She didn’t have Logan. She had absolutely no certainty that he would ever come back to her. She loved him. She loved him with everything she had, even though losing him hurt her.
She loved him.
But she wasn’t afraid to be alone. Whether she was with Logan or not, Will wasn’t the right thing for her. This wasn’t the right place.
“What?” He looked blindsided. Devastated. Perversely, she wanted to laugh. He might have been a mirror of where she was four months ago.
That idiot. What had he done with his summer?
“Yeah,” she said. “I think we should see other people.Onlyother people. I’m sorry, that was a bad joke. I swear to you I didn’t plan it.”
“But you said that you wanted to be with me. You wanted to separate because you couldn’t stand the idea…”
“I know. That was months ago. A lot has happened.”
“What?”
“Do you want that kind of honesty?”
“You’re asking me for divorce, why not?” he asked, sounding bitter and angry. How was that fair?
Of course it’s not fair. It’s feelings.
Feelings weren’t fair.
And he’d been the hero of whatever journey he’d been on this past summer, the same as she’d been on hers. She didn’t esteem his journey, but still.
“I fell in love,” she said.
The words landed hard. She could see that. Like a fist to his face.
“You got so angry at me because I wanted to have an open marriage, and then you went andfell in lovewith someone else?”
“Yes.” She didn’t take his bait, or tell him to save his outrage, even though she wanted to. “I did. I learned something about myself. I can’t love more than one person at the same time. Or rather, I can’t beinlove with them. You will always be the father of our children. You will always be the man that I spent twenty-two years married to. I care about you. I even mostly like you, even though I was mad at you before we split. But I’m not in love with you.”
He looked like he was processing the speech, but slowly. Trying to grasp at her words as best he could.
“You’re leaving me for another man?”
She shook her head. “No. It turns out that he doesn’t want…” A tear fell down her cheek, and she wiped it away. Here she was, crying about Logan in front of Will. But it felt really honest. She was out of everything but honesty.
She couldn’t offer easy. She couldn’t offer fake. She couldn’t offer anything but the truth.
“He doesn’t want the same things I do,” she said. “So I’m not leaving you for him. I’m leaving you because I don’t think either of us should be in a marriage when we know we want somethingmore. I shouldn’t be married to you knowing that I can love someone more than I love you. Andyoushouldn’t be with me knowing you want someone more than you want me.”
“I was going tell you that I don’t… That you were right,” he said, his voice raw. “I don’t want that. I tried it. At the end of the day, it’s just sex, Samantha. There’s no one to go home to. There’s nobody to talk to. There’s… None of them know me. You knew me. You knew me when I was a teenager, and you saw things in me that nobody else did, and…”
It was about him. All of it. What she gave to him, not how he felt about her.
She’d never been more certain of her decision. Of herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That it took you all that time to realize that what we had was special. But I can’t be sorry that it took me this break to realize that what we had wasn’t enough.”
She was breaking him. In the way that Logan had broken her.
But this had nothing to do with her being afraid. She was being brave. Will was just going back to what he knew. Because it was all about him. He missed the way that she saw him. He didn’t want to start a new relationship because he would have to get to know somebody. They would have to get to know him. He didn’t want a new relationship because that woman wouldn’t be the mother of his children, giving him allowances and forgiveness because of their history.
She had jumped headlong into a relationship that was hard, and he didn’t want that, because she had spent twenty-two years making his life easy.
