Happy Place

EVERYONE IS IN their respective corners of the house, getting ready for the bachelorette-slash-bachelor-party night Parth and Sabrina have planned.

I should be getting ready too. Instead, my mind keeps wandering back to that dark ledge I’ve spent months turning away from. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. The pain is too much. It will suck me into itself, and I’ll never get back out.

Let it go, I tell myself.

It doesn’t matter that I never got concrete answers about what broke us. What matters is that we broke. What matters is that Wyn’s happy with his new life.

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.”

He tucks me against his chest, the water from his skin sluicing down my arms and back. His mouth burrows into my hair. “It wasn’t you,” he says. “I promise it was never you. I was in such a fucking dark place, Harriet. After I lost my dad. I was drowning.”

He presses me closer.

“I’m sorry,” I say, voice crackling. “I wanted to help you. I didn’t know how. I’ve never known what to do with pain, Wyn. All I’ve ever done is hide from it.”

His hand furls against my ear. “You couldn’t have done anything else, Harriet. It was never you. I just . . . I lost the best man I knew, and it was like I stopped knowing how to exist. Like the world didn’t make any sense anymore. And you had this new life, this thing you’d been dreaming of for so long, and all these new friends, and—and I was greedy for your time, and I hated myself for not being happy for you. I hated myself for not being good enough or smart enough or driven enough for you.”

“Fuck that.” I try to push back from him.

He holds me fast, doesn’t let me go, and it makes me so angry, how he’s holding on now, when it’s too late. “Listen,” he murmurs, “please let me say this.”

I lift my gaze to his. I think of the first time I ever saw his face up close, how his features had struck me as contradictory, a rare mix of magnetism and standoffishness: I want you close, but don’t look at me. Now he’s pure quicksand. No stoniness. Wide open.

“I was lost,” he says. “As much as I loved my parents—as much as I always knew they loved me—I grew up thinking I was a letdown. I had these two incredible sisters, who came out of fucking left field and were nothing like my parents or anyone else in our town, and as early as I can remember, everyone knew they were going to do something amazing. I mean, when I was twelve and Lou was nine, people were already talking about how she’d win a Pulitzer someday. No one was giving me imaginary awards.”

“Wyn.” We’d been down this path too many times.

“I’m not saying anyone thought I was stupid,” he says. “But that’s how it felt. Like I was the one who didn’t have anything going for him except that I’m nice.”

“Nice?” I can’t help but scoff.

Generous, thoughtful, endlessly curious, painfully empathetic, funny, vast. Not nice. Nice was the mask Wyn Connor led with.

“I wanted to be special, Harriet,” he says. “And since I wasn’t, I settled for trying to make everyone love me. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s true. I spent my whole life chasing things and people who could make me feel like I mattered.”

That stings, somewhere deep beneath my breastbone. I try again, feebly, to draw back. Wyn’s hand moves to the back of my neck, light, careful. “And then I met you, and I didn’t feel so lost or aimless. Because even if there was nothing else for me, it felt like loving you was what I was made for. And it didn’t matter what anyone thought of me. It didn’t matter if I didn’t have any other big plans for myself, as long as I got to love you.”

“So that’s it?” I say raggedly. “I took up all the oxygen, and you didn’t tell me until I’d suffocated you. Until you didn’t love me anymore, and there was nothing I could do.”

“I will always love you,” he says fiercely. “That’s the point, Harriet. It’s the only thing that’s ever come naturally to me. The thing I don’t have to work at. I loved you all the way across the fucking country, and at my darkest, on my worst days, I still love you more than I’ve ever loved anything else.

“But I wasn’t happy after my dad died, and I kept waiting for things to feel even the tiniest bit better, and I couldn’t. I didn’t. And I was making you unhappy too.”

I open my mouth, but he cuts across me softly, his hands gentling in my hair: “Please don’t lie, Harriet. I was drowning, and I was taking you down too.”

I try to swallow. The emotion grips my throat too tightly.

Wyn drops his gaze, his voice cracking. “When I went back to Montana, I could feel him.”

“Wyn.” My hands go to his jaw, and his forehead dips to mine.

