Beneath the Scars

by Melanie Moreland

  “She’s moved on.” My voice sounded clogged, almost choking as I spoke.

  “How long are you staying here?” she asked abruptly, ignoring my statement.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need to read those books.”

  “Why are you keeping one?”

  “It’s the last book. The ending, if you like. Once you read those, we’ll talk. I’ll decide if you get the last one.”

  “Why are you giving them to me at all?”

  The room was silent as she mulled over my question. “I don’t really like you, Zachary. I don’t understand what Megan sees in you that inspired the love and loyalty she feels toward you. I don’t know why my husband thinks so highly of you—even now.” Her fingers traced over a pattern on the arm of the chair, back and forth, almost hypnotically. “But I love both of them, and he asked me to give you the information on Jared. Megan still feels something for you, although I don’t understand why. Their opinions have to be counted, so I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt—for their sakes.” She stood up, signaling she was done with me. “Read the journals. Then we’ll talk.”

  I walked to the door. “Does Megan know I’m back?”

  “No.”

  “Will you tell her?”

  “We’ll talk after you read the journals.”

  I knew that was all I would get from her for now.

  Without another word, I opened the door and headed across the beach, the journals feeling heavy in my hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Four days. I waited four days—hoping, praying Megan would return. I wanted to see her again on the beach and go to her; hear her voice, and see her sweet face. I yearned for her more every day.

  The days passed, though, with was no sign of her anywhere. Maybe she had decided not to return once she found out I was back in Cliff’s Edge. I had no doubt Karen told her I’d come back, since she promised me she would. For the first two days, I read Megan’s journals. I relived moments I hadn’t allowed myself to remember, smiled at the way she saw me through her eyes, frowned at how often I’d caused her tears. The tenderness, only she could trigger, raged again, as she described reading my moods when my eyes changed color—something I wasn’t even aware happened. I blinked away the moisture when she compared my smile to a morning sunrise—slow and warming the air around me. I rarely smiled before she entered my life, feeling the scars made that gesture look twisted and wrong. She saw only good and beauty.

  Twice, I had begged Karen to tell me where Megan was, but she refused, saying the decision was up to Megan, not me. Despite my assurances of how much I loved her, Karen’s opinion of me still remained skeptical; her protectiveness was fierce. I had to respect her for that above all else. The morning she left, I found the last journal on my doorstep, but I had yet to finish reading it. The pain it contained was so raw and overwhelming I hadn’t read past the day I fled from Megan and Cliff’s Edge.

  The morning of the fifth day, I was attacking the canvas in front of me, all the rage and bitterness toward myself splashing on the stretched material in angry, bold swipes of black, indigo, and gray. The storm on the painting was bleak, dark and massive; overtaking everything in its path—much like the burning pressure in my chest.

  The pain hadn’t lessened; in fact, it had gotten worse since I returned. I hadn’t slept and barely eaten—Karen’s words and Megan’s writing playing repeatedly in my head. I had read and reread everything Karen gave me. The proof staring me in the face, the truth I knew all along, and refused to admit, ashamed at my actions. The things I’d done, the assumptions I’d made, the pain I’d inflicted. All done because once again, I believed in what I saw, not what I felt. I failed to trust the one person in the world I should have listened to.

  I stepped back, feeling the great weariness from lack of sleep cover me like a thick blanket. I dropped my brush into the jar beside me and wiped my hands on the rag as I stared at the chaos on the canvas. The picture I looked at was void of anything but pain—much like my heart.

  Elliott’s head snapped up, a low whimper happening in the back of his throat as he stood, his tail moving side to side in agitation while his huge eyes looked behind me toward the beach. Slowly, I approached the window, reaching out a hand to steady myself on the frame.

  Megan.

  Standing motionless on the packed sand, just out of reach of the shallow surf.

  She was wearing a long, thick coat clutched loosely around her body. Her shoulders were hunched against the wind that blew strong and cold, while her glorious hair streamed out behind her, the sun catching the color, and turning it bright copper. She seemed so small amid the vastness that stretched out before her, yet it was only her that my eyes could see.

  Dixie ran around on the sand, sniffing and exploring, her excited barks barely rising over the swell of the waves and the wind. Behind me, Elliott paced, knowing Dixie was there. He was as anxious to be reunited with her, as I was to see Megan.

  Unlike the reunion they would share, though, I had no expectations of a joyous reception from Megan. Her journals were vast and rich—our story laid out in all its sweetness and horror. I saw us falling in love, and felt my walls crumble in those pages as I opened myself to her. I felt her elation and read her pain, the pages bearing the evidence of her emotion as she wrote about the last awful day, a few new ones added of my own as I read her words. All of the journals showed the tears that had fallen as she wrote, the watermarks appearing more often as the story grew to a close. I had no idea what the end part of the last journal contained. I still hadn’t read it; every time I picked it up, a wave of nausea would rush through me, knowing I could very well read Megan’s final farewell to me in it. I knew I would read and live her pain of the past few months she’d been alone. Her words would convey the same loneliness and longing I’d felt all this time, as well as the hurt I caused both of us by leaving. As much as I admired her strength before, now I dreaded reading how she used it to move past me.

