Page 84 of A Whirlwind of Color (The Light to My Darkness 2)

There was a quiet groan in his throat as he pulled away. "I love you, Penny."

"I love you, James."

“Penny?” James’ voice pulled me back to the present. Or out of my fantasy? Or out of whatever that was.

I felt it. I felt his story come to life. My mind filled in the details. Whether it was memories or fantasies I had no idea. But the image of us in Central Park made my heart pound faster. And my breath catch. It was perfect. Too perfect. It made me sick knowing what would happen to us after that dance. How we’d slowly break.

“Do you remember?” His voice sounded so hopeful as his eyes searched mine. He had seen me leave the present. He had seen my mind go somewhere else.

I shook my head without really even focusing on his question. “I don’t know.”

“Baby, you have to try. Tell me what you were

thinking. Tell me you saw our first dance on our wedding night. Tell me you remember.”

My heart pounded faster. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. My mind was spinning.

He pulled me closer, his cologne making it harder to think straight. I felt like I was suffocating.

“I need you to try,” he said. “I need you.”

All I needed was air. And space. Hadn’t I just asked him to take things slow? “Why? Because I’m the light to your darkness? That’s what you said, right? James, that’s too much pressure. You can’t put all your happiness on me. That’s not realistic.”

“If you would just let your heart…”

“I don’t remember, James. I’m sorry. I can’t remember.” I shook my head and pushed his hands away from me. “And even if I could…I don’t know if I’d be happy.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Light and dark and black and white isn’t what I want, James. That isn’t what love is. Dull tones of gray. Love is…” My voice trailed off as I turned to look out the window. Dusk was settling over the city, casting a beautiful sunset over Central Park and between the buildings in the distance. “Love should be more of a…a whirlwind of color.” I turned back to him. “And I have to assume that isn’t what we had.”

The music stopped as James stared at me. “Okay. You’re not the light to my darkness. You’re my…whirlwind of color. It doesn’t matter how I put it. What matters is how much I care about you. How much I love you. Because I do love you, Penny. I love you with every ounce of who I am.”

“It’s not about that. You can’t just change how you describe our relationship. I don’t think our life was colorful. I think you had it exactly right. It was black and white and honestly I feel like it was mostly darkness. I…” God, just rip the freaking Band-Aid off. “I tried to kill myself, didn’t I? That’s why you were hiding so much stuff from me? So I wouldn’t figure it out.”

“What? No.” He stepped forward and grabbed both my hands. “Penny, we were happy. You have to trust me on this. I don’t know how else I can convince you…”

“I found the note, James.”

“What note?”

In that moment, I knew he was lying. He knew which note I was referring to. And he was playing dumb. I couldn’t trust anything he told me. All of it could have been lies. “The note where I said goodbye.” I kept going because he was still playing dumb. “Where I told you to move on.” Still nothing. “My suicide note, James. That note.”

“Fuck. I thought I threw that away.”

“So it’s true?” I pulled my hands out of his. “What was so wrong with my life that I’d try to do something like that?”

“You didn’t, Penny. You were poisoned. The note was a what if. You tried to add it to our will in case something went wrong during childbirth. That’s it. That’s the only thing that makes sense. It was just inconvenient timing of when I found it. You’d never try to take your own life. You loved your life. You loved our life together.”

“You couldn’t possibly know that for sure. Only I would know what that note meant.”

“But I know you better than you know yourself right now…”

“No you don’t.” Screw him. I knew myself. The real me. Not whatever person I had become after meeting him. “No matter what you do to convince me that what we had was perfect, I know it wasn’t. Nothing is perfect.”

“I never said our life was perfect. Of course we have issues. Everyone has issues.”

“Like my severe depression?”

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