“No, you don’t,” I said, exasperated.

“You don’t get it,” he hissed, leaning in closer. His jaw worked under his skin. “I have never been so afraid as I was when driving back to Estes from your apartment. I’ve never felt so lost as I did in the hallway outside Thomas’s door, waiting for him to get home. I thought I would feel better when he got there. I didn’t. I thought Tommy could tell me something that would make sense of how I felt and my fears, but he couldn’t. That feeling has only gotten worse, Falyn. Not until I saw you standing in that lobby did I realize what it was.”

I waited. The agony in his eyes made me want to look away.

“It was grief, Falyn. I haven’t felt it since I was a kid, but I remember that helpless feeling when you lose someone. No matter how much you love someone, you can’t bring them back. No matter how much you scream or drink or beg or pray … a hole was created when they left. It burns and rots you from the inside out until you stop crying for the pain to stop and start accepting it as the way life will be.”

I sucked in a breath, horrified.

“I’m not saying I don’t deserve to be left. But I’ll do anything if you’ll just give me a chance to prove myself to you. Thomas said something to me in Eakins about not sleeping with someone to dull the pain. It’s no excuse, but it was a mistake, and I’ll learn from it.”

I listened to his words and then replayed them in my mind. “I have conditions,” I blurted out.

“Name them,” he said without hesitation.

“You have to get tested.”

“Already scheduled.”

“I need time. I can’t pretend that nothing happened.”

“Understandable.”

“I’ll need patience from you if and when I have a moment of jealousy and when it takes me a little bit to remember that it was me who set this all in motion and that it’s mostly my fault.”

Taylor spoke his words slowly, each one emphasized, “This is not your fault. We both fucked up. We both regret it.”

“That’s about the only thing I know right now,” I said.

“No. You know we love each other. And because of that, I know things will get better.”

When I nodded, Taylor sat back in his seat, only a bit more relaxed than before. Either he didn’t believe his own words, or he thought I didn’t. He slid his fingers between mine, and we waited in another awkward silence until our flight was called.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I can’t do this.”