by Katy Regnery
“So…” said Vicky, looking up and plastering a fake smile on her hot-pink lips. “How are things with you?”
“Why’d you do it?” asked Hallie, the quiet words slipping from her lips without permission, without notice.
“Excuse me?”
She had half a thought that she should pretend she hadn’t spoken or pretend she was asking about something else. But the reality was that this woman owed her an explanation, and Hallie intended to have one.
“Why. Did. You. Do it?”
“Do what?” asked Vicky, her smile fading.
Hallie’s nostrils flared. “Why did you sleep with Ian Haven on the night before my seventeenth birthday?”
“Oh, my! Were you always this tacky?”
“Goddamn it, Vicky, answer me!” she demanded. “Why did you screw my boyfriend?”
Vicky stared at Hallie for a moment, searching her face, before leaning closer, her lips parted in surprise. “Oh, my God. You don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“What happened that night.” She laughed softly. “I’m the only one who knows? Neither of you two ever figured it out? Oh, my!”
“Figured what out?” Hallie stood up, approaching the counter, fisting her hands at her sides and willing them to stay there and not, as she would prefer, slam them into Vicky’s plastic-perfect face. “I asked you to tell him I couldn’t make it. Instead, you slept with him.”
“Right,” said Vicky, nodding her head, her eyes laughing at Hallie. “Slept.”
“Fucked,” hissed Hallie.
Vicky took a step back, her face both surprised and offended. “That’s an ugly thing to say, Halcyon.”
“It was an ugly thing to see.”
Vicky sat down on the high stool behind the counter and picked up an emery board. She began filing her nails like they weren’t discussing the most devastating moment in Hallie’s entire life; a life that included her ex-husband giving her a venereal disease.
“Hello?”
Vicky looked up and shrugged. “Calm down. It wasn’t what you think.”
“Oh. You didn’t fuck my boyfriend?”
“No,” snapped Vicky. “I didn’t.”
The.
Room.
Spun.
Around and around and around.
Feeling dizzy, Hallie reached for the marble counter in an effort to steady herself.
Vicky put her nail file down on the counter between them and looked up at Hallie, her delicate eyebrows furrowing. “Let me get you a cup of water.”
“I don’t want any goddamned water,” said Hallie. “I want to know what happened.”
“Fine!” Vicky sighed with annoyance. “Lord, it was ages ago, but I think it went something like this…You asked me to relay a message to Ian, but I was already in my pajamas. I had to get ready, and it took a while. And then I had to walk all way across the whole campus to the barn. When I got there, he was drunk. Like, drunk drunk—lying on his back, on the floor, with a bloody forehead because he must have knocked it into something. I told him you weren’t coming, and he got upset. Really upset, like on the verge of tears. He asked me to stay.”
Hallie blinked back a sudden onslaught of tears of her own, imagining Ian in such a state. “Then what?”
“He kept getting confused and calling me Hallie and saying he loved me. Um, let’s see. I think I sat down next to him, and we drank the rest of the wine, and—I don’t know…I guess we—”
“You fucked him.”
“Fat chance, sister. I already told you that didn’t happen. He could barely stand up, let alone get it up.”
“So how’d you end up half-naked, sleeping next to him?”
Vicky tapped her lower lip with one perfect nail. “As I recall, I took off my shirt and skirt, and helped him with his shirt and shorts. I figured, he asked me to stay…he was offering, right?”
“No! He thought you were me!”
“Whatever. When you’re that drunk, any piece of ass will do.”
“You’re disgusting,” Hallie whispered.
Vicky’s eyes narrowed, and her next words carried a bite. “He was a flirt, Hallie Gilbert. A bad one. He had flirted with me all summer, raising my expectations, and—”
“He was my boyfriend, and you knew it!”
“Not my problem,” said Vicky. “I was there. He was there. I was horny. He was hot.”
Hallie took a step away from the counter, because she was thisclose to doing bodily harm to the bitch in front of her. “Then what?”
Vicky sighed dramatically like this entire conversation was exhausting. “Um…well, he was lying on his back—”
“With his underwear still on,” Hallie blurted out.
“Yes. God!” She bugged out her eyes in exasperation. “Can I finish?”
Hallie nodded.
“…and I found a condom under the other blanket, so I ripped it open, and I was about to help him get it on when I realized he’d passed out.”
“Passed out.”
“Totally. I smacked his face, and he didn’t make a sound.”
“What then?”
“I might have pushed down his boxers and taken a look at the goods.” She hummed something appreciative, and Hallie winced, shaking her head back and forth with pure disgust.
“I figured I might get lucky in the morning, so I laid down next to him, pulled the blanket over us, and went to sleep. But instead, you woke us up in the morning, he freaked out, and I told him he was an asshole and walked home.”
“And told everyone at camp that you’d fucked him.”
Vicky shrugged, a slight smile teasing her lips. “I was out all night. People saw me walking home and made assumptions.”
“And you let them.”
Hallie stared at her nemesis, trying desperately to process this new information and find its place in events that had haunted her for years. But all it boiled down quickly to one important fact:
“You didn’t have sex with him.”
