Chapter Twelve #4
“He wasn’t cruel. He didn’t bully me. He never…” She frowned, trying to find words that had eluded her for years. “I can’t tell people I wasn’t happy; I always feel as though I should be able to point to something. Some awful thing he did. But there isn’t one.”
Blane’s hand resumed its slow movement over her arm.
“He was reasonable,” she said.
“Reasonable?”
“Yes. Very.” She gave a small laugh. “Infuriatingly so, now I look back. There was always a perfectly sensible reason why his idea made more sense. Why we should go where he wanted to go, buy what he wanted to buy, do things the way he thought they should be done.”
“And you went along with it.”
She stiffened slightly. Not because he’d said anything wrong but because the truth of it landed harder than she expected. “Yes.”
Blane’s arm tightened around her. “I’m not blaming you, Bea.”
“I know.”
“You looked like you thought I was.”
“No. I suppose I was blaming myself.”
“Don’t.”
She almost laughed. “That sounds remarkably like an order.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
She lifted her head again.
His jaw tightened once. “You spent a long time with the man. Things get normal a little at a time. That doesn’t mean you chose where they ended up.”
She stared at him. For someone who claimed not to be good with words, he had a surprising habit of finding the ones she needed.
“I think I became smaller,” she said quietly. “Not because he asked me to. Not exactly. I just kept making room. And eventually…” She swallowed. “I suppose there wasn’t much of me taking up space anymore.”
His expression changed, but he didn’t interrupt.
“And then he died.”
Blane’s hand stilled again.
She looked away.
“I was devastated. I was. Whatever our marriage had become, he’d been part of my entire adult life. I grieved him.” She drew a breath. “But there was something else too. And I’ve never really known what to do with that.”
“What?”
She hesitated. It felt horrible to say it aloud. She’d never been able to bring herself to say it before. But… “Relief.” The word seemed to sit there between them, and she closed her eyes. “There. That sounds every bit as awful as I thought it would.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
She opened her eyes again. “Blane, my husband died and part of me was relieved.”
“Sounds like you were free.”
She stared at him. The word fit somewhere much deeper than relief had. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And Bea? That ain’t the same as being glad he died.”
Her throat tightened. “I know that logically.”
“Then know it some other way too.”
She frowned at him.
He lifted one shoulder against the pillow. “You loved him. You grieved him. And when he was gone, you were free. All three can be true.”
She swallowed. “You make it sound very simple.”
“It usually is.”
“No, Blane. It really isn’t.”
His mouth twitched. “Usually is to me.”
She laughed, although her eyes had filled. He noticed, of course, and his brows drew together.
“Oh, don’t.” She wiped quickly beneath one eye. “I’m not upset.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“You’re doing your concerned eyebrows.”
“Can’t help my eyebrows.”
That made her laugh properly. She curled closer against him and rested her cheek over his heart again. The words echoed in her head—freedom not gladness.
She thought she might finally understand the difference.
It had taken a very large, rather intimidating-looking American to help her get there.
And somehow, on the first night in the first home she had ever chosen entirely for herself, she was lying beside him—a man who’d asked before taking even the smallest piece of what she offered him.
For the first time in a very long time, making room for someone didn’t feel anything like becoming smaller.
~ ~ ~
Blane waited until Bea’s breathing had evened out before he moved.
He’d learned enough about her in the last few hours to know he didn’t want to wake her.
That thought stopped him halfway out of bed—a few hours.
Jesus. There’d been women in his life before, women he’d been involved with for months, a couple for years.
But he’d never known any of them the way he already felt he knew Bea.
He pulled on his jeans and looked back at her.
She’d rolled onto her side with one hand tucked beneath the pillow, her hair a mess around her face.
Something in his chest shifted. He ignored it or tried to.
The balcony doors were right there. He opened them quietly and stepped outside.
The night air had cooled, but not by much. The village lights still shone farther down the hillside. Somewhere in the darkness, the cicadas were keeping at it. He sat on the stone bench Bea had made such a big deal of putting cushions on earlier and looked out over the dark valley.
A few hours ago, he’d been planning to spend the night in a villa with four bedrooms, three terraces, an infinity pool, and not one damn person he cared about inside it.
Now, Bea was asleep twenty feet behind him.
He rested his forearms on his knees and stared into the dark.
Sex he understood, but this? This was something else.