I didn’t see Archer once over the next week, didn’t even attempt to speak to him. It was a fight with myself every minute of every day to not reach out, but I had to get used to life without him in it.

I kept myself busy by focusing on my art program. In addition to running my classes, I was starting to do all the things necessary to transition the program over to a new director. I held interviews and chose two different local artists to run the program together. One would be in charge of the children’s and teens’ program, and the other would be in charge of the new adult program that would be starting in the next month.

The first gallery show fundraiser for the program was also scheduled for the month after I was going back to Santa Barbara, so I remained in charge of planning and hosting, but the new director shadowed me to ensure the transition when I left was as seamless as possible for future shows.

I was grateful for the chaos during the week Dan returned. I was struggling with letting go of my program and having to say goodbye to the students I had come to know and love. My only solace was I’d already started making plans to start up a chapter in Santa Barbara.

The crazy amount of work also helped keep my mind off of Archer and my upcoming reunion with Dan. We had discussed staying in the house for six weeks after he came home to give me the time needed to tie up all the loose ends with the program as well as time to train the incoming instructors and program director.

MarisCorp was understanding and great about the extra time we needed in the house. Dan had hinted that Liam Maris wanted to potentially contract him for another project planned for the following year, but it was all he had said about it.

Dan was due back in two days, so I was just curled up on the sofa watching an old black-and-white movie I had never seen before to pass the time. I was zoning in and out, barely paying attention, struggling to stay awake. I must have drifted off.

“I’ve missed you, baby,” a voice whispered in my ear. I jolted awake, jumping up and screaming before I saw it was Dan.

I threw my arms around his neck, holding him tightly. Dread flooded my stomach as I realized his embrace didn’t feel familiar. He didn’t smell familiar.

This was the first time he had returned from a project where I didn’t recognize him in the bone-deep way I used to. He didn’t feel like home. Tears pooled in my eyes, falling over and tracking down my cheeks. Dan pulled away and reached out to wipe them away.

“What’s wrong, Ros? You aren’t supposed to cry at my return,” he joked, but something in his voice sounded… off, not right.

“I don’t know. You’ve been away for what feels like forever. Everything just feels strange.”

It was probably the closest to the truth I would be able to get with him. I dropped back down on the sofa, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. Dan recognized my attempt to protect myself.

He pushed the armchair in front of where I was sitting on the sofa and sat down. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, and clasped his hands together. We just sat there, staring at each other.

I looked at him closely, seeing the tension in his neck and shoulders, how rigidly he held them. He had more wrinkles than I remember and had a little more silver at his temples than he had before the start of this project. The exhaustion was written all over his face. I couldn’t imagine how bad the stress was on this assignment if the effects of it were manifesting themselves physically so quickly.

I looked into his eyes and saw more strain, worry, and an emotion that looked a lot like guilt or regret. We both knew we needed to talk, but neither of us wanted to be the first to start. Hell, maybe we didn’t know how to start after all the distance between us.

“You know, Ros, I thought you’d be happier to see me, more excited to go back home to Santa Barbara. You don’t even seem excited to see me at all.” He was being defensive, which was so out of character for him, and it instantly threw up a red flag.

“Dan, I’m excited to see you. Not as excited about going back to Santa Barbara. You just woke me up too. You know how I am when I’m woken up out of a dead sleep.”

“We haven’t seen each other in months, Ros. I get that it’s late, but this is all you can muster?” The anger in his words smacked me awake. I couldn’t understand how something so small had escalated within him so quickly.

“I don’t know, babe, we’re going to have an adjustment period. We always do after you get back from a project. You know we have a lot to talk about when it comes to us and what our marriage is going to be like, moving forward. I just don’t think this conversation should happen tonight.”

He swore and shook his head before lacing his fingers behind his head. “This was not what I expected to come home to. I expected a warm welcome, like I usually get. Why are you so distant? So cold? Are you pissed at me about how this all panned out?”

I saw red and the rage exploded out of me. “Are you fucking kidding me, Dan? Do you want to have this conversation right now? It’s two in the damn morning. Nothing good will come of us having this conversation tonight. And fuck yeah, I’m a little distant. None of this went as planned. I get that work was a shit show, but you stopped communicating with me, Dan. Fuck!”

He got up and started pacing. His tension and nervous energy ramped up with every step he took. He must have crossed the living room four or five times before he stopped dead in his tracks and turned back to me, giving me a strange look filled with contemplation and something darker and more troubling.

“You’ve changed, you know?” We both knew it was more of a statement than an actual question. “I don’t know when it started, but you’ve changed while I’ve been gone,” he continued.

I still couldn’t tell by the tone of his voice if he considered this a positive or negative thing. Then I considered the fact he had been AWOL for so long he wouldn’t even recognize if I had changed. It didn’t alter the fact that he was right.

“Yeah, I guess I have changed. But you know what, you’ve changed too. What happened, Dan?”

He shook his head in response, but said nothing.

“There’s been a difference in your voice the last couple of times we talked, Dan. I brushed it off, figured I was just being paranoid. But now you walk in here, and the negative, nervous energy is coming off you in waves. I can see something is wrong. What the hell is it? Why do I sense guilt or regret or remorse just as much as I can see the stress?”

I looked up at him in time to see him take a step back and bend over to grip the back of the chair in front of him. It looked like someone had punched him in the gut. He walked back over to the armchair and fell into it. He looked so broken, so different from the Dan I last saw.

“I’m so sorry, Ros. I fucked up.”

