With This Kiss

by Bella Riley

  Finally, she gave into the instinct to throw her arms around him. They hadn’t aired everything yet, but she knew there would be time to completely clear the air in the future. First, she needed to ask, “How are you feeling about everything now?”

  He smiled down at her, that gentle, sweet smile that she’d always loved from the first time she’d looked across the drawing class and found a kindred spirit who thought the whole thing was goofy.

  “Better. So much better. I’m not going to hide anymore, Rebecca. I’m not fooling myself into thinking it’s going to be easy with everyone, but I don’t want my life to be a lie.”

  She finally found a smile for him. “Good. We all love you, Stu. Everyone in your family. This town. And especially your best friend, who wishes you had confided in her a long, long time ago. And you need to know, your mother overheard my conversation with Sean, the one where I told him your secret. Your parents both know. And they both love you.”

  Relief blanketed his face and he covered her hand with his own. “Thank you, Rebecca. For everything. For being my friend all these years. For being my friend, even now that I’ve made things so difficult for you.”

  A baby cried in the distance. A cloud moved to cover the bright sun. And a wave of exhaustion hit her hard, sweeping through her from head to toe.

  “I’m happy you’re home, Stu. And I’m even happier that you’re happy.”

  She saw Dorothy and Helen over his shoulder, knew they’d spotted Stu. Rebecca couldn’t stand here while everyone in town exclaimed over his return. But she couldn’t leave the festival, not when the responsibility for its success—or failure—was resting entirely on her shoulders.

  “I’ve got to check on things,” she said, then headed for the biggest group of strangers she could find and hoped—prayed—for them to need her help with something.

  The inn’s dock was strangely empty. Sean knew everyone was in the forest at the festival. He was going to head back in a few minutes, couldn’t live with himself if he let Rebecca shoulder the responsibility of the event all by herself. But he’d needed to get outside, get away, just long enough to pull himself together.

  He quickly untied the nearest rowboat. The oars were cold and squeaky from a winter and spring of non-use. These past three weeks that he’d been home, the ice had melted from the surface of the water, with only small patches left floating here and there.

  Sean’s heart had been like this lake when he’d arrived for Stu’s wedding. Frozen solid, but for so much longer than one winter and the beginning of one spring. Rebecca’s smile, her gentleness, her love, the heat of her kisses, the way she gave herself over to him so completely when they were making love—they had all been more warmth than his ice could combat.

  He pushed away from the dock, the cold water enveloping the hull of the wooden rowboat. The town got smaller. The water got colder the farther he went out on the lake.

  He let the larger and larger chunks of ice envelop him.

  But after fifteen minutes of hard rowing, he had to face facts.

  This time around, he couldn’t seem to close himself off, wasn’t having any luck making a decision about what he would and wouldn’t feel and simply following through on it.

  Everything that had worked for him in the past was failing him this time around.

  Because he loved Rebecca.

  Secrets. Trust. He’d thought those were the most important things of all.

  But now he knew better.

  Only love mattered.

  And he’d thrown it away.

  Stu stood on the edge of the dock and watched his brother come back toward him. His big brother had always been larger than life. He’d always looked up to him.

  When they were teenagers and Sean ended up completely changed by that car crash, Stu had always wished he could have the brother back who had been so happy, so much fun when they were kids. But he’d been holding too tightly to his own secrets to dare ask anyone else for theirs.

  Rowing into shore with his back to Stu, Sean didn’t see him until he was at the dock and Stu was helping pull him in and tie up the rowboat.

  “Son of a bitch. Where the hell did you go, Stu? I’ve been trying to track you down for weeks.”

  “Now that I’m back, I promise I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  But Sean didn’t look particularly happy about that vow. “You should have told me everything a long time ago.”

  Stu understood why Rebecca loved his brother. But he also knew the reasons she’d be frustrated with him.

  “I know you’re angry with me, but—”

  Sean all but jumped out of the rowboat to face Stu down on the dock. “Do you think I would have cared that you’re gay, Stu? Do you think that would have bothered me even the slightest bit? Don’t you realize the only thing that could possibly bother me about it is that you kept something so important from me for so damn long and I couldn’t be there to support you?”

  “I was confused, Sean. And I didn’t want to put you in the position of having to lie to Mom and Dad.” Stu tried to explain everything he’d been forcing himself to dissect for the past three weeks. “Don’t you remember how Mom was after her brother died? And then when they found out it was AIDS? She didn’t get out of bed for days and she was so fragile for so long after that. I didn’t want her to worry about me going the same way.”

  “I would have helped you figure things out, Stu. We used to be so close. Didn’t you know I’d always be there for you? Don’t you know that I still am, even now when I’m so angry with you that I can hardly see straight?”

