The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 270

Forgiveness First 

LUCAS’S POV: 

Martin lived one hour or more from me. 

He opened the door and we looked at each other and neither of us said anything for a moment. Which was probably not the smoothest beginning to an important conversation but it was what happened and I was going to own it. 

“I owe you an apology,” I said. 

He blinked. “You owe me an apology.” 

“You kept something from me and that was wrong and I have dealt with that part already,” I said. “But I spent weeks deciding what kind of man you were without letting you tell me the full story. And the full story is that you made a promise to your dying best friend kept it and I called you a fool in my head approximately eight hundred times without knowing any of that. So yes. I owe you an apology.” 

Martin was very still. 

“Also,” I said, “I should have called you the next day and asked you to finish. I chose to protect myself instead and that was not fair to you.” 

“Lucas,” he said. 

“I am not done,” I said. “I love you. I was always going to love you through this once I understood it properly. The problem was that I did not let inyself understand it properly and that is partly on you and partly on me and both of us are going to have to accept that.” 

He looked at me for a long moment. 

“Are you asking for another chance?” he said. 

“I am asking you to forgive me first,” I said. “And then yes, another chance. In that order. Because the forgiveness matters more to me than the getting back together and I need you to know that.” 

Something reached him. I could see it in his face. 

“You are forgiven,” he said. “Before you even finished. Completely.” 

I exhaled. 

“I missed you,” I said. Because I needed to say it. “The whole time. Even when I was angry. It was a miserable few weeks and I missed you every fucking single day.” 

“I missed you too,” he said. “Every single day too. I kept picking up my phone to call you and putting it back down because I had not found the words yet and I did not want to say it badly again.” 

“You should have called anyway,” I said. “Said it badly. I would have listened.” 

“I know,” he said. “I know that now.” 

“Tell me about him,” I said. 

Martin looked at the photograph and then he talked but it was not about the illness but about James. Who he was and who he had been. The way he drove four hours every other weekend because Sam was worth four hours and would have been worth eight. The photographs he sent everyone with the caption of ‘look at my boy.’ 

“He sounds like someone worth knowing,” I said, when Martin stopped. 

“He was the best person I knew,” Martin said. “And Sam has his laugh. Exactly his laugh. Every time I hear it I cannot decide whether to be grateful or completely undone by it.” 

“Probably both,” I said. 

“Always both,” he said. 

We stood together in front of the photograph for a moment in the quiet of his apartment. 

Then I said the thing I had been working up to since the phone call. The thing that had been sitting in my chest the whole walk over and had been growing every minute since he started telling me about James. 

“Can I meet him?” I asked. “Sam. Can I come and meet him?” 

Martin went very still.