Turn Back Time (The Full Circle Series Book 1) Annette Anders (shoe dog free ebook TXT) 📖

the door and the windows, the longest distance in the room. He rubbed the back of his head and neck again and stared at the carpet.

Like a caged animal. A few steps in one direction, a few back…

“Did you feel imprisoned? Did I take away your freedom?” Stella stared at him. Had she sabotaged their relationship without knowing it?

“No! You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing.” He stopped in front of a window and looked outside.

His voice was almost impossible to hear when he said, “I was afraid one day soon you’d realize I was not enough for you. It happened to me once, and I couldn’t bear to go through it again. Especially not with you.”

Her head snapped up. “What are you saying?”

He turned around. His dark, soulful eyes were glittering with unshed tears. He walked to the sofa, sat down, and rubbed his hands over his thighs.

She wanted to comfort him but stayed where she was. Whatever was going on here, he needed to be the one to work his way through it and then explain.

“Adrienne and I met in 2009. We were the leads in a theater production in Chicago. It wasn’t quite as big as Broadway, but got lots of attention, and we had a good run. We started to spend time together offstage, and one thing led to another until we had somehow transitioned from hanging out to dating.”

Stella imagined hundreds of scenarios in her many sleepless nights, but not once had it occurred to her that she’d hear him refer to another woman. She knew he’d been in a few relationships, but he had always said they were casual. She was torn between getting up and leaving and staying to hear what else he had to say. Why had he never told her about this?

“I went on my first touring show in the fall of 2010, Adrienne to a stage production in New York. You know how difficult it can be to get together in person, and it’s never for more than a few days, a week at the most.” He looked at her and winced. “In the spring of 2011, I heard the first rumors about her being seen in compromising situations with the lead of her new show. When I asked her, she waved it off as gossip. But I kept hearing more stories, all very similar to the first one.”

He sipped some water, then took a deep breath. “Each time, she tried to explain it as friends-meeting-for-dinner or so-and-so-is-going-through-a-rough-time. I wanted to believe her, but then she started to accuse me of never being there for her. She told me she needed the physical side of a relationship as much as the intellectual side. I felt guilty, but I didn’t know how to change the situation. Did she expect me to drop everything so she could have more attention and her daily fix in the bedroom? When I learned from a friend of mine that she blamed me for forcing her into having affairs, I couldn’t take it anymore. I flew to New York and broke off with her.”

He regrouped before he continued, “We had agreed to keep our relationship out of the spotlight, but later I learned she had no qualms about throwing my name around to get her special privileges, like admittance to clubs and dinner parties.”

David looked at Stella and said, “I realized too late how good she was at blaming everyone but herself. She threw at me that I should’ve asked her to travel with me, should’ve gotten her roles in my shows, knowing perfectly well that I couldn’t do it. But later I wondered if there was some truth in what she said, even though I’d done the best I could.”

“Did you love her?” She wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear, but she had to know how important this woman had been to him.

“I had strong feelings for her, or I wouldn’t have been in the relationship, but I wasn’t in love.”

He got up and crouched in front of her, reaching for her hands and rubbing them between his.

“You are everything I’ve ever wanted, from the moment I saw you in the park, with your nose buried in your oversized purse. Those six weeks in Philly were some of the happiest of my life. In the two years we dated, I could hardly wait to see you again, to spend time with you. And having your support when I went to Hamburg meant so much to me.

“But when I accepted the job in Budapest, I honestly didn’t know how much longer I’d stay in Europe. All of a sudden, I began to see couples and young families everywhere, and I thought of you, thousands of miles away.

“You never gave me one single reason to think you were unhappy. But I began to worry. How would you be able to build a family with me, if I was always somewhere else? And it wouldn’t have been fair to ask you to travel with me, knowing how much you love Philadelphia and how important your friends are to you.

“I began to ask myself what I had to offer you. I loved you so much, and I was afraid I couldn’t give you everything you deserved. Afraid you’d grow tired of waiting for me. I was scared I wasn’t enough for you, and I’d lose you.”

“Are you crazy? I loved you with all my heart.” Stella couldn’t hold back her tears.

He reached for her hands. “For one stupid moment I thought if I let you go, it wouldn’t hurt as much because I was the one to cut the strings.”

“What about my pain?” she whispered and pulled her hands free and rubbed her forehead.

“We had agreed to talk about our future after your stint in Germany. But then you just dropped me like a rotten egg. And not even in person. You wrote a shitty letter!” Her voice rose at the last five words.

She remembered how she found his