He dropped his head into his hands, gripping his hair and refusing to make eye contact. It hit me then that this was bad. Whatever he was going to say would be so much worse than I was ready for.

“The project was fucked up from the start. I shouldn’t have been surprised when Maris transferred the project to the facility on his private island, I should have anticipated it, but it blindsided me. I was lonely and bitter. We were working crazy hours, sometimes working three days before going back to our quarters to sleep.”

“But—”

“No, Ros. Just let me get this out. It was just the four of us, and we got really close. I mean, how could you not get close when these are the only people you’re seeing or talking to all day, every day for months? We would all spend what little downtime we had together as well, as a group. Kelly and I got close. We’re really similar, almost like she’s me in a woman’s body. She sort of became my best friend. The more we worked together, the closer I got to the team and Kelly, the easier it became to handle the distance between you and me. Then it became easier to just not call. Fuck, I’m sorry, Ros, I really am. I did everything wrong here.”

He looked up at me, eyes rimmed in red, stricken. I couldn’t miss the fear written all over him. He was pleading with me to listen, to understand, to forgive with this look. I waited him out in silence so absolute I could hear the rain falling outside. I knew more was coming.

“One night we were hanging out, just the two of us. We would do that occasionally, usually just bitching about the project and watching movies. Well, the night was going as usual, but we fell asleep on the couch. I woke up to her lying on me. I went to stand up, to put distance between us, when she leaned in and kissed me. I… I let her do it. I kissed her back for a few seconds. And then for a few more. Soon I forgot why we shouldn’t be kissing at all.” He stopped there, avoiding my stunned gaze and refusing to say more.

I inhaled sharply and tried to take a deep breath but my chest seized and tightened painfully. My lungs, my chest constricted and then I was suffocating, being crushed under the weight of all the words Dan hadn’t said. I was dying in the lines he was expecting me to read between.

I’d heard people talk about how a broken heart could be physically painful, how you could feel it viscerally, each valve crushing or ripping apart, making you feel like death would come after the torture of feeling every soft, vulnerable part of you shatter into pieces. I’d never believed that. I’d always thought it was just an exaggeration, a way to analogize the emotional pain of losing something that meant everything to you.

In the moments I was left to leap to the conclusion Dan hadn’t drawn for me, I knew that I’d been wrong all along. How foolish I had been to think a broken heart couldn’t be felt physically, especially considering what it had felt like when my mother had been ripped from my life.

“What. The fuck. Happened, Dan?” The words were like sandpaper against my vocal cords as I forced them out of my throat with all the willpower I had in me.

“Fuck, I’m so fucking sorry, Ros. I never planned it, I never wanted it to happen, and I regretted it the minute it did. God, please, believe me, Ros, please forgive me. I had us work triple time and arranged to bring in a couple of extra people from the company to help finish this project on an accelerated timeline. I knew I needed to get back to you as soon as possible. I knew what was going on with us wouldn’t be fixed with us apart all the time. Ros, could you please just tell me what you’re thinking?”

The desperation in his voice affected me more than I’d expected it would, but I was still shocked by the implication of what he was admitting.

“Dan, I don’t give a fuck about the project. I want to know exactly what happened. Did you fuck her?”

He said nothing. He just continued to hold his head in his hands. I waited for what felt like forever but likely was only minutes. Dan finally allowed his gaze to reach mine and before he even nodded his head, the truth was written all over his face and in the anguished glint of his eyes.

An agonized gasp rang out in the room. Dan slammed into the back of the chair he was sitting in and I realized the sound had come from me. I turned away from him then, walked over to the nearest wall and slid down it until my ass hit the ground.

“I fucked up, I know it, and I’m fucking sorry, Ros. I switched her work schedule so we barely worked together after and only when others would be around. I didn’t want her to think this was something I was willing to entertain again. I know I fucked up by letting it happen, and I’m so. Fucking. Sorry. Tell me I can fix this. Please, Ros. Tell me what I can do. I don’t want to lose you.”

His voice broke on the last word and tears fell down his face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Dan shed even a hint of a tear in all the years we’d been together.

I knew then that he was being honest about this only happening once. Dan was one of the most honest people I knew. He could have kept this all quiet, never told me, and I would never have known. I also knew that I couldn’t be around him right now. I was seconds away from losing the thin thread of composure I was holding onto, and I wasn’t willing to let him see that snap.

“I believe you, Dan, but I can’t do this right now. I don’t even want to look at you. You need to leave. We can talk tomorrow, but I can’t do this tonight. No, I won’t fucking do this tonight.”

The words came out slow and calm, so steady and even that it almost scared me. Dan stood up and made his way over to me, reaching out his hand to help me stand.

“No. I can’t. I don’t want you anywhere near me right now, not when all I can picture is your hands on her body.”

He stumbled backward the moment the words left my mouth, reacting like I had struck him. His face was still wet with the sheen of the tears he hadn’t wiped away and he nodded his head with resignation before turning and walking back out the front door.

As the door slammed shut I wrapped my arms around my knees and dropped my head to rest on them. As the full reality of what just happened hit me, tremors wracked my body and a sob broke free. As the pain took over my body, another emotion crept in, spreading through my veins like poison.

Guilt.

As angry and shattered as I was by Dan’s confession, I knew I was worse than him. Not all of the blame rested on his shoulders. I’d kissed Archer. Worse yet, I’d fallen in love with Archer. As much as I wanted to rush out the door and lay bare all of my faults and wrongdoing to Dan, how would I make him understand that while Dan had given his body once to another woman, I had lost my heart to a ghost?