LITMIR.BIZ

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got that stubborn, sulky look. “You sure as hell made me feel like I was.”

      Her first instinct was to lash out and deny the accusation. But Dillon was not the kind of man to admit to having feelings he didn’t really have. He was too damned proud.

      “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

      “It wasn’t always that way. After we got married, you changed.”

      Another denial sat on the tip of her tongue. Why was this so hard? Why was her gut reaction to go on the defensive?

      Instead, she asked, “How did I change?”

      He shrugged. “You were just…different.”

      Well, that wasn’t much help.

      She tried another angle. “What was I like before we got married?”

      He thought about it a second, and the hint of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Fun. You were a little repressed at first, but you were willing to try new things.”

      They did have fun. So much that she used to believe it was too good to be true. She wondered why a rich, handsome man was even remotely interested in someone as boring and plain as her. Dillon had brought her out of her shell. He’d made her feel good about herself. At least for a while.

      The next question was harder to ask, since she was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the answer. “And after? What was I like then?”

      “You were so…serious. All you did was study.”

      That was entirely unfair. Not everyone had the luxury of screwing around. “I didn’t have an eight-figure trust fund to fall back on and a ready-made job being handed to me. I needed to get my degree. And I had to maintain my GPA or I would lose my scholarship. Which, as you know, I eventually lost anyway.”

      “Because of my father,” he said.

      She nodded. He’d pulled a few strings and her full scholarship had mysteriously been revoked. She’d worked hard for that money. She’d busted her butt all through high school and graduated at the top of her class.

      With the snap of his fingers, Dillon’s father had snatched it away. To this day she wasn’t exactly sure why.

      Was it because she’d never been impressed by his money and power? Because she couldn’t be bought? Not for any price.

      May be he’d done it to put her in her place. To prove the power he held over her.

      To add insult to injury, no one would give her a student loan, not when she was married to a billionaire. She’d had to go to work full-time to cover her tuition and living expenses until the divorce was final, and Dillon’s father saw to it that it took a very long time. By then she was so far behind, she’d graduated two years later than she’d originally planned.

      “I didn’t find out what he’d done until it was too late,” Dillon said. “If I had known at the time I would have stopped him. Or at least I would have tried.”

      She’d convinced herself that he’d known all along and had let it happen, and she’d hated him for it. But the truth was, he’d never been vindictive. Just arrogant and misguided.

      And she believed him. If he could have stopped it, he would have.

      “Working harder for it just made me appreciate it more,” she told him, and it was the truth. It taught her to be independent and self-sufficient. She learned she was tough enough to handle just about anything.

      “I would have paid your tuition if you had only asked.”

      She knew that, too, but she’d been too proud to go looking for a handout. Too embarrassed to admit how badly she had screwed up. She had to do it on her own. As Miranda had said earlier, Ivy had a stubborn streak.

      “You didn’t even have to go to school,” he told her.

      “I would have taken care of you.”

      “I’m sure my dad said the same thing to my mom. Then he walked out the door. Besides, if I had quit school, we both would have been bored silly within a month.”

      “Probably,” he agreed.

      “So, I guess our marriage failed because I was a good student,” she said, half joking. He didn’t return her smile.

      “It wasn’t just that.”

      Oh, great, there was more? Was there anything she did right?

      “You sure you want to hear this?”

      She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. “No, but tell me anyway.”

      “After we got married you nagged me constantly.”

      Oh, ouch. That one really stung.

      Her mother’s nagging had driven her nuts. Had she really done the same thing to Dillon? “I nagged you?”

      “No matter what I did, it wasn’t good enough.”

      That wasn’t true. Although she did recall thinking that being married hadn’t been what she’d expected. In fact, it hadn’t been any different than when they’d been dating. Dillon hadn’t changed at all.

      May be that had been the problem. She’d been expecting him to change. To mature overnight.

      “I think I had certain expectations about being married,” she told him. “I thought we would settle down and get serious. Start acting like grown-ups. But things didn’t happen the way I planned. You were so…irresponsible. I think May be it scared me.”

      “I wasn’t ready to grow up,” he said. No apology, no excuses. Hadn’t that always been his M.O.? This is the way things are and if you don’t like it, tough cookies. But that wasn’t the way it worked.

      “Part of marriage is learning to compromise,” she reminded him.

      He opened his mouth to argue, she could see it in his eyes. That stubborn, I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong look. Then he caught himself.

      Jeez, were they both that stubborn?

      He sighed and rested his head back against the headboard. “You’re right. It is. I guess May be I felt as though you were asking me to be something I wasn’t.”

      “And the harder I pushed you to change, the more you rebelled and acted the complete opposite.”

      He nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

      “And the more you rebelled, the harder I nagged and pushed, making things even worse.”

      “Until we self-destructed.”

      “Exactly.”

      And there it was. Their entire relationship in a nutshell. It was a genuine “lightbulb” moment.

      Two stubborn people, neither willing to meet the other halfway. She had never considered the possibility that it wasn’t entirely his fault. It had never even crossed her mind.

      “All this time I’ve had myself convinced that it had to be either your fault or mine. But the truth is, we both screwed up. It’s both our faults, isn’t it?”

      “I guess so.”

      “We were young and stupid and had no clue what we were getting ourselves into.”

      He shook his head. “Well, damn. I guess I’m not as perfect as I thought I was.”

      Neither of them were.

      Knowing that, accepting it, seemed to lift the weight of the past ten years from her shoulders. She felt free.

      Until the meaning of it, the repercussions, dropped on her like a ten-ton block of solid steel. Then she just felt like she wanted to barf.

      She’d been basing her life’s work on her own experiences, her own failed marriage. All this time she held herself

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