Every Sweet Regret (Orchid Valley 2)

“I know, but that’s not the mistake I’m talking about.”

“Then what?”

“Us.” She swallows, and the next thing I know, her arms wrap around me and she’s pressing her lips to mine. Call it hope or habit, but I kiss her back, and when her tongue touches my lips, I meet it with my own. This is my wife. I’m kissing my wife. But no matter how many times I say the words to myself, they still feel wrong.

She’s not my wife. She’s my ex. Finally, my brain’s caught up.

I push her back, gently but firmly.

“Sorry,” she says, bowing her head.

“That’s not who we are anymore.” That hasn’t been who we are for a long-ass time. And Christ, why did it take me so long to figure that out?

She looks up. “It could be. Maybe it should be.” When she steps close again, I back away, and she wraps her arms around her middle. “I know I have no right to ask, Kace. I know. I thought I wanted more freedom, but I miss the routine of our lives. I miss knowing that if things fall apart, I won’t have to fix them alone. I miss having someone there to remind me to lock the front door and someone who’ll fix the shower when it leaks. I miss knowing that if I’m at a loss for how to respond to Hope’s obstinance, someone’s there to lead the way.”

I blink at her. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I miss our life.” She reaches for me, then drops her hands to her sides. “I miss our marriage.”

For months and months after she moved out, I waited for her to come home and say those words. For more than a year, I let myself believe that what we had, what our marriage had been, was good enough for me. But I know better now. I see what she saw all along. “Amy . . .” I hang my head. “You were right to leave.”

She draws in a shaky breath. “I was stupid.”

When I lift my head and meet her eyes, I know I have to say the words I promised myself so long ago I wouldn’t. “If our relationship were truly all you needed, you wouldn’t have had an affair.”

Her eyes go wide and she stumbles backward. “What?”

“I know you had an affair with Clint. It was never Stella. It was you. And she knew about it, didn’t she? That’s why you started telling me all those things about her. You were afraid she’d tell me, and you didn’t want me to believe her.”

Amy’s eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t want her to destroy our family.”

I scoff. “No. You didn’t want me to find out you had already destroyed it.” I look away, because it’s too hard to reconcile what I understand now with the woman I thought she was. God, it’s all so obvious. The way Amy suddenly didn’t want me to touch her anymore. I thought it was motherhood, that she was too tired and run-down from working all day and then coming home and trying to make up for all those lost hours with Hope.

When I turn back to her, she’s staring at me, her expression desperate. “I did it for us.” She swallows. “Clint was always flirting with me. I told you that.”

“Yeah, but somehow you left out the part where you were fucking him.”

“You and Dean were on the verge of losing your business. Without that promotion, I wouldn’t have been able to give the company a loan. I did it for us.”

I shake my head. There’s a gaping hole in my chest—not because I want my wife back but because I’m realizing I spent years married to a woman I don’t even know. Because I spent years lying to myself about what we had. “You did it for yourself.” I swallow back the hurt and betrayal. “And I don’t know whether it was for pleasure or because you wanted to be the hero, but if you knew me at all, you’d have known I’d rather lose the company and work some mind-numbing desk job for the rest of my life before sleeping next to a woman who’d betray me like that.” I squeeze my eyes shut, but there’s a storm happening in my mind, casting every happy family memory under the pall of her choices. “Did I somehow make you think my business was more important to me than our marriage?”

“No.” She shakes her head, blond curls bouncing.

“Did Clint force you?” I remember Stella’s description of how he put his hand up her skirt, tried to touch her without her consent. “Was he—”

“No.” Tears roll down her cheeks, and she blows out a breath. “I liked the attention, okay? He made me feel sexy and wanted for the first time since Hope was born.”