Page 33 of Now That It’s You (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #5)

“Oh really?” Meg bolted up off the couch, her cheeks flaming now. “Where has forgiveness gotten you, Mom? Cheated on how many dozens of times? I’m sorry, but I wasn’t willing to put up with that. Not then, not now, not ever.”

“Meggy, honey?—”

“Don’t patronize me.” Meg paced at the edge of the couch, and Kyle admired her conviction, along with her curves. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through with Dad, I really am. But if you want my honest opinion, you’re better off without him.”

“Meg!”

“Well, it’s true.” Her gaze swung to Kyle, and he had a sudden urge to apologize for his brother. Again. But he kept quiet, sensing Meg needed to rage without interruption.

“I have a lot of regrets in my relationship with your brother,” she said. “But drawing the line over the affair wasn’t one of them. He always knew that was a deal breaker for me.”

“Understood,” Kyle said softly, his mind swirling with his own regrets. He wished he could take her in his arms, but he knew now wasn’t the time.

Meg’s gaze swung back to her mother. “Mom, I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. You don’t deserve it.”

“I know,” Patti said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

“If you just want a hug, I can do that. But if you’re ready to say you’ve had enough, I’ll help you find a divorce lawyer and we can end this thing once and for all. Do you want to take that step?”

Patti looked at her daughter, her eyes watery and her face etched into a frown. She looked over at Kyle, and he wondered if he should offer words of encouragement or just keep his mouth shut.

Before he could say anything, Meg sat down beside her mother and put her arms around her. “You don’t have to decide right now, Mom. But when you’re ready to take charge of your life, I’m there for you. I hope you know that.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” Patti stroked Meg’s back, and it was such a tender moment Kyle could overlook the snot she kept smearing on Meg’s shoulder. “I’ll give it some thought.”

Kyle sat watching mother and daughter locked in an embrace, his heart aching for reasons that had nothing to do with their conversation.

It was after midnight by the time Meg’s mom finally left the house. Meg felt exhausted and emotionally drained, which she knew was nothing compared with how her mother must be feeling.

She watched her mom’s car pull down the driveway, taillights flickering in the darkness. Meg had tried to get her to stay the night, but Patti had refused. “I want to be there when your father comes home,” she’d said. “Maybe we can talk this through.”

So Meg watched her mom’s car vanish around the corner. If there was something else she could do to help, she didn’t know what it was.

“You okay?”

She turned to see Kyle standing beside her in the entryway. He had his keys in his hand, and an uncertain look on his face. He stood close enough that only a thick sliver of light separated her body from his, but it felt like they were a million miles a part.

“I’m all right.” She let out a long, heavy sigh. “You’d think I’d be used to this by now, huh? It’s not like this is the first time it’s happened.”

“Doesn’t matter. It can’t be easy seeing your father hurt your mother that way.”

“No. I suppose it isn’t.”

“My dad hasn’t always been around, but at least when he is, he tries to make my mom happy.”

“I always envied what your parents had,” she admitted.

“It’s not perfect, but it seems to work for them.” He paused, keys still in his hand. “Do you want me to stay?”

Meg hesitated, not sure what he was asking. Was he offering moral support or something else? Which did she most want right now?

Both. Neither. Her heart felt trampled and bruised, and she wasn’t in any condition to be making big decisions right now.

“I’ll go,” Kyle said at last, deciding for both of them. Even though it was what she knew was the smartest choice, Meg still felt a wave of disappointment flush through her.

“That’s probably best,” she said.

“I wish I could do something to help.”

“You already did. Just having you here helped a lot. If nothing else, it’s good for my mom to see not all guys are assholes.”

He smiled and shifted his keys from one hand to the other. “I don’t know about that.”

“Have you ever cheated on someone?”

She felt startled by her own question, and Meg started to take it back. But Kyle was already shaking his head.

“No. I’ve been an asshole in plenty of other ways, but not that one.”

“Good.”

“You?”

Meg shook her head. “Not unless you count fourth grade when Derek Jones asked me to go with him and I didn’t know where he wanted me to go, but I said yes and didn’t know that meant I had a boyfriend until Tommy Simmons kissed me on the playground and the other kids called me a slut.”

“Ouch.”

Meg gave a halfhearted smile. “Can’t say relationships got a whole lot easier from there.”

“I don’t know about that. Don’t you sometimes miss the days of kiss tag and flipping up your skirt to let a boy know you like him?”

One edge of her mouth quirked. “Who says I don’t still do that?”

Kyle smiled and looked down at his keys. He seemed to be weighing them in his palm, maybe weighing something else in his mind. When he looked up at her, there was something dark in his gray-green eyes.

“For what it’s worth, Meg, my brother wasn’t lying when he told you it only happened once.”

She swallowed hard and held his gaze. “How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

For some reason that seemed like enough of a reason to believe him. Still. “Once was enough to matter to me.”

“I know. But I thought you should know he wasn’t a serial cheater like your father. Not with you, anyway.”

