It feels like hours instead of seconds passing with him saying nothing. Why the hell doesn’t he say something?

I swallow down the lump in my throat. “What are you doing here?”

He arches a brow, amused. “I was invited, Chrissie. I’m invited every year. I don’t come. I send a check. This year I came. You are a very difficult person to reach these days.”

“I’m not difficult at all. I don’t want to talk to you.”

He settles on the sofa beside the fireplace and takes his cigarettes from his pocket. He lights one. He shakes his head and his posture changes, a loss of intimidation and aggressiveness.

“You don’t have to stand there hovering against the door like you might need to run,” he says softly.

I lift my chin. “I’m not. I’m just trying to figure out why you’re here.”

Those potent black eyes lock on mine and I can see it. The way I’m behaving hurts him, and in spite of how he started this, it’s not Mean Alan sitting in here with me.

“Chrissie, you’re behaving ridiculously. Sit down. A few minutes of your time. That’s all. You’ll never hear from me again.”

Never hear from me again. My heart reacts unexpectedly severely to that and I fight to keep how that one hurts me from my expression. I slowly move from the door and settle in a chair across the coffee table from him.

“What do you want?”

He runs his hand through his hair and then holds the black waves in the clutch of his fingers. He lets out a long exhale of breath. “Christ, I wish you’d read my letter. I don’t know how to say the things I have to say to your face.”

My brows shoot up. I’ve never heard Alan sound so anxious and unsure before. I feel a crack in the wall around my heart and I don’t want to.

“Then don’t say them. Whatever you think you need to say to me, Alan, don’t. I’m happy. I don’t want to hear it.”

He looks amused again. Amused and sad. His expression confuses me and I lower my gaze to focus on my hands resting in my lap.

“I don’t doubt you don’t want this any more than I want to be the one to do it to you,” he says quietly.

Oh no, what does that mean? Do what?

“I care about you, Chrissie. No matter what’s happened between us, I will always care about you. I would never want to hurt you. And I would never lie to you. You believe that, don’t you?”

My thoughts are spinning and I nod. I don’t know why, It’s crazy and I don’t even know why he’s here after all this time, but I do believe Alan. When he talks to me this way I know in the center of my being it is the truth.

“I will regret not calling you back last year as long as I live,” he says in a rough, desperate sort of way. “I’ve hurt you in inexcusable ways. I was angry. I was hurt. I behaved horribly to you, but not one time did I ignore you because I’d stopped loving you.”

I don’t look at him, and I stare hard into a vacant space in the pool house because I can feel myself weakening. If I look at him, I will fall to pieces.

“You’re the only person in my life that matters to me,” he says. “It’s why I’m here, Chrissie.”

I take in a deep, shuddering breath to steady me. “Only I’m not in your life, Alan. Not anymore. You shouldn’t have come here. It would have been better for us both if you hadn’t.”

“Better for me, yes. Better for you, no, love.”

I feel on the verge of tears and I don’t trust my voice to ask him what that one means.

“There is not a thing that happens in your life, a thing you do, that I don’t know about,” he says.

Everything starts to run frantic and loose inside me.

“I never meant for my anger to hurt you,” he continues. “If I had known before I would have stopped you.”

Oh no. Is that why he’s here? He knows about last April? How does he know?

I can’t breathe. I can’t feel my legs, I can’t feel my arms, but somehow my body rises from the chair and moves toward the door.

“It doesn’t matter, Alan. If you had called me I wouldn’t have changed my decision,” I whisper with more injury in my voice than I want to show. “I don’t want to talk about this with you. Not now. It’s too late.”

I’m almost to the door when he stops me. He whirls me around to face him. Those potent black eyes lock on mine directly and the lockbox breaks open. It all tumbles out. My hurt. My regrets. My love for him. In leveling waves, real and present and consuming me.

He takes my face in the palms of his hands. “Please, stop hurting yourself because you hate me. I can’t bear knowing that all this has happened because you hate me.”

I say it before I can stop myself. “I don’t hate you, Alan. I love you.”

“Then don’t marry Neil. It’s in all the trades. It’s why I came here today. Don’t marry Neil because you hate me. Don’t hurt yourself again because you hate me. I couldn’t live with that. I swallowed my pride to come here. I couldn’t let you hurt you again.”

He pulls me against him, surrounding me with his flesh, and he is trembling with his emotions, as frantic and despondent and in pain as I am.

I don’t know why I do it. Maybe it’s because this is goodbye. Maybe it’s because I want to stop this. Maybe it’s because Alan is crying.

I lean into him and join my mouth with his. His mouth moves on mine tentatively at first, only gentle contact. Then it deepens on its own, and I can feel it changing, that we are both changing what this is.

I pour all my hurt and heartbreak of the last year into our kiss, and it happens as it always did—the second I touch him, I am lost in him and we are lost in each other.

I shouldn’t do this… And then the words in my head are silenced as Alan puts me on the bed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

We lie together, not touching or kissing. Disconnected and yet really connected in that way we share and haven’t shared for too long for the both of us, I think. It is us. Connected in the disconnect. Sexually spent, emotionally messy and raging internally.

I turn in Alan’s arms so I can see him. His eyes are midnight black and guarded, and he is unnerved by what we just did, too. I can tell he didn’t intend this. This was not why he came to the party to see me.

My confusion and distress kicks up. No longer able to meet his gaze, I roll away and my eyes lock on my ring. My simple gold band on my left hand.

“I’ve got to go,” I whisper, barely able to push the words past the lump in my throat.

I pull from his arms, climb from the bed and gather my clothes. My shaking hands make feeble attempts at securing my clothing back into place. Why did I do this? How could I be unfaithful to Neil? What power does Alan have over me that I could forget everything good in my life just to screw him in the pool house? That in a flash, everything inside me is turned upside down. That the strongest impulse I can feel raging through my veins is to trash my marriage and go back to Alan?

Alan sits up and settles on the edge of the bed. There is something on his face that makes me anxious and afraid. The room fills with heavy silence.

“Stop dressing, Chrissie,” he whispers, his raspy voice with an edge again.

More heavy silence. I continue to move, dressing like I’m numb. The lump in my throat is strangling and I can’t look at him because if I do I won’t ever be able to say and do what I have to.

“I have to go, Alan.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” he whispers, his voice raw. He crosses the room, stopping my hands, stopping me. “You are not walking out that door until I’ve said everything I came here to say to you. Not this time, Chrissie. It is too important.”

“I love you,” I whisper, almost unable to push the words out of me. “I always will. But whatever you have to say to me doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Let it go, Alan.”

I lock gazes with his intense black stare. His face changes in a flash from passion-kissed to alarmed. “Doesn’t matter? What the fuck are you trying to tell me, Chrissie?”