I step closer and lower my voice, aware that we haven’t gone that far from the dining room.
“That’s enough.”
“Oh c’mon, even your friend is—”
“You’re encouraging him.”
“I’m teasing. I think it should be allowed, don’t you? Dinner would be so boring without it.”
“You’ve made your point. You wanted to punish me and you have.”
She laughs and steps closer to me to ensure I’ll hear her whispered words. “I highly doubt that. You, the great Nicholas Hunt, champion of your house—you’re inherently unpunishable. You wear so much armor I doubt I could say a single thing that would hit your heart.”
She’s wrong. Each mocking word she’s said tonight has fallen onto my heart like a drop of burning oil.
My silence doesn’t sit well with her. She sighs and lets her hands fall to her sides in defeat. “Oh fine. I won’t say another word. How about that? I won’t even open my mouth unless you tell me to. Surely I can’t do any harm just by being in the room—”
I take her then, wrapping my hands around her trim waist and hauling her flush against me. I have no idea what I’m doing. Maybe, initially, I wanted to knock some sense into her, force her into the realization that her silence would solve nothing. She could hide under the table and I’d still be too aware of her in that room. Now, though, her green eyes are closer than they’ve ever been, and I give in to the wild urge to bend my head toward hers.
Her hand shoots up, not striking my cheek but good and ready to do so.
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses, letting her hand fall to my chest so she can wrap her fingers around the lapel of my coat.
Our hearts beat together wildly as our lips stay within reach. She’s rigid in my hands, a piece of glass ready to break, and then another second passes and she softens at the exact moment that my sanity snaps back into place.
I let go of her and step back swiftly, rubbing a hand across my forehead.
No amount of apologies would suffice, so I don’t bother.
Instead, I give her the space to push past me and reenter the dining room.
I go through the side hall, down into the kitchen, and out into the chilly night air.
I started off hating Maren on principle, and though there are many reasons to forgive her past transgressions and grant her the benefit of the doubt, beneath it all lies the obstinate determination to go on hating her. I can hardly consider the scenario in which I might have made life harder for a person who’s already dealt with more than her fair share of hardships. It leaves me with a burning ache in my chest, an insurmountable amount of shame.17MarenIn the morning, I take my coffee out into the back yard, wrapping my sweater tighter around my shoulders to block the ocean breeze as I approach the edge of the property. It’s a perilous drop from where I stand down to the rocky shores below, but an ornate wrought iron fence holds me back. Still, I don’t lean on it too much. Years of exposure to the elements has given it a patina, and I worry there might be some structural damage as well.
I sip my coffee and glance down below. There’s a break in the drop, midway down, a flat walkway that cuts through the jagged rocks, parallel to Bellevue Avenue. It’s Newport’s famed Cliff Walk, and though I’ve never traversed it myself, I’ve seen quite a few tourists accomplish the feat. On a Saturday morning, with weather as beautiful as it is today, I’m not surprised to see it’s already busy with casual hikers.
They look up and wave to me, and I wave back. I wonder what they think of me standing up here, if they mistake me for one of the Cromwells. I can’t imagine.
I hear approaching footsteps in the damp grass behind me, and I glance back to see Nicholas walking toward me from the house. My stomach squeezes tight and I feel immediate unease. He never returned to dinner last night and a part of me worried he’d gone back to New York, but this morning, when I peered out my bathroom window, his car was still parked outside, causing a dangerous feeling of hope to blossom in my chest. It’s still there even as I try to quash it.
I turn back to stare out at the ocean, and each passing second while I wait for him to reach me is a short millennium.
He stops beside me, and I can no longer hear the roar of the ocean over my own heartbeat.
He’s the first to speak.
“When I was a child, there was no fence here.”
“I can’t imagine.”
Even just thinking about it makes me take a small step back, more in line with him.