Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108173 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you,” he blurted out. “I should have told you immediately when I realized that you didn’t know about Cyrus. But I only discovered how little you knew on our wedding day. After your vows I felt blindsided. And then in the limo you clearly had no clue…”
Lilah inhaled sharply as the awful events of that day came flooding back. Well, that explained so much. Ben had been in shock too. Explained, but didn’t excuse.
“I didn’t handle it well and I couldn’t tell you the truth right at that moment. We had a venue full of guests waiting for us, wedding pictures to get through, and Cyrus was so happy. I was pissed off as hell with him, but I wanted him to enjoy that happiness for a little longer. I understand that it was at the expense of your happiness, and I hate that. But I had to make a judgment call and it was the wrong one.”
“No,” Lilah said with a tired little sigh. “At that moment it was the right one. Gramps had put us both in a terrible position. He thought he was doing the right thing, but he should have known his pack of lies and half-truths could come tumbling down at any second. It’s really a miracle you didn’t figure it out before the wedding.”
“I would have if I’d made any kind of effort to be more present, Lilah. I thought you were being so fucking delusional, with your happy wedding plans, and what I thought of as your refusal to even talk about Cyrus’s illness. I thought it was just Lilah being her usual eccentric self, unable to cope with the reality of the situation. I was so fucking eager to believe the worst of the woman with whom I intended to spend the rest of my life …”
He shook his head, self-disgust evident in his eyes and on his face. “It was absolutely inexcusable. On our wedding day, your asthma attack merely served to lend credence to Cyrus’s belief that you couldn’t handle the truth and I just kept it to myself. I took us off on that fucking honeymoon and you didn’t even have the chance to say a proper goodbye to your grandfather and I truly hate myself for that. I spoke with him a few nights before he died. It was the last time I heard his voice, and I was so angry with him for not telling you. I made him swear he would as soon as we got home. And when he died, part of me unfairly blamed you for the fact that the last words I spoke to him were recriminations.”
His eyes gleamed with moisture and for the first time, Lilah caught a glimpse of how much pain Gramps’s death had caused him. And that was only because he was finally allowing her to see that pain.
She reached over and gently brushed a hand over his stubbled jaw. He helplessly leaned into her touch, dislodging the tears that had welled in his eyes. One tracked down his cheek and pooled beneath her index finger.
“We were pretty much doomed from the start, huh?” she said on a whisper, and he made a soft sound of denial, his eyes blazing fiercely into hers.
“You do believe me, don’t you?” he asked, an edge of desperation in his voice.
“Yes.” His face went slack with relief. “Gramps put you in an impossible situation. I’m sorry for that.”
“Lilah, I was always going to ask you to marry me. I believed it was inevitable.”
“Ben… if none of this had happened, if Gramps hadn’t been ill, if you’d come to me at some point in the future, when you finally decided I was mature enough or not flaky enough to qualify as your wife, how would you have proposed this marriage to me?”
He hesitated and she smiled, no bitterness in her expression, or in her voice when she said, “Exactly… your offer wouldn’t have been what I was looking for. And I would have said no.”
She leaned toward him and kissed him softly on the lips.
“Thank you for telling me all of this. I forgive you, Ben.”
She picked up her glass of juice and left him sitting there, a hollow look in his eyes and pain etched on his face. She was grateful they’d had this talk. Forgiving him would go a long way towards healing her own broken and battered heart. Even the thought of co-parenting a child with him no longer seemed untenable. They could have an amicable, emotionless relationship without the specter of his lies about Cyrus coming between them.
And that relieved her.
Ben groaned as he watched her retreat from the room. She’d forgiven him and yet she felt further away from him than ever before. This was not what he’d wanted. This was the opposite of what he’d hoped for.