Conflicted (Everlasting Love)(54)
“It’s a little late for this discussion, isn’t it?” He handed her a towel before wrapping a second one around his waist and stepping out of the shower. “Months too late.”
“I haven’t signed the papers yet.” She followed him into the bedroom, her pride gone as she all but pleaded with him. “And I won’t until we have a chance to talk about this.”
“What’s there to talk about? We’re on two different paths going in two different directions.”
“That’s not true.” She wouldn’t let it be true.
“Give me a break. We’re so out of touch with each other that you didn’t even know I was thinking about a divorce.”
“That’s because you never said anything about it.” Her voice rose despite her best intentions. “You never even mentioned it to me until after you’d given me the papers.”
“I thought moving out of our bedroom was a pretty good indicator that I wasn’t happy.”
“Why did you do that?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “You’re asking me that now?”
“Yes.”
“What does it matter? It’s too late.”
“It matters to me.” Her voice was steady, her eyes calm. “It’s always mattered to me.”
“Which is why you never so much as mentioned it before today, right? Because it mattered so much to you?”
She took a deep breath, bit the proverbial bullet. “I was too scared to ask you before.”
“Scared?” he demanded. “Of what?”
“Of finding out how badly I’d failed you. Of hearing you list all the reasons you don’t love me anymore.” She didn’t try to hide her pain from him. There’d already been too much hiding. If he left her tomorrow, he would do so knowing how much she still loved him.
“It’s never been about whether or not I loved you, Desiree.”
“Then what was it about? What made you move out of our room? What made you file for divorce just when I’d begun to realize my mistakes and try to fix them?”
“What exactly have you been trying to fix?”
She stiffened at his tone. “A hell of a lot, but I guess you’ve been too busy to notice.”
Jesse reached for a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, shaking his head as he did so. “That’s the best you’ve got, huh?”
“How is it that you can make me angrier than any other person on earth?”
“I don’t know. But I think that’s a pretty good sign that we aren’t meant to be together.”
“Don’t say that.” She clutched at him but he pulled away.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I—”
“What, Desiree? Tell me what you want me to do, because I can’t live like this anymore.”
“I want you to love me.” The words broke the dam on the emotions she’d held inside for so long. “I want you to let me love you, to let me make the past few years up to you.
“I want a second chance, or a third or a fourth chance. Whatever chance I’m up to by now, I want it. I want to focus on you for a change, on us, instead of on this stupid ranch. I want to go on a second honeymoon, where we can talk and lie on the beach and make love all day if that’s what we want to do.
“I want to get to know you again. I want you to get to know me. I want you to look at me and see your wife again. I want to prove to you that I’ve changed, prove that you mean more to me than anything ever has. I want you to hold me like you used to, to kiss me and hug me and tell me that everything’s going to be all right. Even if it isn’t. Especially if it isn’t. I want you to love me and I’m scared, so scared, that you’ll never be able to again.”
*
JESSE FELT HIS MOUTH FALL open but couldn’t close it for the life of him. He hadn’t seen Desiree this way since her mother died—hysterical, incoherent, completely devastated as she poured her heart out to him.
He crossed to her before he could remind himself what a damn fool he was to fall into this trap again. “Stop, darlin’.” He crooned the words as he pulled her into his arms, her body flush against his. “Please, stop. You’ll make yourself sick.”
Her shoulders continued to shake, her body shuddering with her grief. “I hired a new trainer so that you could have more time to spend on your line. You’d always be in charge but I thought Tom could take over some of the less important stuff that you do so that you could concentrate on Cherokee Dreaming. I know it’s your dream just as I know you’ve put it on hold over and over again through the years for the Triple H, for me.”
He stiffened against her, but she was too caught up in her words and her misery to notice. “I hired someone to help Bob out, thought that maybe I could put some of my responsibilities on him so that we could spend more time together. I had papers drawn up making you a partner in the ranch. Fifty-fifty.”
“Desiree, stop it.” His voice was low and shaky as shock after shock reverberated through him.
“No. I won’t stop. I’ve held this inside for a long time and I’m sick of it. Sick of hiding behind my pride and pretending that your disinterest isn’t killing me.” She reached up, her hands tangling in his hair as she looked him in the eye. “I know what you’ve done for me, what you’ve done for this ranch. Don’t think for one second that I don’t know where we’d be if Big John hadn’t hired you, if you hadn’t stayed on after we got married, though you didn’t want to. Without you we’d be a hell of a lot less than what we are. I’d be a hell of a lot less.”