Page 79 of Snowed In With The Second Chance Daddy

She laughs, a grateful laugh. “Yes, then you can talk about fighting him.”

Both of us are quiet for a moment, gaze lingering.

It doesn’t matter how much has gone sideways between us. She’ll always be Iris and I’ll always be Trevor and our connection and rapport will always exist. Regardless of outcome.

“I tried really hard to be a good wife. To be enough for him even though we weren’t getting pregnant. But I wasn’t.”

I frown.

“He left me for another woman right before my twenty-first birthday.”

“Heleftyou?”

“Don’t rub salt in the wound.”

I stand up again, holding my hand out. “That’s not what I meant, not at all.”

Iris smiles sadly. “I know it’s not what you meant. It’s part of the whole reason I hate it. I don’t want people to see me as a woman who was left behind. Who at one point didn’t have a backbone. Because I’m afraid…people will take advantage of it and try and push me to that place.”

My heart is breaking for Iris.

I will always love her even if she’s not mine. Her pain is mine.

The fact she felt she had to hide herself even from me, the man she was to spend her life with, lets me know just how deep this pain goes.

“So, what happened? How did you get to be…the Iris I know now?”

“Well, I was left with nothing. I mean, I’d barely had a job more than camp counselor. It was…mortifying. And I didn’t have any support from my family. I mean, you want to talk about misogyny–”

“Probably shouldn’t, or I’ll have to add them to my hit list.”

Iris’s eyes flutter shut, and she smiles, out of necessity.

When she opens her eyes again, they’re shiny. “Everyone except my brother, Ben. Ben supported me.”

She always speaks fondly of Ben.

“I lived with him in his dorm for a few months until I could get a job. And he played video games. So, I would watch at first and then…I started playing them and that was that. I fell in love.”

“I bet you did.” To be a fly on that wall, watch Iris fall in love with one of the things that make her who she is today.

I love this woman. I love her! I love the way she moves, the way she breathes, I love every piece of her.

She steps toward me. “When I got the job in Seattle, I panicked. I’d had my world controlled by a man before and because we were engaged, I was just afraid you’d find a way to trap me and…that’s on me.”

“If I had known that, it would have changed everything, Iris.”

“If I had been able to tell you, I probably would have been able to tell you about the job to.”

I nod. “That makes sense.”

“I’m sorry, Trevor. I’m so sorry.”

I run my tongue along the inside of my cheek, thinking. “You think we moved too fast? With getting engaged? Did we get it wrong?”

Iris sucks in a breath. “I’m going to sit now.” She crosses to the couch. “You think I could get some water or something.”

“Of course, sparkling or still?”

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