“Then, out of the blue, a month after Jonny died, I got a call from Heather. In all my selfishness, I’d just left her behind. I never even said good-bye. I thought about her every day, but I just couldn’t go back. When she called, it was like old times, when we were kids, before everything happened. She asked to see me, and of course, I said yes. I was living in LA by this point, so she flew in the next day. We met up, and after that, she became my lifeline…that was, until you.
“Heather had taken on running the company as CEO. She’d graduated early, gotten her business degree. She was always smart, way smarter than I ever was. To this day, she’s still running Segal’s. And I make sure to see her regularly. She usually comes here to see me ’cause I don’t like to go out to Kentucky if I don’t have to. Every time I see her, I try to sign the company over to her, and every time, she refuses and asks me to come run it with her.” He lets out a soft chuckle. “I let Heather down all those years ago when I left. But I won’t make that mistake with her again.”
“She sounds really great, Tom.”
His eyes meet mine with warmth. “She is. You’re alike in a lot of ways…spunky, argumentative.”
“I’m not argumentative.” I grin.
“Firecracker.” He presses his finger to the tip of my nose.
“And what about…your mother?”
His eyes darken. “Heather sees her. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I was eighteen. I can’t forgive her for what she did. If she never had an affair with Joe, then…”
He stops there, and I don’t push it. I, better than anyone, know how hard it is to forgive and forget.
He puffs out a breath. “Ly, what I said to you that day…when I pushed you away, reacted like I did…after you told me you were in love with me…” He shakes his head, regret in his eyes. “Sure, there’s a reason why I’ve lived my life the way I have, using sex to get by, but I also liked my life. It was straightforward. I didn’t have to care about anyone but me. And after my dad, after what happened, why it happened…I promised myself that I would never put myself in that position. I swore to myself that I would never fall in love. I would never give a woman the opportunity to shred me like my mother did to my father.
“I was afraid that if I fell in love, and she broke me the way my mother did with my dad…that I wouldn’t be able to cope, the way he couldn’t…”
He meets my eyes, and I see it there in his. His fear. He doesn’t have to say it out loud.
“So, I kept an emotional distance from women, taking what I wanted, and then walking away. It was easy…until you.” He touches my face, running his fingertips over my cheek, into my hair. “I couldn’t get you out of my head.”
“Still, you pushed me away.”
“I panicked. What you were telling me…deep down, I knew that I felt the same, but I was fighting it. Fear had me fighting it.” He lets out a soft laugh. “You scare the motherfucking shit out of me, Lyla Summers.”
“You scare the motherfucking shit out of me, too, Tom Carter.” I give him an uneasy smile, baring myself to him again. “What I feel for you…I’ve never felt anything like it for anyone ever.”
A light turns off in his eyes, and he removes his hands from my face, leaving me with a cold sense of foreboding.
He sits forward. I follow him.
I let my feet fall to the floor, the hardwood cold against my skin.
“Ly…I want to be with you, and I hope…really hope”—he gives me a nervous look—“that you want to be with me, too—”
“I do,” I say quickly, cutting him off, afraid of where this might be going.
He tips his head to the side. His eyes meeting mine, he stares deep into them. The look in his greens makes my stomach sink.
“I’ve always been straight with you. Apart from the stuff about my family, I’ve never lied to you, and that won’t change now.”
My heart starts to beat hard in my chest.
“I can’t ask you to start something with me if you don’t know all the facts.”
My hands are shaking.
“After I left you that day…I made a mistake.”
A Heartbeat Later—Tom’s House, LA
No. No. No.
The room starts spinning. Shakily, I get to my feet. I edge around the coffee table, putting it between us.
“You’ve been with someone else,” I choke the words out.
He gets to his feet. “No. Yes.”
“Oh God.” I cover my face with my hands.
Suddenly, he’s here, his hands on mine, pulling them from my face. “This isn’t what you think. I didn’t—”
“It never fucking is with you!” I stagger back, shoving him away. “I’m sorry for you. Sorry for what happened to you, how you lost your family, but I can’t take this.” I’m edging away from him. “I can’t do this. I’m not stupid. I know who you are. I knew there was a big possibility that you slept with other women these last two weeks, but to know that you were with someone straight after you left me there on the sidewalk in front of my apartment…” I clutch a hand to the pain tearing open my stomach. “After what we’d done hours before…I let you have sex with me there…I let you—” I cut off, the memory of him moving inside that intimate, private place, now sullied by his confession.