Vulnerable [Suncoast Society] (Suncoast Society #29)(50)

He opted for the high road. “I know that I would be okay if you love whoever Mommy ends up with in the future. So I would think she’d be okay with you loving Uncle Jesse. People can love more than one person like that. Just like you love Great-grandma.”

He deliberately didn’t mention Eva’s parents, or his. Laurel rarely saw either set of grandparents.

Especially Eva’s.

“Oh. Okay. Good.”

Leo pulled his car into Eva’s driveway. It was getting easier to think of it as Eva’s house, and not “their” house.

Especially with Jesse now living with him, sharing his bed and his life.

They were going to have to sell the house sooner or later. He couldn’t maintain a house and an apartment indefinitely, even with Jesse helping him pay monthly expenses at the apartment. Eva didn’t make enough money on her own to pay all of the house’s expenses. In their divorce agreement, he would help pay for half of the mortgage, taxes, and insurance for up to one year from when the divorce was final. That was in addition to child support.

Unless Eva got a roommate to help pay for everything, they’d have to sell it, splitting the equity fifty-fifty. Or at any time, she could try to get financing and buy him out for his half of the equity.

Something he seriously doubted she could or would do.

After getting Laurel’s suitcase out of the trunk, he walked her up to the front door. Eva stood there, her face a blank mask. When he sent Laurel inside after a final kiss and hug, he waited for her to get down the hall before asking.

“Are you all right?”

Eva crossed her arms over her chest and studied her shoes. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just SSDD. I’ll be fine.”

He hesitated, finally reaching out to touch her arm, waiting until she looked up and met his gaze. He hated that there were tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Eva. I take full responsibility for all of this. You didn’t do anything wrong in our marriage to get us to this point.”

“I know. Doesn’t make it any easier.” She let out a sad laugh. “I guess I hoped that, after a while, maybe you’d change your mind and decide you were wrong and come back to me.”

“You’re a good woman. I know I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re sorry.” She let out a long breath. “I realized Saturday, when I saw you and him together and how much she loves him, that this is how it’s meant to be. I get it now. I get why the counselor keeps telling me I was using ‘magic thinking’ all this time.”

This was news to him. Yes, they’d both talked to the counselor privately, in addition to the joint sessions for Laurel’s benefit, but they never discussed those sessions with each other.

“What are you talking about?” Leo asked.

Her shoes interested her again.

Greatly.

She wouldn’t look at him when she eventually started speaking again. “She told me I was living my life for the way I wanted things to be instead of the way they really are. That I keep hanging my hopes on you coming back. That I was deliberately trying to sabotage the divorce, thinking that if I made things hard enough for you to fully detach that you’d give up and come home.”

Her gaze skipped up, then away again. “I’m sorry about the custody stuff before,” she whispered. “I was angry and thought maybe it’d make you come back to me if I pushed hard enough and made things difficult enough for you. That you’d give up. That wasn’t fair for me to do.”

He pulled her into his arms, hugging her. “I’m so sorry.”

Her hands crept around him, holding him. “You both looked so happy together.” He heard the tears in her soft voice. “And I wanted to hate him. I tried, but I can’t. Because I could finally see what you meant. How different you are with him than you were with me. And Laurel really likes him.”

“He’s a good man. And he loves Laurel, too. She does really like him.”

“I know. She told me Friday before you picked her up that she does.”

“You know I wouldn’t be with someone if I didn’t think they could love Laurel. She always comes first in my life. And if I’d had the slightest bit of doubt about him, he wouldn’t be living with me.”

She sniffled and he let her go when she stepped back, wiping at her eyes. “I know. I think that’s what finally got through to me yesterday. Because I do know that you always put her first. Even to the exclusion of everyone else. And thank you for letting her invite me yesterday. I’ll admit I sort of wanted to intrude, but it finally made me see the light.”

Eva wrapped her arms around herself. “She’d come home and talk about you three going to cookouts and stuff with friends, and then I’d call people and chat and no one would say anything. Then I realized she was talking about people I’ve never even met. At first I thought you all were hanging out with our friends and they were just hiding that from me and not inviting me.”

His heart broke a little more for her, that she had felt like that, her insecurities so close to the surface. “I have friends, Eva,” he gently said. “Jesse does, too. I’ve been getting out and making new friends, not only hanging with old ones. You need to get out and spend time with your friends. You can’t stay cooped up in the house all the time and do nothing but go to work and come home.”