by Elise Faber
Shan knew enough about their relationship—and had actually witnessed Derek’s proposal by s’more, so she understood the shared look.
She even understood the slice of pain and longing that cut through her.
See? She could be healthy . . . or pretend to be, anyway.
But, God, she’d yearned for that—small secrets between a couple, private jokes and sweet looks. And she’d had it for a time with Brian, she supposed. But it had been fleeting and bittersweet and—
It was never that.
Never what Pepper and Derek had.
Which is why she was currently looking at paperwork for the house, for the mortgage, and neither of them looked familiar.
Only now, she finally remembered why.
They’d bought this house when she’d been about eight million months pregnant, stuck on bed rest in the hospital, the actual papers not having been signed until the day after she’d delivered Rylie.
Her name wasn’t on them.
On either the house or the home loan she’d been paying over the last year.
Only now, she remembered Brian coming to her while she’d been terrified she was going to lose her baby, while she’d been not living even day to day, but hour to hour. He’d said that because she was in the hospital it would be easier if he just did the mortgage in his name, then he could get everything signed and wrapped up, and they could move in as soon as Ry was born.
They were supposed to have fixed that, to sign some paperwork after Ry had come home, putting both the mortgage and house in both of their names.
And Shannon had thought . . . well, honestly, she didn’t remember a lot of that time.
She’d had an emergency C-section that had taken eight long weeks to recover from—hindered by an infection at her incision site—and then when she had finally been able to move around, Ry hadn’t been the easiest baby and Brian had been traveling all the time . . . and that first year was mostly a blur.
By the time she’d gotten some actual sleep, she had already returned to teaching, and then her life was a baby, trying to be the perfect wife, to create the perfect home for her and Ry and Brian, and trying to be the best teacher her crew of third graders had.
Cursive and teething and cloth diapers. Baby food, day care, and poems. Common core and journal entries and board books.
And perfectly smooth hair. Wrinkle and hand cream every night. Shaved legs. Simple, understated makeup. Getting back to her pre-baby size. Dressing like she cared. Homecooked meals and—
Years of living as she thought she should rather than for herself.
She’d fought so hard to make something perfect, and in doing so, she’d missed the fact that she and Brian were never perfect, would never be, and that she’d wasted so much time and effort and energy trying to make it so.
Alone.
In the end, despite the fight she’d put up, despite the effort and energy, she’d ended up alone anyway.
Shannon set the papers down, sank back onto the couch, her head in her hands, her glass of red sitting on her coffee table full and untouched. The tears threatened to come. The feelings of failure definitely came.
Nearly a decade, and she was right back where she started.
Alone. Left by a man who was supposed to have loved her.
Again.
“Fuck,” she muttered, knowing what she needed to do but hating that she had to do it.
But this was Rylie’s future.
This was her future.
And for once in her fucking life she could demand to get what she deserved.
So, she picked up her cell and dialed her almost ex-husband.
Ring.
She fought the urge to not hang up.
Ring.
Then, “Hello?”
Humiliation burned hot in the back of her throat.
Because the Hello wasn’t from Brian. It was from Ann. Brian’s Ann. Ann, who’d sent Shannon an email nearly eighteen months before filled with pictures of Brian with her.
Couple pictures.
Holding hands. Kissing on cheeks. Kissing on the lips.
And a photograph of the three of them—Brian, Ann, and their little boy.
Who was a month younger than Rylie.
One. Month.
“Hello?” Ann said again.
Focus. “Hi, Ann,” she said. “It’s Shannon. Can I speak with Brian, please?”
Silence.
Then, “Oh. Um . . .” Ann’s tone was uncomfortable. “Brian and Billy are actually camping in the backyard tonight. I . . . um . . . don’t want to disturb them. Dad and son time, you see.”
Dad and son time.
Not Dad and daughter time.
“I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important,” Shannon said, stifling the sharp spike in the back of her heart, knowing that Rylie wouldn’t get that. That her daughter had never had it.
Knowing that when she got older, it would wound deeply.
Because Shannon had lived that truth herself.
And she knew those deep injuries never fully healed, that they always ached, always made a person wonder if only they had done something different, if only they had been better . . .
Then perhaps their parent would have loved them more.
“I—”
“Please, Ann,” Shannon said, hating that she was begging but some part of her praying this was some horrible mistake and that Brian really wasn’t trying to sell the house out from beneath her.
He knew about her father.
He knew about her past.
He was the father of their fucking child.
So, he couldn’t be that bad. Right? Right?
A sigh drifting through the speaker. “I’ll go get him.”
She winced at the sound of Brian’s cell colliding with something hard, but then the noise cleared, and Shannon waited for Brian to come to the phone. Then waited some more. And even more. Then, when she was just starting to think that he wasn’t going to come, that Ann had shoved the cell into some drawer to be forgotten about, she heard a scrabbling sound and air pulsing through the phone’s speakers.