  Slowly I walked down the stairs, Elliott ahead of me. Shrugging into my coat, on impulse, I slipped the last journal into the pocket. I hesitated, my hand gripping the door handle, knowing once I opened the door there was no turning back. Elliott would be out like a shot and within seconds, Megan would know I was coming. There was a chance she would turn and walk away.

  Nonetheless, it was a chance I had to take.

  Elliott was out of the door and on the beach before I even got to the top of the stairs. I stood watching as Dixie and he raced toward each other, the barks of welcome ringing out, echoing loudly. A smile tugged on my lips, watching the two furry friends reunite. Megan turned, watching as well, her head lifting, looking my way as I stood on the steps. Deliberately, she turned back to the water, her shoulders now straight. There was no doubt what emotion she was feeling at the moment.

  Wrapping my coat tighter, I crossed the beach, stopping before I was too close. The urge to wrap myself around her was almost overwhelming. All I wanted was to reach out and touch her, but I knew that wouldn’t be welcomed.

  She spun around, the movement so abrupt and unexpected, it startled me and I stepped back. Emotions I’d kept buried, memories I refused to allow to surface, broke free, tearing though me like a tornado.

  Her eyes—swirling, deep pools of brown so rich and vibrant stared at me, filled with a thousand emotions. Her sweet face was pale, the freckles standing out on her skin like flecks of wet sand on a bleached seashell. She was thin and tired looking—yet so very beautiful.

  How could I have forgotten how beautiful she was? How much she made me feel simply by being close to her?

  I stepped forward, but her hand flew up, halting my movement.

  She was also very angry.

  I held up my hands in supplication. “Megan,” I breathed.

  Her eyes dropped, but she didn’t move, instead pulling the coat she was wearing closer around her like armor. “Why are you here?”

  “I had to come back.�
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  “Why?”

  How did I explain it to her? There weren’t enough words for what I wanted to tell her. “Please, look at me.”

  Slowly her eyes lifted, my heart aching with the pain and hurt I saw in them. Pain and hurt I caused. Her hands tightened on the coat, the material twisting in her fists. “You believed him. You believed his disgusting, terrible lies,” she spat.

  “I’m sorry.” Two words that weren’t anywhere near adequate, yet the only ones I could think to say.

  “You’re sorry?”

  “I have so much to say, Megan. I don’t know how to start.”

  “Why don’t you start with where you’ve been for the past few months, Zachary? After you left me here! Alone—facing that sea of reporters who were screaming and yelling questions, calling me names, while he stood there, fucking smirking as you walked away—no—ran away like a coward! You arrogant, selfish, asshole! You just left me there!”

  Her voice had steadily risen until she was screaming at me and I flinched at her words, but didn’t stop her diatribe. Everything she said was true.

  “And then I come back here to find you gone! You disappeared without a word, the whole time believing his lies!”

  “I did believe them. It made so much more sense than you really loving me.”

  Her shoulders sagged, her voice now weary. “I never did anything but love you.”

  “I know that now.”

  “How did it feel when you realized I wasn’t lying? That everything I said was the truth? That we were real? He used me. He used you to get to me. Not the other way around. How did that feel?”

  “It made me ill.”

  “How do you think I felt?”

  “I have no idea, Megan. I can only imagine you were devastated.”

  She nodded. “I was. And, I was alone again and had to start over.”

  I closed my eyes at the sound of her pain. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “I don’t know what else to say. I want to take you inside and talk to you. Sit down and hash this all out. Listen to whatever you want to tell me. Maybe get you to listen to me.” I inhaled sharply. “I know it might not mean anything now, Megan, but I love you.”

  She drew in on herself, taking a step back as her eyes widened. “You love me…why, Zachary? Why exactly do you love me?”

  Watching her reaction to me was torture. The need to draw her close clawed at me and I pushed my hands into my pockets to stop myself from touching her. My entire world was hanging by a thread in front of me, and I knew it could snap at any second. She could turn and walk away—out of my life for good.

  My fingers closed around the journal in the bottom of my pocket, nervously clutching the smooth leather, remembering her words of love. I needed to make her feel them again. “Why? Because of how I felt when I was with you. How you made me feel about the world around me. That maybe, it wasn’t such a terrible place. That perhaps I had a place in it, as long as you were beside me.”

  “You were so quick to throw it away.”

  “I know. I was scared and caught off guard when my past hit me in the face. I reacted and I hurt you. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

  “Why did you come back? You came back before you knew the truth. You said yourself you don’t give second chances—ever.”

  My brow furrowed. “You aren’t the one who needs the second chance. I am, Megan. I need you to give me a second chance. I’ve fought against it for months. I kept telling myself the only thing I felt for you was contempt, but I was lying to myself. I missed you so fucking much, I ached with it.” My hands clenched at my side, desperate to reach out, needing to touch her. “You want to know why I came back? Because somewhere, some part of me knew I had to try and find you. There was a small voice telling me it was real. You did love me and I’d fucked up the one good thing I ever found in my life.”

