“You will have hundreds of millions of dollars. And if he turns up, I’ll be there to help you deal with him. Thanks for that. Who knows what you must’ve thought.”
He said the last part fast, like he didn’t mean it, and I knew that was because he’d meant it too much. I squeezed his hand and tried to send all my belief through it. “Thanks for letting me hear it. I have the feeling you’re ashamed, but you have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re even more amazing than I knew, do you realize that? You give so much, even when nobody could expect it of you, even if nobody will ever find out. You think you’re hard, but you’re so . . . so decent underneath, Hemi. And so you set limits. So you cut him off when he tried to go somewhere you couldn’t stand to go. That was the right thing to do, and it made you look even stronger to me.”
He stopped where he was, in the middle of an echoing corridor, and looked at me. His face would have seemed as inscrutable as ever to somebody else, but I saw his eyes, and he couldn’t hide from me. “I hated you hearing that,” he said, “and I would have said I didn’t want you to, but could be I was wrong.”
“Hey,” I teased gently, “I got the ‘w’ word and everything. And if I helped, I’m glad.”
“Wait till you meet my mother,” he said, and started walking again. “She won’t be sober. I’ll have to invite them both to the wedding, and I’ll have to chuck at least one of them out.”
“And if you do,” I said, “I’ll just be that much more impressed.”
Hemi
Back in Koro’s room, Karen was reading aloud, and Koro had his eyes closed.
“Don’t stop,” he said when she trailed off at sight of us. “I want to hear what happens.”
“Harry Potter,” Karen informed us, and I laughed despite my still-turbulent emotions.
My dad. And Hope. And Koro. It was all too much.
“Don’t laugh,” Karen said. “Have you ever read it?”
“No,” I said. “And I wouldn’t have said it’d be Koro’s cuppa, either.”
“Just because you haven’t tried something,” she said loftily, “that doesn’t mean it’s no good. Open your mind, Hemi.”
Koro smiled, but his eyes were shrewd as he studied me. He might be dizzy, and his head might still be aching, but he saw too much all the same. “Leave your dad behind, did you?”
“Finishing his coffee,” I said. “He’ll be back.”
“Leave Karen with me for a bit, then,” Koro said. “Let her keep distracting me. You take Hope someplace more cheerful for a wee while. Say all the things you’re scared to say, and let her say all the things you’re scared to hear. Only one way out, and that’s through.”
I could have pointed out that I knew that, since I’d been pushing through all my life. But maybe not with Hope. Maybe I’d just thought I had. I’d done something wrong, and it seemed that everybody could see it but me. I’d better find out what it was if I was going to fix it.
“I’ll be back,” I promised. “I’ll switch off with Karen.”
Koro waved a hand that still had IV tubes running into it. “Or whoever else is coming. You know they’ll be here soon enough. I have enough company, and I’ll have more. You’ll keep. Go.”
When Hope and I were in the car, I started to turn the key, then stopped myself. “I was going to say, ‘We’ll go to the beach.’ But maybe I should say, ‘How about the beach?’”
“The beach is good,” she said. “The beach is perfect. Good job asking, though.”
I nodded, put the car in gear, and went there. All the way through Tauranga to Mt. Maunganui and the kilometers-long stretch of sand where I’d given Hope her ring and we’d danced on the shore. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it with every happy memory I could invoke attached to it. If I were really meant to be honest, I’d need all the help I could get.
We were walking, then, on the firm sand at the water’s edge in a fresh breeze that felt glorious after being cooped up in the jet for so long, the winter sun warmer than it had any right to be in August and only a few white clouds scudding across the blue sky. I was holding Hope’s hand, and having her this close to me on a New Zealand beach was a pretty good place to be.
After a couple quiet minutes, during which I let the peace settle over me and seep into my bones, she said, “It’s beautiful today. You should have seen how hard it was raining when I came.”
