Page 14 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

“No,” she replied with a forlorn sigh. “It wouldn't have been the same.”

“How do you figure?” I asked.

“Because I believe that he didn't kiss her back,” she said. “I wouldn't have been able to tell him the same thing had it been the other way around.”

I was silent, staring at her as she pushed her empty bowl of decent stew away. She laid her hands in her lap and stared at the table, shame and regret blanketing her face.

“That's why I had to leave that night,” she admitted, lifting one side of her mouth into a sad smile. “I knew that if you kissed me, I would kiss you back.” She laughed, so sad and quiet, then looked up to meet my eye. “Which I completely blamed you for, by the way.”

I couldn’t find it in me to laugh with her as I leaned one elbow against the table, propping my cheek against my fist, and asked, “Why is that?”

She looked down at her hands, swallowing again.

“Because you had been so nice to me, and … I guess … that was something I wasn’t used to.

You listened to me, you cared about the things I had to say, and you had only just met me.

I kept thinking, Why the hell am I wasting my time with my loser of a boyfriend when someone like this wants to give me the time of day? ”

A tear fell from her eye, and she swatted at it hastily, as if hoping I hadn't seen, but I couldn't miss it. “God, I feel like such an asshole, saying that out loud.”

“You're not an asshole,” I answered quietly.

She sniffled and held her head higher. “No, you know what? You're right. I'm not an asshole. I felt the way I did because I was right. Luke was a loser. He always was a loser … but …”

“You loved him,” I finished for her without even a smidgen of jealousy to back up my words. Even if he was the reason she hadn't given me the chance to kiss her years ago.

She closed her eyes and nodded. “Too much.”

“No such thing,” I argued.

She laughed and opened her eyes, leveling me with a challenge in her gaze. “Don't say that. Remember, I haven't finished telling you my story.”

“Well then,” I said, waving the waitress over to get the check, “it’s a good thing I still want to listen to you.”

***

We strolled along, past the Statue of Elizabeth Montgomery, around Old Town Hall, through Derby Square, and near the Peabody Essex Museum.

I played tour guide, using what little knowledge I had to point out places of importance, and despite it being the end of February, not once did I notice the cold.

And maybe that was thanks to my coat or that spring was lingering in the air, but I chalked it up more to the woman at my side, who exuded more warmth than a roaring fireplace.

All the while, she told me her tale. The years she had spent alone, taking college classes while working at her dad's shop and a local pharmacy.

She got her bachelor's and master's degrees in business management, with the intent of running her father’s shop one day.

She dated around a bit, had a couple of boyfriends, but her heart had belonged to Luke, despite understanding that a relationship with him would be unlikely to be anything more than toxic.

“And I thought about you,” she confessed, looking up at me as we wandered. “Sometimes, I'd think about what would've happened if I had just let you kiss me. How different things could've been.”

“I thought about you too,” I said since we were in the mood for confessions. “A lot actually.”

She sighed. “I, um … I looked you up. A couple of times. Not … not much or anything, but … a couple.”

I turned my head abruptly, startled by this bit of information.

Of course, I would've been able to find easier than she would've been.

I hadn't had her full name while she had mine.

I'd been in the military. I'd been in a handful of small-time news articles.

But my mind raced, wondering what exactly she had found. What she knew.

“I read about the attack,” she said, lowering her eyes, like she was ashamed to admit it. “I knew you had been injured and discharged.”

I grunted in reply, those old wounds tearing open with the mention.

“Can I ask how you were injured?”

I cleared my throat loudly and lifted my hand to tap my ear. “IED blast made me deaf.”

“Oh, wow,” she uttered, her face falling. “Both ears or just …”

“Both,” I answered. “They told me that, um … my eardrums were likely more fragile due to ear infections or something as a kid, so they were more susceptible to damage.”

“Did you have a lot of ear infections?”

I huffed a bitter chuckle. “No, but my dad liked to use me as his punching bag, so …”

“Oh God, I'm so sorry. You had told me about that, and I forgot,” she said, berating herself. “I’m such a—”

“It's fine. That was a long time ago.”

She turned away and nodded. Her mood had shifted; she was pitying me, and I needed her to stop. I didn't want her pity. I just wanted to know her and, if she wanted to, for her to know me … even the bad parts.

“So, um”—I brushed my elbow against her shoulder—“when did you get back together with Luke?”

Her chest heaved with a deep breath, and immediately, I sensed I'd hit on something sensitive.

She raised her eyes to the Grimshawe House, just across the street from the Old Burying Point.

She squinted her eyes in the late afternoon sun.

It'd be setting soon. I needed to get her back to Charlie's place and get myself to work, but, fuck, I didn't want to leave this moment.

I wanted to live here forever, wrapped in a combination of cold and warmth that left me so wonderfully discombobulated.

“We got back together after he was in prison,” she admitted on a sigh, as if speaking the words aloud had been a relief.

“Prison?” I asked, startled as I turned from the ancient house.

Her weary gaze met mine. “Charlie really hasn't told you anything, huh?”

“Chuck … Charlie … and I are …” I lifted one shoulder. “Coworkers, I guess. We're friendly—friends, I mean. But we don't talk much.”

