— THREE —
HE brought wine and a winning smile. She was in trouble.
“Nope. We’re not opening that.” She shook her head as he grinned and stepped inside. The temperature outside was dropping and he was wearing a leather jacket she hadn’t seen before over jeans and a white t-shirt. He looked good. They didn’t need to add alcohol to the mix for her to feel unsteady about what was going to come next.
And it wasn’t them, together, in an orgasm-fest for the ages. What happened Friday morning could not be repeated. Not when she’d made up her mind about moving forward with her life in a way that didn’t involve Rafe Minelli and his future conquests.
If he wore that jacket around town, there would be a lot of conquests in his near future. Hot damn.
“Then put it on your wine rack or something. I didn’t want to come empty handed.” He handed it over but didn’t let go right away. He pressed the bottle into her hands and stared at her intently as if he was trying to unlock her secrets.
She was only hiding two things. One she was just trying to work up the courage to share. The other—that he still melted her from the inside out with his chocolate brown eyes and stupid dimple—was locked in the vault.
This wasn’t the first time he’d come over since moving out, but it had been at least nine months. He’d taken the Christmas lights down and replaced the weather-stripping on the front door, and she’d given him a stiff thanks at the door. So he hadn’t seen—
“You painted.”
“Yeah.” Because the warm yellow had reminded her too much of him.
“By yourself?” He turned around slowly in her living room, formerly their living room, an inscrutable look on his face.
“It was pretty easy,” she muttered. He’d taken half the furniture, which left a lot of room to move stuff around and create bare walls.
“I like the beige.” He was totally lying. Taupe, oatmeal, canvas … didn’t matter what she called it, he’d never wanted any neutral colours in their space.
“Have you made any other changes?”
“Uhm, I tiled the backsplash in the kitchen.” She pointed the way, which was stupid. They’d bought the house together. He knew where the kitchen was. Had made her coffee in it almost every morning for three years, even if he was gone before she woke up. Had perched her naked on the counter and knelt in front of her, licking—
“Looks good.” He glanced back at her, his gaze lingering on her pink cheeks for a moment. “A lot of good memories in here, huh?”
He couldn’t know what she was thinking, not exactly, but her breath caught in her throat nonetheless when he patted the counter. “Come here.”
She shook her head in short, choppy movements. Nuh-uh. They needed space between them. Loads of it.
“I’m not going to bite, Liv.” His voice was low and rough, like he was actually promising to bite her all over.
“I’m not so sure about that,” she teased as lightly as she could.
He gave her a long, hard look before smiling ruefully. “Yeah, I wouldn’t take that bet. So what’s for dinner?”
And just like that, the mood shifted. “Beef stroganoff and a salad.”
He kept his distance as she worked on the salad, flipping through a newsmagazine on the table. When she pulled a bottle of salad dressing out of the fridge, he moved to take it from her. She noticed the pile of opened mail at the same time he did and cursed under her breath.
“What’s this?” He fingered the red flagged letter from the hydro company and she winced.
“It’s nothing. I just forgot to pay that bill.” She watched as he flipped the letter over and frowned.
“Three months in a row?” The incredulous look on his face told her he didn’t buy her excuse. “It says here they’re cutting off the power tomorrow.”
“I paid it last Wednesday,” she mumbled. “It’s fine.”
“The whole balance?”
No, just the minimum, but he didn’t need to know that. “It’s fine,” she repeated, swiping the mail from the counter and dumping it in the nearest drawer.
He shook his head. “Obviously not. I’ll give you some—“
Tight, angry words shot up her throat and she swallowed them back, holding up her hand instead. “No.”
“Liv, this is still my house, too. If the costs are too high—“
“Then it’s time we sell it. That’s the only conversation we’re going to have about money, okay?”
He clamped his mouth shut and leaned back against the other counter, crossing his arms. “I don’t want to sell.”
Even though it was her plan, deep down she didn’t want to either. Hot, sweaty memories of the night they moved in flooded her mind unexpectedly and she turned to the sink so he wouldn’t see the pink of her cheeks or the bright tears in her eyes.
