“Thank you for saying that,” she said, “but I’m not even really talking about Patrick’s duplicity in this. Yes, it was both a devastating blow and a huge big beacon of illumination into what was really going on with my life. But it’s really my part in all of it that still throws me, still keeps me wondering about myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…here I was, with a man for over a decade, enjoying what I thought was a fully realized, healthy relationship. I absolutely assumed that we’d get married, have a family, but that we were both focused on achieving other goals, career-oriented ones, first. I had moved in, we were all but joined in holy matrimony in my mind…so I just sublimated the rest.”

“The rest of what?”

“The rest of what I wanted from us as a partnership, but wasn’t getting. I was constantly compromising my wants and needs for his, but he always made it seem like it was our idea, not just his idea. And I’m far, far from being an idiot or the kind of person who just blindly trusts and adores without any return of the same.”

“But?”

“But that’s exactly what I did. For a long time. A very long time. Why did I do that? It’s so not who I am, and yet I was totally that girl, that woman. And just now, what I said about not being obligated forever, and that making yourself happy should be a valid goal, too. It’s all about balance. You give; you get. I had no balance, yet I still felt obligated.”

“Why? What did he do that made you feel that way? Give you the job?”

“The job, his heart. Or so I thought. He was like this bright shining beacon of everything I wanted, everything I was working toward, and there he was, willing to shower me with all of my dreams come true, both personally and professionally. It was really pretty heady stuff for me. I couldn’t believe I was going to be that lucky.”

“But you were giving him something as well.”

“See, I guess that’s where I never quite really grasped that equity. I always felt I had to live up to it, earn it.”

“It being what, exactly?”

“Happiness. In my case, in my mind, that meant making Patrick happy, or making him love me. And that sounds so deeply pathetic. Like I didn’t think I was worth anything just by being myself. But I did. At least where the business part of it was.” She fell silent again, her thoughts clearly drifting inward.

“Just maybe not with the relationship part, huh?” he asked quietly.

She looked at him, and her eyes were stark again. “Yeah,” she said, her voice softer, a bit rougher. “Just maybe not with the relationship part.”

He stroked her hair a while longer, let her epiphany simmer a bit longer inside her head. Because he was pretty sure she already had most of this figured out long before this conversation. She’d felt duped, used, both in their private life and in their professional one. He couldn’t imagine the pain of that, coming from the most trusted person in her world. It had to have been the deepest blow imaginable. But Brett assumed she already figured out why she’d hung in there so long on a promise that was never delivered upon, the one of marriage and family.

That flash of pain, of sudden, stark awareness, had been some other link, some other connection, she’d finally made within herself. It made him want to know more. She’d said it made her think about who she’d been with Patrick and who she’d been before him. So, this went deeper into the past, he thought, to her childhood maybe. Something to do with the link the love of her adult life had to the love given to her in her childhood.

A pain that stark, a sadness that profound, had to reach pretty deep. He knew that part from personal experience. Experience he was no more excited to delve into and share than she probably was. It was enough that she’d gained a bit of insight, perhaps put a few more puzzle pieces of herself together. He’d thought about things like that a lot on his trek. Who he’d been, who he’d become, who and what were important to him. And what would truly make him happy.

He didn’t know how it would affect how she felt about him, but he was beginning to see the struggle she faced. Having loved a man for so long who, in reality, had never fully loved her back. Now getting herself involved with him, a man who, at best, didn’t even know what he wanted for himself, much less in a relationship with someone else.

It bothered him, more than a little, to realize that he was not, perhaps, someone she should invest herself in emotionally. He might not have had anything close to a traditional upbringing, and adulthood, thus far, certainly hadn’t changed that path. But he’d always known himself to be a good, honest, decent person, with a strong heart and solid dedication to those he loved. He had pride and integrity. He was a good man who felt worthy of giving and getting love.

So it was hard to accept that he might not be worthy of her. That, because of the kind of life he led, the uncertain future ahead, he could never be the right man for her.

More stunning still was the realization that, for the first time, outside family, he wanted to be the right man. There was a brief sensation of finally, and the relief of knowing for absolute certainty he did have that inside of him. He’d wondered. More than once. But there was no continued glory or joy in the discovery…because his finally was with Kirby.

Dammit.

She reached up and tapped his chin gently with the pad of her fingertip. “Now who’s lost in thought?”

His lips curved briefly, but for once he didn’t feel much like smiling.

She shifted a bit higher until his gaze met hers. “We’re quite a pair, you know.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I think we both have some stuff, in our past, that makes us a little misfit for traditional roles.”

“I don’t know why you’d say that about yourself. You’re running a place trying to make it a home away from home for other people.”

“Right,” she said softly, “because I haven’t figured out how to make one for myself. So this gives me one by proxy.”

It made his heart tight. “Kirby-”

“Don’t go feeling all sorry for me; that’s not what I meant. I just meant, we’ve both reached a certain age, we’ve both had our successes in life, but we’re both still trying to figure the rest out.”

“Maybe that’s what life is anyway. Trying to figure out what comes next. Life changes; goals change.”

“True. But I know some of the things I want. Or wanted, anyway. And I couldn’t get them.”

“So you make new goals.”

“I did.”

“But?”

She smiled, but there was a definite wistfulness in her eyes. “Life goes on, and you try and move along with it, but you realize that maybe the old goals are still the ones you wanted all along.” She slid up a bit farther until she could take his face in her hands. “Don’t look all worried on me. I’m not going to try and mold you to fit my dreams, okay? I know you’ve got your own things to work out.” She kissed him, and it was sweet and stirring and achingly poignant, all at the same time. “I’m not going to get in your way, okay?”

He pulled her the rest of the way up, then rolled so she was under him again. He kissed her, and there was nothing sweet or tender about it. She responded to him instantly. And his body, so recently sated, roared to life again. He didn’t know what he was doing, just that he was suddenly angry and scared and uncertain and he didn’t want to be any of those things. What he wanted was to be buried deep inside Kirby again, where everything felt intensely, perfectly right.

If she seemed surprised by his sudden ardor, by the ferocity in the way he took her, she didn’t show it. Instead she rose right to the occasion and matched him thrust for thrust. She was moaning and he was all but growling when he came. It was wrong, venting his fear like this, but she was there to take it, to accept it, to make it all seem so very, very right.