His eyes close, a deep breath pressing us closer. “And I felt so stupid for running away from all that. For trying so hard to be different from him when he was the best man I’ve ever known.”

“You’ve always been like him,” I say, “in all the ways that matter.”

The corner of his mouth turns up, but it’s a tense expression, a wrought one. He’s shaking, from the cold or adrenaline.

“I just . . .” He takes a breath. “I felt like I was failing him, and my mom, and you. I wanted you to be happy, Harriet, and the Martin thing—maybe it was an excuse, but I was so low then that I genuinely convinced myself that was the kind of guy you wanted to be with. And you kept pushing the wedding off. You never wanted to talk about it. You never wanted to talk about anything, and when I saw you with all of your new friends, I thought . . . I thought you should be with someone as brilliant as you, who could fit into this world you spent your whole life fighting for.”

“That’s not fair, Wyn,” I cry.

“What was I supposed to think, Harriet?” he asks, voice fraying. “When I’d have to cancel a visit, you didn’t care. When I missed a phone call, you didn’t care. You were never mad at me. You never fought with me. It felt like you didn’t even miss me.”

I break into sobs again as the reality of it hits me. That all that time and energy I’d spent trying to be fine for him, to not crack under the weight of my job, to not need anything he couldn’t give—all it had done was drive him away from me faster.

“I knew you’d never leave me,” he goes on, his voice like sandpaper. “Not when I was such a fucking wreck. But I didn’t want to trap you. I didn’t want you to wake up one day and realize you were living the wrong life, and I’d let you do it.

“That’s why the phone call was so short. Because I couldn’t have time to change my mind. That’s why I mailed your stuff back so fast. Why I couldn’t stand to have a single piece of you left where I could see it.

“Because I’m always going to love you. Because more than anything, I want you to be happy. And now you are,” he says. “And I am too. Not all the time, but I’m so much better than I was, and when Sabrina called and asked me to come here, I thought I could handle it.

“I genuinely thought I would show up, and I’d see you, and I’d know you were happier. I’d know I did the right thing letting you go.

“I’ve worked so fucking hard on myself these last five months, Harriet, and I’m doing well. I’m with my family, and I’m doing work I’m proud of, and I’m on medicine.”

“Medicine?”

“You asked what changed my mind about the job earlier,” he says. “That’s what did it. Medicine. For depression.”

My throat squeezes. Just one more huge thing I didn’t know about him. “From losing your dad?”

He shakes his head. “I thought it was just that. But once I started taking it, I realized that had just made things worse. But it’s always been there. Making everything harder than it should be. It’s like . . .” He scratches his temple. “In high school, I had this friend on the soccer team. And one day, after a game, he collapsed. His chest hurt and he couldn’t get his shirt off, but he wanted to because he couldn’t breathe, and we all thought he was having a heart attack. Turned out it was asthma.

“Spent like seventeen years operating on fifty-five percent lung capacity without realizing breathing just wasn’t supposed to be that hard. Starting antidepressants was like that for me. I felt like shit all the time, and then suddenly I didn’t. And all this stuff seemed possible for the first time. My mind felt . . . quieter, maybe. Lighter.”

I dash away the tears pricking my eyes. “I had no idea,” I croak.

“I didn’t either,” he says. “I spent a lot of energy trying to be fine, and—the point is, things are finally good for me. And I thought if I came here and saw you, it would prove we were both exactly where we were supposed to be. And instead, I showed up and you were furious at me. And you know what I felt?”

“I know you’re angry with me too, Wyn,” I force out.

He gives a sharp shake of his head. “Relief. I felt relief. Because it finally felt like you cared. If you were mad at me, it meant your heart really was as fucking broken as mine is. I thought when I found a way to be happy, I’d think about you less. But instead, it’s like . . . like now that the grief isn’t strangling me, there’s all this extra room to love you.

“But we can’t go back, so I don’t know what to do with any of this. I don’t even know if you feel the same way, and it’s killing me too. I go back and forth every thirty seconds thinking I’m hurting you just by being here, and then thinking you couldn’t possibly still love me after all this time, and even if it’s not real, a part of me wants to pretend I have you, but another part thinks I’ll die if you don’t tell me you love me, even if it doesn’t change anything. Even if it’s just getting to hear it one more time.

