Meeting His Match

by Tia Souders

  “You’d have grounds for a lawsuit. She can’t fire you because you found a boyfriend.”

  Marti laughed and ran a hand through her hair. “Do you hear yourself?”

  “Do you want this to end? Could you honestly say goodbye to me right here, right now, and have no regrets, to walk away and never look back?”

  She bit her trembling lip.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, then pressed his mouth to hers.

  He parted her lips with his. She tasted of champagne, and he felt the pounding of her heart against his own as he drew her closer, one hand on the back of her head. If she wouldn’t listen, he’d show her. He’d convey with his lips what he couldn’t with words, unravel her fear and all her doubt bit by bit.

  But it wasn’t enough. Maybe he wasn’t enough because he sensed her pull away in the moment before she placed her palm against his chest and took a step back, breaking their connection.

  Breathless, Marti’s chest heaved as she wrung her hands out in front of her. Her blue eyes glittered under the moonlight, and he wished he knew what she was thinking.

  The air grew thick between them. When she finally spoke, her voice vibrated with emotion. “You act like my silence is an admission when I’ve said nothing.”

  “We both know the truth. I felt it last night when we kissed.”

  “It was just a kiss!” she screamed, and his heart lurched. Several people turned and stared, eyes wide, wine glasses paused at their lips.

  “Look me in the eye and tell me you feel nothing, and I’ll let this go.”

  She blinked up at him, her mouth opening without a sound.

  “Tell me.” His spine stiffened. “It wasn’t just a kiss,” he breathed and stepped closer. He ran his hands over her arms, leaning in and speaking softly into her ear. “It was lips, and breath, and skin, and touch. It was soft murmurs and sighs and unspoken promises. That kiss spoke volumes.”

  His eyes searched hers. His instincts had never let him down, and everything inside him told him that Marti felt the same way. “That kiss was everything. And if you weren’t such a coward, you’d admit it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MARTI

  MARTI SLUMPED NEXT to discarded shoeboxes in the freebie closet. She’d tried on every single pair, including a pair of gorgeous, thigh-high boots, and she still didn’t feel any better. The last time Marti spent this much time talking in here to the girls was when Mel’s parents contemplated retiring down south and she had an epic meltdown.

  Marti’s thoughts pinged on Logan, the pain in his eyes as he walked away.

  “We’ve tried chocolate and shoes. Nothing’s working. I’m at a loss.” Caroline threw her hands up, as if Marti weren’t in the room.

  “I’m sitting right here.” Marti pointed at her chest.

  “Marti.” Mel moved to sit across from her. “If you’re this upset, then maybe you should talk to him again, or talk to Blue. Tell her you won’t do it.” She sat cross-legged in front of Marti amid a pile of shoes.

  Marti snorted. “And lose my job?”

  “Or not. I can’t imagine Blue would risk losing you. She said it herself, you write the most popular digital column by far. No one has a cult following like you. She knows you will take your readers wherever you go from here.”

  “I know, but what about her ‘taking matters into her own hands’?” Marti said, making air quotes with her fingers.

  Caroline shrugged. “What could she possibly do? It’s not like she can write the article for you, and she can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to in your personal life.”

  Exactly what Logan said, but Marti didn’t believe it. Something told her Blue meant what she said. The woman was unhinged. She broke off her own engagement for the good of the magazine. She’d stop at nothing to tear Logan down.

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I can’t be in a relationship. It would never last.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “And why not?”

  “Because it’s me we’re talking about. I can barely manage to share my life with Fuzz, let alone a guy. I don’t do relationships. I never have. Think about it, I’m twenty-five years old and never had a boyfriend. The first one I get is fake. I’m a walking disaster when it comes to love. I don’t even believe in it.” Marti chucked a sandal from last season across the room. “Come on, Mel. If anyone understands, it’s you.”

  “It’s different with me,” Mel said, pushing her dark hair away from her face.

  “What? How?”

