Authors: Holley Trent
“Some people are meant to be parents.” Meg’s gaze wasn’t on the bespectacled blond helping Toby off his friend’s shoulders. It was on the redhead who fit so seamlessly into her life, he seemed imaginary.
Erica cleared her throat. “You know, Sharon once told me that if I didn’t put myself out there, it’d be my fault if Curt walked away. He’s the kind of man that needed a woman who’d work him the right way, and I didn’t know if that was me. I resisted it for a while, and he was being stubborn, too, because he didn’t chase women. But, the thing is, we’re like two magnets and if you put us together, we want to stay that way. Even when our brains resisted, our hearts didn’t.”
Meg blew out a breath and raked a hand through her loose hair. “If this goes badly, I suspect everyone will be on his side, not mine.”
“Then don’t let it go badly, huh? Hey.” Erica reached into her basket and plucked out a little plastic baggie of lemon pound cake. She handed it to Meg. “You keep my secret, I’ll keep yours. That way we’ll both have someone understand.”
Meg pulled back the edges of the bag and inhaled the lemon icing’s aroma, nodding. “Yeah. What a secret.”
“Don’t feel bad for wanting a good guy. I know they’re not in style right now.” Erica giggled and stretched her long legs out in front of her.
“I’m afraid I’ll break him.”
“Teach him to set limits.”
“Just like that, huh?”
Erica nodded and unscrewed her water cap once more. “I didn’t say it was going to be easy. Nothing worth having is really easy.”
Chapter 11
Spending the night at Meg’s with the Scotts under the same roof added an entirely different layer of confusion to the mix for Seth. Naturally, he slept in Meg’s room, but then there was the feeling of unease when he didn’t know what her expectations were. He’d successfully dodged the scenario several nights out of the week, begging off by saying he had to be at work very early the next morning and thus drove home to Fayetteville.
He’d tried to bow out of joining them on the second Sunday of their stay—their last full day—but Toby begged him not to go. He did have to work in the morning, but he couldn’t think of a single compelling reason why he couldn’t start his Monday in Raleigh and get up an hour earlier.
Over the past week, he’d been trying not to let himself grow attached to the Scotts and the way they drew him into the family as if it were such a natural thing. He felt, for the first time in twenty years, as if he belonged to someone. A family, beyond the ragtag group of grad students he’d collected and made his kin while at the university. But all that was fake, so he tried doing what he’d seen Curt do so many times in the past: shutting down. Putting up that wall, and letting nothing permeate it. If he didn’t put himself out there, he wouldn’t get hurt.
And then Toby would hand him some toy that needed fixing, or Mr. Scott would lower his newspaper and ask Seth to explain some Russian political issue to him, and all that desperation, the wanting, came back to the surface. As much as he wanted Meg, he wanted Toby, too. And even all the rest of them, in smaller doses. This wasn’t his world, though. At any time, Meg could decide she was through—that the worst of it had all blown over, and that the time had come for them to part. To move on to the next thing.
Seth didn’t know if he had it in him to put himself out there again. He’d just as soon be alone, and had gotten used to solitude, anyway.
He sat on the bench at the end of Meg’s bed and heeled off his shoes.
She entered the room and shut the door behind her. “My folks are all right, I guess,” she said with a sigh. “That said, I’m glad they’re going home tomorrow. It’s tough feeling like you’re on all the time and have to perform. I guess every adult kid feels that way around their parents.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said softly.
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Right. I’m sorry.”
“Do you have a blanket in here? I could sleep on the floor.”
“Hmm.” She strode into the master bathroom and flicked on the light, turning on the faucet before responding. “You’re welcome to half the bed, Seth.”
If only accepting the offer were possible. To be so close and be chaste? Not touch? He’d take his chances on the floor.
A few moments later, Meg stepped out, drying her washed face on a hand towel and stopping just in front of his toes. She whispered, “You know, nights you’re not here, Toby asks where you are. He wanted to know if you had a job like Spike’s where you’d never be here.”
Acid rose in Seth’s chest, and he had to swallow before taking a bolstering breath. “And what did you tell him?”
“Told him you have a house in Fayetteville and that your job is there. Told him we haven’t figured out what to do about that yet.”
Truthful enough, he figured.
“He’s always sad when you’re not here for dinner. I think he’d started getting used to it, and then you skipped out on us for Cuban food…”
Ouch. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in the way. I didn’t want to—”
She put up her hands, quieting him. “I understand. You’re tied in tight with everyone but me. Funny how that worked out over all these years.”
“You were always kind of separate.”
She nodded and, to his surprise, took a seat next to him on the bench. “Yeah. I blame myself for that. Before I got married, Sharon, Carla, and I were pretty much inseparable. If there was spare time to be had, we’d be doing something together. And then Spike came along, and I let him dictate where I should and shouldn’t be. I had to lie about where I was. Who was around me. He wanted to isolate me and trot me out only when it was convenient. I didn’t understand at the time that what he was doing was a form of abuse, but he was supposed to be my one great love, and it all fell apart spectacularly. I realized something was really wrong the more I observed Sharon and Ashley. They’re together, but autonomous. Even with Ariel to take care of and her job, Sharon always managed to find time to fret about me.”
“She frets about everyone.”
Meg pointed to him, then herself. “Hence us. And I hated Grant for a long time for taking Carla away from me. I wanted them to fail so badly so she’d come back, but he’s so good for her. Good to her. After a while I realized I was jealous of what they’ve built. Wanted it for myself, but…you can’t build a foundation on quicksand.”
Seth’s heart felt heavy, cold in his chest as if the blood in it were too thick to pump. Could it be that this one he’d thought had it all together was really no better off than him emotionally?
