With This Kiss (33 page)

T
he morning of the Tapping of the Maples Festival was full of sun and bright blue skies. The wind was still, the birds were chirping, and the flowers were blooming.

Everything was perfect.

At ten a.m. the festival opened its “doors” and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was a huge success. Hundreds of people had come from all around New York to celebrate a new ritual of spring at Emerald Lake.

Rebecca had worked toward this day for months. She was glad to see what fun everyone was having, both young and old, as they learned to tap the maple trees. Mr. Radin was conspicuously absent, of course, but she wouldn’t have expected anything else.

But instead of basking in her success—and Sean’s, too, as she couldn’t have possibly pulled it off without his help—her gut churned.

Because all the while, as she stood beneath the clear, blue spring sky, as she kept an eye on the festival proceedings and dealt with a handful of issues throughout the morning, she couldn’t push away her memory of watching
Sean sleep last night, the hard lines of his beautiful face softening as he relaxed into her arms. She’d never loved anyone the way she loved him.

And she simply couldn’t stand beside him every day, couldn’t lay with him in her arms every night and know that a promise he made continued to tear him apart every second of every day.

Confident that everything was under control with her festival, she was glad for a few minutes to walk away from the crowds. Somehow, she needed to figure out how to take a full, deep breath through her clenched and tight lungs. She was doing just that when she felt a buzzing along her spine and saw Elizabeth Murphy coming toward her.

The breath Rebecca had been taking exploded in her chest.

You promised him you wouldn’t say anything
.

Elizabeth gave her a wobbly smile as she approached, but Rebecca couldn’t smile back. Not yet, not until she’d done a better job of swallowing down everything that was still bubbling up.

Twenty years. That’s how long it had been since Sean had caught his mother in a compromising position with another man. Rebecca tried to remember that everyone had willingly stuffed it down, pushed away the ramifications of a promise made under duress. It was up to them to change things, not her.

“I’m so glad the weather is cooperating for your festival today, Rebecca.”

She hadn’t spoken with Elizabeth since Sean had told her his secret. Not trusting her voice, Rebecca simply nodded her agreement.

Sean’s mother looked tired, more worn than Rebecca could remember seeing her in the nine months she’d been in town. With any other person, Rebecca would have asked if everything was all right, if she could help with anything.

But she didn’t dare say those words to Elizabeth. Not when she knew others might follow, harsh words that weren’t her place to say.

You promised not to say anything
, she reminded herself again, the words playing over and over in her head as she tried to get herself to heed them.

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you, Rebecca?”

Rebecca’s breath caught in her throat. Oh god, what was she going to say to that?

She needed to lie, needed to tell Sean’s mother that everything was fine.

But she simply didn’t know how to do that.

She turned to face Elizabeth, looking her square in the eyes. “Yes, I am.”

Sean’s mother looked terribly fragile as she nodded her acceptance of the truth. “I’m sorry. So very sorry for the way I’ve behaved.”

Rebecca felt as if she’d stepped into the twilight zone again with Elizabeth, one where everything had turned topsy-turvy. Because, if she wasn’t mistaken, this was a woman who rarely apologized to anyone for anything.

Desperate to keep her vow to Sean, Rebecca chose her words very carefully. “You don’t know how much it means to have you say that, to know that you plan on fixing things.”

Elizabeth gave her a strange look, one tinged with confusion… and fear.

“Yes, Rebecca, I want to fix things between us. I’ve never treated you as well as I should. I was too protective of Stu.” She paused. “And then Sean. I wouldn’t let myself see you for who you really were because I was afraid you were going to hurt my sons.”

Rebecca barely kept her mouth from falling open.
This
was what Elizabeth was apologizing for? For being somewhat cold and unwelcoming to her?

Blood rushed in her ears again, louder this time, and her hands were tight fists by her side. She needed to turn away, needed to back down from confronting Sean’s mother. But, damn it, he’d borne the pain of his mother’s deep betrayal for nearly twenty years already. One more second was one second too long.

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.” Her words were flat and so much colder than Elizabeth’s had ever been to her.

Elizabeth flinched. “Rebecca? What are you talking about?”

Rebecca said only one word. “Sean.”

She wasn’t glad to see his mother turn a nasty shade of white-green. She wasn’t doing this because she wanted to see his mother put in her place. It was simply instinctive to protect the man she loved from the one person who’d hurt him the most. Not just once, but again and again with her continued demand for his silence.

Elizabeth wasn’t saying anything. She wasn’t pretending she didn’t know what Rebecca was talking about. She wasn’t defending herself, either. Instead, she was standing there looking completely broken, tears sliding from her eyes one after the other.

Rebecca knew how soft she was, that she’d never been
able to hold a grudge, that the sight of tears always made her give in.

But this time, she was immune to Elizabeth’s tears, even to the woman saying, “I was such a mess. My brother had died and I wasn’t thinking. I should have never had the affair.”

Rebecca shook her head, even though she wanted to put her hands on Elizabeth and shake her instead. Everything she’d told herself she needed to keep inside to hold on to Sean’s trust broke through the dam… and came spilling out.

“But you did. And when he caught you in the act, instead of being brave and owning up to your mistake, you asked a child to be your partner in crime. For a crime he didn’t have any part of. You hurt him, Elizabeth. You changed him. You taught him all the wrong things about relationships. About women. And he’s paid for your mistake his entire adult life.” She all but bared her teeth at the crying woman. “You’re not going to let him pay any longer.”

