Cara #2
“I know.” His jaw worked. “I know I did.” His eyes were wet now, and he wasn’t trying to hide it, and the sight of it undid me a little more.
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry, Cara. There is no version of this where I was right to keep it from you, and I think I knew that the whole time, and I kept going anyway because I was scared and I was happy and I didn’t want to be the thing that broke it. ”
I stood up because I couldn’t sit still anymore. I walked to the window, stood with my arms around myself, stared at nothing, and tried to locate the version of myself who could handle this without falling apart entirely. She wasn’t available.
“I’m not ending this,” I said to the window. “I want you to know that. I’m not walking away.” I turned back. “But I need to go home. I need to think. I can’t do that here.”
He was on his feet before I’d finished. “Cara.” His voice cracked open on my name.
“Please don’t go. Not yet. Stay and talk to me—just—” He crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to look up at him, and his eyes were red at the edges.
His hands came up and then stopped short, like he didn’t know if he had the right to touch me anymore.
“Please. I don’t want you driving home alone with this. I don’t want that to be how you leave.”
“I can’t stay right now.” My own voice had gone unsteady, and I hated it.
“I need to think, and I can’t do that when you’re—” I gestured at him, meaning all of it, meaning the fact that he was standing there looking at me like that with his eyes wet and his hands reaching for me.
“I can’t think straight when you’re right there. ”
Something moved through his expression at that—grief, and underneath it something that looked almost like hope, like he understood what I meant and was holding onto it.
He stepped back. Gave me the room. “Okay,” he said, and his voice was very quiet and very raw. “Okay. Take whatever time you need.”
“Don’t call me. I’ll reach out when I’m ready.”
He nodded. His hands had dropped to his sides, and he was looking at me with an expression I was going to be thinking about for a long time—not resigned, not angry, just destroyed.
I went into the bedroom, changed into yesterday’s clothes, and left his shirt folded on the bed. I didn’t let myself look at the books on the dresser. I picked up my bag and walked back through the cabin.
He was still standing in the kitchen. He hadn’t moved.
At the door, I stopped. “Don’t come to the shop,” I said. “Don’t text. I’ll call when I’m ready.”
“I understand.” His voice was steady, but his eyes weren’t, and he was blinking more than usual, and I had to look at the doorknob instead of at his face. “Take my truck. Leave it at the shop; I’ll get it later. I have the motorcycle.”
I looked at him one more time despite myself—this man who was even now, in the middle of this, thinking about how to make things easier for me—and felt something in my chest break open the rest of the way.
“Thank you,” I said.
I opened the door and walked out into the cold November morning. He didn’t follow me to the porch. He gave me that much.
I made it about three miles before I had to pull over.
I pulled over and cut the engine. I sat with both hands on the wheel and let it come.
It wasn’t the dramatic kind of crying—no gasping, nothing loud—just tears, quiet and steady and relentless, the kind that come when something important has cracked, and you don’t yet know how bad the damage is.
I cried for the version of us I’d been building in my head, the one I’d let myself believe in fully and without reservation.
I cried because he’d said he’d never been this happy, and I believed him.
It still wasn’t enough to make him tell me the truth.
I cried because I loved him and I was angry at him, and both of those things were completely true at the same time, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
Eventually, the worst of it eased. I wiped my face. Started the engine. Drove the rest of the way home.
The shop was closed—it was Sunday. I climbed the back stairs to my apartment and unlocked the door.
The cats were waiting. Wentworth came straight to me with a worried chirp and climbed into my lap the moment I sat on the hallway floor. Knightley pressed against my ankle. Darcy actually wound himself around my legs before settling nearby.
I let the tears come again then—harder this time, but still quiet.
The secrecy had cut deepest. He had wanted both things—the job and me—and yet he had kept me outside the decision. I understood the fear. I even understood why he had hesitated. But understanding didn’t make the hurt disappear.
I sat on the floor a long time with Wentworth purring in my lap. When the worst of the tears passed, I stood, went to the kitchen, and put the kettle on. The familiar routine steadied me a little—the apartment I had built for myself, the life that had been mine long before Jasper.
I picked up my phone, turned it off, and set it face down on the counter.
The kettle finished. I poured the water over the tea and watched the color slowly bloom in the mug, dark and steady. The cats moved around my feet in their usual quiet orbit, but even their familiar presence couldn’t quite soften the sharp ache lodged behind my ribs.
I was hurting in a way I hadn’t expected. Not the clean, bright anger I’d felt shoving Eric away. This was heavier, a hurt that settled deep and made everything feel a little farther away.
I could see how the old wounds from his Marine days had made him terrified of asking me to wait, of risking that I might decide he wasn’t worth the cost. Part of me even wanted to reach across the distance and tell him it was okay, that I got it.
But the bigger part of me—the part that had just learned how to stand up for herself—couldn’t let the secrecy slide.
I wrapped my hands around the warm mug and took a slow breath.
The hurt wasn’t just about the job or the travel or the long hours.
It was about the trust I had handed him so freely, only to discover he had been protecting himself instead of protecting us.
I had let him all the way in—into my apartment, into my bed, into the quiet hopes I had started building around a shared future—and he had kept one foot outside the door the whole time.
Tears pricked at my eyes again, hot and unwelcome.
I didn’t brush them away. I let them sit there for a moment, blurring the steam rising from my tea.
I wasn’t ending things with him. I wasn’t ready to walk away.
But I also wasn’t ready to pretend the secrecy hadn’t cracked something important between us.
The cats watched me from the floor, patient and steady.
Wentworth stayed close, his weight a small, solid comfort in my lap.
For now, this was enough—my apartment, my tea, my cats.
I needed time to sit with the hurt, to let it settle, to figure out whether the version of us I wanted could still exist once the truth was fully on the table.
I took a slow sip of tea and let the warmth spread through me. The irony lingered—the same day I had finally learned how to stand up for myself, the hardest person I would have to stand up to was the one I loved most.
And the worst part was that I had ignored every early warning my own heart had tried to give me.
Now I had to decide if love was worth trusting someone who had already shown me he couldn’t always trust me with the truth.