by Sarah Morgan
“Tansy loves it. She’s the eight-year-old. It’s hard to get her out of the water. Cole would rather dig in the sand for dinosaurs.”
“Which you’ve conveniently buried?”
“Sounds about right. How about your family? How’s Harriet?” He forced himself to ask the question. Not that he didn’t care about Harriet, but he cared more about finding out as much as he could about Fliss. “Does she know you’ve been impersonating her?”
“Yes.” She paced the kitchen, on edge, and then spun to face him. “Okay, I thought I wanted to avoid this but it turns out I can’t, so can we just get it over with?”
“Which part? The part where we update each other on the parts of our lives we’ve missed, or the part where we enjoy dinner?”
“The part where you say whatever it is you feel you need to say. Just do it. Give it to me straight. I hate suspense and tension. At least, I love it in movies and books, but I hate it in real life so let’s just get this done. You’re mad at me. Ten years is a long time to store up anger, so just let it out and then we can move on.”
“Fliss—”
“Don’t feel awkward about it. You think I don’t know? I messed up, Seth. I messed up in a giant, huge way. Mega mess-up. And you suffered for it. I wrecked your life, and I’m sorry.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead and muttered something under her breath. “That didn’t sound sorry, did it? But I am. Jeez, I am so bad at this. Are you going to speak?”
“You said the same thing the other night.” And he’d thought of very little else since. He couldn’t make sense of it. “Why would you think that? Why would I be mad at you?”
“You want a list?”
She had a list?
“Yes. Let’s hear it.” He wanted access to everything going on in her head. Even more so now he’d been given a glimpse.
“It was all my fault.”
“The fact that you got pregnant? I was there, too.” And he remembered every detail. Small things. The softness of her skin. The crash of the waves. Touch and sound. The way she’d felt and tasted. Nothing in his life had ever felt so right. “How could it have been your fault?”
“We wouldn’t have had sex at all if it hadn’t been for me.”
Did she really believe that?
“Fliss—”
“Can we stop pretending and remember how the whole thing went down? You tried to stop me ripping your clothes off. I have a distinct memory of hearing you tell me it wasn’t a good idea and that we shouldn’t do it.”
“Because I was worried about you. Not me. You were upset that night. You didn’t talk about it, but I knew you were upset. Your father had arrived unexpectedly. He’d said something—you wouldn’t tell me what. Whatever it was made you cry.”
“He didn’t make me cry.” Her tone was fierce. “He never made me cry.”
“You mean you never let him see you cry. But I saw it, Fliss. I saw what he did to you. How his words made you feel.” And he’d wanted to step through her front door and confront her father. He would have done it if he hadn’t been sure she would have been the one to bear the consequences.
There was a long silence, and then she lifted her chin and looked at him. “I have a confession. Something I probably should have told you a long time ago.”
He could hear the crash of the waves through the open doors.
“I’m listening.”
“I told you I was protected. Taking the pill.” She looked away and stared at the food instead. “It was a lie. I wasn’t. I said it because I—I was afraid you might stop. And I really, really didn’t want you to stop.”
He waited. “That’s your big confession?”
“I lied to you, Seth.”
“I know. I always knew.”
Shock flashed across her face. “How?”
“You were pregnant. It was pretty easy to figure out. And if there was blame, I share it, too. I should have used a condom.”
“You didn’t think you needed to.”
“I should have used one anyway. The reason I didn’t is the same reason you lied about taking the pill. Neither of us was thinking much about that side of things. Our relationship was always a bit like that, wasn’t it? It was like trying to hold back a storm.” And he knew instinctively that part hadn’t changed, that if he touched her they’d reach flash point as fast as they had the first time.
“I trapped you.”
“That’s not how it felt.”
“Oh, come on.” She paced to the doors, and for a moment he thought she was going to walk out. Then she paused. “One crazy summer, that’s what it was. Sex. Hormones. A teenage rebellion moment.”
“Seriously? You’re pretending it was teenage rebellion?” He saw her cheeks darken with color.
“It was never supposed to end up the way it did. We never should have gotten married.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Mr. Good Guy.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “I don’t think so. I got you pregnant.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Why are you always so determined to take the blame for everything?”
“Because it was my fault! I hurt you. Vanessa said—” She broke off, and he stilled.
“Vanessa? My sister spoke to you about it?” Why had that possibility not occurred to him? What had happened to his thinking?
Her gaze slid from his. “Forget it.”
“Tell me.”
“Why? It’s all history now. It’s not going to help.”
“I want to know what she said.” He stood firm, in this instance every bit as stubborn and immovable as she was.
“Nothing I didn’t already know. That I wasn’t the right person for you. And a few other things.”
Knowing Vanessa, he could imagine what those other things might have been, and he tucked the anger away and made a mental note that next time he spoke to his sister he was going to leave subtle at the door.
“My relationships are not my sister’s business.”
“She had your best interests at heart.”
“Maybe, but that still doesn’t make it her business.”
