Frowning right back, Gray leaned forward, too. “What? Didn’t mean what?” He’d barely started in on his second drink, but felt like he’d passed out or something. Regaining consciousness having missed something huge. Except that he’d been sitting right there. Still sober enough to drive.
“You...” She shook her head. “You tell me how hard it was at home. Your mother...always tired. And I jump in with the perfect mom story. Oh, my God.” Her eyes widened, looking aghast. “Is that what I did to you in the past? Was I this callous to you? Shoving this great upbringing, this privilege, at you?”
“No.” He said the word with force. It needed to be there. And took her hand across the table, looking her straight in the eye. No blinking. Head-on. “You were, are, one of the most sensitive, strong, caring women I’ve ever known. You didn’t shove, Sage, you shared. Any privilege you might have had, knowingly or not, was as much mine as yours when we were together.”
Moisture filled her eyes. She blinked. Nodded. But her chin had that telltale tremble.
“It’s not your fault, Sage,” he told her then. Words coming forth out of his need to own up. Man up. “You were right a little while back, when you realized that I’d withheld...certain aspects...of things. You seemed to think it was because of something you did or didn’t do, but it was not. I very carefully, very consciously, showed you the me I wanted you to know. I didn’t ever lie to you. I gave who I was when I knew you. But I chose to shed a lot of things. And since I’d shed them, I didn’t share them.”
Great job. Couch it all, still. Couching the couching. Manning right up.
“It wouldn’t have mattered how much you nagged me. I wasn’t going to give you any more. Because in my mind, I’d left the past behind. The last thing I was going to do was dredge it back up again.” Feeling the warmth of her soft fingers in his, he let go.
Sat back and said, “But I see now why being a mother is such a huge part of you.” And saw, too, that some things were never going to change.
Chapter Nineteen
They left before either of them had made it through half of their second drink. Sage knew he was right to call it a night. And was still sad to see the evening coming to an end.
A completely adult night.
She had so few of them.
“You feel like a walk on the beach?” Gray asked as he turned onto Ocean Breeze. Almost as though he was reading her mind.
She wasn’t dressed for beach walking, but then neither was he. “I do.” She said the words, smiling, and then almost immediately stiffened.
The words she’d been rehearsing, dreaming about saying to him, and then had been robbed of the chance.
But they fit. And she’d had closure on the past.
He pulled into Scott’s place. “This tux is on loan,” he said to her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just run in really quick and get out of it.”
“As long as you don’t mind me overdressed.” She grinned. “At least until we make it down to my place.”
The look in his eye as he turned to her sent an instant flood down to pertinent parts. He’d opened his mouth, as if to say something, but it just hung there for a second, before closing abruptly.
“I’ve got no complaints,” he said, his back to her as he let himself out of the car. She got out, too. Could put Morgan out as he changed. And bring the dog back in. Adults only wasn’t the life she wanted for herself. At all. Fully clear on that one.
But sometimes...
Morgan completed her business and ran right back up the porch steps just as Gray came to the doorway, in swim trunks and a T-shirt.
Seriously?
After letting the corgi back in, he secured the door behind him and joined Sage on the beach. With her heels hanging from the fingers of one hand, she squished her toes in the sand, feeling the coolness of the last Saturday night in October there, too.
And shivered.
“You are not going swimming this late at night, alone, in the ocean.”
With a grin in her direction, he said, “You could always watch out for me.”
“I mean it, Gray.” She had no smiles at the moment. “You know as well as I do, with the tide, an undertow, or...who knows what in the water, hunting for food...”
“How about let’s take that walk and think about it,” he offered, heading off slowly in the direction of her house. With his hands in the pockets of his trunks he said, “I’ve actually swum regularly, at night, since I’ve been here. Not for long, just a dip in before bed. And I don’t go out far. I respect the ocean as much as anyone. It just...makes me feel good.”
His words appeased her somewhat. Enough that she relaxed again. She didn’t want anything to ruin the night.