Meg nodded. For some reason she did find that comforting. Even when Matt had broken the news to her, her mind had been drifting to what else he might be hiding. How many other women had there been? And did it matter if there had been one or one hundred?

“Let me ask you something,” Kyle said.

“Fire away,” she replied, willing to discuss just about anything to keep him here with her just a little while longer.

“Do you think your mom will leave him?”

“Definitely not.”

There was no hesitation in her voice, which seemed to surprise Kyle. “Really?”

“Not a chance.” Meg shrugged. “I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but she’s been letting my dad run rickshaws over her for years.”

“Rickshaws?”

She frowned. “Is that not the expression?”

He looked like he was fighting not to smile. “Roughshod. Run roughshod over her.”

“Whatever.” Meg weighed a dismissive hand, and it occurred to her that Kyle’s gentle conversational corrections felt nothing at all like when Matt used to do it. “My point is that she’s not going to stop the cycle. Not now, not ever. It’s just the way things are with her.”

“How many affairs has your father had?”

Meg snorted. “That we know about? At least a dozen. I’m sure it’s more than that.”

“Do you think it’s some sort of weird turn-on for your mom?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve considered that before—I mean, as much as I’ve been willing to think about what turns my mom on.” She made a face. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“So what is it?”

She shrugged. “Low self-esteem? Force of habit? Refusal to back down from her marriage vows?”

“Love?” Kyle supplied, and Meg couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement.

“Maybe. But it’s not any kind of love I’d want to be part of.”

“But you are part of it. Like it or not, you’re their daughter. You’re a product of that.”

The thought of that made her chest hurt. “Probably true in lots of ways.”

Kyle leaned against the door, studying her with an intensity that made Meg start to squirm. “If that hadn’t been the story of your childhood, do you think you might have forgiven Matt and gone through with the wedding?”

Meg hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

Kyle nodded, and something flickered in his eyes. “That’s what I thought.”

“That doesn’t mean it would have been the right thing to do. But I wouldn’t have known that at the time.”

He looked at her a moment longer, then pushed away from the door, shifting his keys from one hand to the other.

From her spot in front of the fireplace, Bindi poked her head up and looked around.

Meg knew she should just let him call his dog and walk out the door and go home to his own home, his own bed, his own life.

But something made her reach out and touch his arm. “Kyle?”

“Yes?”

Meg hesitated, biting her lip. “Please stay.”

He looked at her, his gray-green eyes unblinking. He didn’t move toward her, and he didn’t move away. “What are you asking?”

“I just—I don’t want to be alone.”

“I see.” He hesitated. “Maybe Kendall can stay with you.”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not it.” God, he was going to make her spell it out.

She took a shaky breath and met his eyes, her hand still on his arm.

“I’m asking you to stay the night. We can keep all our clothes on and just sit on the sofa talking all night, or we can make mad, passionate love until we fall asleep exhausted. I just want you to stay.”

Kyle nodded. “Which of those two options would you prefer?”

“The latter,” she admitted softly. “But the former sounds nice, too.”

Kyle stared down at her, his eyes dark in the dimness of her foyer. “Are you asking because you don’t want to be alone, or because you want to be with me?”

Meg hesitated. What was the right response here?

The truth. She knew what it was before the words left her mouth. “I want to be with you.”

He reached for her, pulling her tight against his chest.

Meg tilted her head back and his lips found hers. They stood in the entryway kissing until they were both breathless. She was the first to draw back. “Come on,” she said, taking him by the hand. “This way.”

She pulled him toward her bedroom with her legs feeling like jelly.

Her heart thudded in her ears, and she said a silent prayer there’d be no more interruptions this time.

No needy parents or unwanted phone calls or oven timers with a mind of their own.

Just the two of them, doing this thing they’d agreed mere hours ago they absolutely shouldn’t do.

What the hell was she thinking?

She wasn’t thinking. She was feeling. And dammit, that felt good. Meg stopped in the doorway of her bedroom, turning to look at Kyle. He stood staring at the bed.

“It’s new,” she said. “I got it last year at a clearance sale at Sleep Country. In case you’re wondering if I ever?—”

His kiss cut off the rest of her words, which was just as well. Knowing her, she would have kept babbling about the damn bed and the fact that she never slept in it with Matt or did anything else that probably crossed his mind.

Of course, there were the sheets—a wedding gift from a college friend who’d insisted she keep them even after the wedding didn’t happen.

The pillows, too, had a history, and Meg tried not to recall the argument she and Matt had gotten into over firmness and thread count and a million other stupid features that seemed worth fighting over at the time.

Had Kyle ever made love to Cara on that cot in his studio? She hadn’t thought of that until just now, and the idea of it felt jarring.

But as Kyle laid her back on the bed, Meg felt her mind let go of all those thoughts. She forgot about Matt and Cara. She forgot about lawsuits and book sales and families and adultery and everything else.

For the time being, she let herself dissolve in Kyle’s arms.