Cathy didn’t want to hear any more. She knew how the story ended, and she was reasonably sure she knew what it had to do with her. Stone was right. In a twisted way, this wasn’t personal. But for her the bottom line was that as much as she loved him and wanted him, he didn’t return her feelings.
“Needless to say, we left right away,” he said. “I was too drunk to drive, so Evelyn took the wheel. We started fighting as soon as we got to the freeway. She finally had the proof she’d been looking for. Her fears about my supposed infidelities had been confirmed. I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen. All she knew was that she couldn’t turn me on anymore but this other woman could. I’d devastated her. I’d always loved her and cared about her and in the end I’d hurt her more than anyone ever had before.”
He was silent for a long time. Cathy picked up the story. “That was the night of the accident.” It wasn’t a question.
He nodded. “She was killed instantly, but I survived. Evelyn died thinking that I’d betrayed her. All she’d ever wanted was for us to love each other. It was the only thing I couldn’t give her. I’ll never be able to make up for that. I can never heal her or fix her, and that makes me crazy.”
The pieces of the puzzle fell neatly into place. Cathy had thought she understood the ending of the story, but she’d been very wrong. The point wasn’t that Stone wouldn’t love her because he hadn’t loved Evelyn. No, that would be too simple. It was worse.
He wanted to make up for what had happened between him and his late wife. He wanted to fix Evelyn. But she was gone. So he’d found someone else to fix. In some twisted way, she’d taken Evelyn’s place in his life. Maybe he thought if he did enough good deeds, he could atone for the past.
“You think I’m Evelyn,” she breathed.
He stiffened. “Of course not. You two have nothing in common.”
She rose to her feet because the need to move was overwhelming. After folding her arms protectively across her chest, she paced to the window. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before,” she said, more to herself than to him. “There were so many similarities.”
“You’re nothing alike.”
She glared at him. “Then tell me how we’re so different.”
“I want you,” he said simply. As if the passion were enough. As if the fact that he wanted her in his bed would make up for him not loving her.
She shook her head. “That’s not good enough. You’ve used me as a means to an end. I’m just a project to you. Not even a real person.”
She thought about the unborn child she carried. If she wasn’t real, what would he think of the baby? She shuddered at the thought.
“Cathy, you don’t understand.”
She spun toward him. “I understand perfectly. You’ve been playing with my life. You can’t do that, Stone. You can’t pluck people out of their worlds, change their circumstances and not accept responsibility for what you’ve done. What did you think? That I would accept all of this, then one day politely leave and never give you another thought?”
“No. Of course not. I didn’t set out to do anything like that. I care about you. I thought we were friends. I just wanted to help.”
“In the meantime, you might also ease a little of your guilt about Evelyn.”
His expression hardened. “Nothing will ever change what happened there.”
She stared at him. “You’re right,” she said. “Why didn’t I see that before? Nothing will ever change how you feel about the past. I guess we were both acting without thinking.”
He spoke, but she didn’t hear him. The need to escape was overwhelming. She left his office and hurried into hers. Once there, she grabbed her purse and left. She didn’t know where she was going; she only knew it had to be away from here.
* * *
He sat alone in the dark. He didn’t want to see the room they’d shared together. In shadows he could pretend he was somewhere other than the bedroom where they’d spent so many happy hours together. Unfortunately the darkness couldn’t hide the scent of her body or her perfume. The sweet smell lingered in the air. The darkness also couldn’t erase his memories of what they’d said to each other earlier that day.
He knew he’d hurt her. Inadvertently he’d done the one thing he’d tried to avoid doing. He’d thought they could just be friends. But Cathy had been right about everything. Hehadinterfered with her life without considering the consequences.
She’d seen right through him. She’d seen that he’d thought of her as little more than a project. A way to, if not make up for the past, then at least to make sense of it. It had taken a while for him to come to realize she was a person in her own right. By then it had been too late. They’d been involved.
He’d acted selfishly and thoughtlessly. Ula had tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened. He’d done all the wrong things for all the right reasons, and now Cathy was paying the price.
He’d only wanted to help, he thought. Why had everything gone so wrong? Why hadn’t he seen what he was doing?
He sat in silence for a while, waiting for the answer. At last it came to him. In a moment of self-revelation followed by self-loathing, he realized he was a selfish bastard who assumed he was smarter than everyone else. He’d assumed he knew and worked for the greater good when in fact everything he’d done had been for his own self-interest. No one else’s.
There was an old saying that the truth hurts. He knew that to be true. Unfortunately his pain and truth had come too late to help Cathy. He didn’t even know where she was.
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. She’d been gone for hours. What if she didn’t come back? What if she did? What was there to say to her? He could apologize, but that was such a feeble effort after all he’d done.