  “I’m not the only one who screwed up.” Stu loved his big brother enough to finally go out on a limb. The limb he should have gone out on a long, long time ago. “You’ve been making excuses and pushing all of us away for way too long. I know you’re angry with me for disappearing the way I did, but I’m mad, too. You’re upset that I didn’t confide in you. But you didn’t confide in me either! I know I wasn’t brave enough to ask you for answers when we were kids, but neither of us is a kid anymore.”

  He watched his brother carefully, knew that the time had come to find out the truth.

  “I’ve been gone for three weeks, Sean. But you’ve been gone for nearly twenty years. What happened between you and Mom when we were teenagers?”

  Finally, Sean told him the truth of what he’d seen when he was fourteen… and of the promise he’d made and the secret he’d held for so many years.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Elizabeth found Bill in one of the smaller barn buildings hammering on the leg of a wooden table that had broken off beneath the weight of the tapping equipment. So much had changed these past weeks. Stu leaving, Sean returning. Love forming between Rebecca and his oldest son. Along with what Bill hoped was the beginning of a new, better, closer relationship with his son.

  The hammer landed square on the head of the nail he’d selected from a tin can of old, hammered-straight nails. If only he could straighten out his marriage, then everything would be perfect.

  But it was all so much more complicated than that.

  He felt his wife’s presence before he saw her, had always known when she entered a room simply by the way the air changed and sparked around her.

  “Bill.”

  His name shook, fell from her lips.

  And he knew.

  The time had come for the final secrets, the final lies, to be revealed.

  “I had an affair. Twenty years ago. After John died. With Roy.”

  His wife looked ragged. She was crying, but he could see that she’d clearly been crying before now.

  “I know.”

  Her shocked gasp resonated through the room. “But you never… you never said anything to me.” Her words came at barely above a whisper. Raw and ragged. “You never did anything that made me suspect you knew.”

  “You might not remember the past very clearly anymore, but I do,” he told her, his own voice shaking now from the
force of emotions pushing up from his gut, his chest, through his windpipe. “Your twin brother died and you went from being the strong, capable, loving woman I’d married to a brittle shell. I did everything I could to try to help you, but you were lost to me. To your sons. To everyone who cared about you.”

  “I never meant—” A sob choked her words short. “He didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “I know that. Just as I knew it then. Being with people who loved you hurt too much. So you jumped into the arms of a man who didn’t care about anything more than his next orgasm.” It hadn’t been hard for him to piece two and two together—and to get Roy to tell him the truth over one too many whiskeys at the local tavern. For so long he’d waited for her to tell him the truth. But then, when she hadn’t, he’d tried to convince himself that it was because she was afraid of losing him. “And I know it never went beyond that one time.” He tried to smile at her, wanted to reach out to her, but it was too difficult. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

  In all the ways he’d thought this conversation would play out over the years, he’d never imagined that he’d tell her she was forgiven and she’d break down and cry harder.

  “Sean…”

  He could barely make out his son’s name. “What about Sean? Is something wrong?”

  Her voice was shaking so hard, he had to concentrate hard to hear her say, “He saw me. I made him promise not to tell you.”

  Bill tried to focus on his wife’s face. Thirty-six years ago he’d taken one look at her and known that he would love her forever.

  Only, no one could have told him forever wasn’t nearly as long as he’d assumed it would be.

  He’d loved her enough—so damn much—that he’d tried to convince himself it was enough. For nearly twenty years, he’d told himself one version or another of that lie.

  But his love could never be enough. He saw that now.

  Just as he finally saw all the anger, the frustration, the hurt that he’d forced himself to push into the background for nearly two decades.

  “I loved you.” He heard the past tense at the same time she did. “How could you, Elizabeth?”

  She flinched at the way he said her name. Even when he’d recently stopped calling her Betsy, he’d never said her given name said so coldly.

  She reached out her hand, tried to stand and come to him. His heart broke looking at her, but he wouldn’t let himself go and pull her into his arms. Even though every cell in his body screamed at him to do just that.

  No. He knew how it would turn out. He’d forgive her again, hope for their love to return to the way it used to be, all the while knowing how fruitless that hope was.

  “Bill. No. Please.”

  His feet moved toward her despite knowing better than to go to her. To let himself touch her.

  To let himself hope.

  Barely a foot from her, he pulled from what was left of his anger and stopped where he was. She was still standing there, her arm outstretched.

  “I thought I could look the other way when you came back to me. But it was always between us.” He looked down at her hand, her diamond ring still gone from where she’d taken it off when they were sanding the floor. Watching her take that ring off three weeks ago had been a prophecy of doom. “Even though I forgave you a long time ago for cheating, I kept waiting for you to tell me the truth. To let go of that secret.”

  “I wanted to tell you so many times, but I couldn’t risk telling you. I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “I know why you cheated, Elizabeth. I even told myself I understood. But I’ll never understand how you could ask a fourteen-year-old boy to keep a secret like that.” He took a step closer to her. “I’m his father, for God’s sake! You forced him to lie to me! You made it so he couldn’t look me in the eye.”

