Things We Never Said (Hart's Boardwalk 3)

His sigh was beleaguered. “Dahlia, I’m not going to say I’m not still fucked up about you. Sex didn’t change that, no matter how amazing it was. I’m still angry with you. But maybe if you’d stay and talk to me, I could let that go. Please.”

It was the please that did it.

Even though I imagined my heart was about to be bruised and pounded by whatever came out between us, I knew I had to have this conversation if either of us were to move on.

Flicking open my messages, I texted both my dad and Bailey to let them know I was at Michael’s and I was okay. Done, I shoved my phone back into my purse and met Michael’s wary gaze. “I’ll need that coffee, then.”

His features relaxed and he nodded, gesturing for me to go ahead of him back into the kitchen. Once there, he handed me a mug, and I settled down at the kitchen table. Michael took the seat next to me, and I tried not to look at anything but his face.

It was hard.

The T-shirt he wore did nothing to disguise his physique, and I wished we could hit a replay button on the scene in the bedroom, but this time add in way more of me exploring his body.

His hands curled around his coffee mug, and I unwittingly studied the movement. I’d always loved Michael’s hands. Maybe it was the artist in me. I knew that they were large and masculine but at the same time long-fingered, big-knuckled, and graceful. It was a sexy combination, and I flushed remembering the feel of his hands all over my body.

“Why?” His voice was hard again. It drew my eyes from his hands to his face. There was so much turmoil in his expression. “Why did you leave and not come back?”

As difficult as it was to tell him, I knew I had to. He deserved to know that I hadn’t just abandoned him. I released a shaky exhalation, feeling a wave of nausea in my stomach.

Wrapping both hands around my coffee mug, I drew from its comforting heat. “I pushed everyone away after Dillon died. Not only you. I don’t know what might have happened if I’d been given more time. I like to think I would have let you in again, but we’ll never know.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

“Before you argue about that …” I couldn’t look at him as the memories of my mom’s behavior swept through me. Since I was twenty years old, I’d wanted Michael Sullivan to love me. As messed up as it might sound, I’d worried for a long time that if he knew that my own mother couldn’t love me, he’d question why. Start to find reasons not to love me too. It was irrational and moronic considering his family issues, but I’d twisted a lot of things up inside me over the years. It was time to explain.

“Dahlia?” Michael’s eyes narrowed in concern. “What am I missing here?”

“My mom,” I blurted out. I could feel the emotion thickening in my throat, the tears burning in my eyes, and it made me so goddamn angry because I wanted to be past it. I wanted to make peace with the fact that my mom resented me and move on. “Not long after Dillon died, my dad was out. There was no one in the house but Mom and me. I was in my bedroom …” Grief thickened my words. “Surrounded by Dillon’s stuff. I was sitting on her bed, trying to make sense of it, you know. Like, how all of her things were sitting there waiting for her to pick them up, to use them, to put them on. And it would never happen. I had her brooch in my hand. You know how she loved roses, so a few months before everything went to hell, I’d made her a silver brooch. It was a single rose in bloom. She’d loved it. Wore it a lot.”

I fought back the tears. “She wouldn’t ever wear it again, and I couldn’t make that make sense. It was driving me crazy. The agony of all her things sitting there was driving me nuts, so I started to put everything away.” I looked up at him, and through the sheen of emotion in his eyes, I saw the vision of my mom’s face when she caught me. “That’s when Mom walked in. There was no buildup. No questions. She … she just slapped me.” I could still feel the brutal sting of those hits. “I was so stunned, all I could do was cower on the floor as she kept hitting me, open palm, on my head over and over, screaming that God took the wrong daughter. That it was my fault and she’d wished God had taken me instead.” The last word broke out in a sob, and I heard the screech of a chair over the floor seconds before Michael’s arms pulled me up out of mine. I buried into him, into his strength, as if I could somehow melt into him and in doing so, he’d draw out some of the pain and relieve me of it.

His arms banded tight around me and he pressed his lips to my hair as I shuddered and sobbed all the feelings I thought I’d cried out of me long ago.

* * *

Sometime later, with my head

hurting a little, I sat on Michael’s couch with a fresh cup of coffee and a used tissue crumpled in my hand.

I tried not to notice Michael’s proximity on the couch or the way he kept looking at me like he was ready to take a bullet for me. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time to see how my story had transformed him back into my old Michael.

“So that’s when you started drinking?” His voice was soft, coaxing.

Nodding, I took a sip of coffee before responding. “That night I wanted to disappear. I was too ashamed to tell anyone, and I thought if I told my dad, I’d only make my mom hate me more. I convinced myself she was grieving, that she didn’t mean it, but in truth what she said festered. So to get to sleep that night, I stole the gin in my parents’ liquor cabinet. When I realized everything hurt less when I was numbed by alcohol, I kept drinking.”

“I remember.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I was so fuckin’ scared. Didn’t know how to help you.”

Flinching as I remembered everything I’d put him through, I turned away. “Dad was scared too. Like you, he thought it was only about Dillon. That’s when his sister, who lived in Hartwell, reached out to him. She owned the gift shop on the boardwalk, and he convinced her to let me rent it. I said I’d go because I couldn’t bear to be around my mother, but I promised him he couldn’t tell anyone where I was.”

“That’s the part I don’t get.”

Meeting his gaze, seeing the betrayal in his eyes, was difficult. “I hated myself, Michael. I was responsible for my little sister’s death, my mom hated me, I was drinking so I could sleep at night, and I’d pushed everyone I loved away. You deserved better.”

“I deserved the truth.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I thought leaving you was the best thing for you.”

Seeing that I wasn’t getting through to him, I realized I’d have to tell him everything. How low I’d gotten.