Page 37 of Fractured Trust

She nodded, and he could see an entire world of emotions in her eyes. He couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling right now, but whatever had happened, it had obviously affected her.

He let her go and guided her toward the couch, sitting down then tugging her down next to him. “Tell me about it,” he said, as calmly as he could. A part of him hated that she’d gone to see Deacon without telling him; would have hoped that maybe she’d have wanted him along for support. But the other part of him realized it was something she probably needed to do on her own. And even though he didn’t like it, there was no pretending that Deacon wasn’t her ex-husband. No ignoring that he and Summer shared a history that Noah hadn’t been a part of. A history that only the two of them could resolve. As much as he might wish he could have been there to mess up Deacon’s face.

“I asked him why he did it.”

Noah smoothed his hand over her hair. “What did he say?”

She laughed, but it was brittle. “He admitted he did it deliberately, that he… wanted to take me from you.” Her lips twisted, and she trembled.

Noah didn’t say anything, just kept sifting his fingers through her hair, letting her continue at her own pace.

“The worst part is, I could see he still thought he was justified in what he did. As much as he did it for selfish reasons, he honestly believed he was doing me a favor. And he believed that photo was the proof he’d been right all along.” She closed her eyes for a long beat. “It makes it less black and white, I guess. I kind of wish I could just hate him. But how can I? What he did was wrong, but I contributed to the mess. If I weren’t… the way I am, I would never have reacted exactly the way he wanted me to. And I…” Her voice cracked. “I’mthe one that let myself get drunk. That let him kiss me.” She shook against him. “It was me that kissed him back. And it was me that went home with him.”

Summer gazed at him, her pale green eyes shimmering with tears that didn’t fall. “Deacon may have been responsible for lying to me, but I’m the one responsible for hurting you, Noah. And I understand if you can’t forgive me for that. I’m not sure if I can forgive myself.”

Fuck, he should have seen this coming. That she’d blame herself. And as much as he hated it, a small, bitter part of him couldn’t help but blame her, too. Back then, he’d thought what they had was rock solid. He’d imagined a future with her so many times, and she’d thrown it all away. He didn’t understand how she could do it. And not just kissing Deacon in a moment of weakness, not just sleeping with him, although that still hurt like a bitch even now, but tomarryDeacon so soon after she’d supposedly been in love with him.

It was the one thing he’d been struggling to come to grips with since he’d found out the truth. Probably because he’d obsessed about it the most over the last decade. And if there was any chance they’d be able to move forward from here, they needed to address it. Now. So that hopefully they could both finally put the past behind them. He gazed into her tormented eyes, glossy with unshed tears, and asked the question that had been on his mind for eleven years too long.

“How could you marry him, Summer? How could you turn away from me and marry Deacon? I thought we had an understanding… I thought you knew that when we were older, I’d…” His words trailed off, his jaw clenching. “I just don’t understand how you could move on so quickly. Even with what you thought I’d done.”

Summer’s eyes darkened, and her bottom lip quivered. “It wasn’t like that, Noah. It was just”—she hesitated, then pulled away from him and rubbed her temples—“it seemed like the right thing at the time.”

The remnants of Noah’s long-suppressed anguish boiled up. As much as he knew she was hurting now, he couldn’t ignore the pain he’d suffered. “How! How could it be right? It was right betweenus. How could it possibly have been right between you and Deacon? Explain it to me, please. Because for the life of me I can’t figure it out.”

“I don’t want to talk about—”

“Well, I do. We need to, Summer; we need to fucking clear the air once and for all. And God knows we need to be honest with each other. So just answer the damn question!”

She stared at him, turmoil tightening her features.

“Summer, answer the—”

“I was pregnant!” she blurted, then inhaled sharply.

Noah’s heart stopped. “Pregnant?”

She dropped her head and nodded, and he looked around, ridiculously, as if he were suddenly going to see a child playing on the floor. “Where… What happened?” he asked.

When Summer looked back up at him, her expression was blank but a shadow of remembered pain flickered in her eyes.

Understanding hit a fraction of a second too late. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Summer. I’m an idiot.”

Summer’s throat bobbed, and she rubbed her hands on her thighs. “That’s why Deacon and I got engaged. That night after the bonfire… I felt sick about what I’d done as soon as it was over. I didn’t want to tell Deacon that I’d made a terrible mistake, by… by being with him. But I knew I had. The worst mistake I could have ever made. Even though you and I were over, I knew I didn’t feel anything more for him than friendship. I knew it was going to take me a long time to get over you, and leading him on wasn’t something I wanted to do. So, I tried to go back to being just friends, even though it was obvious by then he wanted more. But that plan went out the window when I saw those two little lines. I thought we’d been safe, but”—her face contorted, and her voice shook as she continued—“we were both drunk, and not really thinking straight.”

Summer took a shuddering breath. “I’ve never been more terrified in my life, but things moved pretty quickly after that. He proposed, and I… I was scared and confused, so I accepted. We told his family and his dad offered him a job in Chicago, a good one, at his real estate company. I decided to postpone going to college, and we moved. Mom wasn’t happy about it, but it seemed like the best thing to do. It wasn’t long after we got there that it… happened. Just one of those things, the doctors said.”

Noah’s chest tightened at the pain in her voice. He gentled his tone. “I’m sorry, Summer. Sorry that happened to you.”

She swallowed again but gave him a wan smile. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago now.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her quietly for a few minutes before asking, “But if you were only getting married because of the pregnancy, why did you still go through with the wedding after…” Noah paused, not sure what was the right way to say it. He went with her phrasing. “Why did you still marry him after it happened? Did you… love him?”

She sighed. “No. Not then, anyway. After the baby… afterward, I expected him to call it off. I never thought he was in it for any reason other than it being the right thing to do. The responsible thing. But he didn’t call it off. He said he wanted to carry on with the wedding. And I was just… alone, far from home, heartbroken—in more ways than one. And he made me feel cared for, safe—wanted.” Noah tensed—things he apparently hadn’t. At least, not at the end.

“And we’d already been planning the wedding,” she continued. “Keeping going with it helped distract me. Looking back now, I know it was the worst thing I could have done—I should never have married him when I didn’t love him. God, I’m pretty sure I knew that then, but…” she trailed off.

He must have been some kind of masochist because he heard himself ask, “You grew to love him, though?”

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