  “I’ve got triplets, for one. No man wants that kind of baggage, and even if he did, I have personal experience with getting burned. You don’t.”

  Marti opened her mouth to protest, but Mel barreled over her. “I know what your dad did to your mom sucked, and I know he hurt you when he cut you out of his life, but I don’t really think all guys are bad.”

  Marti arched a brow. “I know you don’t believe that. You loathe men.”

  Mel sighed. “No. I put up a good front, but it’s just more complicated for me. I’ve got kids. I have more people to consider than just myself. With you, it’s different. You don’t need to worry about four hearts breaking. Only your own.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” Marti grumbled.

  “Maybe if it were just me, I would try again,” Mel said, ignoring her.

  “You’re trying to tell me that you’d date again if you didn’t have kids?” Marti asked in disbelief. Since when? How did the world around her suddenly make zero sense?

  Mel bit her lip, her expression thoughtful. “I don’t know because it’s hard to picture my life without them. But it’s not like Craig was the first guy to hurt me. I’d been hurt before him, too, and I still gave him a chance.”

  “Exactly!” Marti waved frantically, on the verge of losing her marbles all over the freshly polished floor. “And look how that turned out.” If having your husband ditch you after giving birth to triplets didn’t turn you off relationships for life, Marti didn’t know what did.

  Caroline growled and stood, pointing at Marti. “Women can do the hurting too, you know. Love isn’t a one-sided thing. I’ve dumped plenty of guys.” She moved to the vanity with the makeup display and began angrily sorting the lipsticks as she spoke. “And before you say anything, because I know what you’re about to say.” She shot Marti a look of disapproval. “They weren’t all jerks. Some guys I ditched just because.”

  “True.” Mel riffled through the secret stash of chocolate they kept hidden in a Lou Bouton shoebox from three seasons ago. Tearing open a chocolate bar, she snapped off a piece and handed it to Marti. “Remember that guy you dumped just because he had weird eyebrows?”

  Caroline pointed a tube of lipstick at Mel. “Yasss,” she said, then applied the rosy pink shade to her lips. “He had brows like caterpillars. I couldn’t do it.”

  Marti scrubbed her hands over her face and groaned.

  It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours and she missed Logan already.

  Marti swallowed, squeezing her eyes closed as she replayed the words that spun circles around her heart. ...It was lips, and breath, and skin, and touch. It was soft murmurs and sighs and unspoken promises . . . It was everything.

  She told him she couldn’t fall. And she meant it.

  Longing wrenched in her gut.

  This wasn’t love. Was it? And if it was, why did it hurt so bad?

  “After my father left, my mother told me something, and I’ll never forget it.” She didn’t know what to do. All she knew was her heart hurt.

  “What was it?” Caroline asked, her voice soft.

  “Love is nothing more than a lie you tell yourself.”

  “Yikes,” Caroline muttered.

  Marti’s throat ached with emotion. She grew up, clinging to those words. She had believed them whole-heartedly.

  The question was whether she still believed them now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  MARTI

  SNOW FELL TO
THE GROUND in fluffy white tufts. Normally, she’d be thrilled, but she couldn’t find it in her to care. Not when every little thing made her think of Logan.

  She wondered what he was doing at that very moment. Was he staring out at the same scene, watching the powdery white blanket the city?

  With a sigh, Marti picked up her phone and glanced at the missed calls from Blue. Soon, she’d have to face her. Calling off sick worked the last few days, but come Monday, she’d have to face reality. No more avoiding Blue and the breakup article she couldn’t bring herself to write.

  Shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth, Marti mindlessly watched a movie, pretending like her father’s wedding wasn’t in an hour and she had nowhere to be. She needed to get up, wash her hair, and get ready. She knew that, yet the only thing that had motivated her to move from her spot on the couch in the last few hours was her bladder and an empty bowl.

  Her doorbell rang and she sighed. “Whoever it is, you’re going to have to bust the door down to talk to me. I’m not coming out.”

