Page 42 of Never Stay Gone

She set down her coffee cup and braced herself against the counter. “I thought there might have been a chance that you’d fight for us.”

The world was starting to spin around him. He gripped the back of a chair. “You don’t want this either, Shell. I know you’re texting other men.”

Shelly’s eyes flashed, and she glared across the kitchen at him. “You’re going through my phone?”

“I didn’t have to. The messages were right on your screen. I saw them when you left your phone at Manuel’s.”

Shelly’s expression tightened. “I have never cheated on you.”

“Well. I appreciate that.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Ilovedyou. Don’t you get that?”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what to do other than apologize. Always apologizing, always fucking up.Don’t—“You’re right, though. You deserve a guy who is madly in love with you. I’m… I’m not that guy. I’m sorry, Shell.”

“Youwere, I thought—” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Why did we put five years into this? What were we holding on for?”

You better marry that Shelly Atchinson.Darkness swirled on the edges of Shane’s world, trying to pull him down. “I tried,” he breathed. “I did try.”

Shelly buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. “What happened to us?”

It’s not you.His lips clamped shut. He struggled for breath, and he grasped the chair so he wouldn’t fall to the floor. His knee was buckling, his thigh was shaking, and this was the second person that day who was telling him they loved him and that he’d failed them. He’d failed Dakota, and he’d failed Shelly.

He’d failed his father.

He’d failed at everything in his whole life.

Failure son.Don’t—

“I think we need to break up,” Shane whispered.

“No shit,” Shelly snapped. “Were the suitcases in the driveway your first clue, Deputy?”

Shane flinched.

“Sorry.” Shelly turned back to the sink, one hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m… I’m not okay right now.”

“I know,” he said softly. “That’s my fault.”

She shook her head but didn’t reply. Silence settled between them.

“I don’t know if there’s anything left to say,” Shane finally said. “I don’t love you the way you deserve. You’re not happy. I don’t make you happy. Ican’tmake you happy—”

“Why can’t you?” Shelly whispered. “We loved each other once. What happened to that?”

He stared at the ground again. “I can’t love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

She studied him, peering all the way through him. “Shane… Are you—”

“Don’t, Shell.” He gripped the chair back so hard the wood groaned, nearly splintered. “Don’t.Please.”

She had this knack, sometimes—she could cut right down to the emotional heart of something, bypass everything except the core truth of it. Terror raced through him, turning his guts liquid, and he closed his eyes. He and Shelly could stand here arguing about the past five years, the little slights and hurts and missteps they’d both taken on their slide toward the end. Or Shelly could put together what Shane was fumbling around and that bottle of Viagra and all the nights he hadn’t reached for her in the dark, and she could ask him, “Are you—”

Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.

“Then I think you need to leave,” Shelly said. “We’re over, right?”

She wasn’t wearing her ring. He couldn’t remember when she last had. He nodded. “Yeah.” He blew out a breath, his vision going blurry. “Shell—”