Strangers in Paradise (32 page)

* * *

Cassie's blue Taurus was the only car parked along Main Street when Sam got there. He pulled the truck in next to her, and met her at the hood of her car.

“Let's go sit on the bench by the sandbox,” she said, leading the way without waiting for his answer. Or allowing conversation, either.

The sandbox was new since Sam had left. It didn't hold any memories. He'd have preferred the bench by the palo verde tree.

They'd sat on that bench often during the years of their courtship. During their brief marriage...

The first time he'd taken her to sit there was after she'd fallen trying to beat him in a bicycle race. She'd gone too fast over the curb at the edge of the park. He'd been scared out of his wits when he'd seen her fly off that bike. And so relieved to find that she'd only skinned her knee that he'd made a total fool of himself. He'd told her then and there, sitting on that bench, that he liked her.

She'd laughed at him. “Of course you do, silly,” she'd said. “We're friends.”

“No,” he'd brazened right on, his young heart too full to keep still. “I mean as in a boy liking a girl.”

Astonished, she'd just sat there, staring at him, not knowing what to say. And because he'd been afraid she'd decide she didn't like him back, he'd leaned forward and kissed her.

Just a peck. They'd only been twelve or thirteen at the time. But there'd never been anyone else of consequence for either one of them after that. Certainly not for him. And, he suspected, not for her.

Cassie sat at one end of the bench. The park light across from them revealed the figure-hugging cotton top she was wearing, putting her breasts in a spotlight. God, he ached to touch them again. He'd once had the right to touch those breasts whenever—

Sam swallowed. He'd been wanting her too many years to allow his thoughts to travel that road. Especially when she'd already made perfectly clear that it would be a cold day in hell before Sam Montford ever had his hands on her again.

He sat on the opposite end of the bench. And wondered how to begin, now that they were both here. He'd had so many conversations with her in his mind, explained things over and over, looking for his own understanding by seeing the past through her eyes. Yet now he didn't know how to begin.

“First, I want you to know I've been paying for what I did to you, to us, every day of the past ten years,” he finally said. “I'm so sorry, Cassie. More sorry than you'll ever know.”

She nodded. That was all. No words.

Sam hadn't really expected absolution. His sins were too great for that. But God, he'd hoped for...something from her. Some sign of forgiveness.

“I wouldn't have been any good for you if I'd stayed in this town, Cass,” he said next. It was a truth he'd come to realize over the years. “I was dying here, and I didn't even know it.”

“Dying?” she repeated, staring straight ahead. He couldn't tell if she was really as numb as she appeared, as unaffected, or if she'd just learned to hide her emotions over the years.

“I'm not a lawyer. I never wanted to be a lawyer. Or the mayor of this town. Or a scholar.”

“Then why did you say you did?”

Sam blinked. “I didn't ever say that. My parents did. The town assumed I did. No one ever asked me what I wanted.”

“You were valedictorian of our class.”

“Not because I tried.”

“You have a brilliant mind, Sam. How could you not want to use it?”

The old trapped feeling climbed insidiously up his spine. Until he remembered that although he was back in Shelter Valley, back with Cassie, he wasn't the same man anymore. He knew who he was now. What he was about.

Sam watched her shadowed face, wishing he could see her eyes, her expression. “I do use it,” he told her. “Just not in the way that was planned for me.”

Cassie shook her head. “I don't understand.”

“I know. You never did.”

“Oh,” she said, a trace of bitterness seeping into her voice. “So now it's all my fault?”

“No.” The word was soft, filled with grief. “I know it's all mine. I'm just trying to explain, if I can, how everything went so wrong.”

“Explain, if you can, why you screwed that...that bimbo.”

The harsh words were so completely discordant with the peace of the quiet evening, with the Cassie he'd known. Sam flinched.

“She didn't mean anything, Cass,” he said, sickened even thinking about that night. The things he'd done.

He'd never been so ashamed of anything in his life. And had never recovered, either.

“You're the only woman who's ever meant anything to me. You were then. And you still are.”

“Don't give me that, Sam,” she said. “It's not necessary now. It doesn't matter.”

He'd known she felt that way—and he couldn't blame her. But the words cut him deeply.