“Where would you move?”
Pine Harbour didn’t have many rental options. Rafe lived in the only apartment building. There were two units above his mother’s cafe but that was obviously out of the question, and any house would be out of her price range.
He figured out her plan just as she opened her mouth to confess, and from the sound of his voice at her back, he was pissed. “You’re leaving.”
“It’s for the best,” she whispered. She couldn’t hang around to see him move on, and it didn’t matter that he’d almost kissed her. Twice, both times acting like you were an oasis in the middle of a freakin’ desert. Didn’t matter, she reminded herself, because they’d scorched enough earth in their divorce that really getting back together wasn’t going to happen. If they kissed, and oh god did she want that more than her next breath, they’d tumble into bed. And on the other side of a torrid love affair with her ex-husband stood her ex-mother-in-law, ready to brand her as a hussy and drive her out of town.
She wouldn’t be pushed. If she left, it would be with her head held high. Rafe needed to not kiss her, end of story, and the only way that was going to happen was if she put some significant geographical distance between them. She cleared her throat and raised her voice enough to claim bravery, however false it might be. “I moved here to be with you. We’re not together anymore. It was a mistake to stay after the divorce.”
“You have friends here,” he rasped, and she wanted to turn and look at him. Wanted to soak up the hungry, needy look she imagined was scrawled across his face and pretend it was enough to pull them back together.
But it hadn’t been enough to keep them together in the first place. Nothing had changed on that count. Rafe wanted her if it was easy. He wasn’t willing to fight to keep her as his wife. She deserved more than that. For the umpteenth time, she promised herself that being alone was better than being lonely inside a marriage. “No, Rafe. I have you here. And I don’t honestly see how we can be friends. Not really. Not when we can’t openly date other people in front of each other.”
“Is that what this is about?” His jaw clenched and his dark eyes grew even darker.
“Of course it is!” She shook her head. “The other morning, that was torture for me.”
“I told you that nothing happened.”
“Really? Because that’s not what Matt Foster says.”
He frowned. “What did Matt…when did he…”
“At the diner yesterday. He came in for lunch with Sean. He didn’t tell me, exactly, but it’s a small place and he wasn’t quiet.” Damnit, she didn’t want to cry. She blinked furiously and bit the inside of her cheek to keep the tears at bay. “You kissed her. She sat in your lap for hours and you touched her and kissed her.”
He stared at her for a minute, his face twisted in unexpected anger. “So it’s okay for you to want to see other people but not me. Not after two years.”
She lost her fight against the storm. “It should be okay,” she sobbed. “It needs to be okay. And yet…it’s totally not.”
Her shoulders shook with emotion as she sucked in giant breaths, desperate to stop crying. She bowed her head and vaguely noticed Rafe move behind her and turn off the heat on the stove. He gently steered her by her shoulders, his big hands warm and comforting, to the couch. “Here,” he said gruffly, pushing her to sit before joining her and tugging her to lean back against his body. The afghan from the end of the couch ended up around them both as she pressed her face into his stiff shoulder. She fit perfectly there, moulded to his side.
“Liv,” he rasped her name quietly, his lips brushing her forehead. This clearly wasn’t what he’d planned—for tonight or for their lives. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to move.” It was the only possible solution, even if it hurt to think about leaving him behind for good.
“I don’t want you to go.” He sighed. “I know that’s selfish. I can’t imagine you not in my life.”
Regret for all that could have been sat like a lead blanket on her chest, and she sighed. They couldn’t live in the past. “This can’t be what you want, though.”
— —
How could he answer that? What he wanted was Liv and this house and a bunch of kids. No grief for working two jobs. He’d tried once to suggest that if they had kids, she wouldn’t be so lonely. That had been an epic fight, one he’d never be stupid enough to start again.
“What do you want?” That was really all that mattered at the end of the day. His displeasure was a secondary concern to her being happy.
