by Dori Lavelle
“Anything you want to know,” he said.
“You said you paid someone to make you disappear. It must have cost a fortune. Where did you get the money?” She had been wondering about that ever since the day he showed up.
Scott stiffened as if the question had slapped him. “The money Jack left me was a lot.”
Melisa felt her anger return. Most of all, she was mad at herself. He had led a different life from the one she knew and she had been too blind to notice. “So, during our marriage you had money stashed away and you kept it all from me?”
He lifted his head but his eyes darted back and forth. “I’m sorry. I knew the past would catch up with me one day. I needed to be ready to run when the time came. I needed money for that. But I did spend some of the money on us.”
Melisa’s mouth fell open. “Our house. You offered the old couple more money than you told me, didn’t you? You did say you made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
“I wanted you to be happy. I wanted to make all your dreams come true. I hurt you instead. I’ll forever be sorry for that. I still have a lot of the money left. I want you to have it.”
“I don’t need your money.” Sure, she and Heat could always use more money, but she didn’t want to take anything from Scott.
“I’m dying, Melisa. I have way more than I need for a few more months.”
“Like I said,” Melisa repeated, lifting her chin. “I don’t need a penny from you. Stop offering.”
Scott gave a half-hearted shrug and started eating again, but his hands were trembling. “Okay.”
For the first time, Melisa really saw the effects of his illness. There was no way he could be lying about being sick. Though he was still good looking, his hair was not as thick and lustrous as it once was, his eyes were slightly sunken, and his skin pallid. “Look,” she sighed, “what you did is unforgivable. But I’ll try to be here for you, if you need me. Just don’t expect me to forget.”
“That’s more than I could ever wish for. There’s nothing I want more than a few last moments with you. You have no idea how I wished things could be the same between us again.” He gave her a wide smile, showing his bright white teeth.
Melisa’s eyes brimmed. “I loved you so much, Scott. I wish you hadn’t thrown us away the way you did. I wish you had told me the truth.” She paused. “But I have moved on without you. Everything’s changed. I’m not sure what you expect me to give you right now, but my life is different now. Like I said, I’m married. I want you to respect that.”
“I still can’t believe you’ve moved on with my best friend.”
“You don’t have to. It is what it is.” She shook her head. “There’s so much you don’t know about my relationship with Heat.”
“I know you knew each other in high school. What more is there to it?”
Melisa moistened her lips. “Okay, since we’re being honest with each other, you should know that Heat and I had a thing in high school. A brief time together. The baby, the baby that I—”
“The baby you gave up for adoption was Heat’s? You had a child with Heat?” Scott stammered. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. “I don’t believe this.”
Melisa had told him about Ben, but hadn’t mentioned who the father was. She had lied, in fact, and said Scott didn’t know Ben’s father. Now Melisa felt a twinge of guilt for withholding the truth from him at the time. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to ruin your friendship with Heat. He must have felt the same way.”
Scott stood up from the table, his brow furrowed, and stepped to the large window. With his hands in his pockets, he gazed at the lit fountain.
Melisa felt a sudden urge to comfort him. But she stayed where she was. She may have lied to him in the past, or withheld information, but that could never compare to what he had done to her.
After a long moment of silence, he turned back toward her. His eyes were flat and unreadable. “Can you promise me something?”
“I don’t know. Depends on what you want.”
“If you haven’t already, don’t tell Heat I’m in town. After one month, I will leave you to continue your life. No one can know I’m here. I hired a stranger to make me disappear. I don’t know what kinds of crimes he committed to accomplish that. I know what I did was stupid, but it happened.”
“Stupid? It was more than that.” Melisa snapped. “It was cruel. Nothing is worse than believing you’ve lost someone you love forever. What were you thinking?”
“If it came out that I was responsible for my father’s death, it would have affected you. I didn’t want you to suffer for my crimes. This is a small town full of people who think they’re perfect. I didn’t want you to become an outcast.”
“So you thought I was that weak? I’ve made it through worse than gossip, Scott.” Melisa clenched her fists. She felt like hitting him. “I became a damn alcoholic, like my mother. I overcame it. You think I’d bend from a few nasty words thrown my way? No, what broke me was thinking about how you must have suffered in that fire. It tortured me to think of what you must have gone through, being burned alive. What almost killed me was the realization that you were gone forever… that you would never return to me.” Her voice was loud now, her words like darts. “And now, after everything you’ve done, you’re asking me to lie to my husband the same way you lied to me?”
“I wish I didn’t have to put you through this. But I took a risk coming here. It would only take one person finding out and I could end up in jail.” He returned to the table and looked down at her with a pleading expression. “For the last weeks of my life, I’d rather see you than be locked up in a jail cell.” He brought his hands together in a pleading gesture. “Please, Melisa. Just for a few weeks. No one needs to know.”
Melisa found herself nodding, even if she hated what she was doing. She, too, didn’t want him to spend the last days of his life behind bars. What it meant, though, was that she couldn’t go back home for as long as Scott was in town. Heat would read everything on her face.
