He was waiting for her when she came walking up the block to her apartment building. She saw him before he saw her, and she slowed her pace, watching the way his shoulders slumped as he leaned over, elbows on his knees. He looked tired, defeated, not at all the man who stood up at the White House with complete confidence that he was the right man for the job.

And she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d done that to him.

She was midway up the block when he turned and looked at her, and if she’d had a camera, she would have taken a picture to remember that brief instant when his eyes landed on her and he looked at her like he used to, like she was his world. It sent sparks through her chest and tingles down her arms.

“You seem to keep finding your way to my front steps,” she said, stopping and looking at him with suspicion.

He stood, towering over her, and she couldn’t control how her body seemed to sway toward him.

“I’m sorry for storming out of here like I did.” He paused, seeming to search for the right words. “I need to ask you something. I’m hoping you’ll let me.”

“Okay,” she said simply, mostly because she couldn’t deny him anything, even if she’d wanted to.

They went inside, each of them seemingly lost in their own thoughts, and once they’d sat down in the living room, he looked at her for a moment.

“I need to know,” he said, his deep voice low and rough. “And I guess it doesn’t matter now, and I should have left it all behind me years ago, but I didn’t—for some reason I can’t. I need to know what they said to you. What argument did they use that convinced you to leave me?”

Her breath caught, and she physically had to hold herself back because all she wanted to do was run—far and fast—to avoid the humiliation of revisiting that moment in her life. But he was here now, with such sorrow in his voice and such despair in his eyes, and she had to let it all out. Finally put the last of the ugliness on display so they could both move on.

“They started the campaign a few months before the end of that school year. Asking lots of questions about how we were going to live, where we’d live. And I began to notice that they seemed so unimpressed that you were going to Yale Law, they kept focusing on what I’d be doing—who would I be friends with? Which school would I transfer to? And bit by bit, I realized that they were working up to telling me that they weren’t going to pay for my tuition once we moved to Connecticut.”

Teague shook his head in consternation. “So it was the money?”

“No!” Her answer was sharp and fast. “You think I would have left you for their money?” Her stomach hurt, and she could feel her face flush.

He just watched her.

“I made it clear sometime in April that we didn’t need their money. I knew between the two of us and student loans, we’d be fine. But next there were questions about your family—remarks about your mother not having a college education, about who your father had been. When that didn’t work, they finally hit me the one place they knew would really hurt. They talked about what would happen to our children. My mom had all these stories about mixed-race kids, all the bullying and prejudice they faced. She kept it up, Teague, week after week. She’d call, email, leave me messages, and every time, she’d slip in something she’d heard about another little child who’d been mistreated because they were part black.”

“Jesus,” he said, his face twisting in disgust.

“You know how I felt—feel—about kids. I’ve always wanted them. I used to dream about what our children would look like—your eyes, beautiful mocha skin, my hair.” She sighed, because even now she could picture them—perfect little mixtures of her and Teague.

“So they convinced you that our children would suffer? Be miserable because society would never accept them?”

She nodded. And now, listening to him say it, it sounded…well, ridiculous. This wasn’t the 1950s. America was full of people of all races and combinations. Her children with Teague would have been among millions of Americans who were a mixture of the world’s people.

“Jesus, they’re vicious.”

She nodded her head vigorously. “They were, but I was a fool, Teague. I knew better, and I folded like a deck chair.”

His hands clenched, and his jaw was tight. “You were twenty years old. Barely more than a kid yourself. They used your tender heart against you, Dee.”

She sighed, not knowing what else she could say.

“Thank you for telling me the truth. It helps to finally understand what happened.”

“It doesn’t make it okay. No matter how young and softhearted I was.”

“Probably not,” he said, standing and looking down with eyes that searched hers for answers she didn’t have. “But it helps. And it gives me some closure that I think I’ve needed for a long time.”

“Good,” she choked out. “I want you to be able to put it behind you. I want you to be happy.”

“I’m trying,” he answered; then he gave her a sad smile and walked out the door. And most likely out of her life.