And once he had her mindless, breath breaking against his ear, her hands clutching at his hair, her pleas filling the space around her, he’d use that leverage—
“You can’t leave me. I won’t let you go...”
The echo of those decades-old words from a man he hated to the woman who hadn’t been able to resist them had his steps grinding to a stop, the blood burning through his veins running cold.
He was just like him.
No matter how Connor swore he wouldn’t let him be, that bastard was a part of his DNA.
How many times had his mother tried to leave his father? Tried to break things off and start a life separate from the man who would never make her properly part of his?
He thought about that morning so many years ago. The too-small, too-still shape of her curled in on herself in the middle of her bed. The knowledge, even before he reached out to try to wake her—
What would it have meant for them if his father had respected her wishes and let her start living her own life without him?
Could she have pulled herself together? Found the will to just...live?
Opening the fist he’d had clenched since he’d torn through the house and found Megan gone, he stared down at the band of diamonds in his palm.
This was the second time she’d returned it to him.
The second time he’d completely ignored what she wanted.
Raking his hands through his hair, he balled them at the back of his skull and stared out the windows at the ocean beyond.
He wasn’t his father. He’d spent his life proving it to himself and anyone who dared connect the Reed name. He’d stood at the door of his father’s office that last day and turned down his money. His job. His grudging recognition.
Told him he wouldn’t accept any of it. The only thing he would take were the memories of how this man had ruined his mother’s too-short life with his selfishness.
And those only because, try as he might, he couldn’t make himself forget.
An awful pain settled deep within him. He had to let Megan go.
It would be better for them both.
Forcing his breathing to level out, he turned around and walked back to her suite of rooms.
Once this space was cleared of her things, he’d be fine. Move on, just as he always did.
Even if always had never been like this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MEGAN HAD THOUGHT the phone call with Connor two nights earlier uncomfortable.
Yes, she’d expected they would need to talk, say the things her absence had already announced, work out the return of her belongings and discuss a divorce. And they had. But what she hadn’t expected was the call to go the way it had.
So very easily. Peaceably. Politely.
Connor’s casually conversational tone—
“Do you have a lawyer already or can I get one for you?”
“Sounds like the earliest the shippers can get there is Friday. Going to be okay until then?”
“You sure you don’t want any of these clothes? This blue dress was dynamite on you.”
—working her over in a way no amount of hostility, accusation or railing could have accomplished. It had nearly killed her to leave, but the hurt of knowing how little her departure had affected him was so much worse. He’d turned off all emotion...in a single day. Been so unaffected, the call had unfolded more like friendly chitchat than the first step in the end of a marriage.
Back at the house, he’d been ready to “talk” her out of leaving, but he’d still been in the fight at that point. Once she’d gone and the loss was confirmed...it was as if he’d simply shrugged it off. And she’d been wrecked to have all her suspicions so quickly confirmed.
But, as brutal as having her heart crushed again was, the fresh pain of it was exactly what she’d needed to alleviate her doubts about artificial insemination and her choice to forgo relationships in the future.
She would never doubt again.
So the call, as uncomfortable as it was, had been worth it.