Page 131 of Keep Me Close

“No,” I say, tears slipping free despite my best effort to keep them contained, “you couldn’t possibly.”

He doesn’t move to comfort me. And somehow that makes the ache even worse. There once was a time that if I cried, Hugh would have crossed any space between us without a second thought. Now, decades later, he finally understands that I might not survive his touch should he try to give it.

Or perhaps he wouldn’t survive my rejection of it.

I swipe at my cheek. “You let me build a life around a lie.”

The words hang between us. For one long second, I think he might deny it or try to explain it away.

“You’re right.”

Simple. Honest. Brutal.

When he doesn’t try to fight the truth, my chest seizes all over again.

He takes a breath. “I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

My head jerks up and I study him, surprised to find that he actually means it. I can hear it in the scrape of his voice and see it in the rigidity of his posture.

“I haven’t earned that,” he admits. “I might never earn it.”

For a moment, the room goes so quiet, I can hear the thudding of my own pulse.

“But I’d like the chance to try.”

My insides tremble, because what he’s asking is worse than begging. Begging would be easier to resist. Easier to dismiss as guilt, loneliness, or age making fools of both of us. His sincerity reaches deep inside me to a place I buried long ago, and that’s what undoes me.

When he moves, it’s not to close the distance between us but to drop down in front of me. His movements are slow and deliberate. Like a man lowering himself beneath the full weight of his own pride.

My breath catches as Hugh falls to his knees on the carpet in front of my desk. For one wild second, I wonder if I’m imagining it. If grief and fury and too many years of unrequited love have finally pushed me over the edge.

But no, there he is. The boy who once broke my heart. And the man who spent years carrying himself like he could withstand anything.

Now he’s on his knees in my office.

His gaze never leaves mine. “I should have fought for you then,” he says quietly, each word landing with crushing precision. “I should have told you the truth.” His throat works. “And I did neither of them.”

A tear slides down my cheek, and this time, I don’t bother wiping it away.

When he reaches into the inside pocket of his coat, my heart stutters. He draws out a small velvet box, worn soft at the edges by time. I know what it is before he opens it, and my hand flies to my mouth. He sets the box gently on the desk between us before flipping back the lid.

My ring.

It’s not one that’s similar or inspired by.

But mine.

The one he slid onto my finger with shaking hands in a garden twenty-eight years ago. The one I thought was gone forever. Sold or buried. Lost to history the way I tried, and failed, to lose him.

The emerald catches the light as I stare at it through blurred vision. “You kept it.”

His voice nearly breaks when he answers. “There was no way I could get rid of it.”

I look from the ring to his face, and realize this isn’t a performance or strategy.

Only love.

Love and regret and ruin and something so enduring it makes my heart ache to witness it.