“You don’t know. You have no fucking idea.” The raw anger in his voice shocked her.
“Lucas—”
“The night she died, the night she left all dressed up and stepped into that cab, she wasn’t going out for the evening.” His fingers were white on the glass, his grasp so tight it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. “She was going to join her lover. She was leaving me. So how’s your image of our perfect love looking now, Eva?”
Twelve
It’s better to lead than follow, but if you must follow, follow your instincts.
—Paige
He’d expected her to walk out, and he wouldn’t have blamed her. Maybe it was even what he wanted.
Why else would he have told her the truth?
For a long moment she said nothing and he watched a range of emotions cross her pretty features. Only a few hours before he’d seen ecstasy and passion in those eyes. Now he saw shock and confusion, followed by compassion. Of course, compassion, because this was Eva and it wasn’t possible for her not to feel compassion.
It was the last thing he wanted.
He stared down at his hands, disgusted with himself for spoiling her perfect night but instead of walking out, she sat down next to him.
“But she—” She stumbled over the words. “She was the love of your life. You knew her from childhood—”
“That’s right.” He watched her process all this new information. Watched as her glowing picture of the perfect love affair, the perfect marriage, changed shape into something distorted and ugly.
“I saw pictures of you together—at premieres, walking through Central Park. I saw the way you looked at each other.”
“And that simply proves that you can tell very little about a person by looking at them. A point I’ve been making since you first broke into my apartment.”
She didn’t appear to hear him. “You say you loved her and I saw her in the photos. She loved you, too.”
“She loved me. As well as she could. But love is complicated, Eva. That’s what I’ve been telling you. It isn’t all hearts and smiles. It can be pa
in. Sallyanne couldn’t handle being in a long-term committed relationship. She kept waiting for it to self-destruct, and when it didn’t she destroyed it herself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I.” And he blamed himself for that. For not looking closer. He, who prided himself on always digging deep, had failed to even scratch the surface of what was going on with his wife.
“Does anyone else know the truth?”
“That she was leaving me? No. If she hadn’t slipped on the ice getting into the cab, the world would have found out that night, and it would have been as much of a shock to them as it was to me.”
Look, Lucas, look what I did to us. I took what we had and I broke it. I always told you I’d break it.
He reached for the bottle of whiskey but his hand was shaking so much he missed the glass.
Eva quietly mopped up the amber pools with a napkin left over from one of the lunches she’d brought him.
Then she took the whiskey bottle from him and poured two fingers into the glass.
“Aren’t you going to lecture me on drinking? Tell me it isn’t going to help?”
“No.” There was no judgment there, only kindness and friendship. “What happened that night, Lucas?”
He’d never talked about it. He’d never wanted to. Until now.
Why? Why now?