‘On the night before I planned to elope with her and marry against my father’s advice.”
‘What did she do when you confronted her?” Elisa knew him well.
‘she cried. She was desperate. The father refused to leave his wife for her.
Sofia’s family were angry and threatening to disown her.”
she must have been terrified.”
The sound of compassion in Elisa’s voice reminded him how gentle her heart was.
‘yes ”
‘What did you do?”
‘I gave her money to begin life over somewhere else.” He had been unable to just walk away.
‘What happened to her?” She rolled her eyes when he didn’t answer.
‘Come on. I know you didn’t just dump her like that.”
‘I dumped you.” It was a shameful truth he would have to live with for the rest of his life.
Even the dim light could not disguise the fact that her face drained of color, but she didn’t back down.
‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about her and your eighteen-year-old self.”
‘She married a year after the baby was born.”
‘A happy ending for her.”
‘But not for me.” Because the experience had left him distrustful and that distrust had cost both him and Elisa dearly.
”Did you love her?”
”1 wanted her ”
‘As you wanted me.”
He did not like hearing her compare their relationship to the one he had had with Sofia.
‘lt is not the same.”
‘Right. You trusted her more than you trusted me.”
‘
My lack of trust in you was because of her.” Frustration made his voice biting when what he wanted to do was soothe the look of hurt from those beautiful green eyes.
‘And there was the fact my father told you I was like Shawna.”
‘Si ” Something he never should have told her.
Elisa’s head and heart were reeling. A year ago she had paid the price for another woman’s sin and Salvatore’s lacerated male pride.
It made sense of so much she had not understood. Inconsistencies that had haunted her and made her wonder what she had done wrong to make him distrust her so much.
She’d had two strikes against her and hadn’t even known it. Her own father had talked her down to Salvatore. That was not a truth she was ready to deal with on top of everything else and yet she had no option but to do so. Papa thought she was like Shawna despite the fact that she’d never done anything to make him think it.