The Wishing Tide (25 page)

Lane

L
ane lay very still, afraid to break the spell. It was strange having a man in her bed, to lie naked and sated in this room she had never shared with anyone. She’d almost forgotten how good it could be, and how frightening—the yielding of secret places, of the self. There’d been no one since Bruce, and for the last year of their marriage, there hadn’t even been him.

In the dark, she blushed as she relived the memory of Michael’s mouth, his hands, everywhere at once, burning without consuming, taking without emptying, and she, in those deep, delicious moments, willing to give everything.

She hadn’t meant for it to happen. It began with a touch, a simple gesture of compassion, but like Michael’s brutal reaction in the greenhouse, emotions she thought under careful control had suddenly ignited without warning. She had gone out of her way to keep her feelings tightly reined, buttoned up, and out of sight—and for good reason. The last time she let a man into her life, she had allowed herself to be systematically dismantled, her pieces rearranged into an almost unrecognizable version of herself, until even now, five years later, she wasn’t sure she had relocated all the fragments.

He was sleeping, one long bare leg draped casually over hers, his
breathing smooth and rhythmic, keeping time with the milky beam of light that swept through the room at regular intervals. The tortured look was gone from his face, but for how long? They had talked after, about the horrors of that night, the blank horror in his mother’s eyes when he found her frozen on the stairs, the weightless terror he felt as he plunged through a burning staircase—the terrible moment he realized Peter had stopped screaming.

The bleak unfairness of it was almost inconceivable. The boy—Evan then—who by the age of eight had already suffered a lifetime of tragedy, and the man asleep beside her now, who still carried those tragedies on his scarred shoulders, and probably always would. Because there was no way to reconcile with the dead, no way to forgive and no way to be forgiven.

Now, in retrospect, so many things made sense, like puzzle pieces shifting into place, the picture finally coming clear: his aversion to
Great Expectations
with its madwoman and its burning house, the warning to mend the rift with her mother before it was too late, his unapologetic revulsion of Mary and others like her, too poignant a reminder of the mother whose gradual unraveling had ultimately torn his family apart. Even his theory about houses having souls made sense now, in light of what the walls of the Rourke House must have witnessed in Hannah Rourke’s day.

The rest of the story was only slightly better. Michael had lived at the Cloister, in the not-so-tender care of the nuns, until a suitable family could be found. It took almost two years before he was whisked away to Boston to meet his new parents, who apparently had no shortage of money, but fell rather short when it came to demonstrations of affection. Having his name changed the minute he arrived certainly couldn’t have helped matters, though he’d claimed with a shrug against the pillows not to have cared one way or the other. She suspected he’d probably stopped caring about a lot of things by then.

It would be light soon; she should try to sleep. Beside her, Michael
sighed and turned away, taking his warmth with him. The loss was startling. Rolling onto her side, she scooted closer, fitting her hips with his until the tips of her breasts grazed the scars along his back. He stirred, groaning sleepily, then went still again. Yes, Lane thought, closing her eyes, it was good to have a man in her bed—this man. Michael Forrester or Evan Rourke—she didn’t care which he was, so long as he was beside her when she woke in the morning.

He wasn’t, though.

Instead, she woke to a tangle of cold sheets and a dent where his head had rested only a few hours before. It was early, a little past six, the room bathed in flat gray light. Lane surveyed the telling trail of clothing strewn across the carpet—sweatpants, T-shirt, socks, panties—precisely where they’d been shed in a feverish route to the bed. But nothing of Michael’s, she noted, as if he’d gone out of his way to erase all traces of his presence.

Listening for signs of life, she was greeted with only silence. No creak of floorboards, no rush of water through old pipes. Had he packed up and slunk away during the night, convinced what had happened between them was a mistake? The thought left a hollow place in her belly.

After dragging on fresh sweats, she padded down the back stairs, relieved to catch the smell of coffee drifting up from the kitchen. Not gone, then. Her knees actually wobbled with relief as they cleared the last few steps. But Michael wasn’t in the kitchen, and the jacket he’d hastily draped on a peg near the door last night was gone. Beside the coffeepot stood a clean mug and spoon, along with a curtly penned note.

