CHAPTER 43

“Don’t call me that,” she said. She just felt tired and defeated. He stood there, hand still outstretched and looking miserable, with alcohol dripping from his hair and into his eyes. For a very brief moment she felt herself softening.

“I know that I’ve been an utter bastard,” he admitted.

“Yes.”

His admission strengthened her resolve.

“I’m sorry . . . ?”

“Is that a question? Or an actual apology?”

He hesitated briefly and she rolled her eyes. “Get back to me when you know for sure.” She swept from the room, and Gerard stared at the door for a long time after she’d left.

Now that this whole divorce thing was becoming a palpable fact, he admitted to himself that he wasn’t quite so willing to roll over and give her everything that she asked for. He wanted his wife and child but he was a broken man, both physically and emotionally, and it hardly seemed fair to saddle her with his innumerable problems after everything that he had already put her through. Yet he knew that without her he’d