“For you. At that point, I didn’t care about me. All I cared about was you,” he huffed. “You know what my family is like. I wasn’t brought up to discuss my issues. Liam and I were taught to hide our pain, bury our hurt until we could handle it ourselves. I didn’t have the skills to communicate something on that scale. I didn’t know how! I didn’t. But I would have found a way eventually. I would have come clean. It sounds stupid now, but I didn’t want to cause you pain.”

“Oh, come off it. You weren’t going to tell me. You got caught. Even Everly had to step up and say the words. You didn’t do it to prevent me pain. You did it for your own selfish needs!”

“What have I got to lose by lying, Alexis?! I had already lost everything that ever meant a damn. I lost you. I’m not saying this to placate you. The worst already happened! I can’t come back from that.”

I rolled my eyes, which made him switch up fast. “What about you, huh?!”

“Me?!” I shrieked.

“Yes! You cut me out so thoroughly that over four years later, I’m still fucking recovering. Why didn’t you stay? Why didn’t you talk to me? Why didn’t you fight for me—”

“FOR WHAT, OWEN!?” I was on my feet then, standing over him, yelling in his face. Unwilling and totally unwanted, tears tracked down my cheeks as our shared history swept through me as if it were yesterday.

“You refused to talk to me for a whole fucking month! You have the audacity to ask that of me? How dare you!”

I concentrated on my breathing since I was near hyperventilating. My head was getting fuzzy. He had to hear me, listen to what I had to say as I unloaded the past four years onto him.

When I finally reestablished myself, I stared down into his sorrowful eyes and told him what his lies did to me.

“‘I’m pregnant… with your husband’s baby.’ Six words, Owen. Six. That’s all it took for my world to be absolutely decimated. The man I loved. The man who vowed to be by my side forever betrayed me in the worst possible way. Tell me the right way to handle that? Tell me how I should have stayed? How should I have talked to you? I may be a coward for running, but you don’t understand, Owen. I was just trying to survive. That’s all I was trying to do.”

Owen remained sitting as he grabbed onto my waist, his distraught face mirroring mine. I ripped at the middle of my chest, that familiar ache I hadn’t felt in years coming back in full force.