Page 54 of Reckless Love

“I used to know you. Or… I knew some version of you.”

“That’s harsh, Stephen. You knew me better than anyone.”

“Maybe. But I don’t know you at all now.”

We stare at each other, frustration clear in his expression that I can only assume is mirrored in mine. He might want to minimize eight years and countless experiences together, but I can’t. I won’t. I’m done pretending that none of it mattered.

“What did you expect to have happen when you showed up here in the middle of the night? A repeat of that cycle you and I were in for years? If you need a good fuck, you’ll have to find it elsewhere.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He scans me from head to toe, and his lips twist into a cruel smile. “I know exactly what an unsatisfied woman looks like.”

“You’ve seen a lot of them, have you?”

“Not leaving my bed. But coming to me from someone else’s bed? You bet.”

The urge to slap the smug look off his face is almost uncontrollable. As much as we fought and fucked before, we never laid hands on each other in anger. But I’ve also never seen that look on his face before—like what I feel, who I am doesn’t matter. Like I could be anyone.

As warped as it is, I can’t stomach any thoughts of him satisfying someone else. Before, when we were off and on all the time, I didn’t like him sleeping with other people, but I always knew I was the one he really wanted. That I could get him back. That we’d always find our way back to each other.

But we’re so far apart in this moment, physically and emotionally. He doesn’t even feel like the same person.

“I can’t believe you’re throwing other women in my face.”

“Me?” He widens his eyes and presses his palm to his chest. “Ava, be so fucking for real. You’re married to someone else. You stood up in front of all of Bellerive society, and you picked him. You picked him.” He shakes his head, and his disgust is clear. “You had his fucking kid. I would have…” He swallows. “I wanted… The things I would have done…”

“You don’t understand,” I say, and I try to reach for him, but he sidesteps me. “If you’d stayed, I never would have married him.”

He crosses the room to stand in front of the partial wall, as far from me as he can get without putting the entire length of the apartment between us. “Go home. Get the fuck out and go home.”

“If you’d stayed, I never would have married him,” I say again, sure that’s the key to cracking him, to whatever is sitting between us.

“You said no to me, Ava. When I suggested marriage, you laughed in my face. Whether I stayed or not, I would have kept on being your dirty little secret.”

“You were never—”

“I was!”

“You didn’t want people to know either. Does that make me your dirty little secret?”

“Yes,” he says. “Which is how I know we never would have worked out. That’s the reality. The core truth that you don’t want to see. We are not the same people, and even if we were, we were doomed from the start.”

“No,” I say, flashing my hand. “No. I don’t accept that.” I stare at him, trying to see the man I know is in there. “You have no idea how I felt when you left,” I whisper, and the memory of those months after he disappeared seeps back in, causing my shoulders to slump. Never in my life did I think it was possible to be that low. “Maybe things wouldn’t have changed right away between us, but they would have changed eventually. That’s my truth. That’s what I know.”

“Would that have been before or after you married Raul fucking Santos?” He glares at me from across the room.

“Fuck you, Stephen. I told you I wouldn’t have married him if you’d stayed.”

“Forgive me for thinking that’s just another one of those things you say that you don’t mean.”

A tiny gasp of indignation escapes me. Even when we used to fight, Stephen was never mean.

“Go home,” he says again. “I’m not letting you blow up your life because you need a good, hard fuck.” He comes toward me, ushering me to the door with a hand on the small of my back. Each of his fingers burns through the sweatshirt I’m wearing. “Go buy a hot tub,” he says, “I hear the jets work even better than a man.”

Then he gives me one last little shove outside before he shuts the door in my face, snapping the lock back into place.

I stare at the closed door, broken and bewildered. What the hell just happened?