Cooper (Wild Boys After Dark, #4)(20)
“I didn’t,” she confessed in a whisper.
He grew silent, and when he finally spoke again, his gaze was unwavering.
“I’m truly, deeply sorry. It was selfish of me to put you through that, and even more selfish of me to want you to let me back into your life. There’s no excuse for how I handled things. I can’t change what I did, or how long it took for me to wake up and come to my senses, but I can promise you that for the rest of my life I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you.”
She had no answer to that, because she’d never stopped loving him, but her future had less to do with her heart than it did with Melody’s. Now, of all times, she had to think outside of her own wants and needs—and his—and think of what was best for their daughter.
“Cici, you know what I’ve been through, but you haven’t shared with me what you went through or where you stand. I want to know all of it. The good and the bad.”
“I’ve changed. My needs have changed. My hopes and dreams have changed.” The words were painful as they left her lungs. “You hurt me, Cooper, and I tried so hard to forget you.”
Unexpected anger simmered in her belly. She thought she could handle this, but confessing what he’d done to her was ten times worse than hearing about Cooper’s affairs with other women. Confessing her pain meant facing her fatherless daughter’s pain—pain Melody didn’t even know existed. But Cici expected one day that pain would appear like a ghost and would affect their precious daughter for the rest of her life. Melody had yet to ask why she didn’t have a father, but one day she would, and Cici dreaded the thought of what that might do to her confident daughter’s self-esteem.
“I can’t change the past, but I can work like hell to make sure I never hurt you again.”
It’s not just me I’m worried about. “Even after all this time, why do I still believe you when you tell me that?”
He smiled, and it made her happy to see that smile after the heaviness of his confession.
“Because who I was when you knew me is who I finally am again now, only stronger. When my father died and my mom was attacked, I lost myself. When I had to let you go, I put myself in living hell. But my heart has somehow survived with its love for you intact, and that will never change.”
She believed him with every fiber of her being, but she had a daughter to protect. “My last four years have been a lifetime away from yours.”
“Thank God for that,” he said solemnly. “Tell me, please.”
Her heartbeat quickened, the words We have a daughter vying for release, but she wasn’t ready to tell him that yet. What if he left again, abandoning her and their daughter? She needed to get the rest out on the table before she could even think about revealing that.
“It took me weeks to stop crying. My sister wanted to track you down and do God only knows what to you.”
“If she had come after me with a gun, I would have deserved it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Can’t you be a dick just once instead of being…you? God, I never could fully hate you. I tried. Believe me, I tried, but I couldn’t get there.”
“I have a studio in Manhattan. You could have found me any day of the week and given me hell. Why didn’t you?”
I was busy being pregnant and then raising our daughter. “I wasn’t going to be that crazy ex guys talk about, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
His eyes filled with regret, but he never shifted them away from her, and she appreciated his ability to own up to the pain he’d caused.
“I hated that you left me hanging after all the promises we made to each other. I hated that you could forget me so easily—”
“Never, Cici. I could never forget you, not for one single second. That’s what was so hard. I wanted to be with you, but I knew it wouldn’t work. I was too—”
“Broken. I know. I understand that now, but still, it hurt, and it felt like I was forgotten, but you know that. I…” Had our baby. She wanted so desperately to tell him about Melody, but she had to be sure he was really in this for the right reasons first, and for the long haul.
“You never married.”
His statement surprised her. It was so far from what had been on her mind.
“No. I didn’t date much, either.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face and rubbed the back of his neck, like the thought made his muscles ache.
“Because I screwed you up, too?”
Um, yeah, in a sense. “Because of a lot of things. Cooper, why did you come looking for me here? Why didn’t you come to my home or call?”
“I almost did, but showing up at your house felt like a breach of your privacy. I didn’t even look for you online, because I knew if I found you, I wouldn’t be able to stay away. I didn’t know what to expect, and trying to explain something so important over the phone felt like a cop-out, even though I tried to do it three years ago. Back then it was about apologizing, but I still had healing to do before I could give you a future. Now it’s about so much more. I figured here we were both on neutral ground.”
She tried to imagine what it would have been like if he’d shown up at her house, and she didn’t want to think about how she might have reacted. Her mama-bear claws would have come out for sure. A father was not something Melody should have sprung on her any more than a daughter should be sprung on Cooper. She felt like she was balancing on a teeter-totter, with her daughter on one side and Cooper on the other. She loved them both, and she had no doubt that Cooper would love Melody with his entire being, but she needed to be sure he’d never leave her behind—no matter what tragedies he faced.