“All these years, you could have come to me, explained everything you just did. Set things straight so that we could have at least moved forward with our lives, knowing the truth. Instead, you waited until now. After you got the contract of a lifetime with one of the teams every kid obsessed with baseball dreams of playing for.” Her nostrils flared, and she took a threatening step toward me.
I welcomed her anger, though, the signs of life, of hurt and rage that she had every right to feel. I wanted her to unleash it all on me, just as I’d done on Billy. But instead of lifting a hand to punch me in the face as I deserved, she stopped several feet from me. “Don’t stand there, saying that you didn’t pick baseball over me not once but twice, Nolan. Because I won’t believe you.”
Tears filled her eyes, and I lost the ability to even breathe at the sight of them. I’d done this. I’d caused her—us—this pain. “What we had, it was supposed to be special. We were supposed to have the fairy tale. Right now, we should be married with at least two kids running around a fenced-in backyard, far away from the chaos of my family’s enemies. You made me dream of better things, a safer life full of happy kids and a loving husband. But all you gave me was a broken heart and the inability to trust any man outside of my family.”
I forced my lungs to fill with oxygen as I pleaded with her. “Give me another chance, Red. Let me show you that I won’t make the same mistakes I did in the past. Baby, let me prove how much I love you.”
She angrily scrubbed her fingers over the tears trailing down her cheeks. “Love me? At what point in our relationship have you ever shown that you loved me?”
“I told you every day,” I rasped, reminding her through a tight throat.
“Words, but there was never anything to back them up. You barely made time for me, and even then, it was usually when you wanted to get laid.” She shook her head, causing her long hair to fly around her shoulders like a tornado. “No one even knew we were dating back then. If we went on dates, it was as far from either of our campuses as possible so no one would see us together. I was just too gullible and stupid to think that because you gave me the words, it meant you cared. Instead, you acted as if you were ashamed to be seen with me.”
“I did care, Red. Idocare!” I practically shouted. “I love you, Zariah.”
She snorted. “We were together for how long? Yet we never introduced each other to a single family member. My family is scary as hell, but I loved you enough to have taken you home because I thought we were strong enough for you to withstand the crap my brothers would have tossed your way and the grilling my parents would have forced on you.”
“If I’d introduced you to my father, he would have done everything in his power to try to tear us apart.” I tried to make her understand. She didn’t know him. His obsession with my making it big in the baseball world. He’d had his eye on the fame he would get being the father of the top MLB pitcher, not to mention the money that would come with it.
Dark-red brows lifted dramatically. “And yet he succeeded without you taking me home for a single Sunday dinner.”
Guilt tried to choke me on top of the emotions already clogging my throat. “I wanted to—”
“But you didn’t,” she whispered as one last tear spilled down her cheek. “Because I wasn’t worth the trouble. Your life was baseball. On occasion, it also revolved around fucking me—which was rare there at the end of our relationship. Were you getting it somewhere else, Nolan? Frank was so good at providing your every need. Was he getting you pussy too?”
“Don’t,” I gritted out. “Don’t degrade yourself or what we had like that. There was only you from the night we met. I was gone for you the moment I set eyes on you, Red.”
She shrugged, as if it were inconsequential, but I was learning to read her again. I could see the pain in those blue depths, the hurt and distrust that went deeper than I could have ever imagined.
How could she think I would even look at someone else, let alone try to have sex with anyone but her? I’d fucked up worse than I’d ever thought if she could imagine she wasn’t the only one in my bed. There hadn’t been many before her, and zero since. But how did I make her believe me when she had it in her beautiful head that I would cheat on her?