Page 95 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

I straightened. “Now?”

She nodded.

“What?”

“When you saw Jerry leaving my house?—”

“We don’t need to talk abou?—”

“No, I mean yes. Yes, we do.” She licked her lips, which was a nervous tic she had.

My chest was heaving as arousal surged inside of me. Urgency was coursing through my veins, but I could see in her eyes that what she was about to tell me was important. Her eyes flicked down to the ground and then back up to meet mine.

“What? What is it? You can tell me.”

I wasn’t mad at her any longer. To be honest, I was always more hurt than angry. I just didn’t understand how she could have slept with him.Him, of all people. Even if we were technically broken up.

But we were young. We’d had a long-distance relationship for three years. It had clearly taken more of a toll on us than I’d been aware of. In fairness to her, I’d focused so much of my time and energy into fighting those first two years that I’d really neglected our relationship. I took for granted the fact that we loved each other and that she’d always be there for me. I might not have agreed with her actions, but after all these years, I was able to understand them.

Her head shook back and forth as a single tear slid down her cheek. She swallowed, and I heard an audible gulp.

My mind was spinning trying to come up with what information she could possibly need to share with me that couldhave her feeling this on edge. What had happened that was worse than her sleeping with him?

Had she been seeing Jerry Clemons when we were together?

No. That wasn’t possible. Was it?

Had they been having some sort of affair for years?

My chest was getting tighter and tighter as I started imagining worse and worse confessions.

Had she gotten pregnant with his child?

The walls felt like they were closing in on me.

“Nothing happened,” she stated.

I stared down at her as the two words she’d spoken sank in.

“What?”

“With Jerry,” she clarified. “Nothing happened.”

“What?” I repeated again, sure that I had to be missing something.

“Nothing happened. The night, or I guess the morning, you saw Jerry leave my house, nothing happened. Jerry was passed out on my lawn at three o’clock in the morning. I woke him, and he asked to come in and use the bathroom, then he threw up on himself and crashed on my couch. I washed his clothes and left them folded beside the couch. He woke up and realized he was late for a training session or something. That’s when you saw him leaving at six. He was getting dressed because he’d thrown up, not because anything happened between us.”

“But why…?” Nothing she was saying was making any sense. “Why did you tell me that?—”

“I didn’t tell you,” she cut me off. “But Ididlet you think something happened, which is just as bad.” She shifted her weight from her right foot to her left. “The only reason I woke up in the middle of the night to find Jerry passed out on my front lawn was because I was worried about my mom. When I got home from your house that day, I randomly opened her mail and found overdue bills from the hospital and test results and allthese brochures for care facilities that I knew we couldn’t afford. It was bad. Really bad. After going through her stuff, I figured out she had COPD. She needed in-home care, and I knew that I was going to have to be the one to do it.

“I also knew that youcouldn’tmove back here. You would have been miserable. We wouldn’t have made it. We were breaking up all the time, which was my fault, I know. But it wouldn’t have mattered what I told you. You would have insisted on us still getting married, and you would have moved back here. So, when you came over and confronted me, I just let you believe that we’d slept together. I know it was wrong, and I’m so sorry, but I did it because I knew it was the only way you’d actually go back to Arizona and continue fighting. If you knew the truth, you would have given it all up. You would have moved back to Firefly, and I was scared you would have ended up resenting me. I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t be the one who cost you your dreams.”

“I would never have resent?—”

“Well, even if you wouldn’t have. I couldn’t live with myself if I let you make that kind of sacrifice for me. You needed to go and live your life. You needed to follow your dreams and become a world champion, not end up back here?—”

“Working construction,” I finished with a note of irony since that’s exactly what I had ended up doing.

---