I smiled. I was sure I looked like a lovesick loon. Tomorrow when I’m sober, I’ll probably be embarrassed.
“Who was your first?” he asked with a quick glance at me again before watching the road.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Surely, he already did.
“That’s why I asked.”
I didn’t say anything. Jeez, I was a silly girl again playing coy.
“I like to think it was me,” he said.
&n
bsp; “Why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It’s a macho guy thing, probably. It was different with you. Not just the sex. Everything…” He broke off as if he realized he was heading into a conversation that he didn’t want to have. A talk about the promises he’d made and then broke.
He turned into the long drive at my parents’ house.
“You can let me off here,” I said.
He kept driving on the gravel road past the house and out toward the river. He parked and then got out of the truck. He came over to my side and helped me out. Without a word, he took my hand and we walked across the field toward the river until we came to the oak tree where he’d taken my virginity. Where he’d given me Alyssa.
I hadn’t been here since he left. It was a reminder of all I’d lost. All he’d taken from me. But standing here with him now, I didn’t feel bitterness. Just sadness.
I looked up at him, to find him staring down at me. “Why are we here?”
He shrugged. “It was our place. I’m taking a trip down memory lane.”
That seemed even more dangerous than letting my guard down through booze. “That was a long time ago.”
“Maybe, but I have good memories of you and me here. We used to talk a lot, remember?”
“I remember talking and other things.”
His lips twitched up. “Other things, yes.” He looked out over the river. “I felt close to you. Like I could talk to you about anything.” He turned back to me. “But there were some things I still never told you.”
With those words, I realized he was ready to talk. He was ready to tell me why he abandoned me.
11
Wyatt
I didn’t know what I was thinking bringing her here to the place I first made love to her. To the place I’d promised to spend a lifetime with her. One thing was certain, she wasn’t feeling the same way I was. Not that I blamed her. After all, I’d abandoned her. But as I approached her house while driving her home, it was like the tree called to me. Like there was a magic or power in this place that would help me reach her. Not to talk her into a fake marriage, but to convince her to give me a chance to make it right.
Not that a trip down memory lane would change her mind. No, if I had any chance to rekindle the flame, I’d have to open up to her in a way I never had before. In a way that I’d never dared to when we were younger.
I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering our times here. It wasn’t hard to conjure them, especially with her standing right there in front of me. It was the images of her and this place that kept me sane during wartime. I opened my eyes, looking up through the branches to see the moon shining through them. Yes, this place was magic. It was going to my head way more than whiskey did.
I looked at her, desperately wanting to touch her. To pull her in my arms and promise to never let her go. It was a silly notion. She was right. Ten years was a long time. I wasn’t the same. Neither was she. There was no going back to what we had, which was clearly what I wanted. And yet, the pull to her was still strong. More than I could resist.
She leaned back against the tree. “I never expected the two of us to be here again.”
“I never stopped thinking about our time here,” I admitted.
She cocked her head. “I wouldn’t know it by the way you never contacted me.”
I looked down in shame and guilt.