Triplets Under the Tree

“That’s great!” Caitlyn’s sweet voice knifed through him.

“No, it’s not. I was having an affair with her,” he said bluntly. Harshly. But there were no punches to be pulled here, no matter how difficult it was to keep swinging.

“An affair?”

Her confusion mirrored his but must have been ten times worse because she’d only just learned of it. He’d had hours to reconcile how truly sinful he was.

“Yes. A long-standing one, apparently.” Remorse nearly overwhelmed him.

She grew quiet and he wished he hadn’t insisted on no lights. Was she upset? She should be. But the darkness left him only his own guilt for company.

“I don’t understand,” she finally said. “You and Vanessa were happy. You were in love.”

“I wasn’t. Happy,” he clarified. “Or in love.”

That was perhaps the most painful realization of all. His confusion about love stemmed wholly from not ever having been in love before. When his memories of Vanessa resurfaced, he’d recognized the truth Shayla had revealed. He hadn’t loved Vanessa.

He couldn’t compare how he felt now to the past because there was nothing to compare it to. His feelings for Caitlyn were unprecedented.

And he was most definitely in love with her.

Otherwise it wouldn’t be breaking his heart to tell her who he was, deep down inside where he couldn’t change it.

“Why didn’t you get a divorce, then?” Her voice had grown faint, as if she’d drawn in on herself.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “Too Catholic, maybe. And there was a baby on the way. I’m still missing huge pieces of my memories of the past, pieces I might never recover.”

They lapsed into silence and he ached to bridge it, but this was an unprecedented situation, too. She should be allowed to react however she wanted.

“Did Vanessa know?” Her voice cracked and he realized she was crying as she sniffled quietly.

His gut twisted, and her pain was far worse than the pain he’d caused himself. She was hurting. More than he would have anticipated. Of course he hadn’t thought this would go over well, but he’d expected her to be angry, not injured. His nails dug into his palms as he struggled to keep from touching her, comforting her. He was the source of her hurt, not the solution.

“She knew.” And he wished he understood the dynamics of his marriage, why Vanessa would have stayed in a marriage where her husband didn’t love her and was having an affair with another woman. He didn’t even remember if she’d professed to love him. “I’m sorry to drop this on you with no warning. It’s not how I envisioned this going between us.”

They should have been talking about the trip he’d hoped to surprise her with, the imminent marriage proposal.

“It’s a lot to take in, Antonio.” Her voice fractured again on the last syllable of his name. “I don’t know what to say.”

Frustration and grief and anguish rose up inside, riling his temper as he tried to reconcile how to get through this, how to move forward when all he wanted was to hear her say it was okay, that she still loved him. That it didn’t matter who he’d been. “Say how you feel. Are you mad at me? Hurt? You want to punch me?”

“I feel as if I don’t know you. Commitment isn’t important to you like it is to me. I wish I’d never slept with you,” she admitted on a whisper that turned his whole body cold. “I can’t deal with all of this. Not right now.”

She slid to her feet and left the media room with a rush of quiet sobbing.

His guiding star had left him in the dark, and he felt further away from finding himself than ever. Ironic that he’d spent so long fighting to remember and now all he wished for was the ability to forget.

* * *

Dry-eyed, Caitlyn fed the babies. It was the only accomplishment she could list for the afternoon.

She rocked Annabelle, staring blindly at the wall as she tried to quiet the storm of misery zinging through her heart. If only she could crawl into bed and shut out the world, she might figure out how to get through this.

But she couldn’t. Children still needed to be fed no matter what pain had just ripped a hole in your chest. Christmas decorations still had to be put away, leaving an empty hole where the holiday cheer had been. Life went on, oblivious of how one simple phrase had destroyed her world.

I was having an affair with her.

For years, Caitlyn had envied her sister’s marriage. For years, Caitlyn had lived with her unrequited feelings for Antonio. For years, she’d suffered crippling guilt over both.