“As much as I loved you,” he continued, because there was nothing else to do, “I knew things weren't good.”

“Why?”

Ah. The first bit of emotion in her voice. So she
did
still feel something. Even if it was hate. She wasn't completely immune.

He was a bastard to take satisfaction from that.

“I was never going to be the man you expected me to be. The man you'd fallen in love with.”

“And you couldn't tell me this? You had to go out and screw some other woman, instead?”

The verbal slap hit its mark. “I was only beginning to realize the truth myself,” he told her. “It took me years to sort it all out.”

“I don't understand,” she said again.

“I didn't, either, Cass, not for a long time. All I can tell you is that I was ready to explode and I couldn't understand why. I didn't know how to fix it.”

“Maybe if we'd talked about it...”

“Maybe.” But he didn't think so. They'd both been so young. So set in the patterns their parents had created for them. He wasn't sure either one of them could have figured anything out at that stage.

“So you didn't want to be married?”

Sighing, Sam leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him. “I didn't know,” he told her honestly. And felt a wave of pain when he heard her hissed-in breath. “I knew I loved you to distraction,” he said, turning to look at her. “But I felt so
trapped
....”

“I can't believe you didn't tell me!”

“I didn't know what there was to tell. I didn't understand it myself. How could I love you and want out of our marriage at the same time?”

Chapter 8

C
assie's silence was revealing. She didn't believe he'd loved her.

And Sam couldn't just leave his question hanging.

“I can honestly tell you now,” he said, willing her to look at him, and, when she didn't, continuing anyway. “I know with absolute certainty that it
wasn't
the marriage I wanted out of.” He took a breath, then another. “But our being married was...connected to everything else. Back then, I couldn't distinguish one thing from another, so I escaped it all. But my problem wasn't the marriage, Cassie.”

“What was it, then?” The question was soft, fragile, almost as though she was afraid to hear the answer.

“Shelter Valley. The Montford legacy. The life that had been planned for me. I'm not a desk man, Cass. I can't stand to be shut in all day. I have to be outside. Working with my hands.”

She'd turned to look at him, and by the soft light from the street lamp he saw the disbelief in her eyes.

“You never did manual labor in your life.”

“I picked up the bush trimmings when I was little.”

“And that makes you a blue-collar worker?” she said incredulously.

“No, but stupid as it sounds, it's one of my fondest memories of being a little kid.” He'd found his answers, and now he needed her to understand them, too. Because without her knowing, the outcome of his struggle didn't seem quite complete.

“I get satisfaction from working up a sweat,” he went on. Whatever force had sent him running from this town, from her, ten years ago, pushed him now. “I'm good at making things, fixing things,” he said urgently. “I look forward to going to work. In a classroom, all I ever felt was the need to get out.”

Was she even listening to him? He couldn't tell.

“At night, sitting at our desk in the apartment working on papers for school, I would think about a lifetime of going to the office, reading investment reports. The most physical thing I'd do all day would be to pick up the telephone. And I wanted to jump out of my skin at the thought.”

He thought about Borough Bantam, about telling Cassie what he did when he sat at a desk these days, but decided against it. The comic strip was a by-product of the understanding he'd finally, painfully, arrived at. Understanding of himself, of his life.

This wasn't about work. Or success. It was about spending his days doing something that fulfilled him. Manual labor did that.

Besides, Cassie—and the rest of the town—might take offense at his animal portrayals of them. They might not see the compliment he'd intended....

“So our whole life together was a farce,” Cassie was saying, her tone abrupt.

“No, it wasn't,” he told her, because he couldn't bear the aching he heard in her voice. But in a sense, she was right.

And they both knew it.

* * *

On some level, Cassie wasn't ready to accept what Sam was telling her. Not because she wanted him to put on a suit tomorrow morning and get a corporate job. But because it changed everything.

Every memory she had—the good ones included—would be transformed by this. Would be made unnatural. Unfamiliar.
Different.

He had to be wrong. He had to be rationalizing a life gone to waste. He was making the best of things, telling himself that he now had what he wanted out of life. To do otherwise was too painful, and there was no way to recover what he'd lost.

“Why didn't you ever remarry?” he asked, when the silence began to grow longer than their conversation had been.

