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“Not like that. She… You know how she is. She circled it and hinted, said a few things outright and then took them back, saying you’d spoken in confidence and she shouldn’t say anything.”
“She said exactly what she needed to say to have you suspecting I regretted our marriage.”
“Yes. That you felt tricked, that maybe I’d gotten you drunk on purpose.”
“Holy fuck!” I say, bolting to my feet.
Garrett turns at the window, and I see Sadie lying there, and I want her to be alive. Alive and well so I can confront her. So I can finally confront her and drive her from my life.
And I want to cry.
Mostly, I want to cry.
Kit says something to Jayla and Madison, who must have come running at my exclamation. I don’t hear them. I just keep staring out the window at Sadie. After a moment, their footsteps retreat.
“I’m sorry,” Kit says softly.
I half turn to him. “Why? You didn’t do anything.”
“I believed her,” he says. “I shouldn’t have, but she poked exactly the right spot. The place where I was vulnerable.”
I sink onto the sofa.
He continues, “I regret that we’d been drinking when we went into that chapel, Laney. I regret it so damn much, and I have from the moment I came down from that high.”
“You were drunk?” I say. “I didn’t think—”
“No, I was fine. I mean the high of getting married. Of asking youto go into that chapel, and you saying yes, and then going through with it. Yes, we’d had a couple of drinks earlier, but I was sober.”
“So was I.” I meet his gaze. “I had two drinks two hours earlier. I could legally drive, and I could legally get married. I knew what I was doing, Kit. If you thought otherwise, at any time, you should have told me.”
“I know. I thought of that, many times, but…” Now his gaze locks with mine. “If youdidfeel as if you’d agreed under the influence, would you have said so? Or would you have committed yourself to making the marriage work, because you care about me and you liked me enough to give it a shot.”
I open my mouth. Then I shut it.
His lips twist in a wry smile. “Yep. Which is why I didn’t ask. I knew if you were unhappy, you’d leave, and you might not have loved me yet, but I’d get there, and if I couldn’t, then I’d let you go. I saw it as a chance to prove myself to the girl I’ve loved for most of my life.”
My breath catches, and my eyes fill.
“Never said that, have I?” he says. “Never admitted it. Partly because it sounds corny, but mostly because, if you weren’t happy with me, I didn’t want to give you any more reason to feel guilty. You’re too good at that already.”
I want to say something—to sayso much—but once again, words fail.
He continues, “I never thought you were drunk when you married me. I wouldn’t have done that. But a bit tipsy? Maybe not making fully rational decisions? Yes. Afterward, I wondered about that. If so, I just had to convince you that marrying me was the best poor decision you’d ever made. Then along came the pandemic, and you weren’t only stuck married to me—you were literally stuckwithme, twenty-four hours a day, just the two of us. Any time things got understandably rocky, I worried more that I really had trapped you. Then Sadiesaid that, at a moment when I was already at my lowest… and she knew it.”
He takes a deep breath. “She didn’t say it out of the blue. She was asking how we were doing, and I was joking-not-joking about driving you crazy, me working from home while you were struggling with virtual teaching. I started blathering about how it had to be hard for you, coming back from Vegas with a husband instead of a hangover, ha-ha. I asked if you two had been in touch…”
“You wanted reassurance,” I say. “You wanted her to say she’d talked to me, and I was happy and regretted nothing.”
He nods. “Now, knowing how bad things were between you two, I feel stupid for expecting that from her. I set my own trap. After that conversation, I panicked and walked out, and I thought it was temporary. You’d come after me, and tell me you were madly in love with me, and everything would be fine.” Another twisted smile. “Speaking of corny…”
“Iwasmadly in love with you, Kit,” I say. “I wanted to go after you. But you know what? You weren’t the only one who worried their spouse might have stumbled into a marriage they didn’t really want. When you left, that seemed to prove it.”
His shoulders sag. “We made a mess of things, didn’t we?”
“We made a royally fucked-up mess of things,” I say. “But that’s what happens when people like us go to Vegas as friends, wind up in bed, and get married after a couple of drinks. We are going to second-guess and overanalyze. Yes, someone might say a simple conversation could have cleared this up, but I don’t think it would have. We set the stage for our own destruction.”
“Not destruction,” he says. “That was never my plan. Even though you didn’t come after me, I wasn’t done. Hell, when I signed the divorce papers, I wasn’t done. It was a step in the new plan. We made a mistake. Time to undo it and start over. I’d win you back after you were free and clear. But then Anna died and you got custody ofMadison… and if I tried wooing you then, I’d have worried I was striking while you were weak, like Sadie did with me. I needed to bide my time, and then launch a fresh seduction with something like coming to the island to help you solve the case of the staged curse hexes.”
