“That was Kelly,” he replied.
“I figured as much. What did she say that’s got you so upset?”
He pulled in a deep breath and plunged forward. “She and Colin are talking about moving to Michigan to be closer to her mother.” Just saying the words out loud was like a rusty knife in his gut.
“And she’s talking about taking Tyler with her,” she concluded with that observant mind of hers.
Brody nodded while staring down at the floor. “I can’t let her take him.” He glanced at Elisa. “I won’t.”
“Of course you don’t want him to go. He’s your son.” Elisa leaned forward and placed a hand on his bare thigh. “Have you talked to Kelly about this? I’m sure if she knew how this was tearing you up, she’d never go through with it.”
“Oh, but she would. And she knows exactly how I feel.”
“You have to be able to work something out with her. I can’t believe she’d just take your son out of state without you agreeing to it.”
The sheet had fallen to Elisa’s waist, and her breasts hung heavy and free of any restraints. He had to hold himself back from cupping them in his hands. “Kelly is obviously a different person with you than she is with me.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “But I appreciate your optimism.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. Not a ravenous, I-want-you-in-bed-now kiss, but a sweet, slow one. One that said I love you, demons and all. No matter how hard you’re trying to, I won’t be scared away.
Yes, he had been trying to scare her away. Because he figured, in the end, he’d screw this relationship as badly as he’d screwed up his marriage. But Elisa proved to be a lot stronger than he’d given her credit for. So far she hadn’t given up on him or any potential future they could have together. Didn’t he at least owe her a little honesty?
Brody reveled in Elisa’s kiss for as long as she let him. Her lips were so tender and pliant, like she’d been born to kiss. He pressed her to the bed and stretched his body along hers, loving the feel of her naked flesh against his. She ran her hands over his shoulders, which were bunched tight with the tension that hummed through his body.
After several minutes of slow, deep kisses, Brody lifted his head and caressed his thumb over her cheek. “You told me you wanted to know everything. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
Little worry lines appeared between her eyebrows, then smoothed out. “Yes.”
He rolled off her, even though what he really wanted to do was slide inside her and forget everything. But if there was any chance of them having some kind of meaningful relationship, she needed to know everything. Elisa propped herself onto her side and watched him, waiting for him to speak.
“I wasn’t a good husband,” Brody started, keeping his gaze fixed to the ceiling. He didn’t want to see the disappointment in Elisa’s eyes when she heard what he had to say.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Brody—”
“Don’t try to defend me, Elisa.” He cast her a look. “Don’t make me out to be better than I am. Right now I need you to listen.” She nodded, and he pressed on. “Things weren’t always bad between us. In the beginning they were good.” When he first met Kelly, he’d been taken with her. She had a way of making him laugh and turning even the most serious moments into something silly. Basically she found a way to take his stress away. For a while he’d relied on that.
“I think part of the problem was that Kelly and I never had a dating period. We rarely had time alone. Most couples have that time when they can get a feel for each other and figure out how their relationship is going to work. I’d only known Kelly for about six weeks when she told me she was pregnant.” He folded one arm behind his head and tried to ignore Elisa’s wildflower scent. “To make a complicated story short, we moved in together so I could take care of her the way I needed to.”
The pure joy and excitement in Kelly’s eyes was still something that haunted him. He’d rushed into the living arrangement, knowing it was what she wanted, but also knowing it wasn’t what he wanted. He’d told himself he’d been gallant, basically sacrificing his own happiness for the sake of his child. What a delusion that had been.
“You didn’t want to live with her,” Elisa guessed.
Go ahead. It’s okay to admit it now. “No. I think I thought with enough time, I could really love Kelly. And I eventually did start to have loving feelings for her. But I always knew that she loved me a lot more than I loved her.” He let out a humorless laugh. “I’m such a bastard.”
“No, you’re not, Brody.”
“Yeah, I am. I led Kelly to believe that I returned her feelings. All along I knew there was a good chance that I never would. Then I talked her into quitting school, telling myself that I was doing the right thing by being able to take better care of them.”
“How would her quitting school allow you to do that?”
He ignored the censure in her voice. “There wasn’t a whole lot of job opportunity where we went to school, and I couldn’t provide for a wife and a baby on minimum wage from the university’s bookstore.”
“So you came back here and went to work for your father?”
“Eventually. Kelly was about to drop Tyler when we moved here. I knew she didn’t want to live in Wyoming. But we desperately needed health insurance, and I needed a good-paying job. My father provided that for us, and I needed to do it in order to provide a good life for Kelly and Tyler.”
“But what about the degree you got from school?” Elisa asked. “Couldn’t you have taken that and gotten a good job somewhere where the two of you wanted to live together?”
“I could have, yeah. But the job market is so damn competitive. Who knows how long it would have taken. I needed something right away, and it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Elisa scooted closer to him, her warmth surrounding him with a comfort he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“So why are you beating yourself up over that? Sounds like moving here was your only option.”
“It was. But I still felt bad making Kelly live somewhere she didn’t want to live.”
“You did what had to be done. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
He heaved a sigh. “I told you not to make me out to be a hero.”
She touched his cheek lightly and turned his face toward hers. “I never said you were a hero, Brody. Only human.”
That was for damn sure. He’d been a weak, stupid human being who’d continually given Kelly false hopes when she’d deserved so much better.
Elisa gazed down at him with so much compassion, so much understanding as though she felt his agony. It was all he could do not to grab her, bury his head in her sweet hair, and never let her go. She gave him hope. She made him feel like he was capable of being the man he once was. And she was going to leave him.
Then, without thinking, he blurted out the words he’d held in for four and a half years. “I slept with someone else. While Kelly and I were living apart.”
Elisa’s face froze with the exception of her eyebrows, which twitched.
“I was pissed off at the world,” he continued like the idiot he was. “Pissed off at Kelly and pissed off at myself. I’d slipped into this weird depression and didn’t know what to do with myself. My only thoughts had been for Tyler and how I was losing him.” A tight fist closed around his heart and forced a lump into his throat. He hadn’t cried over his separation from Tyler in such a long time. He hadn’t allowed himself that indulgence, hadn’t allowed himself to feel much of anything.
Within a matter of moments, he felt like he’d stepped back in time. Back to those lonely days in Noah’s guest house, eating shitty TV dinners and watching useless infomercials in the middle of the night because sleep had abandoned him. In the mornings, he’d be gritty-eyed and brain-dead. Then he’d slump over on the couch and cry like a fucking baby because he’d single-handedly ripped his family apart. Tyler had lost his stable home because his father had been thinking with his dick when a beautiful woman had paid attention to him. Shit, he couldn’t even remember the woman’s name, or what she looked like for that matter.