“Yeah?” she asked, her belly roiling with dread.
“Shut the door, please.”
Oh, God. Why in the world did he need her to close the door? What could be so bad that he’d want privacy to say it? She closed them in. Whatever this was seemed like it was not going to be good.
Finally, he lifted his gaze to hers. But what she saw there wasn’t anger. Cora couldn’t tell what it was exactly. He just looked . . . shredded. “Thank you for making the house so nice.”
“Sure,” she said.
“The boys saw what you did with their mother’s figurines and loved it, so thank you for that, too.” She hugged herself and waited for the other shoe to drop. “But thanks isn’t all I owe you. I owe you an apology, too.”
Cora blinked. That wasn’t what she was expecting at all. “I was the one who touched something I shouldn’t.”
He waved a hand. “Bullshit. This is your house now. There’s nothing off limits to you, Cora. Understand?” Slider peered up at her, those pale eyes so intense.
If she’d been feeling more sarcastic, more sassy, she might’ve asked if that included him. But she wasn’t feeling playful just then. “Okay.”
He placed his hand against the cushion beside him. A silent invitation. “Would you sit with me?”
She sat like he was a wild animal that she couldn’t help wanting to get close to, even though she knew there was a chance it would take off her head.
“I wasn’t upset with you for putting out the figures,” he said, his voice sounding so defeated that it was hurting her heart. “They were there because we wanted to find a place for them and just hadn’t done it yet. What upset me is that they belonged to Kim—”
“I should’ve realized that right away, Slider. It was so stupid of me. I can only imagine how much she meant to you, so I—”
“No, you can’t. You really fucking can’t.” Cora’s feelings were well on their way to getting hurt again, when he continued. “Nobody can. Because nobody knows that it was . . . that it was all a lie.”
Cora’s head whipped up, her eyes on him, her mind trying to process if she’d really heard what she thought she heard. The room was silent, utterly still.
Slider heaved a breath that sounded like the weight of the world sat on his shoulders. And his words made her think that maybe it really did. “Nobody knows.”
“Knows what?” she whispered. Goose bumps ran over her skin, because she’d been holding on to something no one knew, either.
He shook his head, and she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he did. “Kim . . . cheated on me. Was going to leave. And then she got the cancer and the sonofabitch wanted nothing to do with her. So I took her back.”
Cora could barely breathe. After being betrayed and abandoned, he’d spent months taking care of the terminally ill person who’d wronged him. “And you kept it quiet for the boys,” she ventured. She didn’t need him to answer or even to nod, because the minute the words were out of her mouth, she knew she was right. And that was everything she needed to know about what kind of a man Slider Evans was. Loyal, even when that loyalty hadn’t been returned. Honorable. Compassionate. Selfless.
Nothing like any man she’d ever known.
But Slider did answer. “For the boys.” He gave a single shake. “But for me, too. I never want the boys to think bad of their mother, and I certainly don’t want them to know that she was leaving them, too. Because I damn well know firsthand how being abandoned can mark you in ways from which you can never recover.” His swallow sounded thick, tortured. “But I also didn’t want people to look down on me.”
The revelations were making her head spin, and so was the fact that he was opening up to share them. With her. But, for now, she focused on what she thought he most needed to hear. “No one would look down on you. What you did . . . it was heroic, Slider.”
He chuffed out a humorless laugh. “I’m no fucking hero, Cora. Don’t forget that for a second.”
“You are . . . you are to me.” Her belly did a flip-flop on the admission, but she didn’t want to take it back. She’d never thought of Slider in those terms before, but hero definitely fit. He lived his life to take care of his kids. He’d devoted his life to taking care of his dying wife, even though some might say she didn’t deserve his devotion. He’d kept her secret to preserve their children’s happy memories and their self-esteem.
And that was a lot. A lot more than some people did. A lot more than what her parents had done, even before her father’s terrible violation.