“Mm,” I said. “When you were caught out in it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which I survived, even though I was cold and wet and tired and scared. I can always do more than I think I can. I remembered that afterwards.”
The only way out is through. I plunged in. “You left because I didn’t tell you about Anika, and because I asked people not to hire you. And because I didn’t pay enough attention to you. And because you were pregnant, and you were afraid I’d . . . what? Not want the baby?”
She was silent a moment, and then she said, “I think those are just the symptoms, don’t you?”
I started to say something, then stopped. I listened to the waves and felt their motion inside me, the coming in and going away again, the certainty and the effortlessness of it. I felt the wind on my cheek and said, “Tell me. I’m listening. I want to know.”
“Then,” she said, after taking a breath that I could tell was for courage, “it’s this. I left because I was so confused, but now, I think I left because I was losing myself. As soon as I said I’d marry you, especially as soon as Karen and I moved in with you, it seemed like you had to control everything. Or maybe it was as soon as you got back to work, back to the way you normally run things. You wanted to say not just where I worked, but who I saw, where I went, even what I knew and what I heard. I knew it must be because you were afraid, but I couldn’t see how to fight that or how to reassure you enough. You’re so strong, and even if I could have held my own—I grew up with fighting. I hate it, and I’m no good at it. I don’t want to live that way. I want to have peace, but if the only way to have that is for me to do everything you say, that’s not peace at all. That’s powerlessness, and it’s ownership. I can’t be powerless, and I can’t let myself be owned. Love can’t mean giving up myself, like I’m not allowed to be a separate person. That’s a choice I can’t make. I’m no Cinderella. I can’t be. I know what happens to her.”
She stopped as if she were out of breath, as well she might be. I said, “And I’m no prince, I reckon,” and earned a startled laugh from her. “Did I really do all that?”
Now she was the one hesitating, then going on. And she’d been wrong. She had courage and strength to burn. “Don’t you think you did? And whether you see it or not—maybe you could think about where that might come from.”
I forced myself to confront it. You didn’t solve a problem by running away. You solved it by seeing it, learning the ins and outs of it, and then attacking it. I thought about the swim lessons, the news about my marriage, the article in the Journal, and the job interviews I’d known would come to nothing. About all the ways I’d let Hope down.
“Could be I did what I always do,” I finally said. “I focused, and I got the job done. And when things got hard, I got myself under control, and then I controlled everything else I could. This time, maybe that included you. Could be I don’t know how to do this. How to be in a . . .”
“A relationship,” she said. “Just like I don’t. The only one I’ve been in—my only long-term relationship—is with Karen. I had lousy models at home, I don’t know how to do it as equals, as real partners, and neither do you. But we have to learn.” She turned to face me. The wind was blowing her hair across her face, and she put up a hand to shove it back and said, “I want to tell you something, and I want you to try to hear it. The only way you’ll lose me is if you shut me out and push me away. I don’t want to go. It killed me to leave. But I couldn’t get your attention. I couldn’t get through, or I didn’t try hard enough, and I was out of ideas. I felt myself being swallowed up in you, and then the baby thi
ng came along and made it worse, and I panicked.”
“Because I didn’t do this,” I guessed. “I didn’t take you on a walk, I didn’t take you to Paris, and I didn’t send you flowers. I thought I was done. I thought the courting was over, and I could go back to . . . normal. Back to work.”
“That’s not what matters,” she said. “It isn’t about sending flowers, even though I love getting them. I knew you loved me. I still know it. But I needed more . . . you. I felt like a doll. I felt myself acting like a doll. I want you to hold me, but I want to hold you, too. I want to feel like part of your life, and I need to know you need me.”
I laughed, and she stiffened. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t need you much, no. Only as much as I need air, maybe. Only as much as I need to breathe.”
Her eyes were so intent, her heart so open, and she was twisting my own heart, finding my most vulnerable spots. It was terrifying. “Really?” she asked. “Because I didn’t feel that way.”
