Page 55 of Two Wrongs

She rushes to my side and drops down next to me. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

I take her hand in mine, and rub my thumb across the scars I’d found earlier. Wren flinches and tries to pull her arm away. I hold on tighter. “Me? How long did you suffer alone before it was too much?”

She sighs, and quits trying to pull away. I touch the two raised lines, evidence I almost lost her before we got to really know each other. More than the superficial relationship I allowed for the last five years. I tried in the beginning. I’d married young, and just because it didn’t work out for Melinda and I didn’t mean Liam and Wren couldn’t make it work.

The problem was that the more time I spent with them, with her, the less I saw them as kids. It should have helped me believe they could beat the odds. Instead I started seeing Wren as a woman. A smart, funny, beautiful woman who fascinated me completely. From that moment on I pushed her away. I made sure she felt unwanted, unwelcome, and unloved by me when the truth was she was very much wanted and, I was afraid, easy to love.

“I need you to tell me about these.” I stroke the raised skin again to make sure there is no confusion about what I want her to talk about.

“I don’t know where to start. It doesn’t make sense to me now, knowing I could do something like that. It seems like forever ago, but—“

“When did you do it?” I ask.

Pulling her arm up so I could get a better look at it, I notice the skin is still a bit pink. “How did I not notice this? It looks freshly healed.”

She gives me a sideways glance. “Really? How did you not notice this? It isn’t like you’ve paid a lot of attention to me over the years.”

“For a smart woman, you’re pretty unobservant. All I’ve done is pay attention to you, why do you think I tried so hard to push you away?”

She shakes her head. “Well, you missed this,” she mutters.

I nod. She’s right after all. I missed her crying out in pain. Hell, I contributed to it, and it nearly cost me the one person I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover from losing. Yes, I am going to have to let her go. It’s what is best for her, but at least I’ll live knowing she’s out there somewhere. If she’d died, there’d be a void in my life I’d never come back from.

“I did, and I’m so sorry for pushing you away. I thought I had to. Self preservation is a strong instinct, and I did everything wrong,” I apologize.

“Four months ago,” she whispers.

The urge to break things comes over me again, but I shove it down. I try to remember what was going on four months ago. I’m ashamed to realize I have no idea what was happening in her life then. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, but I’m here now. Please talk to me.”

She takes a deep breath. “Liam had been pulling away from me for a while. Really, it had been more than the last six months, but he’d shake out of it. But six months ago whatever would bring him back before, just disappeared. He started staying out late, sleeping on the couch, and he barely talked to me when he was around.”

She looks up from the spot she’s staring at on the floor. “I really don’t think you want to hear all of this,” she warns.

She’s right, I don’t, especially if this is heading where I think it is. I don’t have some fantasy about her being an innocent virgin, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear about her sex life with my son. But, I don’t want her to think that there’s things she can’t talk about with me.

“I can handle it,” I promise her, and I steel myself to mean it.

“There was a party at my best friend Audrey’s house. She wanted to introduce me to the guy she was seeing and invited a few other people we hung out with in high school. I know there were some guys there that Liam had been on the football team with, and they were showing off a little. They’d all gone away to school and had just started their careers. I know he felt left behind and started drinking a lot heavier that night.”

Her brow furrows. “Maybe that was it. Now I wonder if he hadn’t drank that much because he was already an addict.”

She gives a little shake of her head and continues. “I drank quite a bit that night, not as much as he did, but I was pretty tipsy by the time we got home. All our inhibitions disappeared. We went at each other like when we first got married, it was—“

I jump to my feet and start pacing. “You know, maybe I don’t need every detail.”

Wren’s shoulders slump, and I return to her side. “I’m sorry.”

She purses her lips and nods. “I don’t think I could take hearing about you and any of your many women, either.”

“I wouldn’t say there’s been many women,” I scoff.

Her eyebrow curves up. “Is it more than two?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course it’s more than two. Like you haven’t—“ I stop mid sentence when she levels her gaze at me.

“Liam and I have been together since I was sixteen. Unlike my husband, I didn’t cheat, so you do the math. And before you say anything about what you and I are doing, I left him. As far as I’m concerned, the state of my marriage is a technicality. One I intend on formalizing the moment I can get him to sign the damn papers.”

My head falls back to rest on the edge of my bed and I stare at the ceiling. “Sometimes I forget how much older I am than you, but right now, I feel every one of those nineteen years.”

---