“Yeah.”
Annoyed. Clipped. One word. Even better, one syllable.
This was the Brian she’d grown familiar with over the years—not the Brian she’d fallen in love with in high school.
But people grew. People changed. People moved on.
She needed to do the same.
“Hi, Brian,” she said, keeping her voice carefully calm. “Thanks for coming to the phone. I’m sorry to interrupt your time with your . . .” The word son caught in her throat, the reminder so damned painful, even after more than a year of knowing her husband had made another family. “With Billy,” she forced out. “But I had something troubling happen today, and I need to talk about it—”
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Why is it that even though I’m almost finally divorced from you, I’m still stuck talking to you?”
Slice. Punch. Slam.
She closed her eyes, held on to her calm by a hairsbreadth. “Why did a real estate agent come to the house today?”
Silence.
“I asked for one thing, Brian,” she said. “I gave you the money from our joint accounts. I didn’t go after your retirement or alimony and child support. I took over the payments for the car you couldn’t fucking afford so that Ann could have something new. A car I fucking hate driving—”
“Then sell it,” he snapped. “You don’t need a car in Stoneybrook. You can just walk everywhere.”
Calm. Calm. She inhaled, released it slowly. “You promised I could keep the house. That Rylie and I would always have a home here, so I’m trying to figure out why suddenly there was a realtor showing up at my front door this afternoon.”
“I need the money.”
Her breath caught, that last sliver of hope that she’d somehow been wrong, that this was all a misunderstanding, died out.
“Brian,” she sighed.
“Ann is pregnant again
,” he said, sticking the emotional knife into her gut as effectively as if he’d stabbed her with a real blade.
“You promised,” she whispered, chin falling to her chest.
“We need a new place.”
“Need or want?”
Silence.
And she had her answer.
“You’d really do this to me, to Rylie? Upend our lives even more—”
“You two were always fine on your own.”
“Define fine,” she gritted out. “Because I thought I was pulling my weight in a relationship where my husband was working just hard as I was, rather than sticking his fucking dick in a woman and knocking her up when we were trying to make our own kid—”
“Not this again,” he muttered.
“No. No,” she said, voice going cold. “You don’t get to do this to me again. This is not my fault—”
“You had such a stranglehold on every part of our lives, Shannon,” he interrupted. “I couldn’t keep living like that.”
“Then why didn’t you just say something?” she screeched. “Why—” She caught herself, forced her voice to lower so she didn’t wake Rylie. “Why didn’t you just end things between us?”
A beat.
“Because I couldn’t handle you looking like the same beat-up puppy as you did when your dad left.”
The air froze in her lungs.
“It was already bad enough that the few days I’d be home, you were trying so fucking hard.” She could imagine his lips curving up into a smirk. “God, it was so fucking pathetic—”
She swallowed the pain, pushed down the hurt.
The good thing—and the only good thing about her marriage, aside from Rylie—was that Shannon had gotten really good at compartmentalizing things.
So, she locked up Brian’s words and focused on what was really important.
“I need you to call off your realtor,” she said firmly. “And I need you and I to take care of getting the house in my name. I need that to happen or I won’t sign the final divorce paperwork, and I will have my attorney go after you for both alimony and child support.”
He scoffed. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” he sneered. “You’ve always thought you were better than everyone.”
Shan’s jaw dropped open because that was about as far from the truth as anyone had ever come up with. Her struggle for her entire life had been trying to find a way to please her father, for him to be proud of her, and then transitioning that same battle over to Brian when they’d begun dating, when they’d eventually married.
Every action had been carefully crafted and thought out, trying not to misstep. Trying to make sure everyone liked her.
“Well,” Brian went on before she could tell him that—not that he’d listen, anyway. He was too far gone detailing how wrong she was about everything. “You can try and go after me, or contest the divorce, but I think you’ll find that because the settlement has been agreed upon by the court—”
“The settlement said that I’m getting the house.”
“No,” he said, and the gotcha moment seemed to ring through the airwaves with crystal clarity. “We agreed you’d keep the assets in your name, and I would keep those in my name.”
Ice slid down her spine. “The house—”
“Is in my name.”
“Don’t do this, Brian,” she said. “Please—”
A voice rang in the background, calling out, “Dad!”
“I need to go.”
“Brian—”
Click.
He hung up.
And when she called back, he didn’t pick up.
Shannon sat on the couch for a long time, the sky darkening, her heart wrenching, aching, throbbing for her daughter. For herself.
She’d given everything to Brian.
And just like life liked to prove to her time and time and time again, giving everything didn’t matter in the least.
Because men didn’t take care with the gifts that were given.
Men didn’t give a fuck about the hearts passed over on a silver platter.
They took and took and took, until she was simply a shell of herself.
She’d thought Brian was different.
