Page 27 of Sweet Tooth
His gaze went to me.
“You were there. You saw me,” I gasped.
He nodded miserably. “I was too late. I’d come two years later than I’d told myself I would. It was completely my fault. Seeing you like that, with him, it cut me.”
He swallowed. “I stumbled back into the bathroom, got my shit together again and left.”
“But you didn’t even try…” I murmured, my lips struggling to form the words.
“No.” Zane shook his head definitively. “You’d found another guy and you were having a family with him. No way was I going to interfere with that. It was what I’d deserved. I’d taken too long.”
“You did,” I said quietly. “And I still don’t understand why you needed three years before you even checked in on me? Why you couldn’t just come to me after you’d quit drinking and tell me your plans. I could’ve helped you. We could’ve done it together and not wasted so much goddamn time.”
Zane shook his head. “Then you wouldn’t have had Parker.”
“Maybe I’d have had him with you,” I said coolly. “But now we’ll never know, will we?”
He rose, his chair screeching on the floor. “ I screwed up big-time, okay? How many times do you want me to say it? I should’ve come for you. I should’ve never left you. I should’ve figured out how to be the man I wanted to be when I was with you.” His hands were fisted, his face all lines of misery. “But I didn’t. I didn’t, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.” His eyes closed. “But if you can’t accept that. If you can’t forgive me enough to try,” His eyes opened. “Then I need you to tell me now.”
I stood up, cheeks flaming, my own hands fisted. “It was so easy for you. Knowing you’d come for me one day. I didn’t know that. I thought I’d lost you for good. I thought you were done with me, that you had moved on.” I shook my head. “Do you have any idea what I went through, thinking I’d lost you for good?”
“Yeah,” Zane said quietly. “I have more than an idea.”
And in the half-lidded sorrow in his eyes, it was more than clear. He knew. Seeing me with Paul, Zane probably had thought he’d lost me for good too. Yes, he knew.
“And maybe I shouldn’t be holding this grudge,” I said quietly. “But I still can’t understand why you couldn’t have turned things around when you were with me.”
A long, considered silence.
“I don’t either,” Zane finally said. “And it’s something I’ll probably never forgive myself for.”
He drew a breath. “And I can’t explain it, except that the misery of being apart from you, hurting you, it drove me. Drove me to do things, take risks, make sacrifices that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I’d just been happy.” He chuckled, though there was no happiness in it. “The kind of misery that either kills you or pushes you.”
I stood there, feeling the tears prickling in my eyes but not letting them out.
He didn’t need to ask me if I knew. Of course, I knew. What else had driven me to California to take that business course? What else had driven me on days when I was too tired, too fed-up, too scared to work on my business?
The pain had. The pain of losing Zane. Of Paul, who I hadn’t even loved, turning out to be a bigger disappointment than I could’ve ever expected.
“I’m sorry,” Zane said, moving so he was directly in front of me. There was no escaping the pain in those eyes, those dark eyes. “But I never stopped loving you. Never.”
Those words broke me. All the torrent of held-in emotion sputtered out in a tidal wave that had me collapsing in his arms.
“I… you…” I murmured pointlessly.
“Shhh,” he murmured, stroking my hair, taking me in his arms and brushing soft kisses along my hair and jaw.
“I love you, Jess. Just know that. I always have and always will. Always.”
And then we were in a bed, his bed. Although the lights were off.
Then we he carried me to his bed and held me until we both fell asleep.
16
Jessica
The doorbell went off and Parker started galloping around. “He’s here, he’s here!”
“He is here, you little cuckoo,” I said, ruffling his hair affectionately as I went to the door.
When I opened it, my blood ran cold.
The man on the other side wasn’t Zane at all.
After the shock subsided, I finally found my voice. “Paul.”
“Heya,” he said. “Kid’s looking good.”
He nodded at Parker, as if he was some bro come to chill, not a father who hadn’t seen his kid in three-and-a-half years.
“Parker, go back inside,” I said, pushing him back into the house and closing the door behind me as I stepped out onto the porch.
