”
“What I always do. I tried to fix it.” She shrugged and cast her gaze toward the dark sky. “But he’d already made his decision. A decision that didn’t include me, even though it affected me. He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘I don’t want to be married to you anymore.’ And then he left.”
Her voice was bleak, but not fragile. She’d been hurt horribly, but she was strong.
And Roman was humbled that she’d gifted him with this much of herself.
He stepped forward and cupped her face in his hands.
“He was a fool,” he said quietly, when what he really meant was,He was a fucking idiot who never deserved you.
She sighed and wrapped her cold fingers around his wrists. “I figured that out a little too late.”
