Page 130 of Shadowing You

“But?”

She glanced at her husband, who had turned away from them and was nodding into the phone. “I would prefer not to stay with Ethan.”

Gavin took that in, glancing across the terminal at his son. “Can I tell you a thing or two before you decide?”

“I will listen to anything you want to say.”

He shifted in the chair so he was angled toward her. “When Ethan called me from Virginia last week and said he’d heard your voice on the phone, my first thought was that it was a scam.” He paused, weighing his next words. “My second thought, if I’m being honest, was that you had faked your own death six years ago. That you had decided to walk away from him, and suddenly, you found yourself in trouble and needing money.”

She drew a careful breath. “You really thought that?”

“I’m an old spy. I don’t trust easily.” He said it lightly, but she felt the truth in the words.

“I told him not to go over there at all, and when he bought the ticket to Hong Kong, I cautioned him about going deeper into China. I told him about the cameras and the people who would be watching at every airport and every train station. I told him that if he got himself into trouble, I might not be able to get him out. I did everything in my power to keep him from going to find you.”

“Why?”

“He’s my son.” Gavin rubbed his lips together, his gaze slipping away for a moment. “He’s not sure how to feel about me, and that’s fair. I wasn’t a good father to him. I wasn’t a good father to my girls, either. Ethan doesn’t owe me anything. But I love him, and I was afraid something would happen to him.”

Tears stung her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she was crying for this man or for her husband or…maybe she just needed to rest.

“You know what he told me?” Gavin waited as if she might answer. “He told me you were worth any risk.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

“I need you to understand something else.” Gavin’s voice was low, and he leaned toward her, as if this was important. As if she needed to listen closely. “There was a stretch of time six years ago—a few weeks—after you stopped answering your phone. He couldn’t reach you. Your parents couldn’t reach you. Ethan hadn’t spoken to me in…years. Years, Mei Lin. But he called me and begged me to find you. He called me every day, sometimes twice a day, to ask me what I’d learned. My son finally needed me for something, and I…I tried, God help me. I reached out to every contact, looked under every rock, paid every person I could think of for information. I was desperate to give him something, anything, because for the first time in years, my son needed me.” Gavin looked down at his hands. “I found nothing. Even when the official news came that you’d died, he refused to accept it. He wanted me to confirm it. What he really wanted was for me to prove it wasn’t true. I couldn’t confirm, I couldn’t deny. There was nothing.”

Her chest had gone tight, and her eyes burned.

“It’s not about me. I’m just…” Gavin took a breath and seemed to shake off his thoughts. “It was months before he started to accept it, that you’d died. It was years before he’d even entertain the idea of moving on without you.”

She wiped the tears she couldn’t contain.

“He should have told you about the woman,” Gavin said. “I’m not making excuses for him. But I will tell you this. He and I had a lot of conversations in the hours before he got on that plane, in person and over the phone. He told me about his job—he’s a third-year resident. Did you know that? He risked everything he’s worked toward by leaving. I don’t yet know what the fallout will be.”

Ethan had risked his residency? She hadn’t considered that.

“We talked about your parents,” Gavin continued, “and whether he should tell them you were alive. I told him to wait, that we should hold off until we knew for sure. You want to know what we didn’t talk about in all those hours? What my son never once brought up?”

She had a guess but didn’t voice it.

“A woman named Holly.” Gavin looked past her, then lowered his voice. “His heart has belonged to you this whole time.”

Her anger was draining away.

Maybe she’d been unfair. Ethan should’ve told her about Holly, but that didn’t mean he’d never planned to tell her. As he’d said a few days before, there was no manual outlining what to do when you discovered your dead wife wasn’t dead.

All that was true, but everything Gavin had said brought home to her another issue—the real issue. She didn’t know the man her husband had become. And he didn’t know her anymore, either. He still loved the girl Mei Lin had been before prison—the girl from the photograph with the long, shiny hair and easy smile.

That girl didn’t exist anymore. The cell had taken her. The years of hopelessness had taken her.

As much as she wanted to be the woman she used to be, the woman who’d married the Ethan he used to be, neither of those people existed anymore. They were foolish to think they could pick up as if nothing had changed when everything had changed.

She wanted to be with Ethan, more than anything. She’d made a commitment to him, and she’d meant it. But now that the danger had passed, maybe they needed to ease back into their marriage, to make sure it was what they both wanted.

Gavin watched her, reading the words she couldn’t bring herself to voice. After a moment, he sighed. “All right.” He picked up his phone again and tapped the screen. “I’ll find someplace for Ethan to stay. There’s a hotel⁠—”

“Gavin.” Ethan’s voice came from behind her with an unmistakable note of warning.