Every Little Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 2)

I had heard the door open and was about to sit up to stop him when Jess had said, “No, you won’t.” The door had closed. “Bailey doesn’t need that. She just needs us to be there for her.”

“I’m pretty sure putting my fist through that asshole’s face counts as being there for her.”

Affection for Coop had filled me, sparking fresh tears.

“Maybe so,” Jess had whispered. “But let’s postpone that. Come upstairs so we don’t wake Bailey.”

Cooper hadn’t spoken after that. Instead I heard the creak of the stairs as they and Louis climbed them. Exhaustion had taken me and the next thing I knew I was awake and my watch said it was four thirty. As I lay there I thought about the events of two nights ago that had led me to showing up at Tom’s apartment in that stupid red lingerie.

Confusion.

That’s what I had mostly been feeling as I lay in bed on my side, staring at the wall in the dark that night. I’d been confused because I didn’t understand why I pretended to sleep as I’d listened to Tom enter my house, rummage around in the kitchen for fifteen minutes, before coming down the hall to my room to use the shower. I’d pretended even as he’d gotten into bed with me.

We didn’t share a home. I lived in my little one-bedroom house and Tom had his own apartment. Not by my choice. For years the fact that Tom refused to commit to buying a place together had pissed me off. And yet that night as I’d pretended to sleep as he got into bed, I’d wondered why the hell he hadn’t just gone home. What was the point in coming to me on a night he’d worked so late?

And then I’d wondered why the hell I hadn’t turned around and kissed him hello. How many times over the years, especially these last few, had he waited up for me because of the long hours I worked at the inn?

I’d turned onto my other side, leaned on my elbow, rested my head in the palm of my hand, and I’d stared at my sleeping boyfriend.

An unfamiliar tight, horrible melancholy had gripped my chest.

Because confusion wasn’t what I’d been feeling most.

It had been fear.

Perhaps it sounds strange but I’d always liked the feeling of missing people. It’s not the actual missing them part. That part is horrible, of course. But the part when you get to see them again after a separation . . . that’s the part I love. Because in that moment all the messy, complicated emotions we feel for an individual are burned, turning the bitter fragments to ashes, leaving only the sweetness: the love. All I feel in a reunion is the sweet longing of loving them, and the joy of having them in my arms again.

I liked missing my parents—my parents who sold their holdings in the town our ancestors founded, everything but Hart’s Inn, which they left to me and my siblings. My brother, who had no use for the inn, my brother, whom I loved missing. My sister, who also had no use for the inn, my sister, whom I liked missing until I spent five minutes in her company.

However . . . I hadn’t liked missing Tom. The horrible part of missing someone? That’s all I’d felt when I’d looked at him.

I’d studied his face as he slept, remembering the contentment I’d felt once upon a time when I lay watching him sleep back when we were first starting out. If I were honest with myself, Tom had never made me feel giddy or nervously excited with uncontrollable butterflies. That’s what attracted me to him. I felt safe with him. I felt in control of my emotions.

Lately I didn’t feel that way.

I was thirty-four years old. I wanted to be married. I wanted babies.

And the man I’d spent ten years with, the man I thought I’d have all those things with had lain next to me . . . and he may as well have been eight thousand miles away.

Five years ago I would have reached across the distance between us and woken him up with my lovemaking. Tom said that was one of the things he loved most about me—my impulse control. Or lack thereof. I said and did whatever I wanted. Everyone around me knew whatever I was feeling in any given moment. He always

said it was a miracle I was so good at my job as an innkeeper. But my mother had trained me in hospitality from the moment I could talk and I became a different person at the inn. I was professional, controlled.

In fact I think maybe I was so mouthy outside of work because I had to be the Disney version of myself at work—congenial, cheery, good-natured—no matter what shit a guest was giving me.

Tom wasn’t always a big fan of my lack of brain-to-mouth filter, but typical guy that he was, he was a big fan of my free spirit and confidence in the bedroom.

What he didn’t know was that I was only like that with him.

When we met I had felt average. Before I met Tom someone had stomped on me so badly I felt stupid for thinking I might be a little extraordinary. I’d grown up as a descendant of the town’s founding family, people liked me, I was popular. I felt special. That guy took that away from me. However, he’d never been able to take away how much I loved my life in Hartwell. He may have made me feel average, but I still felt like my life on the boardwalk was extraordinary because I lived in a beautiful place surrounded by a community of people I loved.

And as long as life around me was extraordinary it was okay feeling average with Tom. We were equals. We were good enough for each other.

So I had no hang-ups in life or in our bed.

I could reach for him anytime I wanted and know that he would reach back. Or so I’d thought.

Sex between us had always been good. It wasn’t the best I’d ever had but it was good. Tom seemed happy. Or I’d thought so anyway. I was more adventurous than he was so it could have been better, but it was good. It was good enough.