Happy Place(80)

We’ll make it through tomorrow, then go our separate ways. When we tell everyone we’ve broken up, we’ll be able to say it was amicable, that it won’t cost them anything.

But I can’t let it go.

I’ve been trying for months, and I’m no closer to peace. Here’s my opportunity—my last chance. It might be a mistake to get answers, but if I don’t, I’ll spend my life regretting it.

This is what I need from this week, the thing that will justify the torture.

I leave the bedroom, march down the hall past the hiss of running showers and old pipes creaking in the walls.

Everything feels strange, dreamlike: the time-smoothed wooden stairs soft against my soles, the prickle of cool air as I step out back, the rushing sound of the tide sliding over the rocks beneath the bluff. I cross the patio to the side gate, still open from Cleo’s sudden flight of fancy the other night, and follow the path beyond it, into the dense evergreens beyond.

The sun hasn’t fully set, but the foliage overhead coats the footbridge in shadow, pinpricks of mounted solar lights illuminating the path to the guesthouse.

It’s like I’m moving through jelly, every step slow and heavy. Then the wood-shingled guesthouse appears, and I round the corner toward the cedarwood shower.

When I see him, it surprises me. As if I didn’t come here expressly for him.

Only the back of his head, neck, and shoulders peek over the top of the cedar walls, the breeze pulling steam out in silver wisps. A feeling of loss, heavy as a sandbag, hits me in the gut.

I can’t do this, I think. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to make things worse.

I turn. My sleeve catches on a low-hanging branch, and all the moisture accumulated there spatters to the hollow forest floor.

Wyn turns, his brow arching with amusement. “Can I help you?” He looks and sounds happy to see me. Somehow it’s another blow.

I waver. “I doubt it.”

“May I help you,” he amends.

“I just wanted to talk!” I step back. “But it can wait. Until you’re less . . .”

“Busy?” he guesses.

“Naked,” I say.

“One and the same,” he says.

“For you, I guess,” I say.

His brow scrunches. “What’s that mean?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I say.

He rests his forearms atop the wall, waiting. For me to come closer or to bolt.

Now that the opportunity’s in front of me, having an answer I don’t like seems eminently worse than never having an answer at all.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “Forget it.”

“I won’t.” He wipes water from his eye. “But if you want me to pretend, I can try.”

I take another half step back. His gaze stays pinned on me.

As always, something about his face coaxes the words out of me before my brain has decided to say them: “It’s killing me not knowing.”

His brow softens, his lips parting in the half-light.

“Even though it’s been months,” I say. “It’s killing me, being here, acting like everything’s the same between us, and what’s even worse is sometimes it’s not acting. Because . . .” My voice cracks, but now there’s too much momentum. I can’t stop talking.

No matter how fragile, needy, broken I might sound, it’s the truth, and it’s coming out.

“Because you just left, Wyn,” I say. “I never got an explanation. I got a four-minute phone call and a box of my stuff shipped to my door, and I’ve never even known what I did. And I told myself it was all about what happened with Martin. That you didn’t trust me.”

He winces at the name, but I don’t back down.

“I’ve spent months trying to make myself mad at you,” I go on hoarsely, “for blaming me and judging me for something I didn’t even do. And then I come here, and you act like you do blame me. Like you hate me or, worse, feel nothing at all for me. Until suddenly you act like nothing’s changed. And you tell me you never thought I cheated on you, and you kiss me like you love me.”

“You kissed me too, Harriet,” he says, voice low, strained.

“I know,” I say. “I know I did, and I don’t even understand how, after everything, I still let myself do that. But I did, and it’s killing me. This is killing me. Every second of every day, I feel like I’m living with a piece of me torn out, and I didn’t even see it happen.

“I have this gaping wound, and no idea how it got there. It’s killing me hearing how happy you are, without even understanding how I—how I—” My voice quavers, my breath coming in spurts. “I don’t know what I did to make you so miserable.”

His mouth judders open. “Harriet.”

I drop my face into my hands as the tears build across my vision, my spine aching with the force of it when they start to fall.

The shower door unlatches and whines open. I hear the rasp of a towel being pulled from a hook and wrapped against skin. Heat billows toward me in a damp wall, and I flinch at the sudden warmth of Wyn’s hands taking hold of my upper arms. I can’t bring myself to look at him, not while I’m falling apart. Not after baring all the rawest parts of myself.

“Hey,” he says in a quiet rasp, his wet palms scraping up my arms. “Come here.”