Seth runs a hand through his dark hair. "I didn't know what to say. I guess I was also worried you'd tell me not to come."
"It's fine that you're here." I try to sound nonchalant, even though the mere act of looking him in the eyes is making my hands sweat. "But it would have been nice to be prepared."
As if I could ever be prepared to see Seth. I imagine that I can feel his heat from across the room, hear the heart beating inside his chest. My own heartbeat feels out of rhythm, like it might just bounce itself out of my body and soar across the room to find his to recalibrate itself. No one has ever had this kind of visceral effect on me, and it's more than a little frightening.
"So why are you here?" I ask.
He stops rubbing his knees and gazes at me intently. "To apologize."
"Okay," I say, crossing my arms over my chest. "Go for it."
He takes a deep breath before speaking.
"For the first two days after you left, I marinated in my self-righteous bullshit. I was so angry at you. Then by day three I started hearing what you said to me that night."
"It took three days?"
Seth grimaces. "My brain works slowly, but I eventually realized you were right. You were trying to tell me the truth so we could start with a clean slate. You were being brave, and I shouldn't have shut you down like that. I'm really sorry."
I start to speak, but first I have to clear away the lump that is now lodged in my throat.
"Thank you, I appreciate that."
I'm not sure if he's here to get closure or to create an opening for us, and for that reason, my walls aren't coming down any time soon.
Seth looks down at his hands. "Did anyone tell you that I'm divorced?"
"Renata mentioned it," I say, remembering his wedding picture, and the way he looked so uncomfortable posing for the camera.
"My ex-wife, McAllister, wanted me to quit the military because she didn't like me being away so much. What I didn't know was that she was filling her time while I was away by cheating on me. So I quit the Marines, which I loved, and came home to her, and we were divorced within a year."
Even though I'm still pissed at him, I don't like hearing the sadness in his voice as he tells his story. What he went through in his marriage really sucked. Then again, I understand why he's telling me this now. He's equating me with his cheating wife. My hands are trembling from the emotions flooding through me.
"As I said before, I never would have cheated on you. Ever. So please don't compare me to your ex-wife. That's not fair."
"I know," he says. "I'm just trying to explain why I reacted the way I did. It wasn't about you and that married guy, not really. It was about me. What you told me set off a bunch of old anger, and I'm sorry for taking that out on you."
"I met with him when I got home," I say. Seth looks up at me, his eyes locking with mine. "I told him that he could never contact me again. That situation wasn't really about me either. He's in a bad place in his marriage and was using me as an excuse to run away from it."
"Has he gotten in touch with you since then?" he asks.
I shake my head. "No, but I also blocked his number on my phone, just in case he tried."
Seth leans back on the couch and sighs, and I can see how hard it was for him to tell me everything he did. It's been weighing on him these last six weeks in a way that it hasn't been on me. I thought things were completely done with us, but he was still trying to find a way to make them right.
"I talked to Renata about what happened between us," he says. It's mortifying, knowing that Renata has heard all the sordid details of my life, but I guess he had a right to tell her. She is his adopted mother, after all. "She said you'd talked to her about starting an events business at the farm."
"Eventually," I say, still keeping my cards close to my chest.
"I knew that if I waited until you came back to the farm, you might be completely over me, and it would be too late. So I decided to come up here now and ask you..." He pauses before saying, "Is it too late?"
The emotions rushing through me are so strong, it's like being caught in a riptide. Yes, I want to be with Seth, of course I do. It would be easy in some ways to let my feelings carry me back to him. But something in me is resisting that pull, and I know why. I don't want to risk being broken again.
"I'd like to say we can try this, but I'm not sure," I say. "You really hurt me."
He rubs his forehead with his hands, pain etched on his face, and I know that by breaking my heart, he hurt himself, too. It gives me a little comfort that I won't be the only one taking a risk if we get back together.
He inches forward to the edge of the couch. "Maybe I should go."
