Page 130 of Blossoms of the Heart
“Always, baby.” He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Phoebe when you first came back we played twenty questions. How comes you never told me you got married? It’s a pretty big thing to leave out.”
He was right. Completely right.
“It was the worst time in my life.”
“But it must have been good in the beginning, right?” He seemed genuinely interested to know that. “I just want to imagine you having some kind of happiness.”
I shook my head. “No. I was never happy. I married him because I thought it would make my mother happy. You know what she’s like. Always on my back about everything. There wasn’t anything that I did right in her books. She hated it that I chose to study archeology and be like my dad. She introduced me to Jason, that’s his name. And I played along.”
I thought about people who have arranged marriages. Most of them learn to love each other. I thought that would happen to me.
I’d thought Jason was good looking and charming. We could carry a conversation and seemed to get on. It seemed that since we’d gotten past that hurdle things wouldn’t have been so hard.”
“You shouldn’t have had to play along.” He looked upset.
“No. I know that now. He cheated on me constantly.”
“And, that’s the part that makes me want to kill him. He never realized what he had.”
“I think he would beg to differ. There were plenty women who were at his feet waiting to be swooped up by him.”
“Phoebe, there is only one of you and that makes you treasure to me.”
He stared straight into me looking at me with those autumn colored eyes.
I glanced down at my hands and brought them together to stop them from trembling. I wished that I could bask in the compliment but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel anything close to treasure.
“Tai.”
“No. Look at me.” He took my hand again, but this time brought it up to his lips to kiss. “Phoebe. I mean it. Every word. I mean it. You’re treasure to me, and I wish like hell I could have told you that years ago. Maybe it would have meant more.”
“It means a lot now. It does.”
There was so much more to my story. More to tell, more to worry about. More I didn’t want to think about.
Not yet.
“I’m so glad you divorced his cheating ass. Glad you didn’t stay.”
Tears pricked at the back on my eyes and one ran down my cheek.
“I’m sorry.” He caught it and kissed my hand again. “We can stop talking about that.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. There’s… it was just a terrible time, and more to the story that caused me a lot of pain.” That was my way of setting the scene, even though I didn’t have the strength to elaborate.
“Fuck him. Forget the son of a bitch.”
“Yeah.”
Tai gave me something I’d always missed, and even when I felt undesirable, he had the ability to eradicate that from my mind.
I just wished he could do the same with everything else. Eradicate the last few years and all that had happened to me. Make me that girl again I used to be when I last saw him.
Before things went wrong.
It may have been understandable to push my talk about Jason to the back, outside the scope of us.
But talking about my failed marriage brought to the forefront of my mind that I was going to have to elaborate on that story one day. I’d have to tell him everything else. The accident and its effects.