They didn’t finish the rest of their food. Melisa had no appetite left and Scott was still upset about her deep connection with Heat. Ten minutes later, before he left her hotel room, he asked her one question: “Did you love Heat while we were together, while we were married?” Melisa didn’t respond for a while, unsure of what to say. Whether she said or didn’t say anything, he’d be hurt either way. “Seriously, Scott, I don’t owe you any answers. The reason I’m even talking to you right now is because you’re sick, and God knows why I still care about you in spite of everything.”
He nodded and marched out, hunched, like a broken man.
He knew the answer. And Melisa knew she had broken his heart the way he had broken hers.
***
Fifteen minutes after he left, there was a knock on the door. Melisa thought it was Scott again. It couldn’t be Heat. He always called before coming over, to show that he respected her space. On some days they met for dinner outside the hotel, or in one of the restaurants downstairs.
She opened the door and found Lucy, Heat’s sister, standing in front of her. Melisa hadn’t seen her in months and didn’t know she was in town. She had started a job in New York as a fashion designer.
“Lucy, come in.” An invitation wasn’t necessary; Lucy had already entered.
Lucy had the same dark, sleepy eyes as Heat, and for as long as Melisa could remember, she had worn her hair short. Instead of blond, it was now chocolate-brown with golden highlights and stood out against the white tank top she wore with skinny jeans and six-inch heels.
Thank God Melisa had cleared the table, and the dishes and leftovers had already been picked up. Lucy would have been suspicious. She whirled around and threw Melisa a serpent’s gaze, hands on her trim waist. “So this is where you’ve been hiding. Heat didn’t want to tell me, but I squeezed it out of him.”
Melisa swallowed her annoyance. “Nice to see you too, Lucy. I didn’t know you were back in to
wn.”
“Cut the bullshit,” Lucy said. “You lost a baby, and for that I’m very sorry. I’m sure it’s devastating. But it was Heat’s kid, too. While you’re living here in the lap of luxury, he’s at your home, waiting for you to come back.”
Melisa closed the door. “You think this is easy for me? You think I’m enjoying time away from my husband?”
“If you’re suffering so much, why aren’t you with him? Why aren’t you working through this together?” Lucy’s jaw was set.
“It’s complicated.” Melisa bit her lip until it throbbed.
“Do you remember the day you showed up at my door, begging me to tell you where Heat was, when you almost lost him? You finally got the guy. You married the man of your dreams and now you’re doing what you do best when the going gets tough. You’re running.”
“I’m not running. It hurts too much to be in the house right now, to see the room our baby was going to grow up in. I need this time away. That in no way means I don’t love my husband. If you’re here to judge me, please leave.”
“Look,” Lucy ran a hand over her pixie cut. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. But it pisses me off to see you two throw away something you fought so hard for.”
“I love Heat. I might have walked out of our home, but not on our marriage. We will work through this.” She paused. “Our way.”
“Don’t hurt him. You’ll never find another man who loves you as much as my brother does. Sometimes I seriously wonder why.” Lucy waved and left the room, leaving behind the smell of wild honeysuckle.
Melisa slumped onto the sofa and groaned. The last thing she needed was people on her back, telling her what she was and wasn’t supposed to do. She would not allow herself to be pressured. In time, she would return home, and she and Heat would pick up where they’d left off, but she wasn’t ready. She couldn’t leave the Lux until she had sorted things out with Scott. She wanted to hate him for what he’d done, but the truth was, when someone hurts you, you don’t just stop loving or caring about them. You might lash out at them, walk away, or even cut them out of your life, but the love remains with you for days, months, even years before it fades or transforms into something else.
What Melisa had come to find was that love and hate both touch the same corner of the heart. You might think you hate someone, but it could just as well be love.
Chapter Fifteen
The minute Heat and his partner, Joe, entered the burning building, he pushed his own life and problems to the back of his mind, concentrating only on what was ahead of him.
Being a firefighter was a dangerous and strenuous job and required him to be fully present both physically and mentally. The only thing on his mind as he charged up the stairs of the three-story house was that the people inside might need his help.
It was 4:00 a.m., and he was hungry and tired after working a full two days on little sleep. But his discomfort wasn’t important. His focus had to be on the end goal, the possibility of saving a life. He didn’t even have time to familiarize himself with his surroundings, but he also didn’t have time to get lost. He didn’t need to. Fire was his business and he could usually tell where it was coming from before he saw the flames. From a distance, he knew instantly what strategy to use after seeing the color of the smoke and its movement. His job may have been dangerous, but he loved it. Even better, he was damn good at it.
As he neared the burning part of the house, the smoke enveloped him, and even through his thick uniform, he felt the heat.
While the truck crew worked on ventilating the house by opening a hole in the roof, Heat and Joe had been assigned the job of engine crew. Their task was to use water to put out the fire on the ground.
As Heat held the hose at the ready, Joe kicked down the door to the burning room so Heat could get direct access to the flames. Both he and Joe raised their hoses and sprayed the wild flames with water, aiming to smother the fire, cut off its fuel supply, and cool it down.
