Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
His words and something in his eyes died. Maybe it was the last of his love for her. Maybe it was the dream of a family that had compelled every misbegotten step they had taken over the years. Maybe it was something he’d buried with Amalie.
“Cam, you are not responsible. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. No one forced me behind that wheel.”
“God, Kerris, don’t make this easier for me.” He cleared what she thought might be tears from his throat. “There’s nothing you can say to make me feel like less of a bastard right now.”
“I don’t blame you,” Kerris said. “It occurs to me sometimes to blame you, but deep down, I don’t. And I guess eventually I’ll have to get over blaming myself, but I’m not there yet.”
“I thought we could make this work. But Amalie on top of what happened with…I kept telling myself we could get past it.” Regret darkened his stormy eyes. “And I’m sorry for that night, for what I made you do. It was just the thought of you and Walsh—”
“Don’t.”
She had to stop him. She couldn’t talk about the night he’d demanded her body as punishment for her sins. And Walsh’s name between them was too much.
“Let’s not dissect all the ways we hurt each other, Cam. Not today. I’m too…”
Too weary. Too injured, inside and out. Too desperate to be alone.
“Until the divorce is final, you’re still on my insurance, so your medical bills should be covered.” He stood, suddenly businesslike and brusque, but that didn’t hide the desperation underneath. “I’m leaving tonight, so you can stay here for as long as you need to. Hell, you can have the cottage in the…in the settlement. You made it a home, and I know how much it means to you.”
“Where will you stay?” She studied her cast, where Meredith and Mama Jess and a few nurses had signed it.
“I’m leaving tonight for Paris.”
Her eyes shot to his face, shock and confusion competing for mastery in her muddled emotions.
“Paris?”
“I applied to the Sorbonne months ago and was accepted.” He shuffled his feet, a dance of discomfort with himself. “I hadn’t told you because I knew that would be shit hitting the fan on top of everything else we had going on. I delayed admission and was planning to talk to you about it after…after the baby was born.”
“You mean you planned to spring it on me as a done deal, knowing I would cave and follow you over there.”
“Yeah, that about says it all.” Self-contempt twisted his well-shaped mouth around the admission. “But there’s nothing here for me. Ms. Kris is gone. Walsh and I are done, obviously. Our marriage is a joke, maybe was from the beginning. Amalie is…”
Cam bit off the sentence as if the name had pierced his tongue. He titled his head back and looked up at the sky before returning to the conversation.
“Even though it’s off term, Sebastian has some friends I can crash with until the next term begins. I’ll get you the address once I settle in Paris.”
“What about your job?”
“I quit my job a couple of weeks ago. Not like I really need it now that Ms. Kris’s estate has settled. Meredith didn’t tell you?”
“Meredith!” Her turbulent emotions exploded through the numbness his announcement had caused. “Why would Meredith have to tell me my husband quit his job?”
“Why would my wife pretend she was asleep every time I came to the hospital?” Cam returned with re-emerging fire.
They stared at each other, helpless and hostile, a suffocating silence stealing their breaths.
“I didn’t know what to say to you.” Her voice abandoned the fight, leaving behind a whisper. A rogue tear slipped down her cheek at the memory of him standing over her in the hospital. “And I assumed you didn’t know what to say to me.”
“I didn’t. I figured Walsh had said it all.”
His acrid words slapped her, and she shut her eyes against the stinging reproach.
“You think I didn’t know he came to see you? That he was getting a play by play from Meredith?”
“He only came once, and I don’t think he tried to hide it.”
“No, I’ve never met a man as bold as Walsh about stealing another man’s wife.”
“He was concerned about me. We’re friends.”
“Fuck!” He detonated the imprecation like a bomb, pulling the ring on the tenuous control she’d sensed him exerting. “Even now you can’t admit that you love him? That’s what this is all about. That’s why we didn’t work. If he had just…if you could have…”
A groan escaped the bear trap of Cam’s tightly clenched lips. He pulled a hand over his face before running it along the back of his neck.
“Fuck.” He inflated the expletive with frustration and hurt. He turned his head away, wiping surreptitiously at the wet corners of his eyes. He moved toward the patio door, cocking his ear, listening for something she didn’t hear.