“Honey, I don’t even think we kissed.” She sniffed elegantly. “I’ll see what’s keeping Johann.”
Slipping behind the desk and through a velvet curtain, Vicky disappeared, leaving Hallie alone.
He didn’t have sex with Vicky.
He didn’t betray me with Vicky.
Which meant that—and it crushed her soul to realize it—she and Ian had lost years with each other not because of an actual betrayal, but because a set of circumstances had colored a situation to appear like cheating.
He’d gotten drunk and assumed the worst of himself.
She’d found Ian and Vicky together and assumed the worst of him.
And the net result of their assumptions and distrust? Her stomach turned over as she added it up: a decade of alcoholism for him…and a loveless marriage and expensive divorce for her.
They’d ruined both of their own lives over things that had never actually happened.
And it broke her heart all over again.
A curtain to the left of the reception desk parted, and a man with bleached-blond, spiked hair appeared. “Hallie? I’m Johann. Sorry to keep you waiting. Shall we?”
She nodded, too sad for words, alone in no-man’s-land and wondering how in the holy hell she was supposed to tell Ian.
***
Although Hallie looked just as beautiful today as she had last night, Ian couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened. She was…different.
Last night she’d been almost playful—a little like the day they’d declared a truce back in October. She’d told him he looked good in his suit, and she’d taken his arm when he offered it to her. It had almost seemed like they were turning a corner of some kind into peace, and he’d been eager to embrace it.
But today?
Today she was quiet and grave, like he might behave if he’d received terrible, unexpected news. She seemed lost in thought and barely able to meet his eyes, while he couldn’t keep his off of her.
Dressed in a pink dress that matched Tierney’s, with her hair piled up on her head like a princess, she was so tragically beautiful, it hurt to look at her. It hurt to think that he could love her as much as he did—as much as he always had—and never stand a chance with her.
As Rory and Brittany recited their vows, promising to love, honor, and cherish each other until death, Ian thought to himself that he’d already made those promises to Hallie when he was seventeen. He considered her promise ring, which he still had, hidden in the corner of his sock drawer, a sign of his eternal love for her, of an unspoken promise to love her until the end of his days. It didn’t matter that he’d never had the chance to give it to her and say those words aloud. Those promises had already been made in his heart, regardless of what happened with Vicky.
In this life, there was only Halcyon Gilbert for Ian Haven.
And so it would be until the end of his days.
Standing there in the First Congregational Church of Sandwich as his brother pledged to love and honor Brittany Manion until death, Ian had a crystal clear revelation of his own: he’d rather spend his whole life loving Halcyon, than force himself to shut off the purest feeling he’d ever known and move on. He’d rather love her unrequitedly and die knowing that he’d never given up on them.
She didn’t look at him during the ceremony or afterward, her eyes downcast and sad until someone spoke directly to her; at that point, she’d smile, but her cheer was false. Something had happened between last night and now, and Ian wanted to know what it was.
Maybe her husband was making trouble for her? Or her financial situation had somehow worsened? It couldn’t be about him, could it? Maybe she regretted today that she’d been friendly last night? Maybe she’d decided she wasn’t ready to forgive him yet? He didn’t know. But as soon as the wedding was over, he’d track her down at the reception and ask what was going on. He couldn’t bear for her to be upset if there was anything he could possibly do to ease her worries and give her peace.
After the wedding, Ian stood in the receiving line outside the church, his glance occasionally flicking to Hallie and Jenny, who were talking with Burr in the church courtyard. He didn’t feel jealous; he had it on good authority that Burr was going to ask Tierney a very important question very soon. He just wished that he had a few minutes to talk to her too.
Suddenly Jenny bolted away from her mother and beelined to Ian. Grinning at her, he squatted down, ignoring the guests who wanted to shake his hand. This particular guest was more important to him than all of them put together.
“Hey, ladybug. My goodness, you look pretty today!”
“You already said that to me!” she reminded him with a giggle. “Did you know that Bridey is coming for Christmas? Mr. O’Leary said so!”
“Is that right?”
“Yes! I get to have my best friend here for Christmas! Can you believe it?”
“I can. And you see that big hill over there?” Jenny turned to look over her shoulder, then nodded at Ian. “How would you like to go sledding?”
Jenny clapped her hands. “I would love it! I’ma tell my mommy!”
Ian reached out to give her a squeeze. “You do that, ladybug. You tell your mom and make sure—”
“—I get permission!”
He stayed low as he watched her scamper away, looking up to catch Hallie’s eyes for a second. She gave him a grim smile before turning her attention to Jenny. Whatever she said to her daughter made her little shoulders slump, and a minute later, the twosome said good-bye to Burr and trudged to their car.
Again, Ian wondered, What’s up with her today? What’s weighing so heavily on her mind?
He was determined to find out.
Ian drove himself and his parents back to Summerhaven from the church, helping his mother into the main dining room. Nine years after her stroke, Colleen Kelley Haven still used a wheelchair, though her speech had improved mightily over the years.
