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The memory of it ached, like a thumb pressed into a fresh bruise.
“A few weeks later, he proposed. It fit right in with his pattern, resetting with a flourish every time we started to slide. Anything for that emotional high.”
“Fuck this guy,” Harry growled.
“I thought it would all change, once we were married. Iwanted a family. I wanted to mother children in a way I’d never been mothered. I imagined being someone’s daughter-in-law. We’d buy a house, he’d be around more.” Her laugh was ugly. “After about three months, the ring disappeared. Every night, I’d put it in a ceramic dish on the dresser, and one morning, it was gone. Noah tried convincing me I’d dropped it on campus, but I knew deep down I couldn’t have. It always fit a bit too tight.”
Wind sliced through her thin sweater, chilling the sweat that glazed the small of her back. She shivered.
“Noah was married, Harry. He had a wife and kids in the city. He had a family for stability, and sought other relationships in secret to feed his gross narcissistic need for the rush of something new. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one he did this to.”
Harry swore softly in the dark.
Rowan rubbed her nose hard enough to make her eyes tingle. “I actually saw him a few years ago. In Philly. Frankie and Temperance and I went to the Mummers Parade on New Year’s Day and went to get doughnuts afterward. He was leaving the bakery with his family as we went in. I had a hat and scarf on, really incognito. He didn’t recognize me at first. I will never forget the transformation on his face. Polite, impersonal smile. An apology for bumping into me, then a sly grin, like he was gearing up to say something flirty. Then, recognition. Shock. He looked at his family, then back to me.”
Rowan sat beside Harry on the bench, careful not to touch him. He didn’t move away. Progress.
“I’ll never forget those kids’ sweet faces, Harry. For them, I stayed silent. His wife—she looked tired. God, I just wanted to reach out and give her a hug. She was wearing my ring.” Rowan grimaced, still destroying the daisy. “Well, it was nevermine. That asshole used hiswife’sring to propose to me. When she found it missing, he probably used his ‘you must have lost it’line on her. Then he magically ‘found’ it and got to be the hero by giving it back to her.”
Harry had his head in his hands now, still as a gargoyle beside her.
“Harry, when you told me you loved me during that argument in the meadow—that was a thing Noah did. He used ‘I love you’ to manage me. It was a dismissal, and sometimes a misdirection. Back then, I’d been so hungry for those words for so long, I didn’t realize it until a long time after.”
Harry stood and stepped around her, stalking off the dock. As soon as his feet hit solid ground, he went still, planted his feet wide, and balled his hands into fists. A frustrated rumble began in his chest, and with his back to her, he let out a full-throated scream at the sky.
He spun around, breathing hard. “Why didn’t youtellme?” he pleaded.
She carefully moved to him. Tears stung her eyes. “Harry, I have spent the last eight years trying to not hate myself for getting involved with another woman’s husband.Youwere another woman’s husband. You can’t imagine the burden of that kind of shame.”
He swiped both hands over his face. “Ah, Christ, Rowan.” His voice was husky from the scream. “It wasn’t the same.”
She swallowed hard and tipped her head back, willing the tears not to fall. “You’ve been surrounded your whole life by people you trust and love. Without hesitation or suspicion. My whole life? I can’t even trust myownjudgment when it comes to others.”
“You should havetoldme.” The anguish in his voice ripped her in half.
She blurted a watery laugh. “Before Cora, had you ever experiencedanyself-doubt, Harry? Can you imagine how itwould feel to be so perfectly duped by someone you thought you loved? Who you thoughtloved you? I started thinking—maybe something about me drew abusers.” She shrugged carelessly. “Gaslighting was essentially Sybil’s entire parenting style, so it didn’t seem strange to me when Noah did it.”
Harry stepped toward her. The moon on the water reflected light onto his beloved face. Rowan saw tears in his eyes.
“So, when you told me I wasn’t a rebound, and everything happening between us was real and true, my first instinct was that I was being gaslit. That I was the pawn in another game.”
He shoved his hair back. Rubbed his nose. “Did I ever give you reason to think this was a game?” He dashed the heels of his palms across his eyes.
Frustration tinged her tone, and her volume rose. “No. But that, what you said, just now? That’s a thing gaslighters do. They make you question reality.”
“I’m not—” He cut off the words, shook his head. “This hasn’t been—” He made a low, irritated noise. “I won’t diminish your pain. And you have every right to listen to your gut. But some things are real, Rowan. We were real.”
Tears finally overflowed. “Were?”
“I’ve spent the months trying to recover from you, and now you’re ripping out the stitches.” Harry’s shoulders were drawn up in defense, or anger, Rowan couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both.
The daisy in her hands was down to a nub with a few remaining petals, a pathetic husk of the bright white blossom it had been when she’d tended it throughout the summer.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
“Harry. Science is like—its own language,” Rowan said. “Give me ten minutes, and I could teach Alice and Charlotte the basics of Mendelian genetics. I could tell you the scientificname of groundhogs or moth orchids or meadowlarks—but love? Love is complicated.”
