“It was a lie that made me happy. It wasn’t you.”

And that hurt so much she sucked in a sharp breath and stared down at the floor. He was being honest with her. Maybe he’d intended it to hurt, but he wasn’t saying it only to hurt her.

“I don’t think it was the lie that made you happy. I think the lie only made it safe for you to take the chance. I think it was the relationship that made you happy.” Her heart was racing and it felt like the blood had drained out of her face, but she made herself say all of it. All of what she’d been thinking through for the last two weeks. “I think being that man made you happy. The man who was you—but also a little better than the you you’d been before. Just like I was happier being the me that I never thought I could be. The me who is…” She cleared her throat as her voice cracked. “The me who is better with you.”

Something in the words must have affected Caleb because he gave the slightest wince. But he got control of it almost immediately and shook his head again. “What a lovely little fairy tale it’s turned out to be, then.” There was a bitterness in his voice now that she didn’t like, that hadn’t been there before. “I guess all the lies and betrayal have been for the best, then,” he continued, “since the ending is so sweet and romantic.”

“Nothing can excuse what I did,” Kelly said softly after a moment of processing his irony. “But I do think we’re better off now.”

Caleb stared at her, evidently speechless at what she’d just said.

Kelly felt the same way. Had to make herself think back over the words she’d just spoken. Wondered where they’d come from, after the life she’d led, after everything she’d done.

Then she suddenly realized something.

It was true. What she’d just said was true. It was a real revelation, the kind she’d rarely experienced before. The knowledge had come down on her like a gift or a benediction.

A final, poignant benediction to the last seventeen years of her life.

“I am better off now,” she breathed when she could shape words again. She wasn’t hopeful, wasn’t optimistic, didn’t think this realization would change anything but her with its harsh, inexorable grace. “I can’t speak for you, but I know I am.”

Caleb was still staring at her, and his defenses seemed to be lowered enough to reveal an agonizing confusion.

She reached out to put her hand on his arm. “I am better off now. I’m a better person. And loving you is one of the things that has made me so.”

Saying she loved him was evidently a mistake, although she wouldn’t have been able to predict it. As soon as she spoke the word, his face contorted with an intensity she didn’t immediately recognize.

With a violent tug, he pulled his arm out of her grip, and the momentum of his arm caused her to stumble backward. She didn’t fall but she was shaken and disoriented by the sudden move.

“I think you better leave,” he said.

He’d made his choice long before she’d come to his office like this. And the sex—however good it had been, however real it had been—hadn’t changed anything at all.

She nodded in resignation. “Okay. I will.”

—

Her mother died the next week, and Kelly buried her next to her father’s grave.

It was the first time she’d been to visit her father since she’d been adopted, and after the simple burial ceremony, she stood alone for a long time, looking down at both of the graves.

Her mother hadn’t been happy, but she’d seemed to come to terms at least a little at the end.

It was better than nothing.

Justice would never be done for her father, but at least now Kelly knew the truth, and her mother had known before she died.

It was better than nothing.

She focused on the simple grave marker over her father’s grave, etched with only his name, the years of his life, and two words: HUSBAND. FATHER.

It was when she reread the word “father” that Kelly started to cry for real.

“I’m so sorry, Dad,” she choked, kneeling on the grass beside the grave. She’d brought a small bunch of pink tulips, and she readjusted them next to the stone. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been what you always wanted me to be.”

She sniffed and rubbed her eyes, getting herself together enough to say what she needed to say. There was no one else around anymore, and she wanted to hear the words spoken aloud. Felt like her father could actually hear her. She didn’t care if she sounded like a fool. “You worked so hard to make a good life for me, and I ruined it all as soon as you died. But I’m going to try to do better now. I’m going to try to…to live.”

She impatiently wiped away a couple more tears that slipped out. “You were always proud of me, whether I deserved it or not, and I want to feel that way again.”

Randomly, Kelly wondered if Caleb would ever have been proud of her, if they’d been together long enough for her to do something worthwhile. It wasn’t likely to happen now, but Kelly was finally coming to the recognition that there was more to her life than just Caleb.

He was important. Incredibly important. But he wasn’t all there was.

Kelly wasn’t going to taint her memories of her father again. Not with vengeance and not with the consuming loss of Caleb in her life.

“I miss you, Daddy. I still miss you so much.”

She stayed a few more minutes, saying goodbye. To both him and her mother. Until she finally found the strength to pull herself up to her feet.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered before she turned to leave. “I love you. I won’t stay away so long again.”

She felt a rising wave of emotion when she heard her phone ring. Her heart leapt, even though she knew there was almost no chance of its being Caleb.

Glancing at the screen, she felt a sinking disappointment at the same time she experienced a tiny flare of warmth.

It wasn’t Caleb. But the screen read, “Jack Martin.”

She hadn’t heard from Jack for several days, and she’d been afraid he was tired of putting up with her. Despite everything else she was going through, Kelly was glad that Jack hadn’t decided to cut her out of his life for good.

She didn’t answer the phone. She was still too emotional to appropriately deal with a friendly conversation. But she liked Jack and would like to be his friend.

Then she would have two. Reese and Jack.

It was a start.

She turned around and took her first step back toward her car.

Came to an abrupt, jerky halt.

There was a familiar black chauffeured car parked on the drive behind her car. And there was a familiar man standing beside it, wearing black clothes, his dark hair burnished by the sun.

She wasn’t close enough to see the expression in his eyes, but she could clearly tell that he was staring at her.

Feeling a lurching in her heart, Kelly took an instinctive step toward him, but something about his stiff stance made her stop again.

Whatever he was doing here, it wasn’t to sweep her up in his arms and take her home.

Kelly stared back at him, memorizing the proud lines of his lean form and slightly arrogant tilt of his chin.

They stared at each other for a full minute. Then Caleb got back into the car.

It immediately pulled out and drove away.

When she got back into her own car, Kelly sat behind the steering wheel for a few minutes before leaving.

She’d been planning to say goodbye to her parents this afternoon.

She hadn’t been planning to say goodbye to Caleb.

And it felt like that had just happened.

Chapter 12

Caleb stared at his in-box, filled with new emails flagged by his assistant for immediate attention, and couldn’t summon the energy to even begin reading them.