Page 46 of Not In Love

Was this what being loved felt like? Or was she so starved of basic care and concern that she was mistaking it for more?

“How long has Josh been harassing you about this?” Diego said, a hard edge to his voice.

“For a while,” she said. “He got worse in the last few months. He’s still grieving.”

Diego grunted. “Only you could see assault as grief. You’re such a naïve softie at heart.”

“I’m not being naïve,” she said, too tired to argue. “Josh did a full program at the rehab clinic Serenity Hills right after Simon and I got married. He was clean for a whole year. Even managed to be polite to me at a Sunday dinner. But after the accident, he relapsed. His sister and he aren’t close. And Simon was his only anchor. Sometimes I think hating me has been his only fuel to keep going.”

Diego tensed beside her. “Is that why you hated me for so long?”

Kash froze. The words sounded like they scraped bone, exposing something he’d hidden for so long.

“Even after Kat let me back in,” he said in a low voice. “You held onto your dislike of me for so long, even after the accident. Because it was something to feel, something to fuel you in those dark days?”

Her chest tightened, with panic, with something sharp and slippery.

Kash stared at the grain of the floorboards, the way her bare toes curled into the rug. It felt like the ground was spinning out from under her. But she couldn’t lie to him, not even to make him feel better. Not when he knew her as well as he did.

“I didn’t hate you. But I judged you for a long time for abandoning Kat when she told you she was pregnant.”

The silence between them stretched, and in it, she could feel him pulling away—not physically, but emotionally. His body was stiff next to hers.

She forced herself to breathe. She didn’t do this—this talking, this digging. Usually she powered through, shoved the hard feelings into some forgotten mental closet, turned the page. That’s how she survived.

But for him, she had to do this, however painful it was to revisit. “You know that our father walked out on us when I was fourteen. Mama and he had had an argument about the job he had been fired from, again. He said... this damned family was like a millstone around his neck, dragging him down.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “He left before too but always came back. For months, or years in Mama’s and Kat’s case, we pretended like he would return. But I knew. I saw his face that night. He wasn’t angry so much as done. He never came back.”

She looked up slowly, unsure of what she might see in his face. Despite the tightness of his jaw, there was understanding in his eyes that floored her.

“When Kat brought you back into our lives, I was wary. For Tia’s sake more than anything,” she said softly. Wishing now that she hadn’t held on to that judgement for so long. “And yes, my past with our dad colored it.”

Diego didn’t move or say a word.

She tried again. “But you’ve made me eat my words since then. Again and again. You’ve showed up for Tia. For me, in countless ways.”

Still nothing. His face was carved from stone.

After what felt like an eternity, he spoke in clipped tones. “In all these years, did you never wonder why I broke it off with Katrina when she told me she was pregnant? Why I sank so low?”

Kash’s mouth went dry. Her heart thudded so loudly she was sure he could hear it. For just a second, she considered saying it didn’t matter anymore. But clearly, it mattered to him and she would be damned if she hurt him ever again.

Somehow, she forced her voice to work. “You were what, twenty-one? Twenty-two?” she said quietly. “Your career was just taking off, you were traveling. I know guys in their thirties who’d run at the prospect of parenthood. I’ll even admit that co-parenting with Kat must have looked scary. She wasn’t the most reliable sort.”

Diego flinched—not visibly, but she saw it in the brief flick of his gaze, the way his throat worked around whatever words he swallowed back.

“I just figured... that it scared you, so you made a mistake,” she added.

“A big one at that.” he said, before shooting to his feet.

She flinched, stunned by the sudden shift in energy. Grabbing the windowsill, she pushed to her feet, her legs shaky. “Please, tell me what?—”

“I have something to attend to,” he said, without meeting her eyes. It was the first time he had ever cut her off. “Should I get someone else to sit with you? Muriel won’t ask any questions.”

“I’m fine.” Her voice cracked. “And I don’t want anyone else.”

But he wasn’t listening. Not really. That sense of him, the one she felt earlier—strong, steady, anchored—was slipping from the room.

“We have to do something about Josh,” he said, shifting the conversation. “What if he comes after you at the hospital? Or waits outside Tia’s school? Or at the yoga studio?”

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