My heart drops.
He licks his bottom lip as he stares into space.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I did the right thing.”
My stomach twists. “You married her?”
He nods softly with his bottom lip caught in his front teeth, and I wait for him to keep going but he doesn’t.
“Did it go okay?” I whisper softly.
He shrugs. “I tried. I tried every damn day to fall in love with her.”
My eyes fill with tears.
“Twenty-three with a wife and a baby,” he mutters softly.
I kiss his chest and rub my cheek on his skin. I hate this story because I already know how it ends.
“It wasn’t so bad at first. We both put a front on for the sake of the other. Until she fell in love with me, but I didn’t fall in love with her…” His voice trails off.
A tear falls free, and I quickly swipe it away.
Stop it.
He clenches his jaw and I know he’s right back there, all those years ago. “I couldn’t even force myself to make love to her.”
Oh, this is a horrible story. “Jules,” I whisper, and he wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer.
“Samuel was conceived when I came home drunk one night. That’s the only time it would happen.”
I close my eyes.
“Then… she started drinking.”
God.
“It got so bad that I had to have a full-time nanny to care for the children even while she was home.” He stares into space. “Some days, she never got out of bed.”
Oh, this poor woman.
“I tried, I tried to get her help. I just didn’t do enough.”
My chest hurts for both of them.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. I told her before I left for work one morning that I was filing divorce papers that day.”
I scrunch my eyes shut as I wait for the next part of the story.
“She said goodbye to the children.”
A lone tear rolls down my face onto his chest.
“And she drove drunk down a dead-end street at around 130 miles an hour, straight into a tree.”
The lump in my throat hurts as I try to hold my tears back.