Читать книгу Marriage Made In Monte Calanetti - Susan Meier - Страница 15

The pain on Mic’s face seeped into Lily’s soul. She’d known it would hurt him if she admitted the truth, but tonight she saw it was unfair to make him live with a lie that also hurt him.

“I’m sorry.”

He straightened to his full six-foot-four height. “It’s fine.”

But it wasn’t fine. She could see it on his face.

“Why don’t you go home for the night? I’ll clean up after this customer.”

“No. I’ll stay. It’s my job.”

“No.” His eyes met hers. “It is my job. And I do my jobs. I always do my jobs.”

Tears flooded her eyes at the humiliation in his voice. “Please, Mic. That’s exactly my point. You would have taken your responsibilities seriously. And you would have lost your dream.”

“So you felt it was better to take the decision out of my hands?”

His righteous indignation finally got the better of her. “Oh, please. You were in the situation every bit as much as I was. You knew I was responsible for my sister. You knew I was still grieving my parents’ deaths. You knew I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, yet when I said no to your proposal you never argued. I said, ‘I don’t love you’, and you left. You never asked why. You didn’t remember my passion for you. You didn’t think that maybe my troubles might have put me in a bad emotional state. You simply got hurt and left.”

He gaped at her. “You’re pinning this on me?”

She rose from her bar stool. Her chin lifted. “Maybe I am.”

“Well, that’s convenient.”

“Maybe.” A horrible chill enveloped her. The memory of how he’d left raced through her brain. The feeling of abandonment. The knowledge that he hadn’t thought enough of her to even question what she’d said. The memory of the sweeping fear when she realized she was alone and responsible for her ten-year-old sister. “Think back, Mic. You never fought for me. You never fought for what we had.”

“You know, you like to remember your emotional state, but what about mine? I was moving to a city I didn’t know. Alone.”

“Oh, so you only asked me to marry you for company?”

He cursed. “You’re confusing everything.”

“No. Maybe for the first time the truth is coming out.” And it was killing her. All these years, she wouldn’t let herself examine their situation too closely because the pain of losing him had been suffocating. But now she finally saw the truth.

She hadn’t simply lost Mic. She’d proven to both of them that he hadn’t really loved her.

She slid off the bar stool. “I’ve got to go.”

“That’s right. Leave when things get too difficult.”

She shook her head. “No. That’s what you do.”