  A key scraped in the lock. Marti whipped her head toward the sound, and a piece of popcorn fell from her gaping mouth.

  The only person who had to a key to her place was . . . “Mom?” she asked when the door opened with a bang.

  Her gaze slid over Marti, quickly assessing her current state of existence.

  “What are you doing here?” Marti sat up, straightening the throw pillows beside her and shoving a couple dozen candy wrappers under the cushion.

  Her eyes self-consciously flitted over the empty takeout boxes on the counter and she grimaced.

  Whatever her mother wanted must be important. She hated coming into the city. Since the divorce, she’d moved to Jersey after Marti graduated high school and avoided it like the plague.

  “You called me, remember?” Her mother grinned.

  “I did?” A fuzzy memory pierced the edges of Marti’s subconscious. It involved a bag of Cheetos and downing half a carton of boxed wine.

  Marti winced.

  “Yeah, it was bad,” her mother said, confirming what Marti expected. “So I came to stage an intervention.” Her mother breezed through Marti’s kitchen and rummaged through her cupboards until she found the coffee, then started to make a pot.

  Crap, her mom knew about the boxed wine.

  “An intervention?” Marti asked like she’d never heard of one.

  “I hope you plan on showering before the wedding.” Her mother arched a brow at her haggard appearance.

  Marti lifted her shirt to her nose. It wasn’t that bad. “Ugh, the wedding.” Marti groaned. “Do I have to go?” She sank farther into the cushions. With any luck, the soft upholstery would swallow her whole.

  After a moment, the sputtering of the coffee pot started, and Marti felt the cushion sink beside her as her mother took a seat. “I know this has to do with Logan.” It was the first time her mother had spoken of him, and Marti eyed her suspiciously. She knew her mother read her column, but still . . .

  “It doesn’t,” Marti started protest, then snapped her mouth shut. A memory flickered and she caught a glimpse of herself cramming Cheetos into her mouth while relaying every single event of the last six weeks to her mother in excruciating, minute detail. How mortifying.

  “I should have had this talk with you years ago,” her mother said. “But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” She ran a hand through her short, auburn crop, then adjusted the collar of her shirt and straightened. She was fidgeting. It was how Marti knew that whatever she’d come here to say wasn’t easy.

  “Your father hurt me. Badly.”

  “Mom, I know all of this.”

  “No. You don’t know everything.” She set her jaw as she reached out and grabbed Marti’s hand. “I was partly to blame. I was obsessed with my job when I returned to work after being a stay-at-home-mom. I had been away from my career for a long time, and so when I went back, I jumped in headfirst. I lost all balance and gave everything I had to my work, but it was the wrong thing.”

  “Mom, please, can we not do this?” Marti shook her head. “There’s no excuse for what he did.”

  “I know that,” her mother said, her eyes fierce. “Cheating is always wrong. It crushed me, but my marriage suffered for a lot of reasons, and I was one of them. I neglected our relationship. Time and time again, I chose work over your father. We grew apart and started fighting. He resented the attention I gave my career, so he pushed me to work less. But the more he pushed, the more I pushed back. It was a domino effect. Each one of us reacting to the other, stacking the bitterness between us until it was all we had left.”

  Marti stood. She didn’t want to listen to this.

  “Marti, wait.”

  “What are you trying to say, Mom?” Marti swallowed. Whatever this was, she was over it. “Just say it.”

  Her mother reached out and squeezed her hand. “What I’m trying to say is that while your father was wrong, I wasn’t entirely innocent. It took me years to recognize my role in the failure of our marriage. And though there’s no excusing his actions, I have to shoulder a portion of the blame for pushing him away.”

  Marti wrenched her hand away. “No. I don’t believe that.”

  Why was she doing this? Making excuses for him? “He hurt you. He hurt us. And he left, Mom. Or are you forgetting that part? The part where he was just gone.”

