“He got you. He won. He had the world in his bed and what did he do? Fucked every available piece of pussy he could find, and he did it in front of me. He rubbed my nose in it and taunted me. A silent dare for me to go to you and rat him out so he could deny it and make me look like a crazy fool. You were at home with his kid in your stomach and he was getting blowjobs in his truck. Stupid motherfucker. And if that shit isn’t whacked enough, the prick had to go and die. His last words on this earth were him giving you back to me. He had the balls to ask me to take care of his wife and child. His, Leigh-Leigh. His wife. The woman I loved more than my own life belonged to another man. I will go to my grave hating that fucker and loving you. For years, I tried everything I could to stop thinking about you, stop loving you, stop my body from craving you, stop my hands from remembering the way your skin felt.
“Nothing worked. Not women, not alcohol, not seclusion, nothing could make me hate you. And straight up, baby, I tried. I wanted to so badly. I tried hard. I blamed you, Faith, Paul, God, anyone and anything I could, but the truth is, all of it is my fault. I did this to us. I walked away when I should’ve stayed and talked to you. So, no, this isn’t a fucking game, woman. I’m not jacking you around or making promises to Faith I don’t intend to keep. This is me fighting for what should’ve always been ours.”
When Holden was done, his chest heaved like he’d run fifteen miles in the sand but it was the tears streaming down Charleigh’s cheeks that left him breathless. He’d been so caught up in his furious attempt to clear his conscience, he hadn’t stopped to think about the blows he was delivering.
Fuck.
“Leigh-Leigh—”
“I knew,” she snickered. “I knew he was stepping out on me—like you said, he didn’t hide it. Though I didn’t hide I was in love with a man who was not my husband. I couldn’t stop myself from lying in my marital bed and crying. I was married to a man I barely knew, was in love with you, and I was pregnant with a child I wanted to be yours. You think I care he was getting blow jobs in his truck? You think I care he was out carousing? From the day I married him I was emotionally cheating on him with you. And not that it’s any of your goddamned business, but I don’t blame him.”
What the hell?
“He told you he was fucking around and you didn’t care?” Holden asked in utter shock.
What woman didn’t care her husband was cheating on her?
“He didn’t have to tell me. I didn’t miss the perfume, the lipstick, the scratch marks on his back. You think he was taunting you? You’re wrong. That was him punishing me. He had a woman in his bed who loved another man and wouldn’t go there with him. So he’d go out and find it elsewhere, then the next day make sure he was up and walking around shirtless before I left for work so I could see the evidence of his cheating. I never said a word, so he did it more and more. Hickeys, bite marks, you name it. It didn’t faze me because all I was thinking about was you and who you were with.”
Holden’s world tilted. All the fucked-up things Paul had done to Charleigh flitted from his head until his thoughts zeroed in on one thing—she wouldn’t go there with him. What the hell did that mean?
“You wouldn’t go there with him?”
Charleigh reared back and shook her head.
“None of that matters. Faith and I are going to—”
“It matters a helluva lot. Are you telling me that you never fucked that asshole?”
“Obviously I did, Holden, the evidence of that encounter is sleeping upstairs,” she sneered.
A deep growl emanated from his soul, the sound so feral, Charleigh took a giant step back as Holden advanced.
“You know what I’m asking, baby.”
“That’s none of your business.”
Something ugly started to blossom in his chest. An ugly, selfish happiness he should’ve been ashamed to feel, yet he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but warmth at the knowledge. Holden didn’t need her to admit it, but he still wanted to hear the words come out of her mouth.
“Tell me, Leigh-Leigh, did you marry that prick then keep yourself from him? You said marital bed, so I assume you slept next to him. So you shared a bed but not your body?”
They were standing close, so close Holden could smell the faint scent of her lotion, so close all he had to do was lean in a few inches and he could take her mouth. Yet, he controlled his urges and stayed perfectly still. She, however, didn’t. Her hands were shaking, her chest was rising and falling, and her lips were trembling.
“You’re an asshole,” she whispered. “I see that makes you happy. That I married him but never consummated my vows. That I slept next to him but cried over you. Yeah, I can see how that’d make a dick like you happy. Does it make you feel good to know that he held me on our wedding night while I mourned the loss of you? My face was buried in his neck, his arms were around me, and I cried all night long.”
Holden ignored the vision of Paul holding Charleigh. Further, he tried and failed to stop his hands from reaching out and cradling her face. His palms were met with wetness. She tried to pull away but he held her still.
“I am a dick,” he admitted. “A Grade A asshole. But not one thing you’ve said