Oh, how wrong she’d been.
And now, her daughter was going to pay the price for her naïveté.
She was supposed to be making lesson plans.
Instead, she was sitting in her lawyer’s office.
“The house isn’t in both of your names?” he asked, and the horror in his expression made the knot in Shannon’s gut tighten and sink even lower.
“No,” she said and explained about the difficult pregnancy, about the bed rest and timing of when the house had closed. But as she talked, as she told Alberto more details, the expression on his face didn’t give her comfort.
In fact, it made Shan feel like she was in deep shit.
Deep shit that was getting deeper by the second.
When she’d finished with her explanation, Alberto sat back and steepled his fingers under his chin. “I wish I’d know this before.”
“I-I forgot,” she whispered. “Until the realtor showed up— I— It hadn’t crossed my mind.” A shake of her head. “I had Rylie, and we were so busy, and I was working, and Brian was never—”
She swallowed the rest of her words.
“I’m sure I can get you half of the profits from the sale of the house,” he said, making notes on a legal pad in front of him. “It was an asset acquired during your marriage. I might even be able to go back and secure some child support for Rylie, half of what you’ve been paying for the mortgage over the last year, but if Brian is being honest about his funds being short, then we might have a hard time collecting.”
“I don’t want half of its value,” she whispered. “I just want the house. I—I worked so damned hard to make it a home for Ry and me. It’s the one place—” She cut herself off again. “The court doesn’t care about that, do they?”
Alberto sighed. “It’s a toss-up. They want to keep kids secure, but you should consider that half of the proceeds could get you a very nice place in one of the nearby towns. It wouldn’t be beachfront, but it would be in a safe neighborhood and with good schools.”
“Ry is already in a good school—” A shake of her head. “And my job—”
He touched her hand. “I get it,” he said. “I really do know how important the house is to you, and I’ll do my best to keep it for you.”
“Why do I feel like there’s a but attached to that sentence?”
“Because there is,” he murmured.
Fuck.
“I’ll try. I just . . . I have to tell you that I don’t know if I’ll succeed.”
Shannon’s eyes slid closed. “Okay,” she whispered then sighed and stood. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
“I’m here for you.”
Another man.
Another promise.
Another assurance that she didn’t think would be kept.
Four
Sand Toys Lead To A Gut Punch
Finn
He knocked on the door of the cute little bungalow that was next to his, a pail of sand toys in his hand. It was around lunchtime, and he was met with an adorable face peeking through the glass panel, its paisley curtain shoved carelessly to the side.
Freckles on a nose.
Eyes more brown than blue.
“Mom!” she yelled. “It’s a man!”
“Grab your book and take it onto the deck, honey. You need to finish up your summer reading,” came a female voice—not yelling, but still clearly heard because the windows along the front of the house were open to let in the fresh ocean air.
The little girl made a face but stepped back from the door, and Finn heard the pounding of footsteps on the floor.
A few seconds later, the knob turned, and a woman stood in front of him.
Gut punch.
The pain in her eyes was a fist to the stomach,
hurting like hell, stealing his breath, burning through him.
And yet, she was beautiful.
Not a hair out of place. Her body was clad in a pretty blouse and form-fitting jeans, but with bare feet, a pop of red on her toes, on her lips. She looked more model than mom in the pale pink silk with long, dark hair flowing down her back in shining waves. His fingers itched to stroke, if only to prove to himself that the locks would be as soft as they looked. A cluster of bracelets on her arm clinked together as she lifted a hand, shielding her startling blue eyes from the sun.
Insane.
He saw beauty all the time, worked with some of the most beautiful females on the planet. That this woman should arrest some part of him, render him frozen in inaction just staring at her, when he was quite literally trained to always have a soundbite, to always be charming—
He was literally losing his mind.
But then again, that was why he was here, wasn’t it?
Well, not in front of this actual house, but in Stoneybrook in the first place.
An actor has one meltdown . . .
“Hi,” she said, startling blue eyes careful. “Are you . . . um . . . new in town?”
He opened his mouth, holding up the bucket, when the little girl he’d seen in the window came barreling through, book clutched in one hand, stuffed fox in the other, and nearly knocking him over.
The girl was fast and strong.
“Whoa,” he said, rocking back.
“Sorry!” she called, skidding her way to a deck chair.
“Rylie.”
Just her name. In a tone that brokered no argument, but wasn’t raised in volume or tinted with anger.
Model. Mom. Superhero.
This woman could be all three.
Rylie stopped, set her things down, then came over wearing a guilty expression on her face. “I’m sorry I ran into you, Mr.—”
“Stoneman,” he said, filling in the blank and not considering that it was bad for him to have given his real name when he was supposed to be in the tiny East Coast town hiding and quote-unquote-finding himself while on his break for ‘exhaustion’ (direct quote there, from his publicist). “Finn Stoneman.”