“Maybe it scared me to show it.” There. I’d done it. It was out there. “I don’t do weakness, and I don’t do fear. I can’t afford to.”
She’d stopped walking. She had her hands on my forearms as if she needed to touch me, needed to hold me. Maybe for strength, or maybe to give it to me. Maybe so.
“Last night,” she said. “When you were willing just to lie with me and hold me and keep me warm. That night in San Francisco, a long time ago, when we’d almost broken up, and you did the same thing. You did it then for the same reason you did it last night. You did it because you loved me, even though you didn’t know it then. When I’m in your arms, I feel safe. I feel your love surrounding me. But can’t you see, Hemi . . . I don’t need to feel safe every minute. I don’t need to be in the circle of your protection all the time. I know it’s there, and that’s enough. I need to be in the world as me, and to know you’re proud of me for doing that, just like I’m so proud of you. After that, I need you to come back to when I need to rest, and I want to be that for you, too. I want to be your resting place. I want to be your safe spot, where you can open your heart and know you’re loved for exactly who you are. How can needing somebody like that be weak, if we’re giving it to each other? How can that not be strength?”
I could hardly breathe. I could hardly speak. “You are that,” I finally said. “You’re my prize.” She started back, and I said urgently, “Wait. You’re my . . . I don’t know. What you said. My shelter, maybe. I’m out in the storm, and then I come back to you. Like a sailor. Or a Maori.”
“That’s beautiful,” she said. “And I love to hear it. But if you have to be under control all the time, if you’re controlling me, how can I see you? How can I help you? Especially if the only time you show yourself to me is in bed?”
I didn’t answer, and she hurried on. “I hear myself saying all this, and I cringe. I feel like all I’m doing is complaining, when you’ve given me so much, and that’s part of the problem. I don’t want to nag, and I don’t want to fight. And I love having sex with you. I want to have it almost every night, and I love that you want me so much. But I want to know you better than that, and I want you to know me. I want you to love me not just for my weakness, not just because you can take care of me, but for my strength, too. I want you to see that I’m not so different from you. I need to get somewhere, the same way you’ve always burned to. I want you to love the fighter in me, just like I love the fighter in you.”
“If I didn’t,” I said, “I wouldn’t love you much right now. You say you don’t know how to fight. You’re making a pretty good fist of it all the same.”
“I don’t think this is fighting,” she said. “This is discussing. This is sharing. This is risking it all, saying it’s too important to give up. This is what I need. You listening to me, and you talking to me.”
I laughed. “You don’t ask much, do you?”
She smiled, then. “Only to change. They say people don’t change, but I think they can. I think I can learn to put my hand on you and tell you I need your time, I need your attention. And I think you can learn to give it to me. I think I can learn to tell you no, and that you can learn to win in a new way. I think we can both try, if it matters enough.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” I said, my heart right there in my throat, “it matters enough.”
“Then,” she said, “maybe we should talk about where to go from here.”
Hope
I’d been expecting storms. I’d been expecting to be shut down. I’d been thinking we were at “do or die,” and part of me, the part that had never dared to believe my life could really work out this way, had whispered that it would be “die.” I couldn’t live under a man’s control, not even a man I loved as much as Hemi.
The thought that he could be flexible? Yes, you could say that was a new concept. But to help him become less rigid, I was going to have to become much stronger. I’d said we’d both have to change, and I’d meant it.
I was still turning it over in my mind when he said, “Let’s sit a bit, eh.” He led me over to our tree, the one where he’d given me my ring, and I looked at him suspiciously and said, “You planned this.”
That barely-there smile touched his mouth. “I plan most of what I do. Want to take back all those lovely things you said about me?”
“No. If I love you, I love all of you. Even when you frustrate me and make me crazy.”
