Once More With Feeling (21 page)

He moved around the kitchen with that efficiency and grace that I discovered I still found entirely too attractive. I settled myself gingerly on one of the stools next to the granite counter at the kitchen island. He poured me a big mug of coffee and then slapped down a carton of hazelnut creamer beside it, without asking or even really looking at me. When he brought over his own mug and leaned against the counter across from me, he also slid a packet of sweetener and a spoon over my way.

I stared at all this evidence that he remembered exactly how I liked my coffee, and that he was as sure of himself as ever, and I wanted nothing to do with the strange set of internal explosions that detonated in response. I pressed my lips together, as if I were bracing myself, or afraid of
what I might say without meaning to speak, and then went about adding the creamer and sweetener.

‘Where are your parents?’ I asked. There was so much of a ruckus inside me that I’d forgotten it was completely silent in the house, and my voice sounded much too loud. Almost brash. I let my spoon clank against the side of my mug as if that could divert attention from the echo of my question.

‘Florida.’ He cupped his own mug in his hands, but he still looked at me with those dark, knowing eyes. He’d never been much for small talk, as I recalled. Too busy being brilliant and focused and completely impossible. I should have hated that. I never had.

‘And what about your sister?’ I realized as I asked it that I probably shouldn’t have. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was open the conversation with sisters. It could only lead to Carolyn and her numerous trespasses against me, which was not a subject I wanted to dive right into with anyone. Much less Alec.

‘Still lives here in the village. Happily, as far as I can tell.’

He looked at me. He waited. He was, I could see, not at all fooled by this little sidebar into the pleasantries. I told myself I found that irritating.

‘And saving the world?’ I asked, aware that my voice was a little strained, then. ‘How’s that going?’

He smirked then, in his smart-assed way. It was an edgy sort of curve of his mouth that did things to my equilibrium. Dangerous things.

‘Brooke told me you were married a few years back,’ he said, instead of answering my question. Cutting to the chase, I supposed, and who could blame him? ‘I guess I forgot that when I saw you. I’m sorry if I overstepped any boundaries.’

He couldn’t have sounded less sorry if he’d tried. Or more arrogant. Two things which should have made me find him wholly unattractive, yet did not. And I was fairly sure he knew it.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said dryly. ‘I assumed you greet everyone that way these days, since you’re so warm and fuzzy. The postman, the guy who bags your groceries …’

‘I’m a popular guy,’ he agreed, his eyes gleaming, his tone sardonic.

The moment pulled taut between us. I could feel the tension of it, shimmering between us and resonating deep within me. I didn’t want to feel this. This wasn’t why I’d come here. I’d wanted to talk to him, remember him. Not relive him. Didn’t I?

‘My marriage is in a tricky place,’ I blurted out, succumbing to Alec’s kind of kamikaze truth-telling within minutes, like an amateur. ‘I’m kind of investigating how I made the choices I did, how I came to this particular point in my life, and how it all ended up this way. Where it is now, I mean.’

‘Is that like following breadcrumbs through the woods?’ he asked in a mild tone that didn’t fool me at all. ‘Doesn’t that usually end up with someone’s head in the oven?’

‘Happily, you’re a doctor,’ I said, smiling thinly at him. ‘I’m sure we’ll both be safe.’

‘Depends on your definition of safe,’ he replied. But I must have given him a look, because he shifted, his dark eyes flashing and his mouth taking on that sardonic cast. ‘What clues did you follow to my particular gingerbread house? Or is this a different fairy tale altogether?’

‘I’m trying to answer a few questions for myself, that’s all,’ I assured him. ‘Like, why did I choose the kind of law I practise? Why did I choose to live in one place rather than another? No trolls under the bridge to worry about.’

‘Not for me, anyway.’

The way he looked at me then made me wish there was more space between us – more room to breathe. I tried to keep my expression smooth, but it wasn’t easy when he looked at me like that, so darkly arrogant and amused in some way I imagined I wouldn’t like.

‘Why did you choose to work in a corporate law firm rather than come with me to Africa?’ he asked. I stared at him. He stared back, giving no quarter, his dark gaze like a weapon, and then his brows arched. ‘For example.’

