Page 73 of By the Letter

Roman hummed, his fingers open and closing in his lap, but he didn’t ask questions or interrupt.

“He asked me to marry him, promised me security and a home, and I accepted. I was twenty.”

“He took advantage of you,” he gritted out. “Don’t you see that?”

“I know why you would think that.”

I didn’t blame him for believing that. Not one bit. But I hated how tense he was. Maybe that was why I spilled the secret I’d kept almost entirely to myself for a decade.

“We didn’t have sex.”

Roman’s head whipped to the side, his brow furrowed deep. “What?”

I swallowed, then blurted out, “Frank and I didn’t have a sexual relationship. Before I met him, he had advanced prostate cancer. The surgery and treatment were aggressive. They left him permanently…unable.”

He blinked three times as if trying to decipher whether I was real. “Did you know that before you were married?”

“I did, and I was okay with it. We were dear friends, and we loved each other very, very much, but not like that. The treatment had left him with permanent damage to his heart and a dim prognosis for his lifespan. He’d wanted a wife to be by his side and take care of him when he got sick again, and…well, you know why I was with him.”

“Fuck.” He drove his fingers through his hair. “All those years…nothing? He didn’t take care of your needs?”

I shook my head. “No, Rome. It wasn’t like that between us. When I tell you we were friends, I mean it in the truest form.”

His eyes went cloudy as though he were lost. Clara and Bea had had a similar expression when I’d told them. It had been hard for them to understand why I would have agreed to something like that, and I’d been glad they’d never been so desperate and alone in the world to be able to put themselves in my shoes.

“Christ, Shira, I don’t know what to say. This is messing with my mind.”

“Frank was a prideful man, and he would hate for anyone to know this about him. Please keep this between us.”

His eyes landed on me, hard and steady. “I would never tell anyone. It’s no one’s business.”

I blew out a heavy breath. “Thank you. I don’t even know why I told you. I guess so you might understand a little more about me.”

Nostrils flaring, he inhaled sharply. “You hadn’t been with anyone before the night we were together—after Frank…?”

I smiled at his incredulousness. “Not since my first and only boyfriend in college ten years ago.”

“Fuck.” He scrubbed his face hard with his hands. “You have so much lost time to make up for.”

It took everything in me to whisper, “I’d like to.”

He lowered his hands to stare at me, his eyes ablaze. “That’s not happening.”

My heart dropped along with my jaw. “Oh. Okay, I—”

Grabbing my thigh, he yanked me across the bench so I was flush with his side, then he took my chin between two fingers and tilted my head back, bringing us almost nose to nose.

“I mean, if you need to make up for lost time, it will be with me.”

My nose crinkled. “You’ve been helping with that.”

He touched my nose with his fingertip. “Then what’s this about? When that nose gets wrinkly, I know there’s something you’re not saying.”

My heart was a battering ram against my chest, and my chin had begun to quiver. Roman didn’t make me so nervous anymore most of the time, but the way he was looking at me and the topic…it was difficult to breathe, let alone form a cognizant thought.

“Are you nervous, Shira?”

I nodded.

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