Chapter 23 Casey stopped in the kitchen before he left for work Monday morning. "Any plans today?" The spoon I'd reached for to stir my coffee slipped out of my hand. I couldn't bear to lie to him, so instead I asked, "Didn't you say you have something after work today?" "Yeah. A staff meeting. They'll be providing dinner. So I'll be home late. You girls eat without me." "Okay. Sounds good. I'll make something for Rosie and me that I know you don't like." I smiled. "Have a good day." He narrowed his eyes. "You okay?" God, he's always so perceptive. "Yeah." I forced a smile. "Of course." He stared at me a few moments before his mouth slowly spread into a smile. "Okay." And trusting. Casey poured his coffee into a travel mug and grabbed the backpack he always took to work. He bent to kiss Rosie on the head. "See you later, baby girl." "Bye, Daddy." Her sweet little voice was like a knife through my heart. Casey came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "Bye, babe." "Bye. Have a good day." The moment the door shut behind him, I exhaled. Today had to be the last time. I needed to figure out whatever unresolved stuff I had going on with Dorian and move on. Not only was it making me incapable of focusing on anything else, but keeping it from Casey was wearing on me. I got Rosie ready for school, and before I knew it, we were headed down the road as my heart pitter-pattered in anticipation for what lay ahead. When we got to the preschool, I gave my daughter an extra-tight hug, a silent apology. It felt like I had a scarlet letter A on my chest. By the time I pulled up at Dorian's rental home, I was certain I'd let him know that today would be the last time I could meet him. But the moment he opened the door to greet me, and I looked into his eyes, I knew I couldn't let him go back to California that easily. Today couldn't possibly be the last time I'd ever see his face. Dorian flashed a hesitant smile. "Thank you for coming back." "Hi," I said as I stepped inside the warm house. I looked around. "Where's Benjamin?" "He went out to explore. He wanted to give us some privacy." I nodded, unsure how I felt about that. It might've felt less dangerous if Benjamin were here. It wasn't that I didn't trust myself. Of course I'd never cheat on Casey. But I didn't trust my feelings, and the more distractions the better. The smell of cinnamon registered. "Did you make something?" I asked. "I made an apple crisp." He flashed a crooked grin. I couldn't help but smile. "You didn't have to do that." "Well, I'm like Benjamin that way, I guess. I cook when I'm stressed. Or in my case, bake, since it's all I know how to do well. Needless to say, I've made a lot of apple crisps over the past five years. I tend not to burn them like everything else." "Why are you stressed today?" I followed him into the kitchen. "Or should I say, which of the many reasons you have to be stressed is topping the list?" "Just the unknown," he answered. "There's a lot you and I still need to catch up on." He gestured toward the kitchen table. "Sit. I'll get you a piece." Dorian headed over to the stove and prepared me a slice of his dessert. As he handed it to me, his hand brushed against mine, making me all too aware of my unwavering physical attraction to him. A wave of nostalgia came over me as I thought back to a much simpler time when he'd first made me apple crisp. I remembered the giddy excitement of that night and also felt sad for that smitten girl who had no idea of the heartbreak to come. "You fell into a trance just now," Dorian said as he sat across from me. "What's on your mind?" "Just thinking back to the good old days at the mansion." "Those months with you were the best of my life, Primrose." Rather than reciprocate that sentiment, I looked down at my plate and cut into the apple crisp with my fork, grateful for an excuse to look away from him. All my eyes wanted to do, however, was explore his face, every beautiful angle that I'd missed so much. "Can I get you some coffee? Water?" he asked. "No. I'm good," I said with my mouth full. "This is great. Thank you." "You're welcome." He smiled as he watched me chew. We ate in silence for a bit until he finally put his fork down. "I know we don't have that much time. So I'd like to ask you some questions, if that's okay?" Moving my plate aside, I licked the corner of my mouth and cleared my throat. "Okay." Dorian took a deep breath. "Will you tell me more about your relationship with Casey?" I swallowed. "What do you want to know?" "I want to know how he turned out to be someone you didn't end things with out of fear, like all the other guys before him, except me. Is it more than just your daughter? Or is she the main reason you've stayed with him?" He definitely wasn't wasting time. These were questions I didn't have clear answers to, questions I'd been battling internally for