She stared at him mutinously. “It was like I’d been living in shadow until I met you.” She shook her head in frustration. “I loved you with every cell in my body, every breath in my lungs, every thought in my head, every beat of my heart was for you. Always, always for you.”
Now that she’d started, she wouldn’t stop, and he was fascinated, and terrified.
“Our child wasn’t conceived out of ‘messing around’. She’s not the byproduct of ‘just sex’. Charlotte was created in love – at least, for me. Yes, I loved you, Gray. So damned hard.”
He felt the earth shift beneath his feet. Nothing made sense. “Abby…”
But what could he say? What soothing words could he offer?
“And you saw me as entirely dispensable. You saw me as disposable.”
“No,” he denied, even when he couldn’t really offer an alternative explanation.
“I loved you.” She scanned his face, eyes seeking, reading, wondering, and finally, looking away. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
He dragged a hand through his hair. He needed to sleep. In the morning, there’d be clarity. In the morning, this would make sense.
“No,” he said after a beat. “It’s the last thing I wanted to hear.” He didn’t look at her, so didn’t see the way her face crumpled.
Frustrated to be naked in the midst of what felt very important, he scooped down and lifted his jeans, pulling them into place, zipping them up without attempting the button.
“Then why did you ask the question?”
He furrowed his brow. Trying to think logically after how much he’d had to drink was almost impossible. “Because I can’t – I need to know – we’re getting married,” he finished lamely.
“And you need to know I don’t still love you?”
Something strange rushed through him; it felt like ice was in his veins. “Right,” he agreed, with more confidence than he felt. “Exactly.”
“I thought we’d discussed this,” she whispered, tears dancing on her eyelids. “I hate you, remember?’
“What we just did…that didn’t feel like hate.”
“No,” she agreed, looking away from him.
“But it’s not love either,” he said unsteadily, frowning as he tried to make sense of things. It was like doing a five squared Rubik’s cube in the dark.
“Right. It’s sex.” She muttered, lifting her camisole top off the ground and pulling it over her head. “I know that.”
“Do you?”
The question seemed to get under her skin. She startled as if she’d been electric shocked and he watched, carefully, his heart thundering through his body like a tsunami.
“Go to hell, Gray.”
“Why? Why are you pissed at me now?”
“I’m not more or less pissed with you than always,” she snapped, but her fingertips shook and he couldn’t digest the expression she wore. He only knew that it left him with a funny feeling in his gut. This whole conversation did, yet he kept pushing, like he needed her to say something, or for her to understand something. Used to having clarity of thought at his disposal, the fuzzy state of his head was infuriating.
“Your mom said you were devastated after we broke up.”
“We didn’t break up,” she clung to semantics. “You can’t break up when you’re not a couple.”
“Fine. When I left. She said you were devastated.”
“Mom didn’t even know about you.”
“Your neighbor told her.”