“She cares about you and didn’t want to see you hurt. And I hurt you.”
“You were hurt, too.”
“I was fine.”
Something inside him snapped. “Were you fine? Because I wasn’t. I wasn’t fine, Fliss! And I’m willing to bet you weren’t fine either.”
“Seth—”
“I understand why you hide your feelings. You don’t want to make yourself vulnerable. You’re afraid of being hurt. I know how much your father hurt you. He virtually trained you to keep every damn feeling inside. I get that. What I don’t get is why you would hide your feelings with me. Why you wouldn’t talk to me. And why you won’t talk to me now.”
The color drained from her face. “I am talking. What else do you want me to say?”
“I want us to talk about what happened. Really talk. Not gloss over the emotion. Last night you came close to falling apart and you won’t even admit it.”
And he wanted her to be honest. He wanted her to peel back those layers of protection that kept him from understanding her.
“I’ve told you it was a long day, and I’m not a midwife and—”
“Dammit, Fliss—” He crossed the kitchen in two strides. When she tried to sidestep he planted an arm on either side of her to block her escape. “Do not run.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“The truth. Let’s start there, and I’ll go first. Losing our baby hurt. It hurt more than I could ever have imagined possible. People talk about a miscarriage as if it’s nothing, as if a baby is replaceable. But it didn’t feel like nothing. Not to me, and I’m guessing not to you either. We hadn’t told anyone you were pregnant, so there was no one I could talk to and share my feelings with, except you. And you were determined not to talk. I couldn’t get near you. I don’t even know what happened that day you l
ost the baby. I went to sleep and you were in my bed and I woke up and you were gone. Then I got that call from Harriet saying you were in the hospital.”
She stared at him for a long moment and then lowered her eyes so that she was staring at his chest. “I woke early and went for a walk on the beach. I had this horrible pain and I knew I was bleeding. I panicked and called Harriet.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“She’s my sister.”
“This was our baby, Fliss. We were married! You should have called me right away.”
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was hoping they could do something.” Her voice cracked. “I hoped they might perform a miracle. Something, anything, that would make our baby stick. That’s what they said to me when they tried to make me feel okay about it. They said some babies just don’t stick and there isn’t always a reason they can find. Maybe that’s true, but to me it felt like karma. I’d got you into this situation and now I was being punished. I felt as if I deserved it for ruining your life.”
“Seriously? That’s what you believed?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think to ask me what I felt about it all?”
“I didn’t need to. I knew that without the baby, there was nothing left.”
He was so shocked it took him a moment to process what she’d just told him. “So you thought the baby was central to our relationship? That by losing it, we’d lost whatever we’d had?”
“Yes.” She lifted her gaze to his. “You want honesty, Seth, so let’s be honest. If it hadn’t been for the baby, we wouldn’t have got married.”
“Maybe not then, but—”
“We wouldn’t have got married.” Her tone was firm. “What we shared would have ended up being a steamy summer affair. I would have returned to Manhattan. You would have gone back to college. That would have been it. And maybe one summer in the future we would have met up on the beach and had another fling for old time’s sake, I don’t know, but I do know it wouldn’t have had a happy-ever-after.”
Outside, beyond the glass, the sun was setting, sending golden light flowing across the kitchen. For once, Seth didn’t care about the sunset.
“I had no idea you felt that way. Our marriage was real, Fliss.”
She gave a choked laugh. “We got married in Vegas.”
“It was real.”
“Seth—”
“Were you happy that day?”
She looked startled by the question. “I—this isn’t—”
“Were you?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was a croak. “I was happy. It was fun. There was that crazy dress we rented and that crowd of tourists taking photos. Harriet was terrified our dad would guess what we were doing and show up. Most of the photos we took have her looking over her shoulder into the crowd.”
He didn’t tell her that he’d had the same thought. He didn’t tell her about the security firm he’d employed to keep a discreet presence in the background.
“I was happy, too. And I was afraid that if we waited and asked permission, your father would find a way to stop it. I was worried he’d guess you were pregnant.”
And make her suffer.
“You married me to protect me. Vanessa kept telling me you were a knight in shining armor. A gentleman.”
If his sister had been given access to his thoughts at that moment she would have been forced to rethink that belief.
“She wouldn’t have thought that if she’d seen me ripping your clothes off behind the sand dunes.” He thought about the night they’d had sex on the beach and knew she was thinking of it, too.
“I unleashed your bad side. I trapped you.”
She really thought that? It explained so much. “I never once thought you’d trapped me.”
“We got married because I was pregnant. That’s the truth. And I’m still shocked you took me to Vegas. I always saw you as more of a Plaza-in-June kind of guy.”
“Ouch.” He took her face in his hands. “Do you really know so little about me?”
“Are you trying to convince me you’ve always dreamed of marrying in Vegas?”
“Guys don’t tend to dream of weddings. I was more interested in the woman than the setting.”
And he was still interested in the woman. More than interested.
