by Nicole Helm
Carter had been rude to Cole, and her, so she’d flounced off, not bothering to find out about the brother Carter never spoke of.
Sierra sighed heavily. Her flouncing wasn’t even enjoyable anymore, but she didn’t know how else to get Carter’s attention when he was mired in McArthur-land. Usually a good fit got his attention, pulled him out of all he kept himself caught up in. That’s the way things worked for them.
Except it wasn’t working these days, was it?
Cole took the empty seat and all eyes turned to Dr. McArthur.
“Thank you all for coming,” he announced, always the leader. Always in charge. Sierra wished she could admire it the way Carter did, but mostly she thought Dr. McArthur acted more like a king than a father.
She’d give her marriage into the McArthur family one thing: it had certainly allowed her a new clarity on her own parents and family not being nearly so bad as her teenage self had thought they were. Her father didn’t dictate things the way Dr. McArthur did, and her mother most definitely didn’t sit in judgment of everything like Mrs. McArthur did.
“Some things have been going on with the family in the past few months, and your mother and I are forced to realize we’ve mishandled them. Keeping my MS diagnosis a secret caused more problems than I could have ever imagined it would, and that will end now. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve told your mother about my MS diagnosis and apologized for keeping it from her. We’ve decided to move forward as a family unit. Fighting this disease…together.” Dad’s gaze turned to Cole. “As long as we’re all in agreement?”
It was a question directed at everyone, but Dr. McArthur stared mostly at Cole, the son who’d left ten years ago and was only back for a visit orchestrated by Jess.
Cole nodded.
MS diagnosis. MS. Sierra didn’t even know what MS was exactly. A disease of some kind. Was it serious?
But then her thoughts turned to the fact Dr. McArthur made it sound like everyone had known about it. But no one had told her. Anything. She was the one sitting here confused and in the dark.
She looked at her husband, who didn’t even have the decency to look apologetic or explain why she was the one who didn’t have a damn clue what was going on.
But apparently Dr. McArthur wasn’t done.
“We also decided that since some of the family knew and some didn’t, that we would inform everyone of one last thing. Secrets don’t make us strong, and we always want the McArthur name to be strong.” Dr. McArthur looked at Carter so Sierra did again too.
He was still staring at his hands. He didn’t nod or acknowledge his father, but the man continued anyway.
“After the diagnosis, after Carter was informed of it, I felt it necessary to also let Carter know that he was not my biological child.”
Sierra couldn’t make sense of that. She choked back a laugh, because surely this was a dream or a joke or…something.
“What?” Cole croaked, interrupting whatever Dr. McArthur had continued to say. “What?”
Dr. McArthur took a deep breath, cool and calm eyes falling on Cole. “Carter is not biologically mine.”
Sierra stared at her husband, eyes wide and mouth open, and he didn’t even look at her. He just kept staring at his hands.
Because he knew. Oh God, he’d been informed. He’d known these things and that’s why he’d been withdrawn and… He hadn’t told her why. He’d let her think she was the problem. That was the source of his irritation.
He’d known all these things and very, very purposefully kept her in the dark. Separate. Less.
“Your mother and I have spent the past few days discussing the changes we’d like to make in this family. Things have been tense. Secrets have bred that tension. As my disease progresses, it will be important for us to work together to preserve the McArthur name.”
Sierra stared at her in-laws, who’d always made it clear they disapproved of her. She’d never seen them act anything but cold and cruel, but she watched Mrs. McArthur lace her fingers with Dr. McArthur’s.
Sierra looked at her own husband, who was all but leaning away from her. Who’d cut her out. Even when she’d asked what was wrong. Somehow Dr. McArthur and Mrs. McArthur leaned on each other better than she and her husband did.
Sierra felt sick.
“You may each bring up any concerns you have or suggestions before we lay out the way of it,” Dr. McArthur said, much like a teacher might outline an assignment in a classroom. “Jessica, you may go first as you’ve the least to process.”
“Jess. Her name is Jess.”
Sierra said it without thinking, realizing after that she hadn’t been the only one who’d said it. Lina and Cole had also echoed her sentiments, along with Jess herself. Jess who never corrected Dr. McArthur.
“My given name is Jess. It’s never been Jessica,” she said calmly, clearly.
Strong. Certain.
Sierra had never felt more weak or uncertain or out of place in her life, and by God that was saying something. Especially in these past few months of being married to Carter.
Dr. McArthur’s eyebrows drew together, confused lines digging around his mouth. “Then why did you allow me to call you Jessica for so long?”
“Because I was afraid to correct you.”
Dr. McArthur blinked. “Well, then I apologize. It won’t happen again. Please proceed with your concerns.”
Sierra felt as though she was shaking apart. Concerns. MS. Carter wasn’t even a McArthur, and he wouldn’t look at her. What was this? Some realistic nonsense dream?
“You shouldn’t dictate how we all have to handle the situation. We’re all very different people and will need to deal with things in different ways. Asking for our suggestions is a step, but you need to let us go our own ways too. And don’t ignore the fact that you owe us all apologies.”
