I turn, walking into the bedroom, planning to crawl into bed before remembering it’s the bed they got together, hoping maybe Perry would sleep better on it. I groan, turning around and walking right into Ansel’s broad chest.
When I try to push past him, he stops me, gripping my shoulders with shaking hands. “Please don’t walk away.”
I feel like a tornado is crashing around in my mind, but as usual, even though I’m so mad at him I could scream, the feel of his body so close and his hands sliding up my arms is so comforting, it starts to make order out of the chaos. His eyes soften and he blinks down to my mouth. “We need to keep talking about this.”
But when I try to speak, the words come out choked, stunted. “Y-y-y-y—” I close my eyes, trying again. “Y-y-y-y-you—”
Fuck!
I open my eyes, not sure what reaction I’ll see in his face because he’s really never heard me stutter and it hardly ever happens anymore.
His eyes are wide and his face contorted in pain as if he’s broken me. “Shit, Mia.”
“D-d-don’t.”
“Mia . . .” He groans, pressing his face to my neck.
I push him away, wanting pretty much anything other than his sympathy right now. The anger makes my words come out sharper, and with each one I deliver, my tongue relaxes. “Y-you were w-with her so long. I just . . . tonight I felt like the other woman, you know? For the first time yesterday, I felt like your wife. But tonight I felt like I’d stolen you from her.”
“No,” he says, relief washing over his expression as he pushes my hair off my face so he can kiss my cheek. “Of course we broke up before I met you.”
Fuck. I have to ask. “But how long before you left?”
His face falls and I feel like I can hear every second tick past as he hesitates to answer.
“Ansel.”
“A few days.”
My heart sinks and I close my eyes, unable to look at him. “She moved out while you were gone, didn’t she?”
Another hesitation. “Yes.”
“You broke up with your girlfriend of six years only a few days before you married me.”
“Well, technically we broke up three weeks before I met you. I’d been biking across the States before Vegas,” he reminds me. “But it felt like it ended a long time before that. We both knew it was over. She is clinging to something that doesn’t exist anymore.” He cups my cheek and waits until I look up at him. “I wasn’t looking for anything, Mia, but that’s why I trust what I feel for you. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever known.”
When I don’t say anything to this, he asks, “Can I tell you now? Everything?”
I don’t bother answering out loud. On the one hand, it seems a little late for a full disclosure. On the other, a sick part of me wants to know everything.
“Bike and Build started in May, and went through September,” he begins. “Finn, Olls, Perry, and I all became close within days of orientation. It was that kind of experience, okay, where everyone is thrown together and some friendships solidify, and others don’t? But ours, it did.”
He pauses, trailing his fingers down my arm.
“But it wasn’t an immediate affair with Perry and me, not sexual. She wanted it. At least, Oliver and Finn always insist that she wanted something with me from the first few days. I think I started to notice what they meant, maybe in July? And by August, I felt so much fondness and friendship for all of them that I would give her anything.” Pulling back so he can look at me in the dim light from the moon, he says, “Even sex. We only were lovers twice on that trip. A random night in August, when we were very drunk. And then, a few weeks later—after it had been so awkward and loaded with us—we were together on the last night before the excursion ended.”
My stomach twists in a strange combination of relief and pain and I close my eyes, forcing away the image of his hands on her body, his mouth full of hers.
“After that, Perry came back here, and I moved to Nashville for school. We were together without ever really discussing it. She assumed we were, and I wanted to give her that. We saw each other maybe two times a year, and everything else I told you was true. She got to know me well on the trip, sure. But I was twenty-two. I was not the same man then that I am now and we grew apart very quickly.”
He lowers his voice, sounding pained. “And as a love affair, it wasn’t ever passionate, Mia. It was . . .” He curses, wiping a hand across his face. “Like in . . . how do you say it?” He looks at me and I look away, unable to resist the adorable way his lips push forward as he searches for words. “Cendrillon? The fairy tale with the stepmother?”
“Cinderella?” I guess.
He snaps, nodding, and continues, “Like in Cinderella. I think we both wanted the glass shoe to fit. Do you understand?”