Gone for a walk to clear my head. Made coffee.

Lane blinked at the note briefly, then crumpled it in her fist. Of course he’d made coffee.
She could see he’d made coffee. What he
hadn’t done was explain why he had slipped out of her bed before dawn, and out the back door like a thief.

Filling the mug Michael had set out for her, she slumped into the nearest chair. She had imagined a breakfast prepared together, a newspaper shared between shy, furtive smiles, fingers stealing across the table to touch, and linger. Instead, here she sat with a mug of coffee—alone.

The clock above the sink ticked steadily against the silence, a grim reminder of other empty mornings, and the stretch of others like it that seemed to await her. How had she come to live this life of near misses? A marriage that had never quite gotten off the ground. A pregnancy that had suffered the same fate. Even her novel had been stillborn.

She thought of the half-finished manuscript. Had Bruce thrown it away? Or was it still there in the bottom drawer of her nightstand, covered with Professor Bingham’s scathing red notes—one more failure, one more loose end? She had her articles, a kind of consolation prize, she supposed, for the life she wanted but had failed to create—a year’s supply of Turtle Wax instead of a novel with her name on the cover.

Her eyes wandered to the refrigerator with its crayon-bright stick girl and grinning stick dog. The scoopy blue waves and orange-slice sun were unbearably happy, stirring an ache that suddenly made it hard to breathe. She had wanted all that once, the crayons and the peanut butter sandwiches, the school supplies and field trips to the zoo.

She had wanted so much once. When had she stopped? When had she resigned herself to solitary mugs of coffee drunk in a solitary kitchen? Michael was right. Somewhere along the way, by small, insidious degrees, she had decided it was safer to hide behind the Cloister’s thick stone walls than to risk another failure—to risk being unloved.

Until last night, when in a moment of weakness, she had let
Michael inside those walls, had let him see and touch the fragile parts of herself, parts she’d hidden away for safekeeping. The result had been so primal, so wholly and blindingly unexpected, that it almost frightened her. Could she come out of hiding, open her heart again? Risk loving—and losing? And with Michael off somewhere clearing his head, did it really matter?

Come to think of it, her head could do with a bit of clearing, too. Stretching up out of her chair, she grabbed her jacket from the peg near the door, wedged her feet into her duck boots, and stepped out onto the deck. The weather fit her mood as she crossed the dunes and made her way toward the shore, blustery and cold with no sign of clearing.

She loved blustery days, when she had the beach to herself, the wild thrash of the sea, the wind raking through her hair, Starry Point Light looming chalk white against a dull metal sky. She was just beginning to leave her thoughts behind, to lose herself in the rhythm of her heels against the hard-packed sand, when a splash of green out on the jetty caught her eye.

If she was quick about it, maybe she could turn around and slink back to the inn before he spotted her. And yet her legs refused to move. Instead, she studied him in the distance, perched on a sharp jut of rock, shoulders hunched, gaze trained out to sea.

He had to be freezing out there in all that wind and blowing spray, and yet he found it preferable to facing her and dealing with what had happened last night. The thought was vexing enough to start her feet moving again. Out on the jetty, he couldn’t run.

She had closed the distance by half when she saw his posture change. Even at a distance she could feel his eyes, feel the tension stretch between them across the length of wind-whipped beach. He stood when she reached the base of the light, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans as he watched her navigate her way out onto
the craggy boulders. For one yawning, interminable moment they stood staring at each other over the steadily drumming waves.

“You were gone when I woke up,” Lane said finally.

Michael ducked his head sheepishly. “That probably didn’t look good.”

“Not very good. No.”

“I made coffee.”

“I know. I read your note. The head-clearing thing . . . did that happen?”

“Lane—”

“Please,” she said, cutting him off. “Let me go first.”

Michael nodded, but the steady tic along his jaw told her he already knew what he was going to say, and was clearly impatient to be done with it. For a moment, she wondered if she should bother saying anything at all. Then she heard her mother’s voice, telling her to stand up for what she wanted. Squaring her shoulders, she cleared her throat.

