Page 97 of The Moment They Can Never Forgive
“Me,” Dan said softly. “You had me to stay for.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I realized your job would always come first if you couldn’t even tell the woman you cared about what was going on.”
“Dammit, Leah, that’s not fair. I couldn’t,” Dan said. He’d done what he had to. His duty.
She looked down at the hands she now had clenched on the table. “I know,” she whispered. “The rational part of my brain knew that, but just once I wanted to be first in someone’s life, and I knew that would not be the case with you.”
“Leah, you never gave us a chance?—”
“And I never will again. No man will have control over my happiness. Not you, or my father. Not anyone.” The last words came out whispered.
Dan heard the finality in them, and a fist clenched tight around his heart.
“We have to live in this town, Deputy, so let’s get on with doing that, but whatever we had is over and done with, and there will be no more sex.”
“We made love,” he said slowly.
“Whatever.”
Leah rose then and walked away from him again, and Dan let her. Her words burned inside his chest.No man had ever put her first. Had he? Or had he been too young to understand what she needed?
“What a mess,” Dan said, looking at the river. He watched one of the Slatters’s boats float by, full of tourists. He could hear their laughter from here.
“How’d that go?” Ryder nodded to Leah when Dan came back downstairs five minutes later. Leah was now seated with her uncle and, surprisingly, his mother.
“What?”
Ryder rolled his eyes. Dan got a blueberry-and-lemon scone out of the case and bit into it.
“No butter?” Ryder asked.
Dan ignored him.
“So, by that sour look on your face, I’m guessing things didn’t go well with the air clearing?”
“How do you know I was air clearing?” He took the mug of coffee his brother handed him.
“I came up the stairs with coffee and may or may not have overheard your conversation.”
“Which actually means you were eavesdropping.”
Ryder waved his words away. “You need to persist there, little bro. She’s hurting and still has the scars of her childhood, but you can be persistent. Youngest of five, you had to be. Plus, she’d be good for you.”
“You don’t know shit all about her, and suddenly she’s perfect?” Dan ignored the rest of his brother’s statement.
“I knew her before,” Ryder said, “and no one said she was perfect.”
“Knew who?”
“Where the hell did you come from? The door is that way, and I never saw you walk through it,” Dan said to Jay when he appeared.
“Libby’s making chocolate,” his friend said. “You look like you need a piece because your face is sour.”
Dan opened his mouth, and Jay threw a chocolate in, which surprisingly tasted good, even considering he’d been eating a scone.
“Good?”
“Banana, and I told her it tasted like banoffee pie,” Jay said.
