Tears ran down my cheeks.
“And you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
I took a breath.
“Why?”
He looked at me through his tears.
“Because I wanted the deal more than I wanted to admit what I was doing.”
There it was.
Not an excuse.
Not a story about being manipulated.
The truth.
I had wanted to hear it for months.
Now that I had, it hurt more than I expected.
Jared reached across the table.
“Can you forgive me?”
I looked at his hand.
The same hand I had once held while teaching him to cross the street.
The same hand that had signed documents treating me as an obstacle.
I wanted to tell him yes.
I wanted everything to be simple again.
But love wasn’t enough to erase the truth.
“I hope someday I can,” I said.
He nodded miserably.
“But forgiveness doesn’t mean things go back to the way they were.”
