Page 24 of Defending Madison

Oh that’s a phenomenal idea. “Maybe I want to scream.” I allow him to cup my elbow with his hand to lead me to the opposite area of the club. He pushes the glass door and walks us out. The door closes, and the sound shuts down. My ears pulse, and I take a sip of my cocktail. I think she added a bit more alcohol than the last one and relish the buzz. “What?”

“I’m sorry about what Brian told you at the hotel.”

I laugh. “Of course you are. God forbid you’d have told me yourself. Married?”

He holds up his hand. “Give me a chance to explain.”

I down my cocktail and cock my head to listen. “That was four years ago.. We haven’t thought about each other since then, so why does it matter?”

Hurt slams into this chiseled face. “You may not have thought about me, but I think about you all the time.”

Cocking my hip, I cross my arms not hiding my scowl. “Why?”

“Why what?” His frown pulls at my heart.

“Why are you telling me now that you’ve thought about me?”

He grabs my upper arms with his hands and pulls me closer. “I was wrong not to contact you both times.”

I shake my head and cast my eyes to the lights reflecting on the tall glass building. “Sure.”

He moves his hand to touch my chin and brings my eyes to his. “The first time, I let Brian convince me that we wouldn’t work. I was gone all the time, and you were young. It wouldn’t have been fair to you.”

I grit my teeth. “Fair?”

He closes his eyes and takes a breath. “My leaving without a word wasn’t fair, either. But I wasn’t ready for a commitment any more than you were.”

“Fine.” I take a small step back as his hands fall to his sides.

“For the record, I did think about you. I devoured any bit of information I could find about you online.”

The ice surrounding my heart cracks for the first time since the hotel. “You should have told me you were married.”

He adjusts his stance and leans back. “Yes. I should have. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” My blood pressure rises as my heart rate picks up. “You hurt me by just leaving, and when Brian told me about your marriage while we were in New Jersey, you had the chance to explain then and you didn’t.” Not that I really would have listened, I bolted out of there as fast as I could.

“Again. I was wrong. I was a tier-one operator. As a SEAL, I wouldn’t be home for months at a time. Contact is limited on ops.” He rubs his hand over his hair. “I wasn’t ready, and neither were you.”

“You act like you had a thought about the future.”

“I did. I figured you’d solidify your career, and I’d retire from the SEALS. I’d come find you.”

My heart leaps into my throat as I gasp. The colors change in the club and reflect off the glass. Green and yellow with flares of magenta, making nausea overtake my senses. “You assume too much.”

He drops his eyes. “Probably. I’ve always known you’re the one. Those four days over Christmas when we went hunting meant so much to me.”

Blood courses through my veins and the noise is deafening. The nerve. “We’ll come back to that ridiculous statement in a minute. Tell me why I shouldn’t castrate you for cheating on your wife.”

He exhales and leans against the wall. “It’s complicated and not, both at the same time. Meredyth, my girlfriend from high school, got cancer and needed health care.”

My brow lifts. Okay, I wasn’t expecting the conversation to shift back to high school. “That’s horrible.”

“It is. She found out three days before I joined the Navy. Her parents sucked. Neither had a job, so she didn’t have health care or anything but a roof over her head, and we knew that would be short-lived.” He scrapes his hand through his hair, and I realize he’s changed since we last saw each other in New Jersey. The cold, crewcut, military man has downshifted to a calmer, quieter being.

“So, I married her. She got health care and a housing allowance. I sent my check home to her once a month, so she had money to live on. I only saw her every six months or so.”

“Is she okay?”

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