Evelyn #2
“You let me spend all those years thinking I wasn’t enough,” I whisper raggedly.
When the room remains silent behind me, I turn back to find that his face has paled.
“I never thought that. Not ever.”
“Then why?” I demand, the force of it surprising even me. “Why did you let me carry that?”
His jaw clenches. “I thought hating me would be easier for you than knowing the truth.”
I can only stare.
He gives a harsh shake of his head. “I thought if you believed I’d simply stopped loving you, it would be easier to move on.”
The words feel more like a slap.
“You arrogant fool,” I snap.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” My eyes burn. “You don’t get to walk in here after all these years and act like rewriting my life was for my own good.”
He blanches. “I’m not asking you to see it that way.”
“Then how exactly am I supposed to see it?”
He drags a hand through his hair, and for the first time since walking in, he looks stripped raw.
“As cowardice.” His gaze holds mine with unflinching clarity. “As weakness and fear. As me failing you when it mattered most.” His voice roughens. “Take your pick, Evie. They all fit.”
Tears prick my eyes. I hate crying in front of anyone.
Most of all, I hate crying in front of this man.
But there are too many nights I spent questioning my own worth.
Too many careful decisions made around an old wound I believed was settled, only to discover decades later that it had been poisoned all along.
“You married her.”
It’s not an accusation but grief.
Hugh’s jaw tightens, a faint grimace pulling at his mouth like the words cost him more than he wants to show. “I did.”
I swallow hard and force out the question. “Did you love her?”
His response is quick, without hesitation. “No.”
Instead of his answer being a balm to my pain, it only makes it worse.
Love at least would have made sense. Love would have made me the casualty of another choice.
Brutal but understandable. This is so much uglier and colder.
A life redirected by men who thought power mattered more than people.
A girl abandoned not because she was unloved, but because the people deciding her future never once considered her at all.
When my knees grow unsteady, I sink back into my chair without grace.
Hugh takes a step forward. When I give him a sharp look, he stops.
Good. Let him stand there for once, feeling what restraint costs.
“Do you have any idea what this has done to me?” I ask, congratulating myself for keeping the thin waver out of my voice.
He looks as if he might be physically sick. “No.”
“No,” I say, tears slipping free despite my best effort to keep them contained, “you couldn’t possibly.”
He doesn’t move to comfort me. And somehow that makes the ache even worse. There once was a time that if I cried, Hugh would have crossed any space between us without a second thought. Now, decades later, he finally understands that I might not survive his touch should he try to give it.
Or perhaps he wouldn’t survive my rejection of it.
I swipe at my cheek. “You let me build a life around a lie.”
The words hang between us. For one long second, I think he might deny it or try to explain it away.
“You’re right.”
Simple. Honest. Brutal.
When he doesn’t try to fight the truth, my chest seizes all over again.
He takes a breath. “I’m not asking for forgiveness.”
My head jerks up and I study him, surprised to find that he actually means it. I can hear it in the scrape of his voice and see it in the rigidity of his posture.
“I haven’t earned that,” he admits. “I might never earn it.”
For a moment, the room goes so quiet, I can hear the thudding of my own pulse.
“But I’d like the chance to try.”
My insides tremble, because what he’s asking is worse than begging. Begging would be easier to resist. Easier to dismiss as guilt, loneliness, or age making fools of both of us. His sincerity reaches deep inside me to a place I buried long ago, and that’s what undoes me.
When he moves, it’s not to close the distance between us but to drop down in front of me. His movements are slow and deliberate. Like a man lowering himself beneath the full weight of his own pride.
My breath catches as Hugh falls to his knees on the carpet in front of my desk. For one wild second, I wonder if I’m imagining it. If grief and fury and too many years of unrequited love have finally pushed me over the edge.
But no, there he is. The boy who once broke my heart. And the man who spent years carrying himself like he could withstand anything.
Now he’s on his knees in my office.
His gaze never leaves mine. “I should have fought for you then,” he says quietly, each word landing with crushing precision. “I should have told you the truth.” His throat works. “And I did neither of them.”
A tear slides down my cheek, and this time, I don’t bother wiping it away.
When he reaches into the inside pocket of his coat, my heart stutters. He draws out a small velvet box, worn soft at the edges by time. I know what it is before he opens it, and my hand flies to my mouth. He sets the box gently on the desk between us before flipping back the lid.
My ring.
It’s not one that’s similar or inspired by.
But mine.
The one he slid onto my finger with shaking hands in a garden twenty-eight years ago. The one I thought was gone forever. Sold or buried. Lost to history the way I tried, and failed, to lose him.
The emerald catches the light as I stare at it through blurred vision. “You kept it.”
His voice nearly breaks when he answers. “There was no way I could get rid of it.”
I look from the ring to his face, and realize this isn’t a performance or strategy.
Only love.
Love and regret and ruin and something so enduring it makes my heart ache to witness it.
“I never stopped being yours, Evie.”
The words shatter whatever resolve is left within me, making it impossible to speak or even breathe. I can only stare at the ring gleaming on my desk and the man kneeling before me, and know, with sickening certainty, that nothing in my life will ever be the same again.