“You’re lying.”
“I’m not, Kennedy.”
“I had my dad look for you in the department after you left me, and he said you just disappeared! He said you stopped coming in for work and no one could get in touch with you!”
Rhys’s eyebrows rose, as if he were trying to get me to understand what I was saying. “Exactly. They knew where I went, but I couldn’t have any contact with them, just as they couldn’t have contact with me or act like they knew me if our paths crossed. But that night, when I got home, you were so freaked out about telling your family about our marriage that I don’t think you even noticed how dead I felt. Knowing that I’d have to leave you, and fighting with myself over whether or not I should tell you why. I didn’t want to go to your parents’ house after that, but realized that we needed to. I knew your family needed to see me—the guy who would soon be leaving their daughter—so they would have a face to go with the name of the person they blamed. And I needed to see them to know that you would have people there for you once I was gone. Imagine how much worse it got when you and I walked in, and there was your dad expecting you and wanting to know where you’d run off to for the past few days . . . the same man who just hours before had told me to cut ties with everyone in my life.”
I couldn’t say anything once he was finished. I couldn’t remember how to speak, and wouldn’t have known what to say if I could.
When minutes passed without a word from me, Rhys cleared his throat. “The assignment ended almost two weeks ago, and I had to go through some debriefing and tests to make sure I was . . . well, to make sure I was still me. The minute I could, I found your dad and asked about you. And now I’m here.”
“So . . . what? Now that you’re here, things just go back to how it was? We get married again on a whim and see what happens? I had three months with you, Rhys. Three! And in those months, you took everything I knew and turned it upside down in the most incredible way before tearing my entire world apart! I waited for you for two years before completely giving up. I kept thinking that you would show up and it would be okay again. Or that it really had all just been some horrible nightmare and I would wake up in your arms again. But there was nothing. And you can’t come in here after four years expecting us to go back to how we were and try to make me believe that you still feel something for me.”
“Kennedy, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry for leaving you, but I love you. I have always loved you. I have never met anyone—”
“No, you don’t and you didn’t. If you ever had, you would have turned down the job.” I stood from the chair and turned, but Rhys’s whispered words stopped me from leaving.
“Your dad was so sure that you would be waiting for me . . . that our marriage was something you still wanted.”
I looked back at the mixture of confusion and hurt on his face, and shook my head slowly, ignoring the tears streaming down my cheeks. “He was wrong. You shouldn’t have come back here, Rhys.”
“Kennedy!” he called when I began walking toward my room, and I whirled back to face him.
“You ruined me!” I screamed. “Don’t you get that? Leave!”
I didn’t wait to see if he did. I just walked into my room and locked the door behind me before sliding down it until I was on the floor. I sat there crying for hours with my heart torn now that my past had just collided with my present.
14
October 27
Liam
THERE WAS A soft knock on my office door three days later, but I didn’t respond to it. If it was Eli, he’d have come in without waiting for me to invite him. If it was anyone else, they could call me. A minute later, I heard another few knocks and then the door slowly opened.
“I have it shut for a reas—” I cut off quickly when I looked up and saw the girl standing in front of me.
Seeing her there felt like a weight settled on my chest, and conflicting thoughts rushed through my mind. I wanted to hold her, I wanted to yell at her, I wanted to demand she tell me now why she never told me she was married, and I wanted to press her against the wall and show her what exactly we’d had and what she had thrown away.
Instead, I cleared my throat and looked back at the screen of my computer. “I’m busy.”
Another minute passed without her leaving or saying anything, but the second I heard her voice, I couldn’t stop myself from looking up at her. “Do you remember that night in your apartment—the night I stopped fighting what you already knew I felt for you?” I didn’t respond, but she continued anyway. “You told me that you wanted to face whatever I was fighting from my past head-on.”
“But I didn’t know that I would be fighting your husband.”
“Ex,” she corrected. “Rhys is my ex-husband. And before you go repeating what you asked me the morning you found out about him, yes, I know he’s my ex. I am fully aware of it. But you don’t understand; I was eighteen when I married him and he divorced me three months later and disappeared until just the other day. I looked for him for two years after he disappeared before giving up, and only now do I know that he had to leave me because he had to go undercover—just like my dad and uncle.”
“Well, good, I’m happy for you. Now he’s back, and you can pick up your marriage where you left off,” I said, but it was obvious that the last thing I was feeling was happiness over the situation.
Kennedy shook her head as tears gathered in her eyes. “What I’m trying to tell you is that his reappearance had me too shocked to figure out what to say or do the other morning, and that’s why I wasn’t able to stop you from leaving. I never expected to see or hear from him again—especially not while Kira and I were here in California—but I didn’t want you to leave then, and I don’t want you to leave me now.”
I sat there for a while just staring at her as tears slipped down her face. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say you’re still here with me! I want you to keep fighting for us instead of just leaving me!”
“I can’t, Kennedy! He was your husband, and now he’s come back for you. I can’t compete with that,” I said, my voice and body showing how defeated I felt.
A hushed cry burst from her chest, and she tightened her lips into a hard line as she tried to regain control over her emotions, but her voice still shook when she said, “That pain you used to talk about? That fear? That was me not wanting to have another Rhys in my life. That was me being terrified that my world would be shattered again by you, because I knew you had the capability of doing that. I knew it in the way you silently commanded control, I knew it in the way I easily and willingly gave in to you again and again, and I knew it in the way you made me feel just by being near me. No one had ever done that except for Rhys until you came into my life.”
All the air in my lungs left in a heavy rush. It felt like her words had just landed a blow to my stomach. Never once since Rhys had shown up at her door had I imagined that the entire time I’d known Kennedy, I’d been reminding her of him. “So is that why you fought me, or is that why you were with me—because I reminded you of him?”