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“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. I was hurt when you shut me out. I’m not as fragile as you think—”
“I never thought you as fragile, Nadia. I thought of you as mine.”
My pulse picked up. Thought instead of think. But I dared to ask, “And what…what do you think now?”
“I think I’m weak. Love makes me weak. It was how I fucked up with Aubrey. It’s how I fucked things up with you.”
I frowned. “Are you saying this because you said you love me? That you think you can’t love me and be with me?”
“It’s not that. It’s…more complicated than that.” He shook his head.
“Then can you explain it? Because all I know is that you pushed me out of your life, you…you left me.” My voice caught, and I hugged my waist. Didn’t he miss me? Did he care?
“No, baby. I didn’t leave you, please believe me,” he pleaded in a gentle tone. “I left to give us both time to think, but I didn’t leave you. I moved you here to keep you safe. I sent you Laurence to help organize the staff to look after you. Anything you need, they will give you. Are they helping you here?”
“Yes. Everyone’s helpful, and I’m grateful.” But I’d take us together over anything you could ever give me. My eyes flicked to him.
He reached over and removed strands of hair from my face. “I couldn’t spend another day without seeing you. I hated how we left things between us in New York City.”
“I did too.” The tip of his fingers lightly brushed my arm. I shivered and moved my hands down to rest at my sides.
“Laurence told me how you were doing on your internship.”
“I hoped he would. It’s been good…you’ve been working too?” My brows raised.
“Work. I always work. That’s what I can always count on doing.” There was a twinge of annoyance in his tone. He appeared happy in the media, but I understood now that photos captured seconds. We existed in many minutes. “I missed you.”
My heart skipped a few beats. “I missed you, too.”
“There are things you don’t know about me. Things you need to know.”
Life drained from his eyes and it ached my heart. I touched his hand but stayed quiet.
He sighed. “When I call myself selfish, I’m telling you who I really am. Aubrey needed me, and I didn’t help her. I failed her.” His grief and regret were palpable, but I also learned from grief, we often twist the truth to punish ourselves.
“You didn’t fail Aubrey, you loved her. You married her.”
“Yeah, I did. I married her after I broke her heart.” He cleared his throat. “We had a fight when we were dating. She kept hiding things, stuff about her past, and it annoyed the hell out of me. When I found out the truth, she tried to explain her side. She begged me to try to understand her. But I wouldn’t listen. I wanted to argue, to punish her.” He let out a huff. “Fuck, what an asshole I was.”
“You were angry; we all get angry at times. You’re looking at the situation in hindsight because she’s gone, and you wish you could do things differently. But as Doctor Casey tells me all the time, we can’t change the past. We can only go on.”
He went quiet. Minutes went by, and my pulse quickened. What if he closes himself off again? “Did something happen after the fight?” I turned my head back towards him, and he sat rigidly. His eyes were vacant, staring off at nothing, but they were not empty. They were full.
My throat was clogged by the swell of my heart lodged in it. Oh, Paul. I took his hand.
“Aubrey was…she was so sweet, so fragile. She needed me. When I realized I fucked up, I tracked her down to her mother’s house. She was digging in the dirt. She’d cut her hair with the garden shears. I…I was too late. I told her I loved her, but…but my love didn’t matter anymore. She was gone.” His voice shook, and he bobbed his head and wiped his chin.
I squeezed his hand, but my arms were aching to hug him tight, wanting to take that pain. But I didn’t know what he’d do. I caught his gaze, blurred by his tears. “Listen to me, please. Love still matters, it always matters. I wish you believed this, but no one asked you to be perfect. I’m not perfect. And I’m sure that Aubrey wasn’t perfect either.” I paused, looking for the right words. “Paul, we all make mistakes, and from where I’m sitting, from things I’ve heard, it sounds like you helped her more than you think.”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. She learned that night I didn’t have her back. She pretended to be fine, but she never dropped her guard with me again. She never let me protect or comfort her. But I still loved her, and I believed she’d come around. I told myself, we just needed time….” His voice drifted off.
Paul was so gentle and loving with me. He was also so protective; I couldn’t imagine him differently. “Well, you must have worked on it; you stayed together.”
“Yes, but things changed in my life, too. Dad stepped down from his Trust duties, and I had to step up. All I did was work.”
I bet she hated it. Much like I do at times. But this wasn’t about me. This was Paul finally opening up. He needed empathy.
