Because of Lila (Sea Breeze Meets Rosemary Beach 2)

“Have you slept any?” I asked bringing her back to the here and now. Not the demons in her head taunting her.

She focused on me again then started to nod and stopped. “No, not really. When I close my eyes . . . I’m there in that room. She’s showing me the video . . . I hear them.” She stopped and shook her head. “And I know it was before me. I know he was with many, many females before me.” She closed her eyes as if she had to say something she didn’t want to say. That she couldn’t bear to look at me as she said it. “That woman took advantage of him. I don’t even blame him completely for the affair. She was the adult for the majority of their . . . relationship.” She slowly opened her eyes and met my gaze. “It’s the video. The things he said to her,” her voice was a whisper. “If that’s what he wants. He never said things like that to me. Our sex . . . had to have bored him.”

As completely curious as I was to know what he had said during sex that had her so concerned, I asked the obvious question instead. “You’re not worried about her being pregnant?”

Lila shook her head. “No. Even if she’s pregnant, which I don’t believe she is, it’s not his. Women have been claiming pregnancy trying to hold on to a man they’ve lost since the beginning of the human race, I’d guess. At first, I believed her but I was devastated. I’ve had time to think about her actions. The way she told me. How she said it. She isn’t a mentally stable person.”

I had to agree with the mentally stable part. If she’d started fucking Cruz when he was sixteen then something was off in her head. “Are you going back soon?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I’ll have to eventually. I have my studio to finish. My life to get back to. It’s going to be hard. Cruz didn’t lie to me because I never asked about his past sexual experiences. But he had known this thing with Kelsey was about to blow up and he didn’t tell me. Maybe having sex with her when he was young and stupid can be forgiven. But the video I saw was more recent. He was older. He was still seeing her. How can I trust him if he had no guilt over screwing a married woman?”

She had a point. And I wasn’t sure I had an answer for her. What I did know was that everyone had their secrets. Their own darkness. Something they hid from the world. Choosing to forgive them was a choice. Was losing a chance at having that “more” we all wanted worth being unable to forgive? Or could love be enough? To cover all of it and heal them both?

“Do you love Cruz?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“Did this . . . video, or this woman’s words kill any of that love? Weaken it in any way?”

She paused then shook her head. Her shoulders drooped sadly as she admitted it.

“Then you owe it to yourself to listen to him and forgive him. If you don’t you’re only hurting yourself.”

Lila’s eyes filled with tears. “But I may not be enough to hold him. I’m not . . . I’m not experienced. I don’t do things like what I saw and heard. I’m . . . I am boring.”

That made me want to laugh. The woman in front of me was anything but boring. But I didn’t laugh because I had enough females in my life to know when they say shit like that they believed it. Laughing at it didn’t turn out well.

“You are anything but boring. Sure, you’re polite, prim, and proper. You’re kind and thoughtful. You don’t use your beauty as a weapon. You are completely fascinating. Men watch you. They are stunned by you, and you miss it because you’re oblivious, which makes you more appealing. Cruz Kerrington and I have very little in common. But the one thing we do is we are both heterosexual males. I know what he sees when he looks at you. I also know that the man came running after you when you had left town. He didn’t want to lose you. He loves you, Lila. I saw it at your apartment that morning. Go back. Let him explain.”

She gave me a small smile then. “You think all that about me?”

“Every word.”

“Why couldn’t it have been you? Why did my heart have to love him?”

I laughed then. I wondered the same thing at first but I had time to think about it and I knew I had some things to face. Things to admit to myself. And before this past month, I wouldn’t have been ready to move on. I would be wasting my life wanting a woman who was never going to feel the same. I would still be messing up every date I had because I was comparing them to Bliss. But things were different now. I was different.