That name.
Bowie.
Duncan.
No.
No, no, no.
The bright hit her eyes, tears shimmering.
“And I’ve lost it again. Bowie…” she shook her head, “I nearly didn’t survive that.”
She hadn’t.
He’d had to put her together.
You broke her apart, it was the least you could do.
Corey shoved that thought aside too, and it was easy, not only because he had so much practice, but because it didn’t change the fact that he’d had to put her together.
And he did.
“I don’t mean to hurt you, I love you to my soul, Corey,” she kept talking. “But you don’t get it. You don’t understand what I lost. Now…twice.”
Twice.
At that word, something slick sluiced through him, something he couldn’t hold at bay.
A warning sign.
Because he did get it.
Stop looking at her.
He got it.
Look away!
He completely understood.
STOP LOOKING!
Because he took it from her.
Tell her.
Don’t.
Tell her.
Never.
You should have told her years ago. Told him years ago. You know it. Excuses. Always making excuses.
You never got what you truly wanted, why should they?
Maybe because it was never his to have?
Anything is his.
She isn’t. And he lost him long ago. He had them once. Both of them. And they were the only things that mattered.
If it meant so much to them, why did they let it go?
They didn’t let go. He did.
He wasn’t the one who walked away.
And yet another excuse. He knows it. He knows he was the one who drove him away.
Corey actually shook his head to chase the competing thoughts from it before he opened his arms and murmured, “Come here, Genny.”
She came to him, walked right into his arms, pressed her cheek to his chest and wept.
Corey folded her in, tucking her tight, held her, and listened to her grief.
It was then, he felt it, Genny held against him like that, trusting him, giving him something she’d never given to anyone else.
Not Tom.
Not Duncan.
Giving it only to him.
Giving him the grief of losing them.
The both of them.
That was just Corey’s.
And holding her right then, he felt what he’d refused to feel for over forty years.
She and he…
They didn’t fit.
You do.
She was tall, slender, but she had curves.
He was tall, still thin, not reed thin, like he’d been when he was younger, but slim.
But he was not significantly tall, as a tall woman would need.
Like Tom.
Like Duncan.
Stop thinking about Duncan.
Corey wasn’t solid, fit, muscled.
Like Tom.
Like Duncan.
Stop it with Duncan.
She lived in a luxury condominium and was wearing twenty-thousand-dollar earrings, but she’d be just as at home and comfortable in a log cabin the mountains. Maybe more at home and comfortable in a log cabin in the mountains.
Corey owned five homes.
And not one of them was, or ever would be, a log cabin in the mountains.
She was not fragile.
She was not frail.
But it was the ones that were hard to crush that, when you eventually accomplished that feat, they were broken in ways that could never be fixed.
He’d learned that when he’d broken Sam.
When he’d broken Genny that first time.
When he’d broken Hale.
You didn’t break Hale. He doesn’t even know you.
Hale broke you.
Your son broke you.
By needing you.
And loving you.
Corey closed his eyes, and unable to stop it as he had so many times in the past, another ability that was slipping from his grasp, he felt the sensation caused by his thoughts well in him, rushing into his chest.
His doctor said they were panic attacks.
His doctor was wrong.
Corey knew what they were.
You don’t.
He did.
You don’t.
He did.
He dreamed about it.
Christ, the nightmares.
The guilt.
You’re one of the richest men on the planet. You don’t become that…you don’t get what you want in this world by playing nice.
And he got what he wanted by not playing fair? Or instead, did he just lose everything?
No answer.
Which was the answer.
Genny wept in his arms.
She’d lost the most precious thing to her.
Twice.
No, no, she hadn’t.
She’d lost it once.
And he’d taken it from her the other time.
So it’s over, she’d said.
So get in there.
Tell her what you did.
It’s over, she’d said.
With Tom.
It was over with Tom.
Now it’s your turn.
Tell her how you broke her. Help her heal. Give her back what you took from her.
Give it back.
It’s over.
Yes.
It was over.
“I’m being an idiot,” she sniffled into his chest.
He held on to her, and his voice was gruff when he replied, “You aren’t. He was…you had a good marriage. He was a good man. A good dad. You had…”
It all.
She’d had it all.
All that was important.
She’d had it all once before too.
She was better than him.
But Duncan became a multi-millionaire on his terms.
She’s still better than him.
Nobody was better than Duncan.
“Corey?”
He looked down at her face.
Red eyes, a mini-mascara disaster, nostrils still quivering.
She was gorgeous.
“You had it all, honey,” he said gently. “It isn’t easy to lose that.”
She nodded, dropped her chin, pressed her forehead to his chest briefly, then looked up at him again.
“Thanks for coming to Phoenix. You didn’t need…” A tremulous smile. “I won’t finish that. You never need…but you’re always there for me.”