Chapter 9 #2
He goes still. Not the stillness of someone who doesn’t have feelings about what I just said. The stillness of someone who has a great many feelings about it and is choosing his response carefully. “Is that what you want?”
I look at his face. I look at the grey threaded through his hair and the steadiness in his eyes and the set of his jaw.
I think about his laugh on the plane and the way he ordered food for me in the middle of the night, like it was obvious, like taking care of people was just something he did without making a production of it.
“It’s what makes sense,” I say.
He crosses the room. He moves with purpose and an unhurried attention locked on me.
Then he’s close enough that I have to tip my head back to look at him.
How is he already so familiar to me? The warmth of him…
the scent of him. Being this close to him does something to my chest that I am trying very hard to classify as something other than what it is.
“That’s not what I asked.” His voice is low. “What do you want? Do you want to pretend last night never happened?”
I open my mouth. Close it.
The problem with Heath is that he asks the actual question. Not the polite version of it or the easy version of it. The real one, delivered in that rumbly voice without any softening, and it lands somewhere in the middle of all my careful sensible thinking and scatters it.
“It’s what makes sense,” I say again, which is not an answer and we both know it.
Then someone knocks on the door.
I close my eyes briefly. Of course.
Heath steps back and opens it, because he is apparently also the kind of man who opens doors, and there is Leo, looking between us with the sharp eyes of someone who has just walked into a situation and is rapidly doing the math.
“Dad? What are you doing here?”
And then Juniper appears at his shoulder, and her eyes find mine immediately, and I watch her do the same rapid calculation that Leo just did, and I watch the moment she arrives at the answer.
“Clover?” she says.
“Family meeting,” I say. Because what else is there. What else do you say when your life has arranged itself into this particular configuration at nine o’clock the night before your sister’s wedding?
“What’s going on?” Leo demands. There’s an edge to his voice that I don’t think is directed at me specifically, but is looking for somewhere to land.
“Oh my God.” Juniper covers her mouth with both hands.
She is staring at me with an expression that is doing several things at once, surprise and dawning understanding and something that might, if I’m reading it right, be the very early stages of finding this funny, which I both appreciate and am slightly terrified by.
I just nod. Yes. What you think happened, happened.
“Will someone explain what the hell is going on right now? Dad, why are you in Clover’s room?”
I can feel Heath beside me and I can feel the particular quality of his stillness, the way he’s waiting to see how I want to handle this, and something about that, about him giving me that, makes something in my chest loosen the smallest amount.
“Because your dad and I met on the plane and, for reasons, I ended up sharing his suite last night.” I say it plainly because there is no version of this that benefits from being complicated.
“We spent the night together. We hooked up.” Then I wince with my own admission.
I made it sound cheap and unmonumental. But I don’t make an effort to explain.
Leo looks from me to his dad, then back a couple more times.
“What the hell, dad? You slept with my fiancée’s sister?” Then as if he is still picking up pieces of a puzzle, he says, “This is who gave you a hickey?”
“Oh damn,” I say.
“I didn’t know that’s who she was at the time,” Heath says, with the measured calm of a man who has decided that this conversation is going to go a certain way and is going to be the steadying force in the room whether anyone else cooperates or not.
“So you didn’t sleep with her?”
“No, I did.”
There’s a beat of silence that has a very specific texture to it.
“She said it was the best sex ever,” Juniper says helpfully, and then hiccups.
I turn to Leo. “Did you let her drink champagne?”
“She had two glasses,” he says, defensive.
“Two glasses of champagne and a complimentary glass of prosecco at the welcome dinner,” I say, because I know my sister’s relationship with bubbles and it is not a responsible one.
I reach past him and grab the water bottle off the counter by the mini kitchen and press it into Juniper’s hands. “Drink all of it.”
“Yes, mom,” Juniper says, but she drinks.
“Great, so you had a one-night stand with Junie’s sister.” Leo rakes a hand through his hair. He looks like his father doing it, which is not something I am going to think about right now. “Two nights before my wedding. Well played, dad.”
“I made the first move,” I say, because it’s true and because Heath shouldn’t be standing here absorbing all of this alone.
The look he cuts toward me is brief and grateful and very warm.
“It wasn’t a fucking one-night stand,” Heath says, and the quiet certainty in his voice lands in the room like something solid.
Leo exhales. Some of the edge goes out of his posture. He’s not done, but he’s listening. “Then what was it?”
“You know, I’d really like to tell Clover how I feel about her before I have to tell you.” Heath glances at his son, steady and direct in the way of a man who loves his kid completely and is also not going to be managed by him. “We were in the middle of having this discussion before y’all arrived.”
And here is where I have to make a decision.
Because I can keep being sensible. I can stay on the side of what makes sense and what is logical and what doesn’t complicate things, and it would be the right call, the careful call, the call that past Clover would definitely make because past Clover has always been much better at leaving before things get complicated than staying through the part where they become something.
But Heath is standing in my hotel room at nine o’clock the night before my sister’s wedding, having walked down here specifically to say something to me. And he just told his son, with complete unambiguous certainty, that this was not nothing.
I turn and I face him.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to pretend last night didn’t happen.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect. “I did say the sex was amazing.”
“Could’ve gone my whole life without hearing that,” Leo mutters.
“But it was more than that,” I say, and my eyes are on Heath’s face and I’m not looking away. “There was a connection between us.”
I stop there, because the rest of it is sitting right there at the front of my throat, the big version, the true version, and I am not quite ready to say it in front of an audience that includes my sister and her fiancé. I am only so brave.
“But, we are not resolving any of this tonight. We’re here for Juniper and Leo. I’m not going to get distracted from that. Regardless of how deliciously distracting you are.”
Leo pinches the bridge of his nose. “And that.”
“So what are you saying?” Heath asks.
“I’m saying that for the remainder of tonight until tomorrow post vows, I am the bride’s sister and you are the groom’s father. That’s it. No conflict of interest. No complications.”
Heath’s jaw ticks and tightens. “And then tomorrow, after those vows?”
“Then we can talk and see if this is something more.”
Heath crowds into me. “This is something a whole lot more, baby girl. But I’ll give you tonight.” He steps away. “Besides, I’ve got a bachelor party to take this man to.” He grips one of Leo’s shoulders and squeezes.
“Yes.” I grab my sister’s hand and pull her to me. “And it’s bad luck to see the bride from now until she walks down the aisle.”
“I think you embellished that,” Juniper says.
“Semantics.”