‘For example,’ I agreed. My throat felt scraped dry.

I took a sip of the perfect coffee, exactly how I loved it, and wondered if he could see how hard my pulse was pounding, how close to dizzy I felt, that I was simply throwing all these things on the table in front of him as if they didn’t mean anything to me. As if it didn’t mortally wound me, on some level, to admit to Alec of all people
that the man who I’d decided was much better for me than he was maybe wasn’t so great after all. As if this really were a deposition and I the cool, calm, collected lawyer I wished I’d ever been around him.

‘I think if I could answer that question in particular,’ he said, his eyes never leaving mine, daring me to look away from him, a note of steel in his voice, ‘if I’d ever been able to answer it, you wouldn’t have to be asking it now.’

That went through me hard, leaving marks. I sat back on the stool, as far back as I could without falling off onto the floor, and wondered what the hell I’d been smoking when I’d decided this was a good idea. But I hadn’t decided so much as reacted, had I? Carolyn had made me angry again – the scene I’d inadvertently interrupted had simply hurt more than I’d been able to handle – and I’d leapt headlong into this. Maybe someday I would learn the value of calm, cool reflection before action where this man was concerned. I could only dream.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he said instead of elaborating on anything. Instead of following any of the unspoken pieces of our old relationship that hovered around us now down into their various dark places. Another man might have sounded sweetly nostalgic when he said something like that. But not Alec. He sounded entirely too sure of himself, as ever. And with that crack of temper beneath it. His eyes gleamed, as if he could read my mind. ‘I mean that.’

The chaos inside me reached some kind of boiling point
then, and I couldn’t take it. I slid off the stool and onto my feet, wincing slightly when they slapped against the floor with far more force than I’d intended.

‘This is so crazy,’ I said, shaking my head as if I could shrug this all off. Or rewind, somehow, until I was sitting quietly in my house and had never leapt in the car to come here. ‘I’ve gone completely nuts, haven’t I?’ As if this was some silly whim, some funny story I could tell my friends later while howling with laughter about the wackiness of the adventure, the madcap hilarity. Instead of what it really was, which was a colossal and potentially very painful mistake. ‘I think maybe I need to seek out some psychiatric help, not an ex-boyfriend. Wrong kind of doctor, ha ha … I am so sorry. I should never have come up here and tried to force you into this—’

‘Sarah.’

And I stopped talking.

Because oh, the way he said my name. The way it sounded in his mouth.

It had always been like this. He had always managed to make such a simple, ordinary name sound like some kind of complicated melody, even when he said it like he did then. Like an order he expected me to obey.

‘You didn’t drive all the way up here to run out the door the moment things get a little tense.’ He shrugged in that supremely unconcerned, masculine way of his that simultaneously annoyed me and made me wish … all kinds of things I refused to acknowledge. ‘Did you?’

So challenging. With a hint of impatience, too. Like he was a little bit bored and had to be in surgery five minutes ago and how dare I hold him up with my waffling? There was clearly something wrong with me that I found that kind of endearing.

‘Maybe I did,’ I said.

‘Then you should have done it years ago,’ he said in that same offhand, just this side of openly mocking way, ‘so we could be past this shit by now.’

Because Alec never cared if things got too intense, too dark, too anything. In fact, he encouraged it. He only insisted that it all be
honest
. If that sounded easy, it wasn’t. It was
easy
to be honest about whether or not you liked white chocolate – that was a yes or no question. It was more complicated when the kind of honesty he wanted was the kind you hid from inside yourself. But I’d known that, hadn’t I?

I breathed in. Out. I let the riot inside settle. I blinked back the heat threatening to spill from the backs of my eyes.

‘I couldn’t have come years ago, unfortunately,’ I heard myself say, in such a matter-of-fact, scarily
precise
sort of way. ‘Years ago, I thought I was happily married. Years ago, I had yet to walk in on my husband having sex with my sister. So.’

Alec looked at me for what felt like a long time. I stared back, not at all comfortable with the things I worried he could see, but what was the point of hiding them? I’d
already showed my hand. There was no appearing out of nowhere all these years later and then trying to be cagey.

