“I’d hoped the pain would stop once I was out of Boston. It didn’t. It got worse, and so did my drinking. I wasn’t there long when one night I was drunk and took a walk on the beach with my bottle of gin.” Stray tears leaked out of my eyes. Annoyed that there could be any left in me, I swiped them angrily away. “My memories of that night are fuzzy. I vaguely remember walking into the ocean.”
Michael stiffened.
“I … I remember the cold. I remember a momentary fear as I went under. But I also remember the relief.” The tears fell faster, these ones with shame. “I don’t remember Bailey pulling me out. I don’t remember her giving me CPR. And I don’t remember telling her she should have left me to die. But she told me all of it.”
“Fuck.” Tears brightened Michael’s eyes, and he sat forward, his hands clasped on the back of his head as he glared at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He shook his head, his throat working to hold down his emotion.
“That’s the place I was in, Michael. And no one, not you or my dad, could pull me out of it. The only thing that did was waking up the next morning in a hospital bed, sober and hurting, to a stranger telling me I was going to let myself drown and she’d saved my life.”
Michael turned to me, dropping his hands. “Why didn’t you come to me? I should have known all this shit, Dahlia. I should have known. And if you’d let me in, I would have poured so much fuckin’ love into you, you’d never spend a day feeling as worthless as you had to have felt to walk into that water.”
“Michael …” I shook my head, his words a balm and a wound in equal measure. “It wasn’t that simple. You and I had never … and we never said we loved each other … and everything my mom said, and the shame of giving up on myself, all of it twisted everything. I truly believed that you would move on. Easily. That you were better off without my brand of fucked-up in your life.
“I gained a modicum of peace in Hartwell. Bailey became family, I made more friends because of her, and life there seemed simple. I was afraid that if I came back here and I faced my mom, I would shatter again. So I stayed away, and the longer I stayed away, the harder it became to return. I felt so guilty for missing out on everyone’s lives. I’m not proud of it, Michael, but it’s the truth.”
“So why did you come back now? Because you saw me?”
“Partly. Seeing you was shocking and scary, but I didn’t die. I survived the encounter,” I said, smiling sadly. “Seeing you with your wife was painful, but it also made me feel less guilty. That I’d been right. That you’d moved on. So when Dad called about the divorce, I knew I had to be there for him and after seeing you, I knew whatever happened, however bad it felt, I would survive it.”
Michael seemed to stew on my words for a second or two, and then he pushed up off the couch. Outrage pulsated from him.
I watched him warily as he strode over to the window.
“Moved on?” he bit out, turning to face me. “Moved on! I didn’t know any of this, Dahlia. When I wouldn’t stop hounding your family to tell me where you’d gone, your mom told me you’d packed your shit and taken off. Without coming to me, without even a fuckin’ goodbye. So I stopped hounding them. I got angry instead. Dermot eventually told me that your dad sent you away and that only he knew where you were. That fucked me off, so I went to Cian, and I tried to get him to tell me. But he said that if I loved you, I needed to let you go. That you’d come back on your own.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know what you were going through so all I could think was ‘If she loved me, she’d be back already because if she felt half of what I felt, she couldn’t stay away.’”
“Michael.”
“I knew I could find you. If I wanted I could find you, but I didn’t want to find someone who ultimately didn’t want to be found. So I decided to move on for good. And I thought I had.”
“Your wife.”
Michael walked back across the room to sit down. He braced his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor. “My ex-wife. The divorce finalized a week ago. Her name is Kiersten.”
Loving Michael meant I didn’t want to know about her. I didn’t want to know about the woman who had gotten to sleep by his side for years. To talk to him every day. To laugh with him. It cut me up inside so badly, I could hardly breathe. Yet, the masochist in me needed to know how much he’d loved her. “Why did it fall apart?”
He snorted, the sound derisive. “Why did it fall apart?” He turned his head to look at me. “Neither of us knew why it was falling apart. That’s the honest truth. When we met, she was the first woman in ages who made me laugh. Kiersten is cute, and she’s funny, and I liked that she could make me laugh. Over our four years together, we stopped making each other laugh, and I didn’t know why. Until we took a vacation in Hartwell to try one last time to fix our marriage.”
His gaze drifted over my face and down my body before he flinched and looked away. “After we met you, we got back to the hotel, and Kiersten lost it. She wanted to know who you were. So I told her. That I’d loved you. That you left without a word and I hadn’t seen you in nine years. And you know what she told me?”
It was hard to breathe, let alone speak.
“That everything made sense now. That I’d kept her at a distance the entire four years we’d been together. That I never let her in. I never talked about my parents. I never talked about my past. I never talked about my work. Sure, I’d listen to her, but anytime she asked anything that was too personal, I avoided the question.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it. But she was right.”
“Because of me?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“I thought about it when I granted her the divorce. Decided maybe I’d been a shit husband because I was afraid she’d hurt me like you had. But these last few weeks … I know it wasn’t only that. It was because she just. Wasn’t. You.”
Remorse filled me, and I hoped everything I couldn’t say was in my eyes.
“I fucked over a good woman. I didn’t mean it. But I did it.” He
rubbed a hand over his head and sighed. “Thankfully, she’s moving on. Met someone new. A good guy.”
We were quiet as I let all that sink in. I ached for him. I felt guilty that my leaving had caused him so much pain. Worse, there was an ugly part of me deep down that was glad he couldn’t love his wife the way he’d loved me. Now wasn’t that disgustingly selfish?