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Michael turned back to me. He balanced the tray of coffee with one hand. His other hand wrapped around the back of my neck, his thumb stroking my jaw. “Please come inside, kitten.”
His voice was barely more than a whisper. His face was gentle, his touch was sweet. And I knew, Iknew, that when we got inside, he would give me what I wanted. He’d tell me why Alison was there. He wouldn’t make me ask. He wouldn’t even be mad about it. He wouldn’t call me irrational, or jealous, or paranoid, or any of the other bad things threatening to pull me under like quicksand.
I knew all this, and still, the second the door closed behind us, I said, “I wasn’t checking up on you, or trying to catch you. I sent you a text. I told you I was coming.”
“You can come by whenever you want. I’ll make you a key.” He made himself busy, setting the coffee down, throwing the cardboard tray in the recycling bin, switching on the oven.
“I don’t want a key.”
He stilled. “She just wanted to talk. When she left, she did what she felt she had to do for her own happiness, but she left me in a bad place, and that never sat right with her. She was here to apologize. Closure. That’s all she wanted.”
That sounded plausible. Dammit. This would have been so much easier if he’d fed me some batshit crazy story. I cocked my head to the side and looked at him.
“I swear, Nora, that’s all that happened. I didn’t know she was coming. God only knows why she rang the doorbell at seven o’clock in the morning, instead of meeting me for lunch or something. But it’s done now and she won’t be back.”
I believed him. Of course I did. This wasMichael. The problem was, I had also spent years believing Grant. I was gullible and naïve and I knew that.
Maybe he was telling the truth and Alison was there for closure, and to apologize. Or maybe he was lying and they still wanted each other in whatever limited capacity they could get, husbands and kids and girlfriends be damned. Maybe a decade from now I would look back on this moment as the first warning sign that I really should have known better, that I should have already learned this lesson the first time through. Another decade of my life wasted.
Too many maybes.
He took a step toward me.
I took an automatic step back.
It wasn’t the end that worried me. The explosion, the broken heart—I could handle that. Hadn’t I survived it all once before? But the years between now and then, that was what made my chest feel like a block of ice. It was the cloud that threw its shade on everything, the ugly doubts that would twist and turn in my brain, sucking all the joy right out of life.That’swhat I was afraid of. I couldn’t go through that again.
“Nora, please,” he said quietly. “Sit down. We’ll have coffee and bagels. We can talk if you want, or we can wait until you get off work. You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
Oh, god, I wanted that. To push all this to the side and not think about it until tonight. Or tomorrow. Or next week. But I knew better. Problems didn’t disappear when you pushed them aside. They became shadows, lurking in the corners of your mind, threatening rain no matter how brightly the sun was shining.
I was not going to let that happen. Not again.
I put the bagels on the table. “We’ll talk now.”
He took a rapid step toward me, one arm extended like he was reaching for me, and then halted abruptly. He dropped his arm to his side, clenching and flexing his fingers. I watched him with a mixture of longing and wariness. I wanted him to touch me, but if he did I would shatter.
For a long moment neither of us said anything. He sliced the bagels and popped them into the oven to toast. I didn’t really want the bagels anymore—for once, my appetite had fled—but I didn’t stop him.
He braced his forearms on the counter and leaned in. “Tell me what you need.”
You. I need you. Make meknow.
But he couldn’t. It was impossible. Believing in a man was like believing in a god. It took faith, and I was agnostic to my core. I shook my head. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I know that. But we’re not talking about fault. We’re talking about how to get past this. So tell me what you need to be okay with seeing my ex-wife leave my house at eight o’clock in the goddamn morning. Do you want the password to my phone? My email? You can have it.”
I stared at him, dumbstruck. “What?”
“Your ex did a number on you, left you with trust issues so deep it’s like staring into the Grand Canyon. I get that. And I’ve got no reason to keep my life locked down. My work doesn’t require confidentiality, so the worst that could happen is you find out what I got you for Christmas. So if that’s what you need, have at it.”
“Are you serious? You can’t be serious.”
“Sure I am. Why not?”
I rubbed my forehead, frustrated. “Because it doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not?” he repeated. “You get an all-access pass to my life. You find nothing. Problem solved.”