some time, especially with the impending wedding. How was I supposed to admit things to Dorian I hadn't been able to admit to myself? Suddenly feeling a bit reckless, I decided to be as honest as possible. "I can't say whether he and I would still be together if I hadn't gotten pregnant. But I've never felt stuck with him. If I were unhappy, I wouldn't have stayed. At the same time, I no longer have anxiety over getting hurt because the worst has already happened to me. In a weird way, you broke the pattern. After you left, it wasn't possible for anyone to break me any more-I was already broken. And I guess losing that fear allowed me to stop sabotaging things." Dorian lowered his gaze to the table. "Wow." He scratched his chin. "That's very interesting." He exhaled and stared up at the ceiling for several seconds before he looked at me again. "You alluded to the fact that you're not unhappy, but I don't understand what that means. Not unhappy. Not being in a state of unhappiness isn't exactly a state of joy." Fidgeting a bit, I felt myself getting flustered. "What are you needing to hear from me? I gave you my honest answer, even if it's not black and white." "I guess what I need to hear in order to leave Ohio in peace...is that you're truly happy. So happy that you don't have regrets about anything, and nothing I could ever say or do would change that. But I need you to mean it and not just say it to get me to leave because you're scared." He'd hit the nail on the head. It would've been much easier to downplay my feelings for him in order to get him to leave. But was that what I wanted? After a moment, he crossed his arms. "This situation is hard for me, Primrose. Because I don't even know what my goal is. I don't want to break up a family. But I've never stopped loving you. I need you to at least know that so that whatever you do with your life, you make an informed decision. I can't help how I feel, how I've felt this entire time. There wasn't one day when I wasn't in love with you. Not one day when I didn't hope that by some miracle I could find my way back to you and have another chance. But..." He paused. "When I found out you had a child with Casey, I realized I had to be prepared to lose you forever. I debated for a long time whether I should even come to you. But ultimately, I knew I couldn't live with myself if I didn't tell you the truth. I'm sorry if my decision has turned your life upside down." I shook my head. "I don't fault you for coming. There's no reason to apologize." Dorian let out a frustrated breath. "Fuck, Rosebud. I just need the truth." He looked around. "No one else is here. It's just you and me. Nothing you say to me right now will ever leave this room. I want to know what's going on in your head and how you were doing before you knew I was here. Rewind to last week before I showed up. Pretend I'm a fly on the wall. Tell me what your life is really like." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Please." The look of pain in his eyes gave me no choice but radical honesty. "My life...is that I've pretty much dived headfirst into being a mother. It makes it easier not to deal with the things I haven't wanted to." "Like?" "Like the fact that things aren't perfect in my relationship. I love him, but it's different from what you and I had." Dorian tilted his head. "Different in what way?" "Less passionate. But I trust what I have with him more than I've trusted anything. My feelings for Casey have grown authentically and gradually over time. So has my trust. Sometimes things that grow fast end just as fast." Dorian nodded. "You believed that I'd abandoned you. So safety was what you were looking for. I understand." "Yes, of course." "Why have you waited so long to get married?" "I wasn't sure marriage was really necessary." "But you ultimately decided it was?" "I ultimately decided it would be best for my daughter if her parents were married." "What about what's best for you?" "I had no plans to leave him, so I figured there was no reason to keep putting it off." I cringed. Had no plans? I needed to be more careful with my word choice. "But you're not sure you want to be married?" "I'm not a hundred-percent sure it's the right decision." I swallowed. "But that could also just be fear of failure. A marriage can't fail if it never happens." Dorian searched my eyes. "Would you have said yes if I'd asked you to marry me before things changed with us?" I'd been so hopelessly in love with Dorian that I would've said yes in a heartbeat. Yet, I responded with, "The answer to that question is complex." "How so?" "Because while I would've said yes to you, I'm not sure that matters. I'm older now, more mature, and don't think it's a good idea for someone to agree to marry that fast. So, in retrospect it wouldn't have been wise to say yes, even if that's what the person I was back then