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Page 75 of Merry Little Midlife Matchmaker

“Well, you said it yourself. It was a mistake.”

Devastation etched itself into his features. “Lizzie?—”

“I think you should leave, Sean.”

“Lizzie, I care about you. I’m not—that wasn’t?—”

“I spent a long time married to a man who used me as cannon fodder,” I told him. “I made myself small to make his life easier. I still do it. I still let people walk all over me in the name of keeping the peace and being the glue that holds the family together.” I shook my head. “I’m done, Sean. I just realized what I mean to my family, what I mean to you, and it’s a whole lot less than I thought. I’m not going to let another man treat me the way my ex-husband did. You used me, just like everyone else does.”

His lips parted, but nothing came out. I closed the door slowly, and maybe a part of me was hoping he’d stop me, that he’d say something to make it all better, but he just stared at me with those blue-green eyes and that stupid handsome face, and he let me close the door without putting up a fight at all.

I told myself it was better this way. When the dam broke and I finally started crying, I was glad it happened when I was alone.

THIRTY-FOUR

SEAN

I slept on the couch,in the shadow of the Christmas tree that Lizzie had helped me choose. When I opened my eyes the next morning, I looked at the deep green branches and the twisted wire of the lights I hadn’t bothered to turn on, and I felt like a hollowed-out version of myself.

My back hurt. My legs were stiff. I dragged myself to the kitchen and watched the coffee drip into its pot, my mind completely blank.

I’d messed up. But the worst of it was, I didn’t know how to fix it, or even what I wanted the outcome to be.

Choose Lizzie? Choose Aaron and the rest of the family? Slink back into oblivion and move away from Heart’s Cove with Mikey?

The last made me close my eyes in disgust. My son loved it here. Within days, he’d been smiling more than he had in San Fran. He had more friends here than he’d had in the city. He was excited about joining clubs and doing sports. That was exactly what I’d come here to give him: community, support, a richer life.

And instead of being satisfied with that, I’d gone and ruined it.

As I filled my mug with black tar and drank down the bitter sludge, I thought of Lizzie’s face last night. It had been like staring into the eyes of a stranger. Like she’d closed the door on all the parts of her that I’d come to admire. I didn’t have the right to see them anymore.

I drank my coffee and stared at my phone, which was blank and silent. No message from Mikey or my ex, no anger from Aaron, no word from Lizzie.

Why had I thought I deserved a woman like Lizzie? What had possessed me to pursue her, when I knew that she never would’ve made the first move? I’d been so caught up in my own needs that I pushed her into an impossible position. And then when she told me she wanted to wait until after the holidays to broach the topic with her family, I’d ignored that too.

I was the one who’d kissed her. I was the one who’d called it a mistake, who’d ruined her family’s Christmas dinner. Maybe I was no better than my father, after all.

She deserved so much better than me.

The doorbell rang, pulling me from my thoughts. I shuffled to the front door and opened it to see my aunt Margaret standing on the other side. Her silver hair was pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she wore a deep burgundy jacket with a cream silk scarf. Her ears were adorned with smooth, white pearls.

“Hello, Sean.”

I moved aside to invite her in. “Merry Christmas.”

She arched a brow at me and stepped inside. I gestured to the kitchen and offered her a drink, then apologized for the state of the coffee when she made a face after her first sip.

I sat down across from her and stared into the dark liquid in my mug. “What happened after I left last night?”

“Oh, everyone was aflutter with excitement, as was to be expected.”

I lifted my gaze to meet hers and caught the wry look in her eyes. “Aflutter, huh?”

“Aaron vowed to do some unpleasant things to you when he saw you next. Then he called his sister some unsavory names. Sandra got upset. Dorothy opened half a dozen bottles of wine and insisted everyone calm down by screaming at the top of her lungs, which was surprisingly effective. Then we ate dinner and pretended everything was fine. Sandra got me a lovely new jewelry dish for my vanity.”

“Sounds like Christmas.”

Margaret sipped her coffee and managed not to make a face at how disgusting it tasted.


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