“I know I did.” She lowered her gaze and gave him the full view of her long, full eyelashes. There was a time when that view would have sent him into paroxysms of desire; there was a time when he could have spent the better part of a morning on one of those eyelids.

Then she lifted her gaze. “I know I did, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Anthony. I was too hard on you. I should have supported you. I never should have . . .”

She paused. Did she really not know how to complete the sentence? “You never should have slept with Glen Manning,” he offered.

She colored briefly; that delicate, porcelain skin had always been her tell. He could almost see her internal struggle through her skin, behind the lavender veins that showed under the surface of her wrists, along the temples. “You’re right,” she said finally. “You’re exactly right. I never should have. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I hadn’t thrown away what we had, Anthony, for . . .”

“For an arrogant asshole?”

She let a small sigh escape. “Yes. For an arrogant asshole. But more than that, I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”

For so long he’d waited to hear her say those words. And now that she had, the funniest thing happened. He didn’t need to hear them anymore.

“I wish you hadn’t too, Cassie, but the fact is, you did hurt me. Not only that stuff with Glen Manning, which was pretty terrible in its own right. But what’s worse is the fact that you gave up on me. When all that shit with Simon’s Rock went down. You gave up on me, and you stopped loving me.”

She shook her head fiercely. “I didn’t stop loving you.”

“You stopped showing it.”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I guess I did do that. But I won’t again, Anthony. I won’t again. You’ll see.”

He felt not the vindication that he was expecting to feel. He felt only a great sadness, a tightening in his chest. The realization hit him like a wrecking ball, like a stream of cold water pointed straight at his forehead. Anthony and Cassie were not perfect in any sense of the word, either of them, but each of them was better apart than they were together.

Cassie had been the most beautiful bride, her hair in those flower-woven braids, her simple dress that accentuated the utter gloriousness of her skin. He’d felt so lucky to be walking down the aisle with her at the end of the ceremony. (What aisle? his mother would have said. I just saw cedar chips.)

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Cassie.”

“You’re not going to come back?” Her voice cracked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Even for Max?”

He thought about Joy. She’d shown him that a certain kind of connection was possible—was as necessary to his happiness as food and air. He had never loved Cassie the way he loved Joy; he’d been drawn in by the shiny gossamer fabric that covered her, and then he’d been too caught up in his own problems to notice when it tore.