“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It’s a macho guy thing, probably. It was different with you. Not just the sex. Everything…” He broke off as if he realized he was heading into a conversation that he didn’t want to have. A talk about the promises he’d made and then broke.
He turned into the long drive at my parents’ house.
“You can let me off here,” I said.
He kept driving on the gravel road past the house and out toward the river. He parked and then got out of the truck. He came over to my side and helped me out. Without a word, he took my hand and we walked across the field toward the river until we came to the oak tree where he’d taken my virginity. Where he’d given me Alyssa.
I hadn’t been here since he left. It was a reminder of all I’d lost. All he’d taken from me. But standing here with him now, I didn’t feel bitterness. Just sadness.
I looked up at him, to find him staring down at me. “Why are we here?”
He shrugged. “It was our place. I’m taking a trip down memory lane.”
That seemed even more dangerous than letting my guard down through booze. “That was a long time ago.”
“Maybe, but I have good memories of you and me here. We used to talk a lot, remember?”
“I remember talking and other things.”
His lips twitched up. “Other things, yes.” He looked out over the river. “I felt close to you. Like I could talk to you about anything.” He turned back to me. “But there were some things I still never told you.”
With those words, I realized he was ready to talk. He was ready to tell me why he abandoned me.
11
Wyatt
I didn’t know what I was thinking bringing her here to the place I first made love to her. To the place I’d promised to spend a lifetime with her. One thing was certain, she wasn’t feeling the same way I was. Not that I blamed her. After all, I’d abandoned her. But as I approached her house while driving her home, it was like the tree called to me. Like there was a magic or power in this place that would help me reach her. Not to talk her into a fake marriage, but to convince her to give me a chance to make it right.
Not that a trip down memory lane would change her mind. No, if I had any chance to rekindle the flame, I’d have to open up to her in a way I never had before. In a way that I’d never dared to when we were younger.
I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering our times here. It wasn’t hard to conjure them, especially with her standing right there in front of me. It was the images of her and this place that kept me sane during wartime. I opened my eyes, looking up through the branches to see the moon shining through them. Yes, this place was magic. It was going to my head way more than whiskey did.
I looked at her, desperately wanting to touch her. To pull her in my arms and promise to never let her go. It was a silly notion. She was right. Ten years was a long time. I wasn’t the same. Neither was she. There was no going back to what we had, which was clearly what I wanted. And yet, the pull to her was still strong. More than I could resist.
She leaned back against the tree. “I never expected the two of us to be here again.”
“I never stopped thinking about our time here,” I admitted.
She cocked her head. “I wouldn’t know it by the way you never contacted me.”
I looked down in shame and guilt.
“Why was that? Not a word. No call. No email. Not to me or Ryder. Why?”
I swallowed, knowing I had to tell her the truth, yet finding it hard to bring back all the hard memories.
“I was pissed you didn’t come with me,” I admitted.
She scoffed. “Another sacrifice I wasn’t willing to make.”
I shook my head, realizing this was about to go off the rails worse than before.
“I was a young dumb kid. I realize now that I was a jerk to ask you to leave your life, your dreams. It was best you didn’t come. I joined the military and was shipped off to bootcamp and then off to the middle east. You’d have been alone anyway. But by the time I grew up enough to know that, it had been a while. I knew you’d be pissed too and probably moved on.”
“I did move on, Wyatt. I fulfilled all my goals except the one you stole from me.”
Jesus, she knew how to dig the proverbial knife into my heart. “I know. I regret that.”
“I don’t get why you had to leave then in the first place. It was like there was a fire in your ass. No warning. No planning. You just showed up at my window demanding I run off with you. What happened?”
I scraped my hands over my face as I readied to tell her what had happened. Not just that night, but the life I’d led that no one except Ryder knew about.
“My father liked to hit my mother. He was also a drunk, although he didn’t need to be drinking to decide my mother needed a beating. Or me for that matter.”
She gasped. “I knew you didn’t like your father but I didn’t realize he abused you.”
“When you grow up with it, you don’t like it, but you also don’t know any different. You get used to it, I guess. Eventually, when I got big enough to defend myself, my father left me alone except for telling me how worthless I was. My mother though, she was his regular punching bag and that night, I decided to put an end to it.”
“Wyatt.”
I turned toward the river, finding it