“Everything’s different and nothing’s changed, Harriet,” he says. “I tried so fucking hard to let you go, to let you be happy, and when I see you, I still feel like—like you’re mine. Like I’m yours. I got rid of every single piece of you, like that would make a difference, like I could cut you out of me, and instead, I just see everywhere you’re supposed to be.”

I stare at him, heart cracking open under the weight of what I’m feeling.

“Please say something,” he whispers.

My eyes fill. My throat fills. I drop my face into my hands again. “I thought you didn’t want me,” I choke out, “so I tried. I tried to love somebody else. I tried to even like somebody else. I kissed someone else. I slept with someone else, but I couldn’t stop feeling like I was yours.” My eyes tighten against another wave of tears. “Like you’re mine.”

“Harriet.” He tilts my face up. “Look at me.”

He waits. “Please, Harriet.”

It takes a few seconds to force my eyes open. Water droplets still cling to his brows. Rivulets race down his jaw and throat. His thumb grazes my cheekbone.

“I am,” he says. “I am still yours.”

The nail that has been driving closer and closer to my heart all week sinks home.

The pads of his fingers slide across my bottom lip. His eyes are so soft, every ginger touch pushing back another layer from my heart.

But does it even matter that we belong to each other when we can’t be with each other? Our lives are immovably separate. Everything may look different than it did ten minutes ago, but nothing’s changed. He’s mine, but I can’t have him.

My hands tangle in his wet hair, as if that can keep him here with me. His do the same to mine.

“What is this?” he whispers.

I want it to be an I’m sorry and an I forgive you and a Promise you won’t ever let me go and a million other words I can’t say.

Wyn’s finally happy. He has the life that was meant for him. He has a career he’s proud of, one predicated on his being in Montana, and even if he didn’t, there’s Gloria, who needs him. The time with her that he needs, time he missed with Hank. And I’m in California for at least a few more years, too deep in to back out but not so far into the tunnel as to see the light at its end.

Maybe, in another life, things could be different. In this one, this can be only one thing.

“I think,” I say, “it’s one last I love you.”

His fingers tighten on me, his breath stilling. And then, like he’s answering a question, his lungs expand on an inhale and his lips meet mine.

When I let out a shaky breath, his tongue slips into my mouth. The taste of him reaches deep and loosens something I’ve spent months tying into knots. Need stretches out in every direction, waking up my skin, nerves, blood. Wyn angles my face up, deepening the kiss, and his tongue sweeps mine, hungry, tender. A whimper rises out of me.

His hand spreads across my stomach, finding its way several inches up beneath my shirt, and my spine arcs into him, every muscle in my stomach trying to draw closer to his.

He locks an arm around me and walks us backward. His shoulder collides with the shower stall’s door as he hauls me inside and knocks it shut again.

My clothes are already wet from being held by him, sticking to my skin in places, but he shields me from the water anyway as he peels my shirt over my shoulders and drapes it over the wall along with his towel. I lean back against the wall, catching my breath, as he methodically undoes the buttons on my shorts. He takes his time easing them down my legs with my bikini bottoms, and I stand there, skin prickling, breath uneven, and mind on fire. He hangs those too, without taking his eyes off me.

“Is this real?” I ask.

He reaches for my waist. “What else would it be?”

“A dream,” I say.

He pulls me in against him, his warm, damp stomach sliding against mine. “Can’t be,” he says. “In my dreams, you’re always on top.”

My laugh catches as his thumb sweeps up the outside curve of my breast.

I wind my arms around his neck, and he lifts me against the wall in a smooth motion, my thighs wrapping around his waist.

I gasp into his mouth at the sudden sensation of so much of him on so much of me. The bands of muscle across his stomach tighten. My lips part hungrily under his. His hands untie my bathing suit top, peel it away, and my heart pounds into his urgent touch.

He whispers my name at the hinge of my jaw, the water spraying over his shoulders, wrapping us in its heat.

He groans, palming me in slow, intense circles as my breath quickens. His mouth glides down my throat. “Are you sure about this?” he murmurs.

I hold him tighter. He draws back to ask again, but I pull him close, my tongue slipping into his mouth, finding the bitter, bready taste of Corona and sharp tang of lime.