“I feel like I’m back in the world now with Spike gone, and I have you to thank for it. I’m just normal Meg, married to a normal guy. No one’s pitying me anymore. Mocking me. Chastising me. The public doesn’t care about me anymore, besides my neighbors.” She rolled her eyes. “I think I can move on. Figure out where I’m going to be five years from now.”
Seth had his own thinking to do in that regard. In five years, he would be well entrenched in midlife. On the down slope of his life, even. Likely harboring lots of regrets.
“I don’t know if I’ve said it before, but, I want to thank you for doing this for me. You can’t be getting much out of this sham, but I’ve evaluated some things in my life, and made some changes I should have a long time ago,” she said.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad to help, even for a short while.”
Her forehead furrowed, lips parted, and he braced himself for the kind let-down, but whatever she was going to say was preempted by a loud crash of thunder very near the building, followed immediately by the lights popping off.
They waited in the quiet a moment for the power to return, for the air conditioner’s hum to resume, but after two minutes or so, Seth knew they’d be in the dark for a while.
Quiet permeated the condo. There were no cries out from sleeping Toby, and Seth knew from his conversations with Mr. Scott that both Meg’s parents slept with earplugs. One ground teeth in sleep; the other snored.
Meg’s breath was the only sound worth noting. It’d become choppy. Loud. And she was practically in his lap, her body thrumming with panic.
He wrapped a tentative arm around her in the dark and whispered in Russian, “What’s wrong, kitten?”
She just shook, not understanding, but he hadn’t really expected her to.
Was it the dark? The rain?
“It was very close, the thunder, huh?”
She nodded against his shoulder. “I think lightning grounded down the side of the building. That’s happened a few times. Always freaks me out.”
“Problem with being in the tallest building in the area.”
“I’m moving.”
“Just because of lightning, kitten?”
“No, although that’s a damned compelling reason on its own, but because I want a fresh start for me and To—”
Thunder cracked again. Further away this time, but still loudly enough to make Meg scramble to her feet.
Seth pulled her back, gently, and curled her onto his lap, where she shook. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t planned that far out. Phobias aren’t rational things.”
He stood with her, which was no major feat as she was light as a feather, and carried her to the head of the bed, trusting his memory of the room to guide him there without bumping shins and toes. He laid her down, and she pulled him onto the bed beside him. Not cuddling, more like hiding beside him.
“When did it start?”
The temperature in the room was already ticking higher with the lack of air conditioning. It had been a hundred-degree day, and being in such close proximity to Meg was making his core temperature that much hotter. He peeled off his polo shirt and wadded it into a ball before dropping it on the floor.
“I think when Sharon and I flew to Australia years ago. We had to fly through an electrical storm. Middle of the ocean, so there was nothing for us to do but ride it out. Pilot steered away from it, but the strikes seemed so close. The idiot in front of me refused to close his window shade, so I could see the lightning not too far away. I was certain I was going to die.”
“Chances were pretty slim, kitten.”
“Don’t you have any phobias, Seth? Anything unreasonable you can’t shake off?”
He leaned back against the pillow and really thought about it. Did he have any? He’d always taken life by the horns, figuring if it was his time to go, so be it. He’d live life to its fullest and not worry about things beyond his control. He was happiest that way, but he knew there were things he would change if he could. Things he’d orchestrate so he’d ensure his future was as happy as his present. Did he have phobias? Yeah. He did.
“I think I fear most that everyone who knows me well and loves me will abandon me. Curt. Grant. Sharon. Even Erica.”
Meg was quiet a long moment. Too long, maybe, and he thought perhaps he shouldn’t have said anything. Then she rolled onto her side and burrowed her face against his neck right as thunder shook the ground. Raleigh was really getting it hard that night. “They wouldn’t do that,” she whispered. “They care too much.”
“You said it yourself, Megan. Phobias aren’t rational things. They’re just things that get amplified by our own insecurities. They’re like boogeymen under the bed.”
“I’ve got plenty of those.”
“Boogeymen?”
“Insecurities.”
“Why?” He was genuinely curious. He’d always seen her as this force to be reckoned with, stronger and maybe even more intimidating than that lightning flashing outside. She was a goddess he’d always thought was in control, so he was at a loss as to what to do with this scared woman clinging to him as if he were the next breath she needed to take.
She didn’t answer, just fisted his undershirt in her hands and held tight as ozone snapped and cracked outside.
He knew then it’d be impossible to shut her out completely. The wall he’d wanted so badly to erect would never be structurally sound against her force. She’d always get through it. Didn’t matter if she made a tiny pinprick of a hole or tossed a bomb at it. The devastation would be the same.
“Seth…Sergei?”
He blew out a breath and raked her hair away from his mouth. “Yes, kitten?”
“I got my report back yesterday. I’m clean.”
Clean? Why wouldn’t she be? “I never doubted you would be.”
She chuckled against his chest, but it was dry and completely without mirth. “I did. I was scared he’d done something to me. I know he catted around, but I never refused him when he came home. I thought maybe he’d grow up one day.”
He really didn’t understand that but didn’t address it. Her sticking around all those years was masochistic, but who was he to talk, chasing women who didn’t want him longer than a day? “I called in for my labs on Thursday. No surprises, but chastity tends to work that way.”
“Are you ever going to tell me how many women you’ve been with?”
“No.” He actually couldn’t put a number on the figure. Too many? Not enough? He didn’t know for sure, but the estimate he’d given Curt a couple of years back had rendered the man speechless.
“Good. I don’t want to know. Will you do me a favor?” This time when she laughed, it was lighter. Her voice had taken on a bell-like quality. “Another favor, I mean. I’ll forever be owing you favors.”