How To Mend A Broken Heart
Page 16
Fletch picked up her hand from her lap and pressed a kiss to the back of it. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t just stop loving you because you were done with me, Tess, but we went to bed each night and there was this great divide between us that I just couldn’t breach, no matter how I tried.’
Tess nodded, swallowing a lump that had risen to her throat. She’d been so inside herself she hadn’t realised just how much he’d been suffering too.
‘But I want us back together, Tess.’ He raised her chin so they were looking into each other’s eyes. ‘I think you still love me and I don’t want to live any more of my life without you in it.’
Tess nodded. He was right. She did still love him. She didn’t need a clanging of gongs or a light bulb over her head to know it. It hummed quietly in every cell, as it always had. She just hadn’t been listening.
And the truth was their marriage hadn’t ended because they’d fallen out of love—it had ended because they’d given up on that love when everything else had got too hard.
‘I do, Fletch. I do love you.’ She sniffed and wiped at yet another tear. ‘But do you really think we deserve a second shot when we screwed it up so badly the first time? Do you think we can truly be happy?’
Fletch cradled her face, pushing his long fingers into her hair. ‘Yes, Tess, yes. Everyone deserves a second chance. I’m not pretending that the road ahead is going to be all roses and sunshine. We need counselling, Tess, both together and separately. We have a decade’s worth of guilt and grief that needs to be talked about and I imagine that’s going to be pretty harrowing at times. I know you’ve never wanted to talk about this before but we can’t go on like that again. We have to do it differently this time round.’
Tess could see the love and determination mingling in his silvery-green gaze. ‘I don’t want to walk around with this stuff inside me any more, Fletch. I’m so tired of carrying it around.’
Fletch leaned in and brushed his mouth against hers. Finally he felt that everything was going to be all right.
Tess pulled back from his kiss, a swell of emotion blooming in her chest. He looked warm and solid and calm and she needed him more than ever. ‘I love you,’ she murmured.
Fletch smiled. ‘Then the rest will come,’ he whispered, claiming her mouth once again.
And for the first time in a decade Tess looked forward to the future.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781459238893
HOW TO MEND A BROKEN HEART
First North American Publication 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Alison Ahearn
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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