Suggestions. Steps. Because it was clear Jess wasn’t surprised. She’d known too, at least some things. Cole had certainly been surprised about Carter not being Dr. McArthur’s, but he’d known about the MS thing.
Sierra had been completely in the dark. About all of it. The only one.
While Carter, her husband, had known it all. And he hadn’t told her any of it.
Because you don’t belong.
Yes, people got to deal differently with different situations, but they had to… They couldn’t… Sierra got to her feet, chair scraping as she scooted away. She couldn’t sit here and not lose it, and she’d be damned if the McArthurs, including her husband, got to see her lose it.
“I can’t listen to any more of this,” she said, her voice breaking as she bolted for the door. She turned down the hallway. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Carter stand, grim and angry, maybe as if he was going to come after her.
No. No. She couldn’t stand to talk to him right now. She would not listen to some lecture where he sounded just like his father. “Don’t you dare,” she said, voice shaking. “You knew and you didn’t tell me anything? Do not follow me.”
She stalked down the hallway, and the tears started to fall. She pushed out of the house, realizing she had no way to get home because Carter had the keys. She let out a full sob. She didn’t want to be anywhere near this place. She didn’t want them to see her fall apart, but she was failing at that.
Her husband had kept humongous, life-changing secrets from her. He hadn’t confided in her or trusted her. Maybe it was selfish to be hurt beyond comprehension when he’d been dealt a blow, but then she was selfish. It’s what the McArthurs thought anyway.
“Sierra.”
Jess’s voice was calm and as much as Sierra didn’t want anyone to see her this way, at least it was Jess. An outsider, like her.
“Can you give me a ride home?”
“Of course. I’m sorry this came as a surprise to you.”
“He lied to me.”
Jess gently touched her shoulder. “Once you have a chance to calm down a little and talk—”
Sierra shrugged
the touch away jerkily. “He didn’t tell me. He didn’t want to. I asked what was wrong. Over and over. He let me think I was wrong. I thought he trusted me, confided in me. I thought he…” But all she could think was everything she’d thought she knew about Carter was something she’d dreamed up.
Maybe he was someone else entirely.
Or he’d just finally figured out she wasn’t worth the effort.
Chapter One
February 2016
Sierra looked at the calendar blindly. Five months to the day. Five months since that stupid, stupid meeting. And every month since on the fifth she looked at the calendar and hoped this month would change things.
But it had been five. More months than she cared to admit of acting like a petulant child. Yelling and drinking and embodying the kind of horrible sideshow the McArthurs were hideously embarrassed of. She would have made a major ass of herself at the rodeo in September if Jess and Lina hadn’t stepped in.
It had been satisfying. Sort of. Except Carter had withdrawn further and further, and she didn’t want that. No matter how scared she was that everyone was right—theirs was not a marriage meant to last—she still loved him. Withdrawn and distant, hurt by his actions, she still loved him.
So, on New Year’s Eve, a year after they’d first met, first kissed, she’d made herself a promise. No more tantrums. No more embarrassments. She’d do what Carter wanted, because maybe it was what he needed after finding out his life was built on a lie.
She’d become the perfect McArthur clone this year. She didn’t argue. She didn’t speak out of turn. She didn’t ask why he spent some nights with his parents, and she didn’t complain about his extensive hours at the hospital or with his father. She didn’t ask him for more, or tell him how much she missed him. She didn’t beg him to touch her, because God he hadn’t even tried to hold her hand in months. Months.
After all, what was worse? Hurting and having him or hurting and not having him?
For these few months of good behavior, the answer had been that not having him was worse—the pain of shrinking herself into something small and stifling seemed worth keeping him.
But this wasn’t keeping him, was it? Every day that ticked by she hurt more, and he got further away and…
She looked at the five on the neat little calendar he always kept hanging from a clip on the refrigerator. She’d been awful. She’d been good. Nothing had changed. Didn’t that tell her everything she needed to know?
Her behavior didn’t matter. She didn’t matter to him. Nothing she did would change what he did, and didn’t that mean she shouldn’t keep hoping for more? She wasn’t good enough for him. She’d known that anyway. So, didn’t that mean she had to end it?
Her thoughts revolved around that horrible word these days. End. Carter had never uttered the word divorce. He barely uttered any words, and likely McArthurs didn’t do divorce no matter how unsuitable the wives chosen were. After all, Dr. McArthur had married Carter’s mother even knowing she was pregnant by another man. Because pride and reputation were more important than anything else.
Carter was different than his father. Sierra knew that even now, but as the door squeaked open and she looked at the handsome, if drawn, man who still made her stomach swoop, she wondered if it mattered. If he ignored those parts of himself—the differences, the emphatic heart—it didn’t matter that they existed.
If he saw her the same way his parents did, none of this mattered, did it?
“Hi,” he offered stiffly as she simply stood in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at him. She felt like crying, but that was one of those emotional responses she’d promised herself to stop having in front of him.
She’d save that for later after he fell asleep. If he was even staying here. She’d cry herself to sleep either way.
How was this her life? How could she keep on like this? And yet…just like Carter didn’t speak the word divorce, she didn’t leave. She stayed and contorted, because she kept hoping she could do something to make him love her again.
