“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. We both know it’s true.”
“We did nothing—”
She gurgled in disgust. “We did everything. The important things. We broke my connection to him.”
“No. We didn’t. Both of us were very careful, very respectful of him.”
She shook her head, then ran her hands down her face.
He took another step toward her. “And what we feel isn’t foolish or tawdry.” He considered his next words very carefully. She’d told him she loved him in the heat of anger when he couldn’t answer her. Maybe it was time to fix that. “Because I love you too. Genuinely. With all my heart.”
She closed her eyes then quickly opened them again and headed to her bedroom. Chance followed her, but she said nothing. Simply grabbed her nearly packed duffel bag and filled it.
Grief and a wild despair rattled through him. He’d told her he loved her and she had nothing to say? She was leaving?
His breathing froze as pain ricocheted through the chambers of his frantically beating heart. A million arguments raced through his head. Reasons she should stay. But if she wouldn’t answer a declaration of love, what made him think anything he had to say was important to her?
He watched her walk through the great room, her shoulders slumped, her misery evident in every step. He told himself that she just needed time to sort all this out and once she’d had time she’d be back. Maybe not after the funeral. Maybe not in a few weeks. But after a month of working through everything that had happened, she’d be back.
But when the door closed behind her, he wasn’t so sure.
* * *
For the second time in only a few months, Chance pulled his SUV through an intimidating black gate. This one at Saint John’s Cemetery. A long string of cars with funeral flags on the hoods sat on the edge between the thin ribbon of road and the snow piled high beside it.
He didn’t park at the end of the line. Instead, he stopped the SUV near a cluster of trees, got out and hoped his black topcoat allowed him to blend into the dark bark of the trees around him.
Mourners huddled under a small, tasteful tent that flapped in the winter wind. Chance spotted Tory immediately. With one of her father’s arms wrapped around her and her mother holding her up on the other side, she sobbed pitifully.
His heart tumbled in his chest and he sucked in a breath. He had no idea what it felt like to love somebody so well, so completely that you’d bear the burden of five years of grief. No idea what it felt like to be that loved.
How can I stay with the man I fell in love with while my fiancé was in the hospital dying?
After her reaction to his declaration of love, he wondered if she even knew she’d said that.
That she loved him.
He listened to the minister, watched as the man closed his Bible then walked over to Jason’s parents to give comfort before he stepped in front of Tory and handed her a rose. The minister spoke to her and hugged her, giving her special attention.
Chance swallowed hard. She’d spent the last five years a virtual prisoner. And he almost couldn’t believe no one had paid her any notice until now. Not just because she was pretty but because something bright and good emanated from her.
And she loved him.
But she was racked with grief.
And because he’d been there, insinuating himself into her life for the past five months, telling her to move on, she might forever associate him with the final days of her fiancé.
The winter wonderland around him stilled and the thought of that shifted through him. That was the real reason she’d left him. He reminded her of the worst time in her life. A time she didn’t want to remember, but forget.
That’s why she wasn’t with him. She wanted to forget him.
When the service was over, he quietly got into his car and drove home.
He stepped inside the cottage and Max and Kate both rose from the sofa, each holding a twin.
Max solemnly said, “Well?”
He shrugged out of his black topcoat. “She’s devastated.”
Kate sniffed back tears. “I can’t even imagine.”
“That’s just it,” he said, ambling over to the sofa. “I don’t think any of us have a clue what she went through these past years.”
“Is she coming back?”
He snorted. “Why? In the last months of her fiancé’s life, we tried to draw her away from him. To make her laugh. To give her chances to grow, like encouraging her to go back to school. To make her forget her accident. If she doesn’t hate me for that…and I’m pretty sure she does, we remind her of Jason. His last months.” He plopped down on the sofa, and laid his head back so he was looking at the ceiling. “We remind her of the worst days of her life.”