My Sinful Love (Sinful Men Book 4) Page 22

  Annalise

  As I raced down to the Métro a few days later, on the way to a photoshoot at a client’s Montmartre flat, I was annoyed. I was still so damn annoyed, as my train rattled into the station and I stepped through the doors. I was frustrated as I gripped the pole and the subway rumbled away. I didn’t want to have to constantly justify my past to Michael. He’d have to accept it at some point if we were truly going to be together and pull off this transcontinental relationship. Wasn’t it hard enough to manage a long-distance love without this added layer of . . . bullshit?

  I huffed and stared off, searching the faces of the other people in the car, wondering if everyone on this train was as goddamn frustrated as I was.

  Michael had tried to be cool after we’d left my apartment. But I wasn’t a fool. I’d read his emotions and sensed his distance back at the hotel. He’d pulled away from me that last night, and everything since then had been bittersweet.

  I wanted the sweet, hold the bitter, please.

  And I didn’t want to make apologies for having loved before. For having made a choice. To be honorable. To be a woman of my word.

  I reached my destination, climbing the many stairs out of the station, and walked along the curving, hilly streets to find my client’s home. All the while, I tried to force Michael out of my brain. There was no room for annoyance now.

  I raised the iron knocker at the door and was greeted by a stunning fortysomething woman with black hair.

  “Come in, come in,” the woman said in a smoky, sexy voice, excitement in her tone. “I’ve been counting down the hours until the shoot.”

  As I captured images of the boudoir session, the woman told me that she’d been divorced and was remarrying. The photos were a gift for her soon-to-be husband. In the images, she appeared both sultry and joyful. This woman had moved on.

  Why couldn’t Michael?

  The past is the past. You can’t unwrite it. He ought to know that as well as anyone.

  Anger stormed through me again as I hopped on the Métro again after finishing up with my client. I stopped at my mother’s, then helped her to a doctor’s appointment.

  “She’s doing better,” the doctor said. “Her hip is stronger.”

  My mother nudged me and winked. “See? I’m tough.”

  “You are,” I said, a true smile appearing on my face for the first time today.

  “You come from a long line of tough women,” my mother said after we left the appointment and headed to a café, my elbow hooked around her arm, our strides slow.

  “I do,” I said as we found a table on the sidewalk and ordered coffees.

  “What’s wrong, then? Why do you seem so upset?”

  “You’re too observant for your own good.”

  “That’s where you get it from.” My mom tapped the edge of her eye. “So tell me . . .”

  I watched as the crowds click-clacked by on the sidewalk, the cool, crisp air surrounding us and I gave my mother the gist of how Michael seemed unable to deal with my past. The coffee arrived, and we both lifted our cups, lost in thought.

  My mother took a drink then set it down on the saucer, her lips curving in a knowing grin. “I knew you loved him.”

  I knit my brow, shooting my mother a curious look.

  “What did he say when you told him you loved him?” my mother asked.

  “I didn’t say that. I said I was falling.”

  “Ah,” my mother said, nodding sagely. “Therein lies the problem.”

  “How is that a problem?”

  My mother locked her fingers together, forming a bridge. “Falling in love and being in love are bedfellows, but they aren’t the same. Falling is just a way to float the idea, like testing the waters. If you love him, you should tell him. Reassure him. He loves you so. Michael wears his heart on his sleeve for you, and a man like that needs to know he’s special. He knows he’s not the only one you’ve loved, but he wants to feel like he is.” She unlaced her fingers and stared at me, her eyes holding me captive, softly demanding. “Does he feel like he is? The only one?”

  My gut twisted. He was the only one for me now, but perhaps I hadn’t exactly made that clear. “I really don’t know.”

  My mother patted my hand. “Make sure he knows.”

  That night, I wrote to him. I wasn’t entirely convinced I wanted to say those three words in a letter, but there were other things to say. Things that were as important.

  The truth of all my fears.

  When I was through, I dropped it at FedEx. He would receive it in two days.

  64

  Michael

  Sometimes when you drive to a familiar place, you’re not sure how you got there. You know the route by heart. You’ve done it so many times it’s a part of you.

  As I walked across the grass with my sister, my feet guided me in that same fashion along the path we’d traveled many times—on a winding stone walkway, over spongy grass, then through a row of headstones, guarded by oaks and elms. Shannon clutched a bouquet of sunflowers.

  She came here often, leaving these flowers on our father’s grave each time. Today I accompanied her. It wasn’t the anniversary of our father’s death, nor was it his birthday. It was just an average day, and that was why we came. To remember those who were gone. Both our father and the baby Shannon had lost ten years ago, only eleven weeks into her pregnancy.

  I was grateful to be here with Shannon. I could focus on her, as I’d often done. I didn’t need or want to focus on me. I wanted to put the ending of my Paris trip behind me. The way I’d acted. The unfair words I’d said to the woman I loved.

  For the umpteenth time, I shoved it out of my head.

  “You hanging in there?” I asked, eyeing Shannon’s belly.

  She nodded. “I wish I could speed up time though. Fast-forward and have the baby in my arms, to know he or she is safe and healthy and alive.”

  I draped an arm around her shoulder, squeezing. “Yeah, me too,” I said, rather than giving her a platitude. Everything will be all right. I hoped it would, but both my sister and I had seen enough to know those sorts of statements were meaningless.

