If anything, they seemed angrier at her parents than me, and I agreed with them. I wanted to lash out at her mom and dad for what they did, too. Yes, they had hurt me, but fuck, they had allowed me to hurt her in every way possible. I would never forgive them for that.
But I didn’t know what to do next.
Did I want to be with her? That was the big question. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t know if I would ever get that opportunity. I didn’t deserve Myra. I never had. And when I turned my back on her so easily, I had proven that I didn’t deserve her. It didn’t matter that I felt I had a reason given the evidence I had seen. I should have talked to her about it. Instead, I pushed her away. Now, I needed to deal with the consequences.
A penance we had been paying in our own ways for years.
I pulled into my garage, got Daisy out, and took the food into the house. I let my puppy do her business in the yard and then fed her before heating my leftovers.
I pulled out a beer and sighed, wondering what my life would have been like had Myra still been in it. I honestly didn’t want to think too hard about that, though. Because if I did, I knew it would only depress me more.
My doorbell rang, and I frowned, noticing the time. It wasn’t too late, but I figured my family would’ve messaged before they headed over.
I looked at my phone, saw that no one had texted or called, and went to the door. Myra stood on the other side of it. I swallowed hard and looked at the woman I had once loved, a person I didn’t know anymore.
“Hey,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I told the girls. We need to talk.”
I moved out of the way and let my ex-wife into my house, shutting the door behind us.
We did need to talk.
Only I was afraid of what we’d say.
Chapter 10
Myra
I had been in Nate’s home before, but now I had a chance to look at everything closer, even if I was distracted. The place was so…Nathan. Or at least the guy I had grown to know over the past year, layered on top of the boy I’d once known. Every room had a large, comfortable chair. There were places to sit and mingle, and areas to read. Nathan had always loved reading. There was a large TV, the same kind that most men seemed to have, but a lot of the furniture was turned towards it in the family area, and there appeared to be another room to sit and talk and perhaps read a book. It looked wonderful, as if it were inviting me to sit down and enjoy.
But I didn’t think I could.
“Myra.” Nate brought me out of my thoughts. I looked up at him then, peered into his kind eyes, even filled with worry, and felt as if no time had passed. Yet decades stretched between us.
“I was just admiring your home,” I said after a moment.
“Oh.” He frowned. “You’ve been here before, at least with the others. But I never really showed you around. You want to see?” he asked.
If it would delay the inevitable questions and the possible fight, perhaps I should say yes.
I nodded, and he looked surprised for a moment before holding out his hand. I looked at it, and he swallowed hard before letting his arm drop.
“I’d love to see your home. I mean, I walked through here, but I was really only in the backyard for the barbecue.”
“That’s right. And you probably went right by here and through the kitchen to the deck. I have a whole other set of rooms. Speaking of, I need to go check on somebody. It’s been a little too quiet.”
I frowned and then followed him as he jogged towards an office area, where Daisy was currently chewing on a blanket.
“Daisy, what did I say about blankets?”
He went down on his haunches and held out his hand. “Drop it.” Daisy froze and blinked up at me, not paying attention to Nate.
“No, me. Drop it, Daisy.” She dropped the blanket and then padded over to him, looking as proud as punch as she licked his face.
“Good girl.” He laughed. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and cuddled her close. Something inside me twinged a little bit. He was way too damn sexy with that puppy in his arms. And I needed to stop having those kinds of thoughts.
“Daisy, meet Myra. Myra, this is Daisy.”
“Hello.” I held out my hand. The puppy sniffed it, licked it, and then gave me a little doggy smile. “Oh, she’s too cute.”
“And she knows it. I’m going to put her in her octagon for a bit because she’s been a little rambunctious, and I don’t want her running through the house breaking things while I show you around and we talk.”
“Are you sure you have to?” I asked, hating that he had to put her in time-out because I was here.
“We are in training, and she’s still learning her boundaries. Both of us are. Macon left a list.”
I laughed at the thought of his vet brother laying out directives. “He would know best.”
“So he tells me. Often,” he said dryly. He set the puppy behind a white gate in the shape of an octagon, and I looked around at all her toys neatly put away except for a few for her to chew on. She had a bed, water, and a blanket inside the crate.
“It looks like she has everything she needs.”
“And probably more. She’s my first, so I’ve been really bad about spoiling her. Plus, she has enough aunts and uncles who give her things. It gets a little insane. But she’ll have enough toys to chew through for the next year—or four.” He let out a breath, sounding as nervous as I felt. There was comfort in that, even though I knew the inevitable was coming. “Anyway, upstairs is the guest bath, a couple of bedrooms. My master bedroom is on the other side of the house.”
“It’s a beautiful home, Nathan.”
He jolted, and I cursed myself. I had been so good about not calling him by his full first name recently, and yet I had done it to my friends, and now to his face. He didn’t like it when I did, because it reminded him of before. And I didn’t like it that the word sounded so familiar and was so comfortable on my tongue. I didn’t need that reminder.
I met his gaze, trying to find some sense of normalcy in a situation that was anything but ordinary. “I truly love your home. It’s very you. It has all kinds of places to read, and lots of photos of your family.”
Nathan put his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I work from home, so I do my best to make sure I have places that are for work and those for reading. Sometimes they blend, but I do my best to keep them separate. The photos and things are all Arden’s doing.”
“Oh?”
“After the accident, we realized that my home wasn’t very homey. It was pretty much a place for me to sleep after long hours at work. So, when I bought this place after the settlement, Arden made sure it was a home, rather than just a place to rest my head.”
“I’m so sorry you were hurt.”
He swallowed hard. “And I’m sorry I hurt you.”
I let out a shuddering breath and looked down at my hands. “I don’t know what to do with this. What are we supposed to do?”
“Come into the living room. Let’s talk.”
“You’re right. We do need to talk.”
I followed him to the living room, wondering how I was supposed to speak when he was so close. That had always been my problem. He filled my brain with this white noise that reminded me of the past. When we were younger, that same thrum had filled me, though it had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with him. I had fallen hard, and far too fast. And there had been no going back. And now, we were in completely different stages of our lives. What were we supposed to do?