  Incapable of holding anything back, his voice boomed at her, his breath blowing her hair back from her face. Strands that were damp with tears clung to her cheekbones.

  He’d always thought she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to see her beauty again.

  “The affair was forgivable. What you did to our son isn’t.”

  “Sweet girl, come here.”

  For hours, she’d been on autopilot, running the festival. Now, Rebecca knew her grief, her exhaustion, was making her hear things.

  But the arms pulling her close were warm. And real.

  “Mom.”

  She breathed in her mother’s familiar scent and closed her eyes as she let herself be held by someone she knew would never desert her.

  She looked up from her mother’s shoulder and saw, through her tears, her father and four sisters and their husbands and kids.

  Her family had come, after all. They’d waited weeks for her to clean up her messes just like she’d asked them to.

  And yet, here she was, even more of a mess than she’d ever been.

  She knew what they were going to say. That they were going to tell her to come home with them to let them all take care of her the way she’d always taken care of them.

  And this time, the temptation to give up every stride she’d taken to become a strong person over the past months was big.

  No.

  She forced herself to pull out of her mother’s arms, to dry her eyes as best she could.

  “I’m so glad you’re all here,” she said to her family. “Come, I’ll show you around and introduce you to my friends.”

  Her sisters and their husbands looked at each other in surprise. Her father came to kiss her on the forehead.

  “We’re proud of you. We always have been.”

  And that was when she knew: she wasn’t going anywhere. Emerald Lake was her home. She’d never stop loving Sean, but this time she wasn’t going to be the one running.

  Ruffling the soft hair on one of her nephew’s heads, she said, “You guys are going to love tapping a maple. Come with me and I’ll show you how.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Sean had left his brother standing on the dock, obviously reeling from what he’d told him about their mother. Sean was glad his little brother was finally back home, even more glad that everything was finally out in the open between them. He hoped neither of them would see the need for secrets in the future. If they got confused and started to fall back on their old ways, he hoped with every last piece of his heart that Rebecca would be there to set them straight.

  And to love them both despite their failings.

  “Man the inn,” he’d told his brother. “I need to take care of Rebecca.”

  He thought he saw his brother smile, but he was already heading down the dock toward the forest.

  Toward the woman he loved.

  He’d quickly spotted her, working steadily to help families with small children get situated behind the maple syrup tapping equipment. A young child fell and she knelt beside him, brushing the dirt off his pants, talking animatedly to him until he’d stopped crying.

  The child’s parents looked at her gratefully, but she wasn’t at all aware of them. She was wholly focused on the little boy’s welfare and happiness.

  Just as she’d been wholly focused on Sean’s.

  God how he loved her. Since that first moment he’d seen her standing at Andi and Nate’s wedding with tears streaming down her face and her hand over her heart.

  Loving someone means breaking a promise if you know keeping the promise is going to hurt them.

  His beautiful Rebecca. So sweet. So wise. And so much stronger than anyone ever gave her credit for being. Especially him.

  He’d give anything to share her life, to be strong for her and let her be strong right back. With their children. With his family, even the mother he wasn’t sure he could forgive.

  Here he’d thought he wasn’t afraid of anything, when all along, she was the truly brave one. The dragon slayer who would face down the hottest flames, the sharpest teeth, to protect the people she loved.

  He
wanted to call out her name, wanted to beg her to forgive him, to take him back, right then and there. But she needed his help more than she needed his pleas.

  As he attended to various issues that cropped up throughout the rest of the afternoon, at first she gave no outward sign that she saw him. But he could feel her warmth wrap around him, just as it was wrapping around everyone else she came in contact with.

  Still, for the rest of the day she made sure that they were on opposite sides of the festival, moving away from him whenever he came too close.

  At one point, he saw her with a large group of people and quickly realized they must be her family. He wanted so badly to meet them, to thank her mother and father for raising such an incredible woman. But he knew better than to do it today.

  Rebecca was hurt. Angry. And she had every right to be.

  He’d been a complete asshole.

  He’d gotten everything wrong.

  Everything.

  As night began to fall, Sean made sure every last festivalgoer got back to their car all right in the dark. Just in case it rained, he wanted to make sure the tapping equipment was put away and covered for the rental company to come pick up Monday morning.

  But Rebecca was already there, kneeling down beside one of the tappers, wiping it down with a wet rag.

  He couldn’t stop himself from watching her. And from wishing he’d realized what love was really all about before he went and threw it all away.

  Rebecca’s hand stilled on the equipment as she realized he was standing behind her. The moon was bright enough that he could watch her slowly pull air into her lungs and then let it back out.

  “Thank you for your help today.”

  He’d gone and stomped on her heart and she was the one thanking him for helping with the festival? He didn’t even come close to deserving her.

  “You don’t need to thank me for anything, sweet—”

  The endearment was halfway out when Rebecca’s flinch came ricocheting out to him, piercing straight through his heart.