Confessions from the Quilting Circle Maisey Yates (ebook reader 8 inch .txt) 📖

felt like that question had deeper implications, and she did her best not to do that. Not to make more out of this than need be. Because she really didn’t need to make anything out of it at all.

“Taylor isn’t here,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “She just left the garage. She walked home.”

“Oh. I figured... I just figured maybe that was why you were here.”

“No. I came to see you.”

“Why?”

He paused, for just a second. And she felt like that meant he either had no idea why he’d come to see her, or he did, and he didn’t want to say it.

“Well, last time we talked, we didn’t actually talk. And I kind of found that I preferred fighting with you to just exchanging pleasantries.”

“Is a fight required?”

“No.”

“That’s good.”

He stepped inside, the door closing firmly behind him, and she felt like the place had gotten two times smaller. He looked at her, his gaze assessing. And her heart rate increased twofold. Great. She was not doing a good job of remembering what she had decided about him.

She felt churned up still, about the whole thing with Keira. She had been going through a list of what ifs in her head, and trying not to. But it was there, in the back of her mind. Because what if.

You know you can’t do that. It just makes you insane. You can’t go back. You can’t change what is.

No. She couldn’t, but he was standing in front of her right now, and that felt like something. Even if it shouldn’t.

“Are you okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You just look... You don’t look okay.”

“How would you know? We haven’t spent significant time together in over sixteen years.”

“But we spent a lot of time together before that. And I remember.” He got closer to her, and she took a step back, but she hit the bar, and it stopped her progress. And he kept on coming. He smelled good. Or maybe he didn’t. But she interpreted it as good. Because it was him. And yeah, maybe a lot of years had passed, but she still recognized that. She still recognized him.

She ached then. Because she had loved him in so many ways. Because knowing him, caring for him, had made her and broken her several times over.

But he was still Ben. And when she looked at him she felt...all those things. Heartbreak and caring and trust. And right now, it was that trust she needed.

“Avery’s husband has been hitting her.”

He straightened up. “What?”

“It’s been going on for a while, and she didn’t want anyone to know. We just got her moved out. It’s been... Awful.”

“Hell. Does she need anything? Does anyone need to go handle that bastard husband of hers?”

“While I’m sure my dad would lead the angry mob, the police are involved. She went to the police.” Her heart squeezed tight. Avery’s humiliation had been clear, the fact that it wasn’t a pure victory for her hitting Lark in a way that reality never had before. She was risking her life, but in ways that she had never considered. Her livelihood. The way people saw her in the community.

“I’m just sorry,” he said.

“Me too.”

He moved to her, and her heart jumped. Her breathing became labored.

“Ben...”

“I thought about us. I did. Maybe I was a bad husband, Lark, because I wondered if I did the right thing. I wondered if I should have married her. I thought about what it would have been like if I would’ve chosen you. If I would have gone after you. I thought about you... I thought about that night. And you know when I would think back on what it was like to be young, and to not be burdened by how heavy life is, I thought about you. I thought about your smile. Thought about the way you... The way you saw things. You were so enthusiastic about everything. About the world. You wanted things. You dreamed about things. You didn’t just look around you and see the way things are and accept them. You think about how you could make it more beautiful. I remember... I remember when we were like... Fourteen. And you thought it would be the best idea to take sidewalk chalk into town and color the squares in front of all of the businesses, and Mrs. Wilson got mad at you and said it was basically graffiti. And I remember you were so mad after, and you were lying underneath that ivy canopy at your grandfather’s house and talking about how you were being persecuted for your art. And I just... I remember so many things like that.”

He reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and she shivered.

It was the first time Ben Thompson had touched her in sixteen years. And she felt even more now than she had been.

“What else do you remember?” she whispered.

Because she wanted to hear it. He had memories of the girl she’d been before. The girl who had never been hurt. And she wanted to hear him say them out loud.

“That for a year when you were eleven you wore a gymnastics outfit everywhere.”

“No.”

“You did. And you never took gymnastics.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It was silver, if I remember right.”

“No. I want more flattering memories about how I was fighting the establishment with nothing but my creativity and chalk.”

“Okay, how about the time you protested the dress code at school by having a visible bra strap day.”

“Dress codes are a tool of the patriarchy, Benjamin.”

“That’s what you said then.”

“I stand by it.”

“You were unexpected. You always were. I went for the expected. I regretted it.”

“Keira was fun.”

“I know,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m not rewriting this, I promise. It would be easy to do that. But I’m not. I just wanted you to know that I wondered if it should’ve been you.”

“You can’t rearrange life. You can’t... You don’t get a do-over.”

“I know. You can’t do anything over. I’m well aware. But we’re both