Craving Cecilia (The Aces' Sons 6)

Uncomfortable with the memory, I scratched at the back of my neck and stared at the floor. “We both know how that played out. Jesus, I’m lucky I didn’t kill Leo that day. I could’ve. With my bare hands. But it was you that stopped me. The look on your face. Fuck, you hated me. The whole time I was planning on how I’d make it up to you, you were figuring out how to live without me.”

“I had to,” she whispered, making my head jerk up in surprise.

“What?” I croaked.

“I had to figure out how to live without you,” she said, her voice almost soundless. “The other choice wasn’t an option.”

“I thought you’d wait.”

“If you’d have given any indication that I should,” she said gently, “I would’ve.”

“Fuck,” I whispered. “Fuck.”

“I was never with Leo,” Cecilia said, her voice still low. “Not after you. He was just a good friend that knew seeing you was going to hurt me. He made it easier the only way he knew how.”

“By acting like the two of you were together?” I asked in disbelief.

“By making sure that you wouldn’t come back,” she clarified.

“He did that,” I confirmed. After I’d left the club that day, I’d avoided going back for almost two years. I couldn’t stand the thought of Cecilia and Leo together. Imagining it still made my guts twist.

“You broke me,” she said simply, “and I needed the space to piece myself back together again.”

“That was never my intention,” I replied. I didn’t know how to explain that I’d been immature and stupid, that I’d convinced myself everything would be okay, that somehow, I’d deluded myself into thinking that she’d still be there when I got my shit together. I honestly hadn’t even realized back then that I’d had the power to break her.

“Intention matters less than people think,” she said quietly. “I needed you.”

“I know.”

“Do you know what it was like?” she asked, her voice still quiet. “Calling your mom’s looking for you, only to find out that you’d left? You didn’t even tell me.”

“I was afraid you’d talk me out of it, and I knew it was the right thing to do,” I said hoarsely.

“No,” she hissed with a jerk of her head, the Cecilia I knew finally shining through. “The right thing would’ve been to tell me that you were leaving, but that you’d be back. The right thing would’ve been to say that we were in it together, even though you had to leave for boot camp or whatever the hell it was called. The right thing would’ve been to grow a pair and tell me to my face that you’d made a decision that was going to completely change our lives, and let me decide what I wanted to do about it.”

“I know that now.”

“I would have followed you to the fucking moon,” she said, her voice almost pleading. “And you left me without a word.”

I could feel my pulse pounding in my head as her words sunk in deep. I’d known it all along. I’d known it, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have assumed that she’d be waiting on me with open arms. I’d taken advantage of that fact, deciding to ask for forgiveness instead of permission, because I’d been so fucking weak and unsure of myself that I’d been afraid that her disappointment would make me change my course. I’d known, and that’s why I’d been so blindsided when I’d come back and she’d wanted nothing to do with me.

I’d known my entire adult life that I’d screwed Cecilia over and I had no one to blame but myself for our relationship imploding, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized just how deeply I’d betrayed her. My breath sawed in and out as I tried to drag enough air into my lungs.

“Looking back,” she said, her voice steady, “we weren’t ready for a baby, not even if you’d stayed.”

I swallowed hard against the bile rising in my throat.

“Please don’t feel guilty about that,” she said softly, looking down at Olive. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I whispered, gripping my hair in my fists. “Stop, Cecilia.”

We sat there in silence as I tried to get myself under control. I’d deliberately pushed those memories to the past for so long, convincing myself that, sure, I’d fucked up—but it just hadn’t worked out, that the realizations hitting me made it feel like it had happened yesterday. The shame of what I’d done was suffocating.

“How can you even be in the same room with me?” I asked in confusion.

“Because I love you,” she said with a small huff. “And you came through when I needed you.”

“Don’t fucking say that,” I replied.

“What? That I love you?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. “So you can say it, but I can’t?”