Chapter 1
MATT
Matt Owen stroked his wife’s long dark hair away from her face as they stood in the bedroom of the beach house, her head leaning against his bare chest.
“How can you trust me with your body the way you just did and still be keeping things from me?” he asked, pulling her back and holding her shoulders.
Matt stared into his wife’s eyes, searching and waiting for her to give him something.
Liz Owen wasn’t known for having a way with words, but sometimes, if you looked closely, you could tell exactly what she was thinking.
Nothing but the cold wall behind her, she pulled away from his hold, reaching for his plaid button-down shirt. With displeasure, he helped her into it. She gave him a glance of appreciation for his tenderness and turned away to sit on the bed. She glared at the lit candle on the nightstand, with no sign of answering his question.
Frustrated, Matt walked to the window and stared at the dark, starless night beyond. After a long silent moment, he turned to face her. “What were we talking about before we…?” he kept his voice low, conscious of the others sleeping in the house.
His wife’s eyes wandered down and to her left. A sign of remembering. He guessed she was replaying the recent events in her head. He had stormed off the day before, disappearing for the entire day after his wife and his brother, Ben, confessed to an intimate night they’d spent together three years ago. It was the summer before Liz and Matt were married. Their brief break up, for reasons that Matt couldn’t even remember, somehow led his brother consoling his then ex-girlfriend, and they’d wound up talking and drinking all night, only to wake up naked together.
Maybe those weren’t the words they’d used, but that’s how Matt pictured it. Fresh chills went up his spine for the tenth time that day, followed by heat rising into his neck. In the past twenty-four hours, he’d been fighting with himself. Trying not to picture all the things that his brother had done with her. Where he touched her. If he’d been looking into her eyes while…no. He drew a fist to his mouth.
Like he said, fighting with himself.
Now, three years later, Matt had been blindsided by the truth. At no better time than at his parents’ beach house in the Hamptons, in Long Island. During the heated argument out on the back porch, Ben had insisted it was his idea not to tell Matt, and Liz agreed.
Her pleas and reasons didn’t matter to him. It was all bullshit if you asked him.
There’s no way of knowing he would have forgiven them if the truth had come out back then. But he would have liked to be given the choice. Instead, his wife had chosen to start their marriage based on this lie.
Still, something about their confession seemed off, which brought him back here tonight. He needed to be alone with his wife. The woman for whom his love had only grown over the few years they’d been together.
“You came back in here,” her voice cracked through his thoughts. “And…I told you that Ben lied. It was my decision to keep this from you.” This time she met his eyes without hesitation. She took a deep, shaky breath. Even in the dimly lit room, he could see her eyes were still red.
“And I had asked you why,” he continued for her. That was when he’d remembered her response to what he thought was a simple question.
Nothing. She shut down and looked away from him. He’d lost her. And it was killing him. That was when he’d decided to take a different approach. He asked her to close her eyes. She had without question. He’d turned off the lights and lit the few candles in the room, while she waited. He knew she trusted him completely and hoped this would make her feel safe.
It seemed to be working. He felt them reconnect after they had sex, right there against the faded ivory wall, between the guest bed and the only window. Until they were done and he’d started questioning her again.
“And I’ve already heard your reasoning on severing my relationship with my brother yesterday.” He waited for her response. “I think there’s more.” There was a distinct edge in his voice and he’d hoped she heard it.
“You remember why we broke up that summer, Matt?”
Now it was his turn to look away. “Yes.”
“You knew it was hard for me to trust you again. To trust that you wouldn’t take off again with every doubt you had. And when time passed and you asked me to marry you,” she paused. “Then we had that talk a week before our wedding.”
Matt remembered that talk. It was on the floor of his old apartment. They sat against the couch drinking wine and fantasizing about their future. More than anything, Matt remembered proclaiming to never leave her side again.
“I told that you that we would be together forever. That you were the one and only in my life,” he swallowed hard. “And that there was nothing that our love couldn’t overcome.”
She let a few tears fall. “I wanted to tell you right there but all I could do is picture you walking away from me,” she sobbed.
“Why was I walking away?” His voice was soft.
She laughed bitterly at herself. “Oh, there were a number of scenarios,” she started. “You couldn’t be with someone who would come between you and your brother; being with me now would be too complicated and weird;” she took a breath. “Or that you would have been disgusted by the whole thing and…therefore, me.”
He shrugged. “Do any of those sound like me?”
“No,” she admitted solemnly. “But of course, as time went on, it turned into this lie and secret, and the consequences…amplified, and the likelihood of you forgiving me was…non-existent.”
