"Charles, I'm back now. We won't be apart again," Janice pleaded, her voice trembling. "Let me spend a lifetime making it up to you—and to Trista. Please…"
Tears the size of pearls slipped from her eyes, landing softly on the back of his hand. The heat of her sorrow scalded his skin, tugging at every corner of his restraint.
Her tears had always been his undoing.
No matter how calm and rational he tried to be, Charles realized he still had no defense against her. In this chase called love, he had always been the one who lost—again and again, bleeding from wounds too deep to see.
With a sharp breath, he pulled his hand away.
He forced himself not to cave, not to be that same man who would so easily forgive her. Love, no matter how deep, needed boundaries. Everything else—her temper, her stubbornness, even her blindness—he could accept. But not this.
Not the fact that she left him behind.
