22. Luisa #2
“So I broke your heart.” The words came out broken. “I made you hate me. I filed for divorce. I let you think I was every terrible thing the tabloids said I was, because as long as you believed that, you wouldn’t come back to me. You’d be safe. Far away from my father and his reach.”
I sat there, tears streaming, trying to reconcile the man in front of me with the monster I’d spent four years hating.
“I told you at the Henley place that I had a whole plan to tell you I was pregnant,” I whispered. “What I never told you is how close you came to knowing. I’d rehearsed it all that day. You were maybe ten seconds from finding out about your daughter when you asked me for a divorce.”
Wade made a sound like he’d been stabbed.
“I know.” His voice was raw. “I found out later. And I knew. I knew what I’d taken from both of us. What my father had taken. But you were already gone, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t undo it. I couldn’t fix it. All I could do was make sure you stayed safe until he was finally behind bars.”
“So you testified against him.”
“I spent four years making sure he could never reach you again. I handed over everything I had on him, everything I’d spent my whole life pretending I couldn’t see.
” His hands were still shaking. “It took four years, Lu. Four years of staying away, telling myself you were safer the farther you got from me, knowing you hated me and that I’d earned it, knowing I’d destroyed everything that mattered.
But he’s in prison now. Twenty years. And he can’t touch you anymore. ”
Somewhere in a hospital four years ago, Wade had sat by my bed gray-faced and whispered this is my fault, and I’d thought he meant the fight. He’d meant this. His father, and a threat that had hung over my whole life without my ever knowing it was there.
Four years of hating him collapsed all at once into grief, which was far worse.
Then the anger came.
“You decided FOR me.” My voice shook. “You made a choice that affected my entire life, and you didn’t even give me the option to make it myself.”
“I know.”
“I have put larger men than you on the ground, Wade.” I stood up, pacing, my fists clenched. “I was a dancer with thighs that could crush watermelons. I wasn’t some helpless princess who needed protecting. And you decided I was a thing to be hidden instead of a partner to be told.”
He took it without flinching. Stayed seated on the floor, looking up at me with those blue eyes that were so much like Poppy’s.
“You’re right.”
“I could have helped you. I could have been careful. We could have faced it together-”
“You’re right.” He stood slowly. “It was the wrong call. Made for the right reason, but still wrong. I should have trusted you. I should have told you everything and let you decide for yourself whether the risk was worth taking.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I loved you too much to gamble with your life.” His voice was quiet. “I’d rather have you alive and hating me than loved and in danger. But you’re right, Lu. I should have handed you the knife instead of the lie.”
We stood there, both of us wrecked, the weight of four years pressing down on us.
Finally, I sighed. Let the anger slip away, at least for now. There would be time to be angry later. Right now, I just felt exhausted.
“So he’s in jail for good now?” I asked. “That’s why you came to Bellhaven?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “That’s it. He’s gone. And I could finally try to find my way back to you.”
The tears came again. I couldn’t stop them, didn’t even try. Four years of grief and rage and confusion, all of it pouring out of me in ugly, heaving sobs.
Wade took a hesitant step toward me. Then another. And when he tentatively reached out, his hands finding my shoulders, I let him pull me closer.
I let him hold me.
Because my husband had loved me. He’d been trying to protect me. But damn if he hadn’t broken me into the smallest pieces in the process.
His arms wrapped around me, solid and warm, and I buried my face in his chest. He smelled the same, that cologne I’d never been able to forget, the one I still sometimes caught on strangers and had to fight the urge to follow. His heart was beating fast against my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed against my hair, the words cracking. “I’m so sorry, Lu. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I pulled back slightly. Looked up at his face.
He was crying too.
We were so close. His breath warm on my lips. His eyes searching mine for permission, maybe. Or forgiveness.
I tilted my chin up.
He tilted his down.
My phone rang.
We jumped apart like teenagers caught by parents, my breath gone shallow and fast. I fumbled for my phone, saw the nanny’s name on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Ms. Erickson? Everything’s alright, but it’s almost seven and you said you’d be home by six. I just wanted to check…”
“Oh God. Yes. I’m so sorry. I’m on my way.”
I hung up. Looked at Wade.
His lips were parted. His chest was heaving. His eyes were dark in a way that set my whole body on fire.
I’d been a second from kissing him.
Holy shit.
“I need time,” I said, my voice unsteady. “To process all of this.”
“I understand.”
“Can you… can you walk me home?”
His expression softened. “Yes.”
We left the studio together, stepping into the cool June evening. The walk to my apartment wasn’t long, fifteen minutes, maybe, but it felt like an eternity. Every step I took, I was hyperaware of him beside me. The warmth of his body. The way his hand occasionally brushed against mine.
And underneath the worry for me, quieter and a great deal less noble, sat the traitor thing: I kept losing the thread of what he was saying because of the way he said it.
That low, even voice I’d fallen asleep against for three years, pitched soft now so it wouldn’t carry down the empty street.
My mouth went dry. I found myself watching his hands where they hung loose and ready at his sides, remembering with humiliating precision exactly what they’d felt like, and I made myself stare at the sidewalk instead. It did not help.
I watched him as we walked. Watched the way his eyes scanned the street, the doorways, the shadows. Always alert. Always watchful.
I finally understood why.
Because of his father.
Because he’d spent years looking over his shoulder, waiting for threats that could come from anywhere.
Holy shit.
We reached my house. The porch light was on, warm and welcoming. Through the window, I could see the nanny gathering her things.
“This is me,” I said unnecessarily.
“I know.”
Awkward silence. Neither of us moved.
“Goodbye,” I said finally.
“Goodbye, Lu.”
I turned toward the door. Stopped. Looked back over my shoulder.
“See you at class tomorrow?”
The question came out before I could stop it. I hated that I asked. Hated how much I wanted him to say yes.
Wade smiled. That real smile, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
Butterflies thrashed in my stomach. I turned and almost ran inside.