I reach between us and thrill at the feeling of him in my hand. His head bows into my shoulder, one of his hands coming to grip the top of the wall behind me.

“I didn’t bring condoms here,” he says, but neither of us has stopped moving, looking for more friction, for release. The muscles all down his back and stomach and arms and ass are rigid with tension as our hips roll together.

His hands slide roughly behind my hips, canting them up to him. “We shouldn’t do this while you’re upset anyway,” he says.

I move my hand down him. “I’ll be less upset once you’re inside me.”

He wraps a hand over mine, holding me still for a second, our hearts slamming together, hot water racing down us. “We don’t have a condom,” he says again.

Some kind of pathetic sound of dissent squeaks out of me, and he seems to forget what he was saying, pushes me back into the wall, our hips grinding together, nails skating over wet skin. He lifts me a half inch so he’s right against me now. It’s not enough. He grabs the top of the wall again for support as we move together.

“Harriet,” he rasps against my ear. “You’re so fucking soft.”

“Thanks,” I say, breathless, “I don’t work out.”

“Don’t joke right now,” he says. “We can joke later. Right now, tell me what you want.”

“I already told you,” I say.

“We can’t,” he says. “I’ll find a way to get some while we’re out for dinner.”

I laugh into his throat, catch a rivulet on my tongue. “Are you going to hang out in alleyways and wave twenties at strangers who look like they’re packing condoms?”

“I was thinking I’d go to a drugstore,” he says, “but I like your way better.”

He draws back, his hands slowing my descent until my feet meet the wet cedar planks. Everything in me rises in protest until he turns me, lifts my hands to the edge of the wall, and lets his own slide down the backs of my arms, down my sides. One slips around my hip and between my thighs as he presses in behind me.

For a second, I can’t breathe. Even my organs are too busy wanting to do anything else, every last brain wave occupied with the sensation of his hand. His other arm winds around me, pulling me flush against him, his mouth on the spot between my neck and shoulder.

“Was this your goal for the week?” I ask.

He bites the side of my neck. “Actually, it was to make it through the rest of the week as a perfect gentleman.”

“Occasional failure’s good for a person,” I say.

“Is it?” he teases. “Good for you?”

I push myself back into him, pleading. “Please.”

Wyn swears, grabs my hips, and turns me again, pinning me back against the wall and kneeling in front of me.

My joints seem to liquefy as he kisses the inside of my thigh, moves up to my center. My hips lift into the pressure of his mouth. His left palm skims up my stomach, the right moving around to cup my ass, angling me up to him.

I try to urge him back up me, but he stays where he is, the insistent heat of his mouth edging me closer to unraveling.

“Wyn,” I beg.

Goose bumps erupt over his neck. He murmurs, “Come for me, Harriet.”

I try to resist, to ask for more of him, but my body bows up. His name rushes out of me in a breathless plea. He drives me into a wave so heavy and dark that, for several seconds, there’s nothing but sensation. No woods, no cedar shower, nothing but his mouth.

When it recedes, I slump back against the wall, knees weak. Wyn rises and gathers me into him so that my chin rests on his shoulder. The hot water pours down us as he leaves a string of kisses down my throat.

“Thank you,” I say through the dreamy haze.

His smile blooms against my neck. “So polite.” He sways me gently back and forth beneath the water. “The others are waiting.”

“I’m not feeling polite anymore.” I tip my chin back to meet his eyes. “They can wait.”

“The air horn will start going any minute now,” he says.

“Waiting never killed anyone,” I say.

“I don’t know,” Wyn says. “I’ve felt pretty close to death this week.”

“Good point,” I say. “Waiting can be dangerous. We probably shouldn’t.”

His laugh melts into another groan. “Later. Let me buy you dinner first.”

“I’m a modern woman, Wyn,” I say. “I’ll buy you dinner. I mean, if I can afford your dinner now that you’re fancy.”

“You get me a gas station hot dog, Harriet Kilpatrick,” he says, kissing the corner of my mouth, “and I’ll give you the best night of your life.”

I close my eyes, try to hold the moment still. It’s already slipping away. One more day.