Page 109 of Falling for the Grumpiest Protector

I lean forward, forearms against my thighs. "Diana loved me once."

"I know."

"She didn't marry me expecting to leave."

"No."

"She tried, Jack."

"I know she did."

I shake my head. "I don't think I gave her enough credit for that when it was happening."

I remember too much of those years in pieces. Diana standing in a dark kitchen in the middle of the night. Diego asleep down the hall. Me telling her I was fine when neither of us believed it. The exhaustion on her face. The way she started watching me when she thought I wouldn't notice.

"She didn't understand what was happening to me," I say. "Neither did I half the time."

"You'd just come home."

"That didn't make it easier to live with."

"No."

That's why I can talk to Jack. He doesn't tell me what he thinks I need to hear. He tells me the truth.

"I shut her out. I thought if I kept enough of it to myself, she wouldn't have to carry it."

Jack looks at me. "It didn't work."

"No."

Of course it didn't. Silence isn't the same thing as absence. You can hide the details and still fill a house with everything you refuse to say.

"She got scared," I say. "Not because she was weak. Because she had a kid to think about."

"You had a kid to think about too."

"I know."

The words come out rougher than I intend. Jack lets them.

I look across the farm. "Noah's eight."

Jack goes very still.

"Yeah."

"That's how old Diego was."

The number has been sitting inside me all morning. Eight. Old enough to remember. Young enough to grow up without you.

"I keep looking at Noah and thinking about things I haven't thought about in years."

"What kind of things?"

"Stupid things."

"I doubt that."