What He Doesn't Know (What He Doesn't Know Duet, #1)

by Kandi Steiner

She used to be so full of life, and now she seemed almost hollow, the shell of the young woman I’d known over a decade ago. She couldn’t even answer my question about whether she was happy now, one I’d asked in a moment that belonged to just the two of us. I wanted her honesty. I begged her to let me see, to let me in.

“Books aren’t meant to be in perfect shape,” she said when we reached her room. “They’re meant to be read, to be inhaled like oxygen.” Her fingers ran over the spine again, and she smiled. “This book has been breathed. It’s been loved.”

My library wasn’t the same. But then again, neither we were.

lived inside that moment with everything I desired. My husband wanted me, he loved me, I was his and he was mine.

He was right there, my husband, and yet he was nowhere near me at all.

It was my first real interaction with Cameron, and I’d studied him the way I used to study music as a kid. I wanted to know what made him tick, what made him falter — and both answers seemed to lie within Charlie.

I already knew her feelings for Cameron were muddled. She loved him, that was a fact, but he didn’t love her the same way he used to. It bothered her. She was trying to reach him, but it was like being on the inside of a black mirror. She could see him, but he couldn’t see her — couldn’t hear her as she tried to break through to him.

do. I would be her friend, her best friend, and I would sit back and let her see what it could be like to be heard again, to be loved again — the way she deserved to be.

I wished I could leave her alone. I wished I cared that she was married. But after just one night with Cameron, there was no use pretending. I simply didn’t care. I wanted her, and it was clear to me that Cameron didn’t — not anymore.

I would wait for her. I would wait forever.

It was our eight-year wedding anniversary, and that meant I should have been woken up by the smell of cinnamon.

“Do you ever think about me?” I asked, voice barely a breath. “Only every minute I’m not with you.” “Reese…”

“I’m not sorry. Not even a little bit. I’ve wanted you for years. Decades. And did I ever think I’d have you? No. But then life brought me here, back to you, and you were fucking miserable the day I came back. You still are. You can open that pretty mouth of yours and tell me every lie you’ve told yourself but I’ll never believe them. I see you, Charlie.”

Words weren’t Cameron’s thing, and now that he was using them, they were only making things worse. I stared at him like I didn’t know him at all. And that’s when I realized that I didn’t. Not anymore.

I tried to find my husband in the man who stood before me, in the eyes glossed over with unshed tears, in the hand wrapped around my wrist. I tried to find the boy who had shook the first time he took me to bed, who had danced with me in the rain the night he asked me to marry him, who had held my hand through every beautiful, agonizing minute of the birth of our children. But I couldn’t see him. I only saw a stranger, one I didn’t want to pretend with any longer.

She needed me like she needed air in her lungs, like she needed books in her hands, like she needed to feel whole again.

“But, the simple truth is that I can’t not be with you anymore. I came to you because you made me forget I have a choice. I came to you because it’s always been you, Reese. Even when you were gone, even when there was Cameron. When you came back, I felt it. And I know you did, too.”

“If I am a river, you are the ocean. It all comes back to you in the end.”

But if I was a river, and he was the ocean, then Cameron was the storm that raged over the point where we met. And lightning was about to strike.

Sometimes I wondered how many times my father had hit me before he beat the words out of me completely, before the idea of telling him — or anyone — how I felt seemed so pointless I couldn’t fathom it any longer. Charlie had been the one — the only one — to ever understand that about me. She’d let me love her with my actions, with my hands, with early morning breakfasts and bookshelves built in her honor. She read between the lines, finding the words I could never speak aloud, and for so long, it’d been enough for her.

I knew Charlie, but I couldn’t reach her.

It’d been too long that I’d ignored it, too long that I’d let myself pretend everything was okay. I hadn’t been a good husband.

I loved her — truly loved her — not for who she used to be or whatever fantasy Reese had of her in his head. I’d seen her sick. I’d danced with her on her best days and helped her stand on the days she couldn’t bear the thought of it. I’d built a home with her, built a life with her, and neither hell nor high water could keep me from keeping the vows I’d made to her the day we were married. I just had to bring her back to me.

She gave him this dance. Now, I could only hope she’d give me the last one.

“It’s over, Cameron. I’m done. I’m done with the pain, with being ignored, with this sham of a relationship we call marriage.”

“Five years since we lost our sons. Five years since you turned your back on me and left me alone in this marriage. What could you possibly do to change my mind now?”

“You waited too long,” I croaked. “And now, it’s too late. You don’t even love me, Cameron. You haven’t for years. You know you don’t love me anymore. Why can’t you let me go?” I choked on another sob, shaking my head as my vision blurred. “Please, please, just let me go.”

Guilt. Desperation. Pain. Sorrow. Loss.

I shook my head, annoyed that he wouldn’t just leave me be as I gave in to his ridiculous request. I didn’t understand why he wanted to hold me, why he wanted to comfort me only now that he’d lost me.

And I saw him. In that brief, lightning flash of a moment, I saw the man I’d married. I saw lazy afternoons on the beach during our honeymoon, and laughter shared over candlelit dinners, and comfort in the form of hugs after long, hard days.

“That’s all I’m asking. Two months to prove to you that the vows I made to you still hold true, and that it’s me you’re meant to be with — not him. Please,” he begged, and emotion robbed his next words as his own tears met mine. I hadn’t ever seen him cry. Ever.

They say there are two sides to every story, and it was in that moment, in that dark, desperate snapshot of my life that I realized I hadn’t asked him for his.