He sat on a huge, twisting branch that ran perpendicular to the sand, pulling me gently down with him. Behind us was an urban area filled with stores and business and hospitals, with people and all their problems, but we were alone in a green and gray grotto, the gentle swish and roar of the waves our rhythmic background music, kilometers of empty beach spreading in each direction. Sheltered, and alone together, wrapped in the embrace of the sea.
“I reckon,” he said, “that means I love all of you, too. Even when you won’t go along with my perfectly reasonable plans.”
This time, I laughed, and he smiled for real, put his arm around me and pulled me closer, and said, “Did I mention I was over the moon about this baby of ours?”
“Mm.” He was right there, so I had to bury my face in his neck just to inhale his delicious scent, all spice and warm man. A touch of aftershave, and a whole lot of Hemi. I would’ve known his smell anywhere. I would’ve known it blindfolded.
That was when he did the thing that melted all my resistance. He put his hand gently over my lower belly and said, “You were the best thing that ever happened to me. Except now there’s this, too. Now there are both of you. When I start to think of it, sometimes I have to stop, because I can’t . . .”
“You’re overwhelmed,” I said. “Like me.”
“I am.” Surely his eyes were glistening a little, and his hand was so big, so warm and solid on my belly. As if he really could hold both of us under his protection, could keep us both safe there, and what a seductive idea that was, even after everything I’d just said.
“We conceived it here, you know,” I told him. “Probably at Koro’s. Could even have been the night you asked me to marry you.”
“Bloody hell.” He ran his hand slowly down my back and up again, leaving tingles in its wake in that way only he could. “I spanked a pregnant woman. I spanked my pregnant woman, and I spanked hard enough to hurt, or at least right up to the edge of the line, and more than once. Doesn’t make me too happy to remember that.”
“That isn’t the part that has the baby in it,” I had to tease. “And in case you couldn’t tell—I loved it.”
“Not doing it anymore,” he said. “Not while you’re pregnant, I’m not.”
“What if I’m really, really naughty?” I had a hand in his hair and was kissing his neck now, just because it was so brown and strong, and I hadn’t touched him in two weeks, and what was worse, he hadn’t touched me. Plus, there were those pregnancy hormones. For once, they weren’t making me sick. They were just making me . . . hormonal.
“Then I’ll have to find s
ome other way to get you under control,” he said. “But I’m going to be careful, and I’m going to check in more. I’ll say everything you want to hear, but you’re not getting anything rough. I don’t want to hurt you, sweetheart.”
“Would that keeping-me-under-control thing be why you aren’t kissing me right now?” I asked. “Did I ever tell you how annoying that was to me? That first day, when you touched me on my arms, and then my shoulders, until I thought I was going to embarrass myself right there on my couch, and then you refused to kiss me? All that buildup, and not a bit of payoff for about two weeks? Then the first time you did kiss me, up against that wall in Paris . . . it felt like you were going to steal the soul right out of my body. And after that, how long did you torture me?”
“Things are always so much better if you have to wait for them.” He was caressing me now, not that much differently than he had that first time, his hand tracing lightly over the neckline of my scoop-necked T-shirt. He knew exactly how to make me tingle, and was he ever willing to take his time to do it. “And they’re even better if somebody else is making you do the waiting. At least so I hear. From my point of view, I’d say they’re better if I’m making you do the waiting. Nothing I love more than watching you squirm underneath me.” His mouth was at my ear now. “Except maybe hearing you beg,” he whispered, and just the touch of his lips on that sensitive spot made me shudder. “Now, that?” he said, sitting up again, way too much self-satisfaction in his eyes. “I’m willing to do that, pregnant or no, because there’s something about knowing you’re pregnant that’s making me want it even more, reprehensible fella that I am. There are some ways I do want to own you, no matter how much I’m meant to be letting you fly free otherwise, and I’m afraid that’s not going to change. But we’re talking about this baby of ours, not about your sweet little body and everything I’m going to be doing to it . . . tonight. It was really that long ago? You’re that far gone?”
Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) Page 5