She gasped as he wheeled her inside, and Ian had to agree: the event planner that Brittany had hired in Boston had done an amazing job. The large room was decked out with white flowers, bright-green ivy, and white-satin bunting. A twelve-piece swing band was set up in one end of the room with a temporarily installed dance area protecting the original wood floors. He counted twenty tables set for ten people each, marveling that Rory and Brittany even knew that many people. If Ian ever got married—not that it would ever happen, but if it did—the only people he wanted to be there were his family and a few close friends.
“Ian,” said his mother over her shoulder in her strong Irish brogue, “are you well, son?”
“I am, mum,” he answered, pushing her to Table Two, and sitting in an available chair beside her as guests started filing into the huge room for the reception.
“Yer clean now?”
“Yes. I’m sober,” said Ian. “Haven’t touched a drink since March. Go to meetings faithfully.”
“Tierney’s kept me updated, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up,” she said, reaching out to cup his cheek.
“I don’t plan on ever going back,” he said, leaning into his mother’s touch. “I’ll do whatever it takes to stay sober.”
“We’re proud of you, son,” said his father, sitting down on Colleen’s other side. “We prayed that you’d find your way.”
“I have, Dad. I’m going to be okay. I’m sorry for what I put you through.”
“You’ve already said all that,” said his mother, waving away his apology. “We’re just relieved you’re healthy again.”
Ian smiled at her, then glanced over at the door, hoping for a glimpse of Hallie. But when it opened, Fin walked in, hurriedly tucking in his shirt and smoothing his hair. Ian watched, a bit bemused when, a second later, Hallie and Britt’s friend, Tate Jennings, walked in reapplying her lipstick. Hmm. I suspect shenanigans.
“What’re you grinning at, now?” asked his mother.
“Finian,” said Ian.
“Yer man’s trouble. Me sister was always too lean on the punishment.”
“But not you, Mum.”
“Boys need the spoon sometimes,” she answered, giving him a dry look. “Especially boys whose names end in ‘ian.’”
Ian chuckled. “Well, trouble or not, he’s done the work of two men over the past month. Wish he could stay longer than six months; this old place would be running like the Ritz.”
She grinned, though the paralysis of her face made it appear endearingly lopsided. “I guess he’s found his callin’.”
When the dining room door opened again, Ian’s heart swelled, because Hallie and Jenny entered, standing side by side. Hallie leaned down and said something to Jenny, and she ran over to the place card table, where Tate was still composing herself. Tate grabbed two cards from the GS row and handed them to Jenny, who took them to her mother.
Ian already knew where they were seated—Hallie with him and the rest of the bridal party at Table Three, and Jenny with the rest of the children in attendance at Table Six, which was set up with arts and crafts and a hired babysitter to help the little ones stay busy.
“Mum, I have to go.”
His mother nodded, looking over at the door where Hallie stood, her eyes trained on Ian. “She’s grown up to be a beautiful woman.”
“You remember her?”
“Halcyon Gilbert? Oh, yes. I always liked her. A cut above some of the others.”
Ian nodded. “I agree.”
“And her daughter’s very cute.”
“Right again.”
She cleared her throat, lowering her voice. “Where’s her father?”
“Out of the picture.”
“Officially?”
Ian nodded. “They were divorced over the summer.”
“I see.” His mother sighed, smiling again for Ian. “Then I guess you have somewhere you need to be, don’t you, now?”
Ian leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Tá grá agam duit, Mom.”
“Ah, Ian. I love
you too, son,” she said, squeezing his hand before letting him go.
CHAPTER 9
Ian crossed the long room, steadily holding Hallie’s eyes as he approached her.
Ten years and four months ago, he’d crossed this very floor, staring into those same eyes, touching the soft skin behind his ear to confirm she’d gotten his note and would be meeting him later. He’d been nervous that night but so full of hope and love.
He wasn’t nervous tonight, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t filled with hope and love.
Hope for them.
Love for her.
A second chance, his heart whispered. Please give us a second chance.
“Mr. Haven!”
“Hey, ladybug,” said Ian, glancing down at Jenny with a smile.
“Guess what! I’m sitting with the big kids!”
“You are? Well, you better get over there,” he said.
“Can I, Mommy?”
“Of course,” said Hallie. “I’ll be at Table Three if you need me, baby…” But Jenny was already halfway across the dining hall, racing to be with the other kids.
Hallie stared at Ian’s throat for a minute, gulping before lifting her eyes to his. The expression in them was grave, though he couldn’t decipher more than that.
“Halcyon,” he said softly, taking a step closer to her. “What happened?”
She held his eyes for a moment, then shook her head, looking away. “I can’t. Not here.”
He reached for her hand, wrapping his fingers around the soft, cool skin, relieved when she didn’t pull away. “Come with me.”
Leading the way, he pulled her to a door hidden in the wood grain of the wall and opened it. Once inside, they walked down a dim hallway and through an open doorway. Ian reached for the light switch and flicked it on to reveal a small, windowless room with a table, six chairs, and six lockers against the wall.
“I didn’t even know this was here,” said Hallie.
“The hallway connects it to the kitchen. In the early days, this was a kitchen-staff dining room. Now it’s just a break room.”
She nodded once, then withdrew her hand from his, looking up at him like she had something to say but didn’t know how to say it.