would've done." He kept nodding and looked like he wanted to say something. "What?" I asked. "I want to give you advice, but I also recognize that I'm biased. I don't want to steer you in the wrong direction to suit my own needs. Even so, I think you need to hear this." I straightened in my seat. "What advice do you want to give me?" "Making a decision out of fear won't ever suit you. Doing anything but following your heart will catch up with you eventually." "What if my heart isn't sure of the right thing?" "The right thing is irrelevant. The heart always knows what it wants, wrong or right." His stare burned into mine. "What do you want in your heart of hearts, if hurting others wasn't a factor?" Adrenaline rushed through me. Because any answer besides "you" would be a lie. But I didn't feel right admitting the truth. I felt myself shutting down. "I can't come here again." His brows drew in. "Okay...but why? Because you don't want to or because you feel like you shouldn't?" "I don't want to lie to Casey when he asks how my day was. I'm not a liar. It's not in my nature." "So why can't you tell him the truth? We're not doing anything except talking." "It would still hurt him." My voice shook. "I don't want to hurt him." "Why would he be hurt if I'm not a threat to your relationship?" My mind didn't want to go there at all, so my walls just grew taller. When I stopped answering him, Dorian posed the question a bit differently. "If what you want is to go back to the way things were before I showed up, what does he have to worry about?" He paused. "Then you just explain that an ex-boyfriend came back to town to clear his conscience over something that happened in the past. Any man who's confident in his relationship shouldn't have a problem with that." Maybe I was underestimating what Casey could handle. Or maybe I didn't trust myself, didn't trust that my feelings for Dorian were a thing of the past. They sure as hell felt very much like a thing of the present. Rather than address Dorian's very fair question, I turned the tables on him. "What is your next move here? How long are you planning on staying in Ohio?" "I'm staying until you tell me to leave," he said matter-of-factly. "I told you that." "Don't you have a life to get back to?" "I have a lot of things I could be getting back to." He shook his head. "But none of them is more important than you." Oh my. If I'd thought coming here today was going to resolve my feelings, I was sorely mistaken. All I felt right now was sheer turmoil. "I'm sorry. I'm not handling this well," I said, feeling my eyes water. "Who said you needed to handle this any certain way? There's no playbook for this situation. It's fucked up. I know that." My voice cracked. "When you're not right in front of me, it's easier to go on with my life. But when you're right here...everything feels so familiar. There are moments when I feel like my old self. I thought she didn't exist anymore. But I feel her when I'm with you," I confessed. "At the same time, I don't know how that girl fits into my life now." "When was the last time you created art-not for kids or for hire, but for you?" "A long time," I murmured. "That makes me sad." I shrugged. "I'll find my way back to it. This is a season of my life where it's been more important to focus on my daughter. I don't regret that." Dorian nodded. "I'm proud of you." He let out a long breath. "I wish I could just let you go, Primrose. Not come here. It would've made your life easier. But I can't give up hope until you tell me there's none left." "And if I say there will never be hope for us... You go back to California and what?" "I try to move on. My life has been on hold for too long. I need to figure out a new normal." "What do you want out of life now?" He shrugged. "I want to be happy. I would like to have a family, but not with the wrong person. I'm not sure how I move on with someone else if I'm still in love with you, but maybe I do what you're doing." "What I'm doing?" I blinked. "Yeah. Go through the motions. Have a kid. Devote my life to them so I don't need to feel anything else that's missing." His words were like a knife to my heart. Because they were true. Dorian tilted his head to look at me. "That is what you're doing, isn't it? You're not fulfilled in your relationship." "I didn't say that." "You didn't have to." The tension grew thick between us. After several seconds of quiet, Dorian stood. "Let's move to the living room. We'll be more comfortable." Grateful for the momentary reprieve, I followed him and took a seat next to the blazing fire. The heat was no match for the intensity I felt in Dorian's presence today, though. In a romance-themed observation show, several participants undergo a series of interactions and conflicts filled with love, misunderstandings, and power struggles. In the end, one couple rises to over...