He stood still, her words sowing into his mind, his heart. By her definition, had he really released Faith, the past? He bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“What about wisdom, Isobel? Only a fool or a masochist doesn’t learn from his mistakes.”
She slowly removed her hand from his and stepped back. He checked the urge to reach for her, to claim her touch again.
“Wisdom is applying those lessons, Darius. It isn’t judging someone based on your own experiences. It isn’t allowing the past to blind you to the reality even when it’s staring you in the face.” She lifted her hands, palms up. “Today you walked in here and jumped to the conclusion that I was sneaking behind your back with another man. That I had brought him into your home like your ex-wife. It’s easier for you to be suspicious than to believe that maybe I’m not like her.”
She inhaled and tilted her chin up, with defiance in the gesture, in the drawing back of her shoulders.
“I did not cheat on Gage, Darius. I never betrayed him—he betrayed me. He was the cheater, not me.”
Before he could object, question her accusation or deny it—maybe all three—she pivoted on her heel and exited the room. Minutes passed, and when she returned, he remained standing where she’d left him, too stunned by her revelation.Gage cheated? No. Impossible. He’d loved Isobel. Hell, sometimes it’d seemed he’d loved her to the point of obsession. He couldn’t,wouldn’t have, taken another woman to his bed. Not the man Darius had known.
Did you really know him?
The insidious question crept into his brain, leaving behind an oily trail of dread and doubt.
“Here.” She extended a cell phone to him. He reached for it before his brain sent the message to ask why. “It’s my old phone, the one I had when I was married to Gage. I saved it for the pictures I’d taken of him for Aiden when he was older. But I want you to read this.”
She pressed the screen and a stream of text messages filled the screen.
From Gage.
He tore his attention away from her solemn face to the phone.
I should divorce you. Where would you be then? Back in that dirty hole I found you. It’s where you belong.
You’ll never find someone better than me. No one would want you, anyway. I don’t even know why I bother with you either. You’re not good enough for me.
Don’t bother waiting up for me. I’m fucking her tonight.
And below that message, a picture of Gage maliciously smiling into the camera, his arm wrapped around a woman.
Bile raced up from the pit of Darius’s stomach, scorching a path to his throat. He choked on it, and on the rage surging through him like a tidal wave. Swamping him. Dragging him under.
She hadn’t deserved the kind of malevolent vitriol contained in those texts. No woman did. And that his friend, one of the most honorable, kindest men he’d ever known, had sent them to hiswife... The woman he’d proclaimed to love beyond reason...
Had Gage been that great of an actor? And to what end? The questions plagued him, drumming against his skull, not letting up. Because he needed answers. He needed to understand. His heart yearned to reject the idea that Gage could’ve been that spiteful...an abuser.
“Tell me,” he rasped. “All of it.”
After a long moment, her soft voice reached him.
“I was twenty when we met. And he was handsome, charming, funny and, yes, wealthy. I didn’t—still don’t—understand why he chose me. And I didn’t care—I loved him. Becoming pregnant so soon after we married was a little scary, but seemed right. He’d started becoming a little moody and irritable a few months after we married, but soon after the baby arrived, and I refused the paternity test, he completely changed. I didn’t understand then, but now I see he hated being poor, regretted being cut off from his family and blamed me for it. Resented me. That’s when the isolation started. He needed to know where I went, who I was with. He decided my every move, from who I could spend time with to what I wore. Since I just wanted to please him, I gave in. But then I couldn’t see my family because they were a ‘bad influence.’ And if I spoke to a man for too long, or smiled at one, I was cheating. The little money I earned, and the money his parents started giving him, he controlled that, as well. If I needed anything—from personal hygiene items to new clothes for Aiden—he bought them, because he couldn’t trust me to spend wisely. I was trapped. A prisoner. And my husband was my warden.”
“Why did you stay?” Darius asked, desperate to understand. To punch something. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“Love,” she murmured. “At first, love kept me there. I foolishly believed it could conquer all. But then that fairy tale ended, and fear and insecurity stepped in. I’d left school, had no degree. A minimum wage job. At that point, the unknown seemed far more terrifying than the known. And I never stopped believing that if I learned the proper way to act and speak, if I could get Gage to love me again like he used to, everything would be okay. His family would love and accept me, too.” She shook her head, letting loose a hollow chuckle that bottomed out Darius’s stomach. “And I wanted our child to have a two-parent home like I didn’t. So I stayed longer than I should’ve. The night I told Gage I wanted a divorce is the night he...”
Grief tore through Darius. And, still clutching the phone with its offensive messages, he turned and stalked away from Isobel. His thigh clipped the edge of his desk, and he slammed his palms on the top of it, leaning all of his weight on his arms.
It was a death.
A death of his belief in a man he’d called brother. The demise of his view of him. Whom had Darius been defending all these years? How could he still love Gage...?
Her arms slid around him. Her cheek pressed to his back.
The comfort—the selfless comfort—nearly buckled his knees.
