Page 32 of Perdition (Unchained Hearts #4)

“Fuck her! She’s full of shit, Em—” He reached for her, but she moved away, something she’d never done in all their years together, and the shock of that made Frost stumble back, as though he’d been hit by an iron fist. “Emily,” he rasped, “you know me, you know the man I am, the man I have been since the very beginning. I have only ever loved you, only ever touched you. Sarah is a liar—and I don’t know why she’s doing all this! ”

“Maybe because you made her think that you and she had a chance, that there would be something between you two if only I wasn’t in the way.”

Frost reached for her again, his hand stalling midair, uncertainty and anguish on his weary face.

“I didn’t mean for any of that, baby. I know I did some shitty things, and I am so fucking sorry that I let things get this bad between us, that I let her get in between us—but I never meant for any of this to happen.”

God, the desperate sincerity in his voice and the pleading in his eyes tore at something inside her she was equally as desperate to hold in place.

Because what if she let him back in and nothing had changed? Sure, Sarah might get the boot, but what about the next young pretty thing that bats her eyelashes and feeds his need for relevance or pricks his need to protect and provide?

“Sarah means nothing to me, and what she did…fuck…makes me sick, Em.” He cursed, the sound sharp. “She had no fucking right to pull any of the shit she’s been pulling.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you told her she was too young too settle down, and that she’d get stuck. She probably thought you were angling to be the one she settled with.”

Frost snarled, flashing his canines. “I only said that because she’s an immature bitch who’d make a terrible girlfriend. She doesn’t have it in her to commit to anyone, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by straight out saying she wasn’t girlfriend material.”

Em huffed, hating how that made sense.

“What about you agreeing when she said you had options?”

Frost pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed. “I didn’t agree, I didn’t say anything. I made the appropriate noise in the hopes that she would move the fuck on.”

Hell, Vicki and Stephie had been right.

Her husband was an idiot.

“I never meant to hurt you, Em. I never meant for anything to happen, especially with Sarah.”

She furrowed her brows at his words, suddenly wondering what else Sarah had been pulling that Em didn’t know about.

Trouble at the clubhouse?

She really should ask Stephie and Cilla; those two ladies were the most in the know about what was going on with the Unchained club gossip.

That should be you! You should be there, in the know, not thinking like an outsider you’ve made yourself to be.

Nope. She wasn’t going there. Not now.

“I am well aware that you didn’t mean for anything to happen, Frost. My issue is that the only reason Sarah had the balls to approach me like that, to get in my face like that, was because you were complacent.

You let her believe that what she was saying was gospel truth, that she could call me out, talk to me like that, and you wouldn’t do jack about it because I was on my way out, she was on her way in, and you were just being nice, not having kicked me to the curb yet.

She came at me like she did because she felt like she had you at her back. ”

Emily swiped at her tears, her movements rough.

“And do you know why she felt like that? Like she had the fucking right?”

“Em—”

“Because you gave her things that belong to me without a single consideration to me. Those conversations at the bar where you just chatting, laughing, and unloading your day? Those were mine—and I was at home or on the other end of the phone waiting for you to just start the conversation. Those deep chats in your office where you unburdened yourself of your worries, where you dipped into your bourbon stash to sip and savor, and just unwind? Those were mine, too. And I was desperate for you to share with me so I could share with you—I would have given anything for my husband to come and lift some of my worries off my shoulders! But he didn’t because he had someone else to carry his burdens, so he didn’t bother with coming to free me from mine.

And…God—” her voice cracked. “Those afternoons…beneath that red maple…in our spot….” She was shaking now, her body vibrating with the strain of attempting to hold the last bits of herself together.

Frost made the sound of a wounded animal, rushing toward her, his arms outstretched, his face a grievous mask of anguish.

Good. He was hurting, too.

“Sarah knew I was replaceable because you took something that was just mine, just ours, and you gave it to her. She knew the significance of that spot, because it wasn’t a secret in the club.

I know those brothers talk like old ladies at a quilting bee, it wouldn’t have taken long before she heard all about the prez and his old lady’s special place out by the pond.

And she wanted that, too. She wouldn’t have been satisfied with your time and attention, no, she wanted your memories, too.

To replace me in those memories until you didn’t think of me at all—I’d just be this hazy silhouette of someone you once knew, like a ghost, unseen, a foggy memory, easily dissipated and then forgotten.

And when she finally got behind your walls, under your guards, beneath your skin, and inside your head, it only took a single suggestion to get you to give up that last piece of what should have been held sacred between us. Mads loves Em forever.”

He sucked in a breath at those words, at that memory of the night he carved those words into the bark of the red maple.

“And that is why that tree is gone. That is why that space is empty, what we planted together pulled out to the tip of its roots—because the sacred become profane, the beauty became ugly, what we both once cherished became worthless.”