“Not all girls dream of weddings either. After watching my parents in action, it wasn’t something I was in a hurry to emulate. But I bet you thought you’d do it some day. Pretty girl. White dress. Big family wedding. I deprived you of that.”
“The wedding was for us, not my family. We were the only two people who mattered. In fact I’d even say you spared me a big family wedding. For that, I’ve been forever grateful. Vanessa’s wedding almost gave my mother a nervous breakdown. I had no idea choosing a dress and a few flowers could be so stressful. I always thought a wedding was supposed to be a happy occasion.” He hesitated. “Ours was. Whatever came after, that day was happy.”
“Yes. And then we told people and suddenly it didn’t seem quite so shiny.” She looked tired and defeated. “Your mom was devastated when we told her what we’d done, although she hid it well. She was always very kind to me.”
“She likes you a lot.” He paused, wondering, asking himself questions he never had before. “Would you have wanted that? The Plaza in June?”
“No.” She shook her head. “That stuff doesn’t matter to me.”
“I remember Harriet trying desperately to add some romantic touches to our wedding. She was the one who found the flowers—”
“She did that to satisfy her own image of what a wedding should look like.”
“Why didn’t you turn to me?” His emotions were too raw to be contained. “When you lost the baby, why didn’t you tell me how you felt?”
She was silent for a long time.
“I couldn’t. I felt so raw and exposed. As if my insides had been ripped out. It was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me. For the first time in my life I didn’t know how to handle my feelings, and that made me feel vulnerable. Talking to you would have made me more vulnerable.”
He knew she believed it. And knew that was the root of their problem. “I’m glad at least you were able to talk to Harriet. At least you weren’t alone.”
There was a long pause. “I didn’t talk to Harriet either. Not about that.”
It was the last thing he’d expected to hear, and in that one sentence she revealed more than she’d ever revealed before and it made him realize that even he had underestimated the degree to which she protected herself.
“But she picked you up from the hospital—”
“She knew what had happened, but not the details. She tried to get me to talk, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“I assumed—” He broke off, processing it. “I thought you told each other everything.”
“If I’d let her see how bad I was feeling, she would have felt bad, too. I didn’t want her to feel a fraction of what I was feeling.”
“That’s a twin thing?”
She gave a faint smile. “No. I’m not talking about some weird, spooky thing where we feel each other’s pain secondhand. I’m talking about how it feels to see someone you love in agony.”
“Losing a baby is an emotional experience.”
“It wasn’t just the baby. I knew, even as it happened, I’d lost you, too.”
And she’d talked to no one. Harriet hadn’t got any closer than he had. He didn’t know if that made him feel worse or better.
“So you’ve never talked about it? Not with anyone?”
“No. I dealt with it my own way.”
He suspected she hadn’t dealt with it at all.
Her gaze shifted to the door, and he decided that if he pushed her any more she’d be gone.
“Let’s eat.” He stepped away and picked up a couple of serving platters.
She eyed him.
“That’s it? We’re done talking? Is it over?” The anxiety in her voice made his heart ache.
“You make it sound like dental work.”
Most women he knew loved talking. Vanessa did. Naomi had loved it.
Fliss made it sound as appealing as a visit to a tax attorney.
“We’re done.” For now. There was plenty more he wanted to say, needed to say, but it could wait.
“I’m not that hungry.”
“You will be when you’ve tasted what I’m cooking. It’s an Italian recipe handed down from my great-grandmother. A Sicilian caponata.”
“I have no idea what that is, but I’m sure it’s delicious.” On the outside she looked fragile. Her face was slim, her features fine and delicate. The outside bore no clues that she was as tough as Kevlar.
He threw steaks on the grill while she carried the rest of the food to the table on the deck. He’d positioned it to make the most of the sunset and planned to spend every free evening out here until the temperature dropped too low to allow it. He told her about the construction. The thought and work that had gone into transforming the house.
“The view is incredible.”
“I love it. Are you missing Manhattan?”
“Strangely enough no. It’s a pleasant change to wake to the sound of sea and surf rather than blaring horns and dump trucks.”
“You always did love the sea. I wasn’t sure how much of that was because it was time away from your father.”
She didn’t flinch. “That was an element, but it was more than that. I loved the feeling of being right on the edge of the land.” She took a mouthful of food and gave a moan of pleasure. “This is delicious. Do you remember that time we played beach volleyball? There was a crowd of us and we all tumbled into your house and your mom produced all this food. It was one of the things I envied most about your family.”
“The food?”
“Not the food exactly. More what the food represented. Family mealtimes. It was a time to spend quality time together. All those people. Laughing. All helping. Hand me the salt. Pass the sugar. Bryony, can you fetch the ham from the fridge? It was like choreographed happy families. I used to think about it when I was back in New York.” She spooned more food onto her plate.
“That’s what you thought? That we were the perfect happy family? I seem to remember Bryony and Vanessa fighting at the table over something most days, and my mother getting more and more exasperated with them.”
