God, I’m an idiot. For days I’ve been swamped with guilt over my uninvited attraction to Jared Rush. I’ve been mentally berating myself for kissing him when I’d left things with Daniel unresolved.
Now I feel nothing. I look at this man I thought I loved and I wonder how I ever could have thought he truly cared about me.
He reaches for my hand, but I pull it back. “Shit, Melanie. Please. I can’t afford to lose you. Not right now. Not over something as stupid as this. Let me make it up to you. Marry me.”
I laugh because I can’t help it. As far as proposals go, this has got to be the lamest effort any man has ever uttered. Worse than that, I don’t believe a single word of it.
Not that it matters. I wouldn’t have said yes anyway. Not when my head has been full of doubts and misgivings about him ever since Jared exposed his first lie to me.
“My friends are waiting, Daniel. I have to go now. Goodbye.”
I turn to walk away. He ducks into my path, his body an obstacle blocking my escape.
“Melanie, wait. You don’t mean this.” There is a wildness in his eyes, an authentic fear. “I agree, we can’t have this conversation out here. I’ll come by your house later today and—”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t want you to do that.”
“All right. We’ll talk tomorrow, then. You just tell me where and when, and I’ll be there.”
“I don’t think you understand,” I tell him, gently, because I want there to be no mistaking what I’m saying. “I don’t want to see you anymore, Daniel. Not at my house. Not anywhere. You and I are over.”
“Mel.”
I step around him without answering. My feet carry me unhalting to the waiting Volvo where Evelyn and Paige wait for me.
“Let’s get out of here,” I murmur, sliding into the open backseat.
The weight of Daniel’s stare follows me as my friends get into the car with me, then we merge into the river of traffic and drive away.
18
MELANIE
“Honey, are you sure you’re feeling okay?” My mom eyes me with concern as I set our emptied picnic cooler down on the kitchen floor the next evening. “You haven’t seemed like yourself all day.”
“I’m fine.” I give her a mild shrug and an equally vague wave of my hand. “I just needed some time with you and Katie, that’s all. The park was nice today, wasn’t it?”
“I loved it!” My niece grins at me from her perch on one of the four chairs surrounding our little dining table in the kitchen. “When can we do go again, Aunt Mellie?”
“Soon, I hope.” I can’t resist dropping a kiss on the top of her blond head as I hand her a juice box from the fridge.
The three of us spent the whole day on a blanket under a shade tree in our favorite neighborhood green space. Mom napped and read a book off and on, while Katie and I talked and fed a group of nearly tame chipmunks that sniffed out our lunch and came to beg for treats.
“It was a beautiful day.” Mom eases herself onto another of the chairs. She blots her forehead with a wadded-up tissue that seems to materialize from somewhere on her person the way a magician would pull a rabbit out of his hat. “Whoo, it’s a warm one, though.”
I don’t like the paleness of her face, or how easily she seemed to tire today. I asked her more than once if the sun was too much for her, but she insisted she was fine. In fact, she seemed more focused on how I was feeling, obviously homed in on my general state of distraction, even now.
“I’ll get you some water, Mom.”
I grab a glass from the cupboard and fill it from the filtered tap. She nods as she takes it from me, her hands a little shaky. The sight of her unsteady fingers brings my thoughts back to Jared and his jarring outburst just before he sent me away.
If I’m being honest with myself, it hasn’t been more than a minute since the last time he took up space in my head today.
He’ll be expecting me at Lenox Hill tomorrow morning to return to his studio for our next session. I’ll be there, but only to tell him in person that I’m breaking our agreement.
Now that I’ve had time to process my feelings after our kiss—and the startling way it ended—I’ve decided the best thing for me is to keep my distance from Jared Rush. I can’t deny I was moved to hear about his past. His hardship as a child, his drive to rise above it, struck a chord in me. I gained a new understanding of him, a compassion that makes it hard for me to turn my back on the fact that he’s a troubled, tormented man.
But I’ve already watched one explosive drunk destroy himself and nearly everyone else around him. I didn’t survive my father only to get entangled with a man who triggers every alarm bell in my system. No matter how much he intrigues me. No matter how intensely attracted I am to him.