“Options, I guess. Right now I feel trapped here.” She’d said that before—that she’d felt trapped in their marriage. She’d wanted him to put in for a transfer to somewhere with more job opportunities for her, and he’d dragged his feet. He’d been damn lucky to get hired into the community he was raised in. Only an idiot would give that up.
Instead, he’d been the idiot who’d given up his wife. Had he known that was the choice he was making at the time, Rafe wanted to believe he’d have chosen differently. But in his heart of hearts, he couldn’t say for sure.
“What about going back to school for something?” If they sold the house, there’d be enough money for her to live on for a year or two. He didn’t want any of it.
She shook her head. “That doesn’t appeal to me anymore.” Her voice drifted up at him, a wistful, doubting slip of sound that got under his skin.
“You could do anything you want now.” His chest felt like it was cracking open and his eyes were hot and itchy. This felt like breaking up all over again. “Nothing’s holding you back.” I’m not holding you back.
They’d met, fallen in love and gotten married in a whirlwind three months while he was at the training centre for new police hires down south. When it was time for him to come home, he’d brought her with him as his bride. She’d had no clue what she was in store for. Neither of them did.
Six years later, she was leaving him, but it still felt like he was the one who’d failed her. Failed to be enough for her.
She sniffed quietly into his shirt, and he stopped talking. There wasn’t anything else to say. No words would magically make the pain disappear. They were well and truly over and it fucking hurt. So he just held her, fearing it might be the last time he ever got the privilege.
After a time, his stomach growled. He cursed himself as she sat up, the moment slipping away, but then she patted his mid-section and gave him a too bright smile. “Come on, let me feed you.”
It didn’t take long to reheat the sauce and cook up noodles. They ate in surprisingly comfortable silence, given the pile of emotion they’d just slogged through, and after they cleaned up the dishes together. Rafe knew he should leave. He just didn’t know if he could.
He leaned against the open arch between the hallway and the kitchen and notched his thumbs into his pockets. “You’ll let me know if anything needs to be done to the house before we list it?”
Liv turned toward him, wiping her hands on her jeans and drawing his attention to the gentle roundness of her hips and thighs. He dragged his gaze back to her face, trying not to notice the swell of her breasts under her snug purple t-shirt. She nodded sadly and he fisted his hands to keep himself from dragging her in for another hug. He’d undone so much distance in a few short days. Tumbled so far down the mountain it felt like he’d never be able to climb back up again. She belonged in his arms. Too little, too late on that realization.
“I should go. Thanks for dinner.”
She followed him out to the door, grabbing his jacket off the side chair in the living room before he could. “Maybe we should have done this more often after…”
“Might have made it too hard.” He said, not caring if his voice sounded rough and raw. He was raw.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
He pulled out his keys and lifted his hand in a silent goodbye, but she shocked him by reaching out and grabbing him. She squeezed his fingers, her eyes big and bright blue under a glossy sheen of unshed tears.
“Don’t cry over me, Liv, I’m not worth it.”
“You like to pretend you’re so tough.” She smiled, a delicate, shaky curl of her lips. “How about you don’t cry over me, okay?”
He lifted their hands, still gripped together, and kissed her knuckles. “You’re totally worth my tears, baby.”
She hesitated for a minute, indecision warring with something else in her eyes, then she pressed up on her tiptoes and covered his mouth with hers, a bittersweet goodbye. He wanted to haul her tight against him, but he’d done that twice already and it had only made things worse. So instead he cupped her face with his free hand and let the kiss linger. She parted her lips to take a hitching breath, and he thought long and hard about licking into her mouth with his tongue, stirring the passion he knew would never die between them.
A part of him wanted to push her, to fight and force his way back into her heart, but that only served his own purposes. His own happiness.
Letting Liv go was the only way to make her happy. Passion had never been enough to make up for his home town being a claustrophobic let down for her. He pulled back in regret and kissed her nose, then her forehead.
“Night, Rafe,” she whispered, pressing two fingers to her lips.
“Sleep tight, Liv.”