He straightened from the counter eventually, and wordlessly motioned for me to precede him into the big family room. I did, happy to have a little break from all of that intense scrutiny. I took in the high, exposed beams and the large fireplace dominating the far wall. The happy art, the warm colours. I set my coffee on the nearest table and sat down in one of the comfortable-looking armchairs, curling my legs up beneath me. I watched as he threw some logs into the fire and quickly, competently, got a blaze going. The man was still so very good with his hands. When he was done, he dusted those capable hands of his off on his jeans and threw himself down on the couch near my chair.

‘Are you going to stop staring at me in all this ponderous silence?’ I asked. His mouth didn’t move, but those dark eyes filled with laughter.

‘I’m adjusting my ego,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he was doing nothing of the kind. And besides, I knew his ego all too well. It was far too impressive and extensive to suffer any minor dents. ‘My fantasies tended to feature you appearing before me because you’d seen the error of your ways, not because you’d seen the error of someone else’s and thought I’d make a good consolation prize.’

‘I take it back.’ I met his gaze and managed to keep from rolling my eyes. ‘I think I prefer the ponderous silence, thank you.’

‘I’m glad you felt you could come here,’ he said after a moment, and it was the kindness threaded into his usually darker tone that killed me.

I knew he meant it. I knew that even if he was taking some measure of satisfaction in the state of my marriage, as anyone would, he also meant what he said or he wouldn’t have said it at all. That was Alec in a nutshell. I’d never known him to lie. About anything. Not to be polite and not even when it might have helped him out of a tough spot. Not ever.

And for some reason, the fact that he was still so completely and unassailably
him
, so ornery and beautiful and arrogant and kind, just as he’d been all those years ago, when I wasn’t at all sure what was left of me, made that great sadness I’d been so determined to deny well up inside of me. It was like a flash flood of sensation, washing through me and over me until, to my absolute horror, I started to cry. And cry.

And
cry
.

I tried to hide my face in my hands, but I was still entirely too aware of him – entirely too aware that I had just tipped over the edge from maybe kind of amusingly crazy to full-on psycho. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. I sobbed and sobbed, crying out all those pieces of my broken heart, Tim and Carolyn, my parents, those lost years without Brooke and yes, Alec. Too many pieces to name or even appropriately categorize, such a mess of them there were, and I couldn’t do anything about it but ride it out.

I sensed more than saw him move, and then those capable hands of his were on me, and before I could react, he lifted me up, turned around, then sat down and settled me on his lap. I should have leaped off of him as if I were electrocuted. I should have dived for safety. I should have immediately pulled myself together and removed myself from this kind of close contact with him, draped across his lap like some kind of small, broken thing that only he could fix.

But instead, I leaned into him as if he really was as safe as he felt, let him hold me close like he still cared, and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I just … let go.

When I finally stopped crying all over him, when I was wrung out entirely and my face felt like very old parchment or some kind of recently unearthed archaeological artifact, I finally gained the presence of mind to understand how awkward and foolish it was to be tucked up in my ex-boyfriend’s lap. I was no better than Tim. Who’d had, at one point, a very serious sensitivity to Brooke’s deliberate and consistent mentions of
Saint Alec, the fucking healer
. Tim’s phrase, not mine.

I peeled myself off his chest and carted myself away to the downstairs bathroom with a haste that I might have called undignified, had my previous behaviour not already made a mockery of the very word. I was thankful he miraculously managed to keep himself from saying something cutting and/or mocking as I went. I stared in the tiny little
mirror over the sink and quickly understood that no amount of cold water in the world, not even cold water in December in
Vermont
, was going to repair the damage this crying jag had done to my face. And there was no point cataloguing the mess inside, thank you. I was going to have to live with the swollen, watery eyes and the stuffed-up head, to say nothing of the great swathe of brokenness within, and I accepted that inevitability as one more hit in a long tragic line of them.

Of course
I had just treated Dr Alec Frasier like my personal wailing wall.
Of course
I had chosen to do this after all this time, after he’d kissed me, after I’d taken it upon myself to descend upon him like his very own Dickens-worthy Ghost of Christmas Past.