“I know. I can’t imagine how hard that was for you, coming on the heels of . . . losing Jeremy.” Her voice broke, and she dug around in her pocket for a tissue.

“It was hard, Kimberly. Too hard.”

She swiped at her nose. “What do you mean?”

“I made a very bad mistake.” He hung his head, summoned up every ounce of his courage, and spoke. “I’d never felt that alone in my life. At my lowest point, when all hope for you seemed lost, I met someone who was willing to offer . . . comfort.”

As she processed his comment, shock flattened her features and she sucked in a sharp breath. “You had an affair.” The numb words were barely there. A mere whisper.

A cloak of misery settled over him, as suffocating as quicksand. “I didn’t think of it in those terms. I didn’t think, period. I just wanted someone to hold me, to let me vent, to help me wade through the darkness. I never thought you were coming back to me.”

She eased her hand free of his, and his heart stumbled. It was what he’d expected, but the sudden loss of contact was as if someone had flipped his internal thermostat from heat to deep freeze.

“Are you still seeing her?”

“No!” Sweet heaven, how could she think that after his tender care during her recovery? “I only saw her five times. While I was with her, all I could think of was you. I wanted to be back at the hospital, willing you to live despite the grim picture the doctors painted. I realized that sitting by your bed, holding your hand, gave me more comfort than being with her. I never loved her, Kimberly. Never.”

“I don’t know . . . what to say, Dave.” Her expression had gone from shocked to shattered.

“I don’t expect you to say anything. I have no excuse for what I did. I knew it was wrong from the beginning, but I wasn’t strong enough to deal with losing you while I was also grieving for Jeremy. Yet being with her didn’t fill the empty place in my life. Only you could do that, even in a coma. Even if you couldn’t communicate. Even if you were slipping away.”

“After all these years . . . why are you telling me this now?” She searched his face, her shimmering eyes filled with hurt and bewilderment.

“Because there’s more to the story.”

Wrapping his fingers around the edge of the seat, he told her the rest. All of it.

By the time he ended, with his decision to talk to the sheriff, she was trembling and as pale as the moonflowers she planted every summer that wove through the trellis in the backyard.

But he didn’t take her hand or pull her close. With his shameful secrets exposed at last, she would no longer welcome comfort from him or find it easier to fall asleep with him by her side.