“Oh god.” Elizabeth’s hands were over her mouth and she was sobbing. “The accident afterward was all my fault. That’s why he has that scar.”

“The scar on the outside doesn’t matter. That’s the one that healed. But you could never stand to see it, could you? Not when it reminded you of everything you did wrong.”

Elizabeth’s shoulders moved up and down and the tears continued to fall.

“You shouldn’t have worried about the scar on his cheek. It’s the one on the inside of Sean that never healed, Elizabeth. He loved you. God help him, he still does, despite what you did. But the lies you made him keep for
you from the father he loves ripped a hole inside of him that’s never even come close to closing.”

“He won’t talk to me.”

“Of course, he hasn’t wanted to talk to you,” Rebecca said bluntly. “Why would he when every conversation is lined with betrayal. With secrets. With lies.”

“Oh god,” Elizabeth said again.

“But if that’s ever going to change then, you’re going to have to try again and keep trying.” She paused, let her fists unclench from where her fingernails were digging into palm. “Start now, Elizabeth.” She could feel her own tears coming. “Love your son. Please just love your son.”

“I do love him. I’ve always loved him.”

“Then go find him. If the only thing you can say right now is ‘I love you,’ that’s a hundred times better than continuing to say nothing at all.”

“How have I been so wrong for so long? About everything?”

Rebecca had done things that were wrong, too. But she was starting to see that it wasn’t the past that should be holding any of them back. It was the future they should be looking forward to.

And every single beautiful moment in the present that they should be cherishing.

Just like she’d cherished every moment with Sean. Every single smile. Every kiss. Every time he held her in his arms.

“I know you’ve lost so many years,” she said in a low voice that came out at barely above a whisper, for the huge lump in her throat. “Don’t lose any more, Elizabeth. Please try. Please just keep telling him how much you love him. Even if he doesn’t want to listen, even if he
pushes you away, he needs to know that you’re sorry. And you love him.”

“I was going to tell Bill today. I swear I was.”

Rebecca didn’t know what was going to happen between Sean’s parents. Of course, she hoped they’d work through their issues, but she said, “Your son needs you first.”

Elizabeth took a breath, one that shook her entire frame. “I know.”

And then, she was turning and running toward the inn, to find her son, to find the son who needed her love now just as much as he’d needed it when he was fourteen.

More, even.

And in that moment as Rebecca stood on the edge of the maple forest with people laughing all around her, with small children playing tag and cuddling in their mother’s arms, as she wiped away her own tears, she had a moment of pure, sure knowledge.

Sean was going to leave her.

And it wouldn’t matter that she’d broken her promise to him out of love.

In his eyes, a promise broken was a promise broken.

Sean was more important to her than any festival. He was more important to her than her job at the inn. If it meant helping him, she was willing to risk losing him in her life, was willing to risk her job, and any future she could have had in Emerald Lake.

All her life, she’d thought she was such an open book. But now she realized that she’d always been holding something back. Sean had cracked the final part of her shell open and she now loved more purely, more wholly than she ever had before. When she had to start over
somewhere new, at least this time around she’d know that she hadn’t held any part of her heart back.

Which was why she had just risked it all.

For love.

She hadn’t confronted his mother with the truth because she was trying to find a way for Sean to be able to love her back. No, she’d done it simply because, in the end, she couldn’t
not
do it.

Sean deserved true happiness, the kind that would never come until he and his mother were honest with each other. It might not all happen today, but the painful silence he’d kept for two decades would end today. At least with his mother, the person he’d been the most alienated from all these years.

Still, for all Rebecca’s clear-cut reasons for what she’d done, despite how much she believed in each one, she could feel her own heart breaking, one painful beat at a time.

She knew Sean. And she knew, without a doubt, that by her own actions, the man she loved was already gone. Even if he didn’t know it yet.

But he would as soon as his mother found him.

“Sean, honey.”

He looked up from the check-in counter where he’d been reviewing contracts on the new inn he’d been working to acquire.

In an instant—an instant in which everything in his life changed, just as it had that afternoon when he was fourteen—he knew.

Rebecca had told his mother what she knew.

He’d told himself he could trust Rebecca. That if there
was a woman on earth that he could hand his heart, his fears, over to, it was her.

But he’d been wrong.

“We don’t need to do this,” he said.

He had been playing this game with his mother for long enough to know that his only chance to get out of the big emotional scene she wanted to have in order to assuage her own guilt was to nip it right in the bud. To act like it didn’t matter to him.

Because it didn’t, damn it. He was over something that had happened when he was fourteen years old.

She stopped, faltering as she came toward him, her arms that had been outstretched falling to her side. She shook her head, opened her mouth, but nothing came out. And he thought maybe, just maybe, he was safe.

But then, she closed her eyes, put her head in her hands, and for the first time he saw her age. Instead of the woman who had always seemed so strong, almost ageless, he saw the frailty of her shoulders.

Shoulders that were shaking from fear. From sorrow.

Sean shouldn’t be feeling pity for her. He shouldn’t be feeling anything at all. But Rebecca had changed him. He’d let himself feel, had let his heart lead him, for the first time in nearly twenty years. And he couldn’t figure out how to close down the pathways to his heart this fast.

Soon. He’d take care of it soon. But for this goddamned moment, he wasn’t nearly as cold as he needed to be to protect himself.

His mother lifted her head, looked directly at him, holding his gaze with such focus he couldn’t pull his away.