Ari.Ari.
The wrench fell from his hands, and once again, Tom felt that old ache build within him. He’d told himself for years that he no longer loved her. He’d told himself for years that this ache — this constant, fucking awful ache for her — was just a residual feeling of old. That it wasn’t love he still felt for her, but merely nostalgia.
But that had been a lie, not just to himself but also to Sasha. He still loved Ari. He’d always loved Ari. He was alwaysgoingto love Ari, and both she and Sasha needed to know that.
Tom took a deep breath, feeling the calm of his father’s presence wash over him. Whenever he felt trouble at his mother’s house, he did one of two things: went up into the sky in one of his dad’s beat-up old planes, or came in here tomess around with one of his dad’s beat-up old cars. He needed his dad. Needed his memory. Needed his father, even when his father was gone.
He picked the wrench back up as resolve ran through him.
He couldn’t marry Sasha. He just couldn’t. Not while he was still in love with Ari.
And Ari... he needed her to know how he felt. Needed her to know the truth. Needed her to know how sorry he was, how sorry he would always be.
He stood, intending on returning to the house, when a nearby rustle caught his attention.
Someone else was here, he realised. Someone else had followed him.
Ari,he immediately thought — or maybe hoped.Ari’s here.
“You can come out,” he said softly. “I’m here.”
The wrench dropped from Tom’s hand again, the noise bouncing around the old shed, because it wasn’t Ari.
It was Reine.
She was dressed in a pair of pyjamas, a robe around her shoulders, her hair dressed in braids down her back. She was clutching the old, battered pink bunny Tom remembered from years ago, and was staring up at Tom with wide, almost fearful eyes.
“Reine,” Tom said, stepping back and looking desperately from side to side. “What are you doing here? Does your mom know you’re here? Does mine?”
But Reine continued to stare up at him, clutching her bunny. She chewed on her lip in a way that reminded Tom instantly of Ari, and he could see the small child was working up courage. But courage for what?
“I know who you are,” the child said, her voice barely above a whisper but full of bravery. “I know who you are.”
Tom felt his mouth go dry. “Do you?”
“Yes.” The child nodded, and Tom could see that her hands were gripping the bunny with a tightness that must have been hurting her fingers. “Yes, I know.”
“Who am I?” Tom asked, terrified already of her response.
The child stood taller. “You’re my father.”
Chapter 15: Thirty-Seven
There were very few men who Marnie liked and even fewer who she respected. Perhaps it was her upbringing — that sheltered youth as the prodigal daughter of a deeply talented but also deeply disturbed man. Perhaps it was the plethora of men who seemed to constantly surround him, dark-suited and tall, who glanced at her childish presence with annoyance and then later, when she developed into a rebellious teenager with resentment and attitude, a deep and unsettling suspicion.
She hadn’t understood Doug either, if she was entirely honest with herself. Doug had been sexy and exciting, and she’d been seduced more by the idea of him than anything else. To discover that beneath that alluring exterior had been a kind man with a compassionate heart had been a surprise — discovering that she liked that kindness had been a seismic shift that had rocked her to her very foundations. Doug’s kindness had been both a gift and a curse. Deeply attractive on the outside and unable to withstand causing hurt within, Doug had been easily led and easily swayed. Married — perhaps unsuitably — to a woman with a core of steel who was always working, Doug’s affairs had been many, and he’d adopted a devil-may-care lifestyle that Marnie could never fathom but likewise never condemned. The women, the gambling, the airplanes... even now, Marnie was taken aback that not only had their shotgun marriage worked, it had lasted until Doug’s death. Marnie had loved her husband, but she hadn’t alwaysrespectedhim.
And her boys.
Corentin and Tom had been the brown-eyed babies of her dreams. When they’d first placed her tiny infants in her arms, which curved naturally around them, she’d looked down at her little sons and wondered where they’d been all her life. For they were so much a part of her in that moment that she couldn’tremember a time when they’d ever been away from her. In her boys, Marnie found a reason to justify her not-always-happy marriage, her decisions and life choices. In them, she found a renewed sense of purpose. She had to make a good world for her sons. She had to leave the world a better place than she’d found it. Her error, Marnie knew now, was misplacing that sense of purpose into working more and working harder, and not spending her time with her precious babies, who did not remain babies for long, but became wide-eyed toddlers and then, with alarming speed, quiet and pensive boys. Before she knew it, Corentin and Tom were grown. Corentin, as calm and placid and self-aware as he’d been as an infant, was happy enough, his choices and decisions his own. Tom though... It hit Marnie hard that where her beautiful boy once stood, a sullen and resentful man had taken his place, and she’d been struck with the first pangs of regret at her absence from his life.
She loved both her sons, but she didn’t alwaysknowthem.
As for other men . . . well, Marnie could only shrug. Her father, husband and sons had been the only men in her life to really count. The rest had been mere background, an echoing chamber of complaints and disapproval, and she hadn’t liked any of them.
So, ten minutes into dinner with Luis De León, Marnie was heartily surprised to find that not only could she tolerate him, but that she was actually beginning tolikehim too. He was witty and verbose, pleasant and winningly attractive, and Marnie’s heart had fluttered when he’d leaned over the table to fill her wine glass and winked at her.
“Sheesh, I bet you were a stunning bride, once upon a time,” he told her, filling her glass nearly to the brim. “I can see where she gets her good looks from now.”
