The hair on the back of my neck stands up. “When?”
“It happened twenty-something years ago, but I only found out about it this past year.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “I was looking through boxes of old photos to make an anniversary present for them, and I found a stack of old letters in a box—letters that shattered everything I thought I knew about love and marriage and the ability of any man on this planet to stay faithful.”
I’m too shocked to speak.
She takes a deep, shaky breath and wipes fitfully at the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. “They separated for six months, but I was too young to realize it. She kicked him out and wouldn’t return any of his calls, so he wrote letter after handwritten love letter, begging for forgiveness, pleading with her, swearing it had been a one-time, drunken, stupid moment of weakness with a dance partner. So finally, after six months of letters and begging and pleading, she finally took him back.” A sob lurches out of her throat. “A year ago, I found out the man I’d thought I loved for two fucking years, a man who said he loved me and wanted to marry me and start a family with me, had been cheating on me throughout our entire relationship—and then, three months after that, I found out the father I worshipped had cheated on my beautiful mother and, by extension, on me and our entire family and everything we were raised to believe, because, apparently, getting laid by some nobody was more important than honoring his sacred vows.”
I open my mouth and close it.
“I gripped that handwritten letter in my hand and looked at my dad’s familiar, sloping script, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. If I hadn’t read his words with my own eyes, I never would have believed them possible. I would have defended my father’s integrity to my dying breath.” She swallows hard. “I confronted my parents about it, and they told me it was a lifetime ago, that it ultimately made them stronger, that it was actually a blessing in disguise and opened up lines of communication and blah, blah, blah. They said marriage is hard and people are flawed and nobody’s perfect—that to forgive is divine and so many other platitudes; but, golly gosh, I’m sorry if I can’t so easily move past it and pretend it never happened when my whole life I’ve worshipped the ground my father walks on and idolized my parents’ marriage and based my entire conception of marriage and what I’m looking for in a man on my father.” Tears are gushing out of her eyes. She’s a dam breaking. A rambling mess. “My whole life, whenever anyone else was jaded or skeptical about love or marriage, I wasalwaysthe one who said, ‘But fairytales really do exist!’ Because, no matter what, I always knew my dad thought my mom ‘hung the moon’ and that my mother was worthyof his undying devotion—which gave me hope thatmaybethat kind of love might one day be possible for a mere mortal like me—that maybeI’dfind a man who thought I hung the moon one day.” Her chest is heaving. “Their marriage is what I’ve always aspired to have, Ryan, my whole life—but now I don’t know what the fuck I’m aspiring to anymore.”
“Tessa,” I say softly, taking a step toward her, my arms open, but she lurches backward, her eyes glinting with fury and hurt.
“You lied to me,” she hisses. “If you’re willing to hide certain facts from me to create an optimal environment for me to fall in love with you, then how the fuck can I ever fully trust anything you say or do—let alone trust my feelings for you when your plan eventually works?”
I can’t fathom how she’s blowing up my slight omissions this past week into a betrayal of this proportion, especially when the only thing I failed to tell her is that I moved heaven and earth to find her because I fell in love with her at first sight. “Tessa,” I say. “Calm down. I was scared the hacking thing would freak you out right outta the gate, that’s all. I always intended to tell you before leaving Maui.”
She wipes her eyes and looks out at the ocean. “It’s exactly what Stu did—he showed me some perfect version of himself—a version he wished he could be, I suppose—but that version never really existed.”
“Babe.No. This is nothing like that. I’m not Stu. Everything I showed you this week was exactly who I am. I told you the complete truth; I just didn’t tell you a few things at first, for the greater good.”
She narrows her eyes. “If your definition of telling the truth is hiding certain things from me ‘for the greater good,’ then you’re not someone I want to be in a relationship with.”
My heart feels like it’s shattering and gushing blood onto the sand. Tears prick my eyes. “Please, baby. I haven’t been with anyone else since I met you. I couldn’t stand the thought of touching another woman since I laid eyes on you. I saw you and fell in love with you and knew you were rightfully mine. You own me, Tessa. Mind, body, heart, and soul. Please, you gotta believe me.”
She puts her hands over her face. “I don’t know what to believe. This is too much for me to process. I need time, Ryan. You’re Josh’s brother and you two are going into business together and Josh is thinking about having me work with you guys and—”
“Josh wants you to work with us on Captain’s? Oh my God! That would be a dream come true. Tell him yes.”
“It’s not that simple now. What if I give this a chance and we don’t work out? I don’t want to fuck things up for you or for Josh and Jonas. And I certainly don’t want to fuck things up for myself, either.”
I put my hands on her wet cheeks and, thank God, she doesn’t pull away. “Stop thinking so much, love. Get it through your head:I love you. That’s not gonna change. Ever. Come to my room with me right now. Let me make love to you. Let me show you how much you mean to me. And then we can lie in bed and talk things through calmly and I promise all your worries and concerns will melt away.”
She looks deeply into my eyes for a long beat, and, for a split-second, I think she’s gonna throw her arms around me and declare her love for me. But she doesn’t. “Who’d you call that day, Ryan?” she whispers.
I open my mouth and close it.
She smiles wanly. “I thought so.”
I sigh loudly. “I tell you what, my love. I’ll come to your room first thing in the morning to answer that question. We’ll talk then. Okay? You just need time to think and process. So go back to your room and I’ll come see you in the morning. Spoiler alert, though—no matter what you say to me tomorrow, I’m not leaving ’til I’ve convinced you we’re meant to be.”
She shakes her head. “I’m gonna need more than a night to get my thoughts straight. I need to go back home and get back to real life and see how I feel about things then.”
I exhale with relief. If she’s negotiating the number of days she needs to work through her shit, as opposed to my underlying assumption that I’m ultimately gonna convince her to be mine, that’s a very good sign. “Fair enough. How much time do you need, sweetheart?” I ask gently, stroking her cheek. “We can take things as slow as you need.”
“I don’t know. As it turns out, I’ve been having sex with a crazy stalker all week. Who knew?”
I laugh, despite myself.
She smiles—which I take as another very good sign. “I need a week,” she says. “When I get home, I’m gonna be slammed with work while Josh is on his honeymoon. Plus, I’ll want to talk to Josh about me working on Captain’s. Things could get dicey from a business perspective for him if things don’t work out romantically for us and he and Jonas deserve to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into.”
“Baby, are you not listening to me? There’s no way things won’t work out for us. That’s what I’m telling you. I love you. You’re The One. We’re gonna have it all, baby. You and me.”
She fidgets.
I sigh. “Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do: You’re gonna take eight days to think things through in the ‘real world’ because you’re a fucking loon. That gives you a week on your own plus one day to talk to Josh when he gets back to Seattle. And then, the afternoon of the eighth day, no matter what the fuck youthinkyou’ve decided about us, I’m gonna hunt you down and do whatever the fuck I have to do to convince you to be mine. Sound good?”
She nods. “Okay.”
