COLE CAUGHT UP to her after the boat was back on shore and Emily was already striding up the hill. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Back inside.” Where she belonged. Where she wouldn’t have to think about that little rise of hope she’d had a few minutes ago when Cole had offered to throw his phone away—and answered it instead. She should have known better. He was doing what he’d always done—making promises that would dissolve as soon as they got back to real life.
“I thought we were talking.”
She spun around. “I am tired of talking, Cole. We’ve done nothing but that for years. And where did it get us? Nowhere but divorced.”
“We’re not divorced yet, Emily. There’s still—”
“I don’t want to hear one more second about how there’s still a chance. How many times did I say that to you? How many times did I try to make this work? Try to change our lives? And what did you do?” She cursed under her breath and shook her head, hating the pain in her chest, the tears burning the back of her eyes. God, why did this hurt so much? When would Cole stop having a hold on her heart? She wanted to scream at him, to tell him to stop putting her through this emotional roller coaster. The same one she’d ridden so many times in the past ten years, she could predict the next loop. There’d be a high, a wonderful honeymoon period of flowers and dinners out, followed on its heels by the plummeting lows of Cole’s absence, an empty house and an empty bed. “You made a bunch of promises and then went to work. Which is what you’re going to do this time, too, Cole. I know you. That is the curse of being married to you for so long. I know what you’re going to do, and I keep coming back even though I know it’s going to hurt.”
“The company—”
“Was always number one. And I was somewhere in distant second place.” She refused to cry. To let that hurt any more than it already had. But it did, oh, how it seared against her heart, the truth a branding iron that left a jagged scar.
Silence stretched between them for a long moment. “I never meant for that to happen.”
“Yet it did, Cole. Do you know how many times I hoped and prayed and believed, and then you’d break my heart again?” She pressed a hand to her chest and forced herself to take a breath, to be strong, to sever this connection once and for all. “I can’t do that anymore. I don’t have it in me to go through that pain one more time. Not one more time.”
Emily had finally reached her breaking point. Maybe it was the baby, maybe it was being here at the inn, where she had first learned to believe in happy endings. Maybe it was that damned hope that had sprung up inside her when Cole arrived here, and when he stayed, and when he held his phone over the lake.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I’m done with this insanity, Cole.”
The statement exited her with a measure of frustration and relief.
Done.
All this time, she’d never used the word done. She’d always believed there was a chance, but when he’d answered his phone on the lake, she’d known the truth. He was always going to go back to the way he was, and she was always going to be the one in second place.
“I’m done, Cole,” she said again, softer this time.
“What if I’m not? What if I want to keep fighting for us?”
She shook her head, and braced her heart against the hope trying to worm its way back in there. “Where was all that six years ago, Cole? Or hell, six months ago? Now you show up, when it’s over, when we’re a few pieces of paper away from divorced, and you want me to believe you?”
“I have tried, too, Emily. I have tried to connect with you, tried to make this work. It’s not just about the company taking too much of my time. You...” He shook his head. “You stopped giving time.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. He was right. There’d been dinners she had turned down, lunch dates she had skipped out on, late-night talks she had avoided. Cole would come and go in bursts of trying to fix them, then burying himself in work, and after a while, she learned to maintain her distance rather than trust. “It was too risky.”
“Because when it didn’t work out, you got hurt. Yeah, well, you weren’t the only one.”
In those vulnerable words, Emily heard pain, frustration, loss. An echo of what brimmed in her. They’d hurt each other, time and time again. The only thing to do, the only smart course to take, was to end this and stop the hurt, on both sides.
She nodded. “Cole, I can’t do this anymore. I mean it. I’m—” she stopped before she said she was pregnant, and trying to conserve her energy, her heart, for the baby “—done.”
Maybe if she said it enough, she would stick to that resolve. And Cole would believe her.
He eyed her, then, after a moment, nodded and let out a gust. “Then I guess my being here is a waste of my time.”
A waste of his time. That hurt. What did she expect? That he would keep fighting and fighting for their marriage, showing her finally that he was committed? Yeah, maybe she had. And now, after just a few days, Cole was giving up.
“Maybe it is,” she said, though the words hurt her throat and cost her something deep inside. She told herself it was better this way, better to let go now than to keep hoping. Sweet Pea needed a dad to depend on, not one who came and went like the wind.
* * *
The next day, Emily fiddled with her book for a couple hours but didn’t get much accomplished. The words that had flowed so easily earlier now refused to come. Probably because her mind was filled with images of Cole.
She was done, she reminded herself. Done, done, done.
He’d surprised her last night, not just with the excursion on the lake, but with the impromptu proposal. How she’d wanted to say yes, to believe that the Cole she’d seen in the past few days, the relaxed, easy man who had fallen asleep in the sun, would be the one she’d wake up next to tomorrow and every day after that.
But he wasn’t, nor did he want the same future she did. Ending it now would save her a lot of heartache down the road. Even if it felt the opposite in the light of day.
Emily gave up on writing, tugged on a thick sweatshirt, then headed outside. There was a nip in the air, a definite sign that the pretty fall days were coming to an end.
That meant she also had to start thinking about where she was going to go. She couldn’t stay here forever, though a part of her finally felt grounded here in this tiny town in Massachusetts, more familiar than the neighborhood where she’d lived with Cole for all those years. Maybe she’d rent a little house in town, settle down here and build a life with Sweet Pea. It would be a simple, uncomplicated life.
Yet the thought also saddened her. Cole didn’t want children, and once they were divorced, she doubted he’d have much to do with their baby. After their cooking fun in the kitchen, she’d hoped that maybe things would be different, but it was clear the same walls stood between them now as always. With Cole, the company came first, and family came in a distant second, if at all. She’d be raising this child on her own, and in the end, Cole would be the loser.
Cole’s rental wasn’t in the drive, but Martin Johnson’s van was, which explained why Carol had been busy fixing her hair when Emily told her she was going for a walk. Emily smiled. The inn owner was a nice woman and deserved a man who would treat her well.
“Hey, Emily,” Joe said when she stepped outside. He had a window propped on a sawhorse, removing the old glaze in order to fix a broken pane. “Cole went into town for some supplies. He