  I paced up and down the sand, needing to move as the tension grew inside me. “I told myself I was coming back here to clear out the house and sell it, move on and forget this place and that you ever existed.” A humorless laugh escaped my lips as I stopped pacing and stood in front of her. “As if I could ever forget you—or get over you. The day I walked back into the house you were there—you were fucking everywhere. All I could see, all I could feel, were all the good things about you, about us. All I could think of was you. Your voice, your scent, the way you looked at me and cared for me. All I could feel in that house was your love.

  “Then Karen came to see me. She gave me all the articles about that fucking bastard and what he’d done. It was then I realized how deeply I’d wronged you. Wronged us.”

  “You believed him so easily. You walked away without even questioning it.”

  “I did. It proved I was right all along. I wasn’t worthy of being loved. Only used.”

  “I didn’t use you.”

  “I know. Fuck, I know that now. I knew it months ago, but I was too afraid to admit it. Too afraid I had been wrong.” My fingers dug into the skin at the back of my neck. “Karen gave me your journals to read and I saw how you’d written our story.” I stepped forward, my voice wavering. “I read your words—I read your love for me, Megan. I saw your tears on those pages. I saw the truth. I knew how wrong I’d been, how much damage I’d done, and I knew I was probably too late.”

  “Is that why you’re here now, Zachary? Because of the story, because of what you found out at the end?”

  Found at the end?

  I frowned at her. “I haven’t finished reading the last book yet, Megan.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I haven’t. I was too…afraid to read it.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want to know you didn’t love me anymore. I didn’t want to read your goodbye.” I pulled the book out of my pocket, offering it to her. “I wanted to see if I could beg you to rewrite the end. If you thought you could forgive me, and let me try and show you how much I still love you.”

  She looked between the book and my face. Up and down her gaze moved. “You need to read it the way it is right now.”

  My arm dropped, the book now weighing too much to hold it. “Is there no chance?”

  Megan moved closer. Close enough, I could see the gold in her eyes; smell the gentle floral scent of her hair. “You want to know if I can forgive you.”

  I wanted to yank her into my arms and feel her warmth. I wanted to bury my face into her hair and breathe her in, but I couldn’t—not without her permission. Like I was in a trance, I lifted my hand and tucked one long strand of hair behind her ear. “Yes.”

  “I forgave you the day you left me. You’d only known love for a few weeks, Zachary. You weren’t even sure of everything you were feeling yet. What you knew best was being hurt.” I froze as she rose up, the soft brush of her lips on my cheek surprising. “But you have to read the rest of our story, then decide if you want to move forward. We have so much to recover from, and it won’t be easy or happen overnight.” She stepped back, the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “I started again without you, and I’ll keep going because I have to. If you read that book and decide you have to leave, just do it. Don’t come see me. Don’t give me hope again. I’ll pack my things, go back to Boston, and carry on where I have some support. ” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I can’t take it and I won’t let you hurt us again. I won’t recover from that.”

  Then she turned and walked away.

  The journal mocked me from the table where it had been sitting since I walked in the house. I had stood and watched Megan move across the beach, away from me. Her figure grew smaller as the distance between us lengthened. I watched her until she disappeared, struggling not to run after her and beg her to tell me what was in the book. That it didn’t matter, because I loved her. I wanted her to let me hold her until I felt the horrible pain ease away, and I was strong enough to be what she needed. I would prove to her I wasn’t ever going to leave her again
.

  I didn’t want to hurt her anymore.

  I pulled the book closer, almost with fear. I opened the cover; flipping to the page where the satin red ribbon marked the spot I stopped. That last, awful day when I allowed my insecurities to blind me to the truth—truth I was too weak to believe. Megan’s unique, almost old-fashioned script filled the pages. I flipped to the last page, noticing, for the first time, the book was only about two-thirds full.

  I sat on the sofa closer to the fire, an unusual chill running through my body. The contents of this journal were going to change my life, of that I had no doubt.

  I looked out the window, watching the waves as they surged and ebbed. I felt my tension easing as I matched my breathing to the long swells.

  Finally, I lowered my gaze to the book, wondering if I was strong enough to read it and accept what it said.

  Two hours later, the book fell from my hands as hot tears poured down my face, her words swirling around in my head. So many emotions flooded my heart. Her raw pain at my leaving and how she struggled tore at my soul. I left her alone at a time I should’ve been beside her; giving her what she offered me so freely: unconditional love and support. I had failed her in so many ways, yet her words brought with them the flash of another emotion: hope. Hope for the future, hope for us. With that hope, came joy for the news our story contained.

  Bending down, I picked up the book. She hadn’t finished our story. The pages were still blank as if she was waiting, unsure how to finish.

  I had to get to her. Plead with her to allow me to be part of those blank pages.

  To allow us to finish the story together.

  I shivered under the blanket at the cold that seemed to be a permanent resident inside my body. I thought I was prepared to see Zachary. When Karen told me he was back and what she had done, I was shocked—and furious. Her decision, she told me, was based on the fact he seemed as lost and struggling as I appeared to still be, even though I tried hard to cover that fact. When she told me he was waiting for me, I almost didn’t believe it.