Page 124 of The Widower
“Hanna, I think you’ve taken up enough of Colin’s time. He needs to work. Go find something else to do.”
She wasn’t wrong—but I didn’t mind spending a few minutes of my day with Hanna. Still, I kept quiet; from Isabelle’s tone, she was on edge.
“But, Mommy…”
“I’m not asking, young lady. That’s an order.”
Isabelle was being unusually strict, even with Hanna—something I wasn’t used to seeing.
“Okay. Bye, Uncle Colin.”
“See you later, kiddo.”
Hanna left the room and quickly disappeared from sight. Isabelle was about to do the same, but I caught her left arm as she turned.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
“What do you want from me?” she shot back, ignoring my question.
“I want you.”
“What we’re doing isn’t good for anyone.” She dropped her gaze. “I don’t want to keep this going.”
I studied her face, noticing the discomfort written all over it. I already knew why she was acting this way—I didn’t need to be a genius to figure it out.
“Your problem with me is that you don’t know my past. That’s why you keep your distance. Actually, you’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done and still do for me. Really,” she said, giving me a faint, polite smile. “But that’s not the only problem.There’s no future for us, and you know it.”
“Know it? Who says there isn’t?”
This time, she was the one caught off guard. I’d hidden my feelings for so long whenever she was around, but it was time to say more—to show I wasn’t as emotionally detached as she thought. She made me feel alive. Her gestures, her care—they’d never leave my mind. And I could see she truly cared too.
“Don’t play games with me.Just tell me the truth about who you really are.”
“Who I really am?”
“Your past—and how it affects your present.”
“There you go again,” I said, running a hand through my hair, trying to calm down.
“Just like I thought. You don’t trust me. And you don’t even want to tell me the truth.”
She looked down and stepped away, heading toward the back of the mansion.
The right thing would’ve been to go after her. But I didn’t. There were too many things at stake, and I wasn’t ready to dig up my past—not when it was still haunting me every single day.
ISABELLE CAMPBELL
I really wanted Colin to open up to me, especially after getting access to so much information about him.
I wasn’t sure how much of it was true. Jefrey told me it was practically certain that everything he’d found was accurate, and that’s exactly what scared me. Colin wasn’t a bad man, but knowing what he did to a certain person…
“Why couldn’t I keep playing with Uncle Colin?” my daughter asked, sulking beside me, glaring like I’d just ruined her favorite moment.
“He needs to work.”
Hanna needed to understand that we were in someone else’s house, but apparently, she chose to ignore that “simple” fact with impressive skill.
