He frowned. “Talked?”
“Like to a therapist.”
“God, no. No need to. Like I said, we’re fine.” He stared at her. “I wish you didn’t know.”
“Sean…there’s no shame in it. It wasn’t your fault.”
He looked away. And started to blink a lot.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Sean.”
He swallowed with a grimace, as if he had a lump in his throat. “Yeah, I know.”
“Do you?”
He swept a quick hand over his face. “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.”
“Sean—”
His tone was hard as he interrupted her. “I really wish you didn’t know. Because you were friends with my father and it would have been better for you to remember him without this. Easier.”
“I’d rather have the truth. And I am angry at him. I can’t imagine how anyone could do what he did. Damn it, I want to go back in time and take you three out of that apartment so that you got free of it. I really—” She stopped herself and forced her tone to level out. Her getting fired up was not going to help Sean. He was looking really tense, as if he were about to bolt. “I do want to tell you something, though. As I think back to some of my conversations with your father, I believe he regretted his past. And in the two years I knew him, he never touched a drop of alcohol.”
“Did he say when he quit?”
“No, but I think it was a long while ago. Once, when I was cleaning up some detergent that had spilled in a cupboard, I found a stashed bottle way in the back. It was dusty.”
“I found a couple of those, too.”
As Sean took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, she saw him not as he stood before her now, all tall and powerful. She pictured him as a young boy, scared and fragile. “I’m so sorry, Sean.”
“Don’t say that.” His voice cracked and he scrubbed his face again.
“Sean…” She started for him, but he stepped away and she let him go.
“Yeah…” He passed his palm over his eyes again and collected himself. “So, Lizzie, do you want to know why I came tonight?”
She frowned. Why had he shown up out of the blue? “Yes…”
“I heard from Billy. Who went to the lawyer’s today. He told me that you’re giving this house away to the center.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “Oh…Well…They need the money. And as I told you, I didn’t ask for that bequest.”
Sean walked over to some of the boxes she’d packed and ran his hand across them. His profile was characteristically handsome, all broad lines and dark hair.
“God…Lizzie…I really wish I could undo what I said to you. What I thought about you. What I stupidly believed you were capable of. If you’d been after my father’s money you wouldn’t have let this house go. So those checks…They really were for his expenses, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
He cursed. “I swear I’ve never been wrong so many times about a woman in my whole damn life.”
“It’s okay.”
“How can you say that?”
She took a deep breath. “I guess…because now I understand you a little more, it’s easier to forgive.”
***
Sean looked over his shoulder. Lizzie was staring at him with impossibly warm eyes, offering him only absolution and tolerance.
Damn it, he wanted her to yell at him, felt as if he deserved nothing less.
Especially because he was enough of a bastard to want to take advantage of her pity.
“You can forgive me, huh,” he murmured. “I’m lucky, then. Because if I were in your shoes, I probably wouldn’t be able to.”
“We’re different, then.”
“Yeah, we are.” She was a saint. He was a son of a bitch. “I’m truly sorry, Lizzie. More than you’ll ever know. We were going in a great direction for a while there. You were the first woman I’d cared about in a long, long time and…hell, I blew my shot at what I’ve always wanted but didn’t think I could have, because I have no faith.”
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He went back to the window and looked out to the street.
He didn’t hear her come up to him, just felt a soft touch on his shoulder. As the contact was made, he whipped his head around, surprised.
“The thing about forgiveness,” she said, “is that it means you let things go. You start fresh in a different place.”