“Last night we connected. And I don’t just mean between the sheets. You told me things—things I suspect you’ve never told anyone, things I think you’ve always been afraid to say out loud. I don’t know what that means, but it has to mean something. So before you say what I think you’re about to—”

“Lane—”

“Am I wrong?”

“No. You’re right. I’ve never told those things to anyone. But then, you didn’t leave me much choice. You were about to call the police.”

Lane’s eyes widened at his cavalier tone. “And afterward, when you were lying in my bed—all those memories, about Peter and your mother—I wasn’t holding the phone then.”

“You don’t understand. I don’t expect you to, but I . . . needed someone.”

Lane flinched, absorbing the words like a well-aimed slap. “You’re saying I was handy?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He paused, raking his hair off his forehead. “Or maybe I did. I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight, as you’ll no doubt recall.”

“Well, lucky for you, then, that I happened to be around.”

“It was more than that, and you know it. I’m just . . . I’m not good with intimacy.”

“Oh, on the contrary, you’re very good at it. It’s the aftermath you suck at.”

Michael grimaced. “Lane, please. I don’t want it to be like this. I never meant to take things where they went. I care for you, but—”

“But what?” A gust of wind sent her bangs into her eyes. She shoved them back. “This past week, while my mother was here, you . . . we . . . I thought—”

“I know what you thought, Lane. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, too, but the kind of life I’ve had, the things I told you last night, don’t exactly make for happy endings. Marital bliss and happily ever after weren’t part of any world I grew up in. Which is how I know they can’t ever be part of my future. And that’s why I’m out here, making my peace with what my gut knows is the right thing to do.”

Lane felt dread, hot and salty, clutching at her throat. “The right thing?”

“Leaving Starry Point. Forgetting last night. Forgetting you.”

She blinked back the beginning of tears now, determined not to let him see. “And that’s what you want—to just forget?”

For a long time he was silent, as if choosing his words carefully. “I should never have come back,” he said at last. “I came back to find something, or at least look for it—something silly, I realize now. I thought if I could hold it, face it, the dreams would stop and I could get on with my life. I was wrong.”

“You haven’t answered the question.”

“You mean is leaving what I want?” He paused, craning his head back to eye a pair of gulls circling against the cold gray sky. When his gaze returned to hers, his eyes were empty, flat. “I wish I had a better answer, Lane, but I won’t lie. Even if leaving isn’t what I want, it’s what I need. And if you listen to what I’m telling you, you’ll realize it’s what you need, too. I wouldn’t be any good for you. What you need from a man—what you deserve—I just don’t have to give.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it died. Years ago, along with my father, and Peter, and my crazy mother. The night of the fire . . . before . . . after. That’s too many nightmares to share with another person. I won’t make promises I know I can’t keep.”

“So that’s it?” She blinked at him, her eyes watering in the wind. “You’re going?”

“It’s best. And not just for me. I know that’s not what you want to hear. It’s not what I want to say, but it’s what has to happen—before I hurt you.”

“You wouldn’t hurt me.”

He looked at her then, long and steady. “I would, Lane. Not on purpose, but I would. And I’d rather hurt you a little now than hurt you a lot later. You don’t need another man who can’t love you the way you should be loved. And that’s who I’d be.”

Lane fought to keep her voice under control, though everything in her ached to ask him to stay. “How soon will you go?”

“There’s a nor’easter heading for the coast. As soon as it clears I’ll get on the road.”

That was it, then? A slightly more eloquent version of
I
t’s not you; it’s me
?
And he’d already checked the weather.
How efficient.

She managed a nod but kept her eyes on the sea. She didn’t trust herself to look at him, not when her emotions were still so raw, her heart so exposed. Apparently she’d wasted her time worrying about
whether she was ready to risk her heart. The choice had been made for her, before the memory of his touch had even been allowed to fade.

“You’re freezing,” Michael said, taking a step toward her. “We should get back.”