She seemed to understand instantly. “That sounds like Charlie. He keeps everyone at a distance,” she agreed. “Well, I'll just let you know then. Luke was in prison for second-degree murder. He served eight years, and then he was killed by another inmate.”

It wasn't a confession you heard every day, and every word she spoke felt like a punch to the gut. The tightness in her voice. The heavy shame in her eyes. It was a weight she didn't want to carry without any way to lighten the load.

Her husband was a murderer.

When I hadn't spoken for a few seconds, I felt her eyes on me, and she asked, “You're not going to say anything? You're not going to ask what he did or how it happened or who he killed?”

She spoke defensively, and I could only imagine the things people had said to her in the past.

I shook my head. “I'm sure I could look him up if I wanted to know.”

“You wouldn't rather ask me? Get the truth?”

“If you wanted me to know, you would tell me,” I replied, holding her stare. “And I won't beg for information. But honestly, it doesn't even matter. He was your husband. He meant something to you. And whatever bad things he did, I trust that there was enough good in him for you to love him.”

Of all the things she could've said or done next, I hadn't expected her to laugh. And it was a sound on the brink of maniacal, her lips stretched into something between a grin and a grimace as her hand clutched to her chest.

“My parents thought I was crazy for starting to write to him, let alone going to the prison to see him. I think they wanted to commit me when I came home and told them we were getting married. They never …” She sucked in a quivering breath through her nose, her eyes now drowning in tears.

“They didn't talk to me for years, and it wasn't until I was pregnant with CJ that they decided they wanted to know their grandkids. And the thing …” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

“The thing is, I never blamed them for it.

It was easier to pretend I didn't exist than it was to explain to their friends that their daughter had lost her fucking mind and gotten herself knocked up with a fucking murderer's babies. I-I mean, Charlie …” She turned to look off in the other direction, toward the Old Burying Point and its iron fence.

“Charlie ran away because of the torment they put him through for being related to Luke, and I fucking married him .”

I didn't know who they were, nor did I think it mattered.

This woman—this strong, unbelievable, resilient woman—was falling apart in front of me, allowing her pieces to scatter when I assumed she'd been holding them together for a long, long time, and who was I to stop her?

All I could do was hope she'd let me pick up every last one and help her glue them back together.

“I was insane,” she whispered. “My kids will never have a father. We will be alone, and they will resent me for that.” She shook her head, twisting her lips into a sneer.

“God, what a selfish bitch I was. I couldn't just get over him like a normal person.

I couldn't just see him the way everyone else did, like a fucking loser .

A bad guy . He was a murderer, oh my God, and I loved him anyway, and I wanted …

I let him … I-I-I had his kids, knowing they would never have a normal relationship with their father, but that was okay because at least they had a father.

But he's gone . He was a fucking idiot, and he's gone .”

I didn't know what to do, what to say, so I took a step toward her and lifted an arm to pull her into a hug. But she took a step back and held out a staying hand, so I stopped, feeling as though my heart was ready to burst through my chest and lay bloody and broken at her feet.

She took a few deep breaths, steadying her lungs and drying her tears with the sleeve of her leather jacket.

“I'm okay,” she croaked, sniffling. “I'm sorry.

I just, um … sometimes, I want to explode, but I can't because I am always with my kids unless I'm at work, and I can't explode there either.

But I shouldn't have taken that out on you. I'm sorry.”

“Don't ever apologize to me,” I ordered softly. “If you feel safe enough to explode around me, then I am honored, and I never want you to feel sorry for that.”

“Then maybe I should thank you instead,” she replied.

“No need for that either.”

Dwindling rays of sunlight glinted off the red in her hair, reminding me of strawberry picking in the summer with the girls.

My eyes held hers for a handful of heartbeats, every one encouraging louder and louder for my feet to walk toward hers, but I didn't. I stayed put.

My eyes held hers, and I hoped that could be enough, but it wasn't. It never could be.

I wanted her now as much as I'd wanted her years ago, if not more, but once again, I was kept at arm’s length.

Because of Luke? Maybe. Probably. But was it him or the guilt of moving on from him?

I blamed her for neither, but it didn't make this suck any less.

Twenty years, I had held on to her memory, wishing for a chance to see her again, and it'd been given to me.

But obviously, seeing was all I'd be able to do, and that had to be okay.

But then her gaze dropped to my lips as hers parted, staring like I was a tall glass of water in the middle of the desert and she'd been thirsty for too long.

Her hands clenched to fists at her sides, and fuck!

I wanted to close this space between us.

It wasn't much, just two or three feet, but it seemed like a damn canyon now. Vast and gaping.

She wants me, and she has to know I want her too. There's nothing to stop us but ghosts.

And they aren't here.

“I, um …” Melanie began to say, letting her words fade away.

“Hmm?” I grunted, never allowing my gaze to leave her face.

“I think …” She cleared her throat and tore her eyes away from my mouth, but I couldn't miss the reluctance. “I think we should start heading back.”

I deflated as my mind scolded me for ever finding reason to hope.

Then I nodded and started walking in the direction of Washington Street, where I'd left my truck.

“Come on,” I said gently. “Let's go.”