It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “Yes. I’ll send for my things.”
He looked at her face. She felt the attention as if it were a touch, as if his hand had brushed against her cheek.
“Don’t go,” he pleaded. “Don’t leave me. It doesn’t have to be like this, Cathy. What we have is very special, and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t think you do, either.”
She hadn’t realized she’d hoped until her hopes crashed onto the floor and shattered into slivers. He’d asked her to stay because they had something special and he didn’t want to lose her. It was something, she supposed. Not what she wanted, though. Not a relationship built on mutual respect or caring. Not love.
“I can’t,” she told him. “I want more than that. I’ve learned that I deserve more. I have to be more than your current fix-it project and a convenience.”
He stiffened. “That’s not fair. While I’ll admit that the reasons I wanted to help you were complicated, you make it sound like you were a faceless person in all of this. That anyone would have done. That’s not true. I do care about you.”
“Like a friend.”
“Yes.”
“A friend you sleep with.”
“We’re lovers.”
“But not in love.”
His gaze shifted. There wasn’t any point, she reminded herself. She couldn’t change his feelings.
“I wish you the best, Stone. I hope that you can get it together. I love you enough to want to see you happy, but that’s not going to happen until you can let yourself love someone. And that will require you to let go of the past. I hope you can, but I doubt it. Self-pity has become too familiar a companion, and I think in your heart you’re afraid to let it go. You live this half-life, hoping it will make up for what happened to Evelyn. The truth is the accident wasn’t your fault. But if you see that, you have to be willing to forgive yourself and admit it was all right for you not to have loved her. For some reason, you’ve decided Evelyn was perfect—therefore you have to be the wrong one. I suspect you were equally at fault.”
She shrugged. “But what do I know? Good luck, Stone. Try not to stay in your beautiful prison forever. There’s a big world out there, and it still has a lot to offer you.”
“Will I see you again?”
She wanted to say no. It would be easier for her to just cut him out of her life. But it wasn’t just her decision. In a few days, she was going to have to tell him about the baby.
“I suspect you will,” she said at last, then turned and left.
Stone watched her go. When the front door closed, he slumped back in his chair and tried to tell himself that it was for the best. Cathy was getting too close to him. If the situation continued, she would only get hurt. Better for her to move on now, while she still could.
As for him, well, he would be fine, he told himself. He ignored the anguish inside, the gaping hole that used to be his heart.
But as the night wore on and the silence grew, he found it more and more difficult to dismiss the sensation of his lifeblood flowing away. He didn’t want his life to return to the emptiness he’d known before Cathy. It was one thing to never see her again, but he’d also lost the right to be her friend. She had been his only link to the world. Now there was no one.
“Cathy,” he said aloud, already missing her more than he’d thought possible. He’d wanted so much for her, and he’d never realized that part of that wanting was to never let her go.
What did that mean? He couldn’t really care about her. This wasn’t…love.
Love. He turned the word over in his mind. He didn’t know what it meant to love a woman. Not romantically. He never had. Besides, it wasn’t allowed. He wasn’t entitled. Not after what he’d done.
It always came back to the past. To Evelyn. To the horror of that night.
“I’m sorry,” he said into the darkness. “I should never have married you. I see that now. I should have told you the truth. It would have been kinder. Instead, I let you hope.”
Cathy had said there had been nothing wrong with not loving Evelyn back. He wondered if that was true. Did it matter? In the end, he’d betrayed her.
The thoughts filled his mind. He went through the past again and again, trying to figure out all the places he’d failed and what he could have done differently. He thought about Cathy, about what they’d had together. About all she’d given him and how much she’d come to mean to him.
After a while, he realized the light wasn’t just coming from the lamp on his desk, but instead spilled in through the window. Morning. The first day without her.
Sometime later he heard footsteps. When Ula entered the room she walked right up to his desk and stared at him.
“She’s gone?”