Rubbing her hands along her thighs, Cassie braced herself. He wanted the truth. And she needed to give it to him. To be free of it. She'd been keeping things hidden inside for so long.

Measuring each word carefully, searching for total honesty within herself, she told him. “You destroyed my ability to trust, Sam.” At that moment, there was no bitterness. Just a feeling of calm. “I can't open myself up to that kind of commitment again.”

“I can't accept that.”

The bench was hard beneath her, but the cool night air was refreshing against her skin. It was already blisteringly hot during the day, but the nights would be pleasant for a while longer. She wished she felt as numbly exhausted as she knew she must be.

“It's not up to you to accept or reject what I say, Sam,” she said matter-of-factly. “This is how I feel. End of story.”

“One person's untrustworthy, so you've sworn off all men?”

He still faced straight ahead, wasn't even looking at her, but she sensed the emotions churning inside him.

“It was more than that,” she said, remembering, barely able to breathe, as she thought back to those first days and nights of their marriage. “You weren't just one person to me. You were my whole life.”

Her voice faltered as she resisted her tears. For the first time, Cassie could really talk about the betrayal; for the first time, she was with the one person who would understand. The rush of pain that freedom brought was overwhelming.

A spouse being unfaithful was cruelty. But it wasn't just the sex that had killed her spirit. “You were the good honorable man, the eternal husband, the ultimate best friend.” She had to stop. To take a deep breath. To blink away the tears welling in her eyes. “From the time we met, you were the one thing in life I could count on. And I fully believed, I
felt,
I was that for you as well.”

“You were.”

“No, I wasn't.” The bitterness poured out now. She hated it. And couldn't seem to stem its flow. “If I had been, you'd never have been able to do what you did.”

“I was drunk.”

Cassie shook her head. She'd been drunk often enough to know that excuse didn't fly. “No matter how drunk you were, if I'd meant to you what you meant to me, you would've thought of our marriage. Of us, of
me.
And that thought would have pulled you back.”

“I don't agree.”

“I'm not asking you to. We're talking about what I know and what I believe.”

“But you might be wrong, Cass—have you ever considered that? I was there. I know what I was feeling. And what I wasn't feeling. I know how much you meant to me. Have meant to me all the years I've been away. I
know.
” He banged a fist against his chest. “I'm the one who has to live with the emptiness, the regrets, every day of my life.”

Her heart started to pound, her blood racing in a way only Sam had ever made it race.

“I know how I felt coming home to you the next day, driving up our street, seeing the front door of our apartment building, remembering the night I'd taken you there for the first time and known it was our home. I carry with me the complete and utter misery I felt the morning after my...disgrace in Phoenix, when I contemplated walking in that door and telling you what I'd done, what I'd destroyed.”

He spoke so vividly, his words brought it all back to her. The look on his face when he'd walked in and found her crying on the couch, disheveled, having stayed up all night worried sick about him. She could still feel the shock, the nausea, the dark despair when she'd found out where he'd been. The possibility of another woman had never once crossed her mind. A car accident, some kind of fall, a car-jacking, robbery—she'd even imagined him being bitten by a scorpion or hit by a bolt of lightning. All kinds of crazy possibilities had tormented her that night. But never another woman.

She'd felt a complete and utter fool. Worthless as a woman. As a
person.
She'd given her very soul to another person, thinking they shared everything, and she'd been the only one doing the sharing.

And that day hadn't been the worst of it.

“You have no idea what you lost,” she said now, her stomach knotted with bitterness, with remembered despair.

He hadn't just lost
her
that morning. Ultimately, he'd lost their daughter, too.

Not that Cassie didn't blame herself, as well. Her overwhelming desperation, her resulting depression and inability to look after herself, had contributed to the baby's death.

For a moment she considered telling him, but knew she couldn't. Wasn't ready. Didn't have the emotional wherewithal to relive that part of her life. To deal with the emotional reaction that would trigger, the guilt and agony she'd feel.

“I have an idea of what I lost,” Sam said after a lengthy pause.

Oh, no, you don't.
She shook her head.

Hands on either side of her, Cassie resettled herself on the bench.

He glanced at her. She didn't look at him. But she could feel him watching her, each of them lost in thought.