  “I told him to leave.”

  Marti shook her head. “Yeah, I know, but—”

  “No. I told him to stay away.” Her mother’s eyes filled with tears.

  Marti’s throat squeezed. The last time she saw her mother cry was the day her father left.

  “I made him stay away.”

  “I don’t understand.” Marti’s head pounded. What was she getting at? She needed her to spell it out.

  “I was hurt and angry and wanted nothing to do with him. My pride was wounded, too. So, I kicked him out, even though he wanted to work on us. He wanted counseling. But I wanted none of it. I just couldn’t look past the anger and the betrayal. After everything that happened. . .”

  “I don’t blame you for that.”

  Her mother offered her a weak smile. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? But the reason you hardly saw him was because I couldn’t bear it. I threatened him. I told him I needed time to heal without the constant reminder of him in my face. I told him that if he didn’t give me the space I needed, I’d fight him in court and take full custody, and he’d never see you again. And the first time he tried coming around, I had my lawyer draw up papers, so he believed it.”

  Marti went numb. She couldn’t feel her arms, her legs, her lips as she said, “Dad never told me any of this.”

  “He promised me years ago, out of guilt and shame, that he’d never tell you.”

  The room tilted, the floor dropping out beneath her. “Why are you telling me now?”

  Her mother stood, straightening her blouse. “It’s not right keeping this from you, and it’s unfair for him to continue shouldering the blame of what happened after. I think part of me was glad when you turned eighteen and wanted nothing to do with him. It felt like vindication, so I didn’t stop it. But that was a long time ago, and I’ve healed. I was wrong, Marti. Moms make mistakes too. Lots of them.”

  Marti leaned forward, resting her head in her hands as the world around her grew weak beneath her feet. Her father had been forced out of her life. He’d stayed away for so long because he was afraid of losing her altogether, not because he didn’t care.

  Marti moaned and rubbed her temples. It was too much. This. Logan. Blue. All of it.

  Tears pricked the back of her eyes, but she wouldn’t cry.

  Her mother stepped forward and gripped Marti's arms until she met her eyes. “It’s okay to let him in,” she said, her expression earnest.

  “Dad?” she asked, weakly.

  Her mother shook her head. “Logan.”

  Marti swallowed. “You once said, ‘love is nothing more than a li
e you tell yourself,’ and I believe it. I always have.”

  “Oh, Marti. No you don’t.” Her mother placed her hand over her chest, then reached out and rubbed the spot below Marti’s ribs. “At least not in here. The heart wants what it wants.”

  “How can you say that? I was there. I saw what you went through.”

  “I would never give up the years I had with your father. What we had was special. We lost it, not because love is a lie, but because somewhere along the way, we stopped fighting for each other and started fighting for ourselves instead.”

  Marti’s heart raced.

  Is that what she was doing? While Logan was trying to fight for her—for them—she was fighting for herself.

  “What if we fail? What if it hurts?”

  Her mother leaned forward and placed a kiss on her cheek. “You can’t fail if you don’t try. And aren’t you already hurting?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MARTI

  MARTI ARRIVED AT THE ceremony five minutes late.

  She hurried down the side aisle, trying her best to tread lightly and attract as little attention as possible. When she stopped by the reserved pew for family, she squeezed past her Uncle Jim and her Aunt Penny, bumping their knees in the process and earning some rather dirty looks from the people in the pew behind them. Even Grandma McBride peered at her with disdain.

  In front of the alter, flanked by dozens of flowers, her father caught her eye and smiled. He wore a black suit and his bride wore a pale pink dress. Despite everything—their past and her pushing him away—he wanted her there. And for the first time in a long time that meant something.

  Marti watched as he and Christy exchanged vows in a short ceremony, trying to come to terms with the man she thought he was and the one her mother described. She had a million questions; some she may never get answers to. Had they gone to counseling like he wanted, would things be different? Would her parents still be together? Would she still be so afraid to love?