Once the fire was declared to be under control, more crew members joined them and they all sprang into search-and-rescue mode, trying to recover bodies, if there were any.
In the end, they were relieved to find the house vacant. Heat and Joe’s job was done. While other members of their crew investigated the cause of the fire, they could return to the station to attend to other duties. In their line of work, there was always something to do. Heat appreciated that. Even more so now; he needed to keep busy so he wouldn’t dwell on the fact that his life was falling apart.
Chapter Sixteen
When Melisa met Scott for the first time in college, she knew he was different from any boy she had ever known. He had been attracted to her from the get-go and made it clear there was no other girl for him in Serendipity or anywhere else. She was all he had wanted and he would wait for her for however long it took. But Melisa had hesitated. He was Heat’s best friend. Heat, her first love. The man who had broken her heart. But Scott was relentless, and Melisa finally agreed to date him. She allowed herself to be swept off her feet, to be shown what it meant to be loved unconditionally. Scott never failed to make her feel like the only girl in the world.
On their six-month anniversary, they went to the Rose Petal Festival, a yearly Serendipity event where locals and visitors gathered, laden with baskets overflowing with flower petals. They sprinkled them on Serendipity Lake at midnight, along with floating tea lights, to create a magical ambience and hopefully attract luck in love. Scott had borrowed a small white boat from Pete’s Boat Shack, where he worked in the summer. Before the petals were sprinkled, he rowed them away from shore. On the floor of the boat was a basket of multicolored flower petals, and buried in them was a bottle of cider, chocolates, and a container with one of his homemade pizzas.
“Where are you taking me?” Melisa giggled. She had to admit she liked that he went the extra mile to make her feel special.
“Wait and see.” Scott kept rowing, his sculpted biceps contracting and relaxing in the moonlight.
There were a few other boats on the lake, but only in the distance, which made Melisa feel they were all alone in the inky black water.
Soon, he stopped rowing. “I thought it would be nice to experience this evening differently.” Soon after he said the last word, the sound of a whistle pierced through the night and drifted toward them, carried on the wings of the summer night’s breeze. The clock had struck midnight, which meant they could start sprinkling their petals.
“Let’s do this.” Scott stopped rowing and smiled, his teeth like pearls in the night. “Don’t forget to make a wish.”
As Melisa grabbed fistfuls of petals and sent them floating in the wind, she laughed like she hadn’t in a long time. At nineteen, she had already gone through more hard times than many other girls her age. But tonight, with Scott, she felt like a carefree child again—as if for the night, she had borrowed her lost innocence. Her only wish as she threw her petals into the water was that the night would stretch on for as long as possible.
When they’d met and started dating, there had been no doubt of her attraction to Scott. But tonight, in his presence, butterflies awakened in the pit of her stomach, making her giddy. She was in love.
From the distant shore, they heard laughter and music and whistles. The magic was there, the romantic atmosphere created for them under the starry sky, and Melisa knew that today, their relationship would move to the next level.
There were still a lot of petals in the boat, but as she grabbed another handful, Scott laid a hand on hers. “Come to me,” he said in a deep and sensual voice that made her quiver.
“The boat will tip,” she said.
“It won’t.” He moved a few inches toward the middle of the boat to meet her. “I won’t let you fall in.”
As if an invisible string were tugging her, she shifted toward him, all fear of falling gone as she gazed into his eyes, which were illuminated by the moon and the floating tea lights. As long as she stayed focused on him, she would be
safe. She knew she could trust Scott with her heart.
When they were close enough to touch, he cupped her face with both hands and pressed a feather-light kiss on her lips, soft and gentle as the summer breeze. As she drank in his sweetness, Melisa heard a satisfied groan from deep within his throat and his tongue thrust deeper into her open and willing mouth.
Melisa wound her arms around his strong neck and savored the moment that sent her senses spinning. He moved her closer until she was sitting on his lap, straddling him.
As the boat bobbed on the water, they explored each other’s lips, tongues, and mouths. Scott moved from her lips and nibbled her earlobe, sending shivers of desire spiraling through her whole body. She hadn’t had sex in a long time. Her first and last time had been with Heat, and it had left her pregnant. Although the price had been high, it had been beautiful in the moment, and she ached to feel those sensations again.
She closed her eyes when Scott slipped his hand between their bodies and touched her breast, massaging it as he kissed her neck. “You’re gorgeous,” he murmured against her lips. “My wish was that I’d get to kiss you tonight, but damn, I don’t know if that’s all I want anymore. I had no idea kissing you was this dangerous.”
Melisa giggled and threaded her fingers into his hair. “What do you want?”
“Everything,” he whispered, his warm breath misting her skin. “I want you completely. I want to make love to you.”
Melisa’s eyes fluttered open. “Here?”
He cocked his head to the side. “Only if you want.”
She pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes again, shy about what she was about to ask him. No matter how far gone she was, she wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. “Do you have protection?”
“Oh, yes, baby.” Scott flicked her collarbone with his tongue.
“But there are people around.”