“You say you lost the ability to trust, Cass, but did you ever try to trust anyone else?” he asked softly. “Another man? Did you even try to see if you
could,
if you could marry and have the life, the family and kids, you always wanted?”

“What I always wanted was you.”

“Me and the predetermined life that came with being the wife of Samuel Montford the fourth.”

“No, Sam.” She shook her head, adamant. “Sure, I was happy with our plans, but they weren't what brought me real joy. That came from the security of knowing that no matter what the world did to us, no matter what happened, we were in it together. I wasn't
alone,
and neither were you. That's what marriage meant to me.”

“I felt that way, too.”

“Apparently not.” She heard her tone of voice and told herself to calm down. “If you'd really felt that way, you'd have come to me that night instead of having sex with another woman. And you'd have stayed around afterward.”

Sam sighed. “It's all so confused, Cass. I needed you desperately, yet I knew that if I stayed, I was going to damage the very heart of who you were. I was too messed up to protect you from myself.”

Oh. God. Don't do this to me. Don't make me feel you. Don't make any sort of sense. Not now. I can't bear to walk that road again.

“I know we can't go back, Cass, but I'd like to see if we could find something new.”

She stood. “No. And this conversation is over, if that's what it's about. I have absolutely nothing to give you, Sam. Nor do I want anything from you ever again.”

The earnest look in his green eyes tore at her, and she tried to steel herself against him. “Have you listened to us tonight, Cass?” he asked before she could take a step. “What we have between us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance very few people get. How can we just walk away from that?”

She turned to leave, and he grabbed her wrist.

“Let go of me,” she snapped, staring down at his hand.

His grip softened, his thumb almost caressing the sensitive skin on the underside of her wrist. “You just finished saying that what you always wanted was me. For the first time in my life, I have a
me
to give you, Cass.”

“That was then, this is now. And if you don't agree to stop talking about this right now, I'm leaving.”

He still didn't release her wrist.

“I mean it, Sam.”

Sighing, he dropped his hand. “You win.” And then, a silent moment later, he said, “I just can't stand the thought of you living your life all alone. Especially since I seem to be responsible.”

Though she wasn't sure why, Cassie sat back down.

“It's who I am now.”

He turned, pulling up one knee, resting it on the bench between them. Cassie was a little uncomfortable with the closeness, but decided that learning how to ignore him would be the best course. The healthiest course. The course most likely to prepare her for a future of living in the same small town.

“It doesn't have to be who you are, Cassie,” he murmured. “You have so much love inside you, so much to give a relationship. It's criminal to let that all die just because I acted like an idiot.”

What he said was logical. Unfortunately, logic didn't help.

He tapped her thigh, once, lightly. “The world is full of good, trustworthy people.”

Cassie squirmed. “I know.”

Silence hung between them again. She took deep calming breaths, trying to rein in the emotions he was unleashing. She couldn't believe, after all this time, that she was actually sitting here in Shelter Valley with Sam. Couldn't believe that any of this still mattered.

And yet...it did.

“It's kind of ironic, you know?” he said suddenly.

She swung her head around to meet his half-smiling gaze. “What?”

“You want to teach Mariah to trust again, when you don't believe in it yourself.”

There is a big difference, dammit!

“Don't you see a pattern here?” he asked. “You've dedicated your life to a new therapy whose entire purpose is to reach damaged people and teach them to do something
you
can't do.”

“I work with victims.”

“And you weren't one?”

Coming from him, from the man who'd caused her the lifetime of heartache and grief, the statement had a debilitating impact.

She
felt
like a victim.

“It's not other people I'm afraid to trust, Sam,” she blurted.

“You said it was.”

She shook her head, looked out into the darkness in front of them. “No, I said you destroyed my ability to trust.”

“Same thing.”

“No. It isn't.” She needed air. And the deep breath she took didn't give her nearly enough. “It's myself I don't trust.”

The words, spoken aloud, were frightening. She'd never said them before. Never really allowed herself to think them. But she'd known.

“I don't understand.”

“I let myself down. I was partly responsible for what happened to me and...” Her words trailed off.

Elbows on his knees again, hands clasped, Sam contemplated her for a moment, then asked, “How? And what's that got to do with trust?”