Chapter 14 #2
“Having someone thrown in your face. Someone who makes you feel like maybe you don’t measure up.”
Reed goes very still. “Did you bring me here to make me jealous?”
“No.” My answer is quick because I don’t want him to think I’m out to make him pay. “Jackson being here isn't a game. I’m not using another man to punish you.”
The side door stands open behind me, braced and safe only at the threshold. Beyond it, Crane House falls into darkness.
Reed takes one slow step closer and looks down at his hands. The cut under his thumb is red at the edges. “Working with him made me crazy.”
My chest tightens.
“Every time he knew something I didn’t or Lanie mentioned your project, it was like he was already part of it.” He swallows. “I hated it. I knew I had no right to hate it, but that didn’t stop me.”
Wind lifts a piece of hair against my cheek.
Reed’s eyes come back to mine. “Is that how it felt? When Lexi was around?”
“No.” I lift my chin, refusing to relinquish eye contact. “That felt worse. Much worse.”
He doesn’t flinch away from it, so I give him the rest.
“There was never any relief from her, Reed. She wasn’t somebody I saw once at a party and forgot about. She was always there. Calling. Dropping by. Remembering things with your family I didn’t know. Standing beside Catherine like she was the true choice for the role of your wife.”
His face loses color.
“And everybody acted like I was unreasonable for noticing. Like I was insecure because I didn’t enjoy being compared to a woman your whole world had already chosen for you.”
“Annie.”
“You never had to watch me kiss Jackson.”
He stops breathing.
I make myself stay with it. “Imagine my phone rings right now. Jackson needs me. He’s upset, or grieving, or lonely, or whatever excuse makes it sound noble.
I don’t ask how it feels for you. I just go.
I spend the night with him because he needs me, and you sit somewhere waiting for me to come home. ”
Reed’s mouth parts, but nothing comes out.
“Then imagine everyone tells you not to make a scene because Jackson and I have history. Imagine I roll my eyes and say there’s nothing to worry about. Imagine it happens again, and again.” My voice thins. “Then imagine you finally see me kiss him.”
Reed looks like I’ve punched him.
“Jesus Christ, Annie.”
I don’t wipe my eyes. If tears fall, they fall. Let them.
“I did that to you,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Because I couldn’t...” He stops himself and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they’re wet. “There’s no way I’d survive it.”
“That’s what you did to me, Reed.”
He reaches for me slowly enough that I could step back. I don’t. His thumb brushes under my eye, catching the tear before it reaches my jaw. His hand is rougher than I remember, the pad of his thumb scraped and warm.
“Annie,” he breathes. “God. What I did to you.”
He looks at me for a few seconds. Then something in him gives. Reed lowers himself to his knees in front of me. Then his palms settle carefully against my coat, and he presses his forehead to my stomach.
“Annie.” Again, his way of saying my name always gets to me, but right now, my heart clenches at the sound. “I was blind,” he says roughly. “What I put you through. What I made you carry.”
My fingers slide into his hair, the movement automatic, as if my body has gone on autopilot. He goes still beneath my touch. I’ve missed being able to touch him. The ache that settles low in my belly scares me because it’s the kind of ache that could make me do something stupid.
Reed lifts his face. Every part of me wants to soothe him and tell him that everything’s going to be okay. We can fix it. Let’s just make it easier.
I swallow all the words.
I keep my hand in his hair one more second. Then I let go.
“I can’t go back yet.”
He stays on his knees. He doesn't reach for me again.
“I’m finding something here,” I say. “Something I thought I’d lost.”
He listens.
“I’m starting to see myself again,” I whisper. “I can’t leave now and risk losing her.”
Reed stands slowly. He looks wrecked, but he doesn’t make me tend to it.
“I don’t want to lose her either.”
I nod because if I say anything, I’ll start crying all over again.
“Work starts tomorrow,” I say. “Jackson will be here.”
I’ve known Reed long enough to know his tells. And right now, he’s trying very hard to pretend he isn’t jealous.
“You have absolutely no reason to be jealous.”
He looks over my shoulder, as if he expects Jackson to walk right up the hill and interrupt us, then he returns his gaze to mine.
“It’s still you I love, Reed. That’s never changed. I suspect you know that though.”
And despite the fact that I know he knows that, he still lets loose a breath.
“I don’t know what that means yet,” I add.
There’s still that part of me that wonders if I’m being too hard on him. But it’s the truth. I want the real Annie to be able to love the real Reed and I have no idea what that looks like yet.
“You can come by tomorrow if you want.” I glance at his hand. “If you’re not too sore from Lanie’s roof.”
He flexes his fingers and winces before he can hide it. “I’ll be here.”
“What’s Catherine going to think about you spending your time down here?” I ask, because if I don’t say something to break the tension, I might cry again. “She’s probably back at Stanhope planning another event to show off the family.”
Reed’s expression changes. “That’s unlikely.”
There’s something about the way he says it. Something’s happened.
“Why?”
He looks toward Crane House, then back at me. “My mother isn’t living at Stanhope anymore.”
Those are all words and yet, I’m certain I don’t understand what he’s saying. “What?”
“I confronted her after I left Tennessee.” He might as well be commenting on the weather or reading a news report. The sentences come out clipped. “About what she said to you. What she thought.”
I’m not sure, but I’d swear my heartbeat can be heard outside my body.
“She defended it,” he says. “She said you were never suited to the life. So I told her to leave.”
“Leave the room?”
“Leave Stanhope.”
I reach out, gripping the railing nearby. Reed’s eyes follow the movement, then return to my face.
“I used the authority my father left me,” he says. “She’s out.”
Catherine Dillon, out of Stanhope. The woman who moved through that house like the walls were built around her bones.
“And Lexi?” I ask.
“I confronted her too. About…pretending to be you. She called it fun.” His mouth tightens. “She’s barred from the property. Cut off from every connection I control.”
I stare at him. Gone. The woman who’s haunted every minute of our marriage is gone. Just like that.
“Did you do that because you thought I’d come back?”
“No.” His answer is immediate. “You hadn’t promised me anything. You still haven’t.” He holds my gaze. “I did it because whether you ever come home or not, Catherine should never have been allowed to treat my wife that way in a house I controlled.”
I don’t know what to say, and Reed doesn’t wait for gratitude.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, stepping back. “Be careful around the unstable sections tonight.”
“I’m leaving in a minute.”
“Good.”
He gives me one last look, then turns toward his car.
“Reed.”
He stops, turning back toward me.
“I…” I nearly tell him I love him. Maybe I should. Instead, I say, “I’m glad you got to see her. The house.”
He nods. “Me too.”
Then he gets in his car and leaves before I can soften.
I stand at the side threshold long after his taillights disappear down the ridge. Catherine’s gone from Stanhope. Lexi’s banned from the premises. And Reed did it before he knew I’d ever see this house again. Behind me, Crane House creaks in the settling dark.
“What do you think, Maybelle?” I ask aloud.
A breeze moves over the threshold and lifts the hair from my cheek. I smile despite myself.