Gabe (Steele Brothers #6) by Cheryl Douglas Page B

with him for Char’s sake, I’d never really let him have it. But it was time. “But I don’t think it is.”
    Raising a brow, he mirrored my pose. “Fine, why do you think I want you back?”
    “Look around,” I said, opening my arms. “The house never looked like this when I lived here. I cleaned up after you, cooked your meals, and did your laundry.” I took a deep breath, trying to calm my raging temper. “You never had to do anything for yourself and you liked it that way. You liked having someone to take care of you.”
    He shook his head slowly, obviously considering his denial carefully. “That’s not fair, babe. I never asked you to do those things for me. You did them because you wanted to, because you loved me.”
    “In the beginning that may have been true,” I conceded, thinking of the dumb, love-struck, girl who would have done just about anything to please her man. “But I grew up over the course of our marriage, Jason. I changed.”
    “No kidding,” he muttered.
    “I got tired of being taken for granted, being taken advantage of. I didn’t want to be married to a little boy anymore. I wanted to be married to a man who could take care of himself.” In recent months, I’d spent a lot of time thinking about the factors that contributed to the break-down of our marriage and I knew this one topped the list. “I started to resent you. And maybe that wasn’t fair to either one of us. You couldn’t be who I needed you to be, and I guess it wasn’t fair of me to expect you to be someone else just to please me.”
    “I can change,” he said, looking stunned by my admission. “If that’s what it takes to get you and Char back, I can change.” He moved around the room, stacking dirty dishes. “Look, I’ll start right now by cleaning up after myself. I can do a lot of things I couldn’t or wouldn’t do before. Like laundry, grocery shopping—”
    “Jason,” I said, touching his arm, “put the dishes down. This isn’t about dividing the chores equitably. We both know we’re way past that.”
    “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” he said, looking desperate.
    “Why did you cheat on me?” I’d asked him before, immediately after I’d found out about his mistress, but I’d been too shocked and hurt to believe anything that came out of his mouth then.
    He set the dishes back down on the table, curling his arms over his broad chest again. “I don’t know, babe. It just kind of happened, like I said. It was the stupidest mistake I’ve ever made—”
    “But not the only one.” I tipped my head back, looking him in the eye, daring him to lie to me again. “Admit it, she wasn’t the first woman you slept with while you were married to me, was she?”
    He paled, sinking down on the sofa before dropping his head into his hands. “I know I messed up, but I’ll do anything to fix it, Kendra. If you want me to go to counselling, I will. Just say the word.”
    I didn’t need to hear him say the words, or assign a number to the women he’d been with. The guilt written all over his handsome face told its own story. “I don’t feel the need to fix you anymore, Jason.” I sat down on the chair next to the sofa. “I don’t want to change you or help you or try to understand you. I just want to let you go so you can live your life as you see fit and I want you to respect me enough to do the same for me.”
    He shook his head, looking stubborn and determined. “No way. When we married, you said it was for better or worse. You swore you’d never leave me.”
    I tried to imagine him as a scared little boy, feeling abandoned by his parents, who cared more about their own happiness than his. “And you swore you’d never dishonor me. I guess we all say things we don’t mean sometimes.” I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I just wanted to remind him that he was the one who’d broken our vows first. He was the one who set this whole thing in motion.
    “Would you have left me if