AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Blaine emerged from the bathroom. He put a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “She’s gone?”
Mia nodded. Candice was gone, but she’d left a lot of questions in her wake.
*
That night, over a dinner of takeout Thai food on the deck of the Wanderlust, Mia had to ask Blaine about Candice’s revelations. He swallowed and nodded as Mia talked.
“That was a bit out of line. Her telling you all that.”
Mia was oddly defensive of Candice. “Well, she wanted me to understand where she’s coming from. Why she still feels like you owe her something, I guess.”
Blaine took a long drink from a can of Bud Light. He grimaced. “This stuff is shit,” he said.
Mia pressed on. “So you left her, because she couldn’t have children?”
He threw up his hands. “Yeah. That was part of it.”
“Blaine—that’s awful.”
“What am I, on trial?” His nostrils flared. “That was personal business between me and her. You really don’t need to know that about our marriage. I haven’t even talked to my brother or sister about it.”
“I thought you were going to be honest with me!”
“Jesus, Mia. There’s a difference between me being honest and telling you every personal detail of my life. If that’s what you want, I’m not your man. It’s not even healthy, anyway. Now you’re going to obsess about it.”
“Well maybe I should. Maybe you just want me for my eggs.”
Blaine burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? Look. If that’s what I wanted, a baby, and that’s it, I’d hire a damn surrogate and do it that way. A hell of a lot less complicated!” He stood and started collecting the tools that lay around the boat.
Mia felt stupid. “Okay, fine. That’s not really it. It’s just—when you marry someone you stick it out. Through thick and thin.”
“Okay, fine. Yes, our inability to have children affected my decision. If that’s selfish, so be it. If Candice thinks that’s the primary reason, maybe I didn’t make it clear enough to her. But the fact is, I never felt loved by her. Maybe our ways of showing it were just so different that we couldn’t reach a middle ground, but I never felt it. I’m a romantic. I want passion. I want a soul mate. She’s practical. All business. She’s not affectionate. We were not going to meet each other’s needs.”
Mia couldn’t believe how accurately Blaine and Candice had described each other. Maybe that’s what you got after ten years of knowing someone.
“I could have stayed with her, and adopted, if we’d been happy. But why give up my dream of having children for someone who wasn’t the right person?” He sat down again. “And believe me, Candice would never have married me in the first place if it wasn’t for my money. If it had disappeared, she would have disappeared with it.”
Mia took a deep breath. “Okay. I understand. Are you going to help her?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I am. I do feel sort of guilty for how it ended. If that makes me too nice, whatever. One last gesture, and I’m done.”
Mia watched the dark water. She needed to decide if she was okay with his reasoning. She thought of Candice’s obvious sadness and Blaine’s obvious need to do the right thing by someone he’d known most of his adult life. In the end, Mia decided that life was complicated, and there could be no harm in Blaine helping an old friend. As long as she got one final validation from him.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Mia said. “I won’t discourage you. But I want to know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That you love me, and only me. That we’re going to move forward without anything hindering this. Us. Priority number one.”
“I do love you. There’s no other woman for me. You’re it, Mia,” Blaine said. “It’s crazy that I feel this confident about it so early, but I do. But I have something to ask of you.”
“Yes?”
“Give me the benefit of the doubt. And let me keep a bit of my old hurt to myself. I just don’t think we need to be constantly rehashing the details of each other’s pasts. I’ll do the same for you.”
“Okay,” she said. And he was right. While she wanted Blaine to be honest with her, sometimes knowing the brutal truth only made her more insecure.
*
