I took one step backward. Then another. I couldn’t seem to get a full breath.
Nine years. Nine years of believing I fully knew the man I loved.
I turned toward the hallway, desperate to get out before he saw me.
Then another voice stopped me cold.
An older man’s voice. “I don’t think I can do it.”
I looked back through the window.
An elderly man had stepped onto the dance floor, staring down at a white rose trembling in his own hands, while Elliot walked toward him with a patient, familiar kind of smile — the exact same one I’d seen him wear exactly once before, the day he’d taught our nephew to ride a bicycle.
Confusion pushed straight through the heartbreak.
Who was this man? And why was my husband looking at him instead of the woman I’d been so certain was the entire reason I’d followed him here?
Who was this man?
I stayed exactly where I was.
“I don’t think I can do it,” the old man repeated.
The dance instructor smiled kindly. “That’s what you said last week, Gordon.”
“And the week before,” Elliot added.
The old man sighed. “I mean it this time, guys.”