But maybe that was impossible.
She couldn’t bear the thought, and she didn’t know how to tell him. That her heart was breaking. That she was miserable. Wasn’t it obvious? He was miserable too. But if she opened those floodgates, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop and she’d lose him all the same. Afraid he’d confirm all her fears about herself.
She didn’t know the magic combination of words to make him stay without risking that, so she stayed silent.
“Hi,” she finally replied, her throat tight and her eyes burning with tears.
“I, uh, just stopped in to change. Dad asked me to stay over again. Mom’s…struggling.”
Sierra kept her mouth shut, though Mrs. McArthur’s martyrdom of Dr. McArthur’s illness was already old. MS was hardly a death sentence, that much Sierra had gleaned from reading up on the disease. It certainly didn’t foretell Mrs. McArthur’s own death. It made no sense she needed constant support from Carter.
And see—wasn’t that the thing? This would have come between them regardless of the real father thing. The secrets and the silences. Even if things had been good, Carter would always want to support his mother no matter what she was going through, and Sierra would think she was a dramatic jerk.
They were doomed, regardless of this particular incarnation of that doom.
Carter walked through the living room and toward the hall that led to their bedroom. Sierra followed, though she couldn’t explain why. Panic beat in her chest.
She was going to lose him.
She’d already lost him.
But he was here in their bedroom, shedding his suit jacket as he moved toward the closet.
“Did you need something?” he asked, sounding exhausted and desperate for her answer to be no.
You. I need you. But she didn’t know how to admit it in words. She’d lost all the words in practicing her silences. So, she stood there, desperation clawing at her in an all new way. Five months. Five months of no talking, no smiling, no kissing. Five months of nothing but shadows.
She wanted that irresistible light she’d seen in him when they’d first met, that amazing, inner warmth that had made her forget everything he was, and everything she was.
It had started with that. Warmth, light, and a kiss.
Maybe there was some way it’d bring him back. She shook as she crossed to him, and she couldn’t have explained why kissing her husband seemed like some revolutionary baring of her soul. Why she felt sick with hope when it would be easier to speak, to ask, to demand.
But words…words could be used as weapons, and she’d used her own as weapons enough. A kiss was the only thing she had that didn’t come with a million other pieces of baggage.
So, she walked right up to him, closer than they’d been in months. She touched his shoulder, watched as his eyebrows drew together as he glanced down at her hand there.
Then she did what she considered the bravest thing she’d ever done. She rose onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his. Firm, but gentle, her eyes screwed tightly closed to keep her courage up.
When she fell back to her heels and managed the courage to look up at him, he was standing exactly where he had been, his expression exactly what it had been when she’d touched his shoulder. Baffled.
“What was that for?”
But he didn’t say it accusingly, and there was no censure in his gaze. It was all confusion. She didn’t know what to say, so she did it again. Pressed her lips to his, let all of her love and worry pour into that gentle meeting of mouths.
He was still but not stiff, accepting but not responsive exactly, but this time before she could pull away, he touched her. The lightest brush of his fingertips down her shoulder, then the light pressure of his palm on the small of her back.
She shuddered, hope and relief infusing the moment, prompting her to stay here against him longer than she had with the first kiss.
Finally, his mouth moved against her
s, a subtle adjustment so his bottom lip brushed her top one, the slightest flick of his tongue against the seam of her mouth.
She wanted to cry with relief, but instead she moved, pressing herself against him fully. Throwing herself into the kiss more wildly, more insistently, and in that moment it was as if something ignited between them. A desperate heat and need she wasn’t sure had ever been there even before all this mess.
She should dissect it, except she didn’t want to. She wanted to burn in it as his tongue swept into her mouth, as his arm banded her tighter to him. She wanted to forget everything and exist where kisses and attraction were simple. Elemental.
They didn’t talk. She had the fleeting thought they should, but then his hands moved under her shirt, smoothing up her abdomen to her breasts and she figured they could talk later. After all, what was more enjoyable? Exposing horrible emotional wounds or the way he devoured her mouth, a starving man desperate for her?
Her. He hadn’t stopped wanting her at least. And she wanted him. She tore at his clothes, and that seemed to set him off so that he was pulling hers off too.
It was different than it had ever been. Edgy and desperate. Maybe even a little angry. They’d always had good sex, but it had been happy, enthusiastic sex. This was something…darker.
She didn’t mind. Not at all. It made her feel powerful instead of weak, important and elemental instead of inconsequential and small.
They fell to the bed, panting and naked, a tangle of limbs. She crawled on top of him, and she guided him inside, watching as their bodies joined in one long, slick slide.
She gasped. It had been so long and she’d forgotten somehow in the weight of all this awfulness that it could feel good, feel right, to be joined with another person. With him. Even when things didn’t work, this worked. Sierra and Carter worked.
She moved against him, but she didn’t look at him. Fear tangled with all that pulsing want, and she was afraid if she looked at him it would feel like goodbye. It wasn’t an end. It was a hope. Skin to skin, heart to heart.
She had to believe in hope. They wouldn’t be here if he didn’t feel something for her.