  The morning sun rose in the sky, and soon we reached our father’s resting place. I read the engraved words out loud, as I always did when I came here with Shan. Thomas Darren Paige. Loving father.

  “He was,” my sister said.

  “He was.” And once again I wished he were here. Wished I could ask him how to unsay what I’d said. How to fix things with Annalise. We’d talked some since I’d returned, but not enough to soothe the shame in me.

  Shannon set the flowers at the base of the headstone, then kissed the granite. My throat hitched watching my sister. I kneeled down briefly and wrapped my arms around her, holding her close as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Soon she rose, wiped her hands across her cheeks, and plastered on a smile. “I’m all better now.”

  I smiled back and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Of course you are, Shannon bean.”

  “So tell me about Paris . . .”

  “Ah . . .” The subject I’d both been avoiding and needed to talk about, and Shan was precisely the person who’d understand best. As we stood by the grave, a cool fall breeze rustling the leaves, I shared the fears that had bubbled to the surface that last night in Paris, culminating with the fact that I was wrapped in envy still.

  “And I think I might be a total asshole who has no perspective, since I’m jealous of a dead guy,” I said with a forced laugh as I finished the story.

  She rubbed my arm reassuringly. “No, you’re not. You’re just in love, and it’s hard, but I don’t know why you’re so worried that she’s living in the past or can’t move on fully with you.”

  “How is it possible for her to feel the same way about me that I feel about her?” I gripped my chest, as if grabbing at my heart. “I’m so crazy for her I can’t imagine ever feeling this way about anyone else. How could she do it? She is the great love of my lif
e. How will I ever be anything to her that comes close?”

  Shannon parked her hands on my shoulders. She was tiny, and I towered over her small frame, but in that moment, she was the strong one. “You are my big brother I have always looked up to, leaned on, and relied on. You’ve been like a watchdog, looking out for all of us. But you’ve forgotten to take care of yourself.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine,” I said, not denying it. “But what does that mean?”

  “That you’ve got it wrong, Michael. Because you understand love on this powerful, intense level. That’s your strength, but it’s also your weakness. To you, love is an all-or-nothing proposition.” She moved her hand back and forth like a pendulum. “You love Dad; you don’t love Mom.”

  I scoffed. “Of course I don’t love her. How could I?”

  She sighed and squeezed my arm. “All I’m saying is you feel everything in your bones, down to your marrow. And it’s not conceivable to you that love can be more than one person, more than one thing. Like how you felt about Brent and how angry you were with him.”

  I flashed back to my reaction when Shannon told me she was with Brent again. I hadn’t been happy, and I’d told Brent as much. But I’d softened eventually. I’d welcomed Brent into the family because of the man’s deep love for my sister. “But we’re good now. Brent and I get along.”

  “And I am so, so glad. But my point is this—right now with Annalise, you’re stuck in All-or-Nothing Michael Land. And you have to let the past go. I had to let my own mistakes with Brent go. There are so many things I could have done differently ten years ago. But we found each other again. Remember that. You and Annalise found each other again. You’re together. Now. Alive and in love. You have each other’s true hearts. You do.”

  Something inside me broke at her words. Something dark and consuming. Something like fear. It broke off and fell away.

  To the ground.

  “I’m an ass,” I said.

  Shan laughed, shaking her head. “No, you’re just a man madly in love. And you’re also a man who doesn’t always see what’s obvious.”

  My brow furrowed. “Okay, what’s obvious?”

  “It’s possible to love two people deeply, madly, and truly.”

  “How? How can you say that?”

  Her next words came out in a soft breath. “I love two people deeply.”

  I arched an eyebrow in question. As far as I knew, Brent was it for her—her one and only. Her first love and her last love, and she hadn’t fallen for anyone in between. “Who?”

  “Brent,” she said, raising her chin, saying his name matter-of-factly. “I loved Brent in college for who he was then—a goofball, a funny guy, my hero. He’s still the same man, and yet he’s also completely different. And I fell in love again with the man he is now. A strong man, the guy who makes me laugh, a great father, my biggest supporter. The one.”

  “But he’s the same man,” I said, trying to make sense of my sister’s theory.

  She nodded. “I know. Of course he’s still the same person, but . . . he’s also not. He’s different now than he was the first time we were together, and I loved him then, and I also fell in love with him all over again now. With the man he is today,” she said, stopping for a beat.

  In her silence, a bird chirped in a tree, and somewhere on the other side of the cemetery, footsteps crunched over grass, and I spotted others visiting headstones too. These moments surrounding me—of life and death and love and memory—tugged at everything inside me, yanking on all my heartstrings. I loved Annalise in high school. I loved the memory of her. I loved the idea of her. And then I fell in love with her again in the present, with the woman she is now. “I think that’s how I feel for her.”

  “And how she feels for you,” Shannon added. “But you have to rethink your all-or-nothing view of her. Because she’s falling in love with you now too.” She poked me in the chest for emphasis. “She loved you then, and she loves you now, and you’re fixated on what came in between. You need to let it go, because it’s foolish to think there’s only one great love.”

  “There is for me,” I protested, but it was fainter this time, and my words seemed to hold less weight than they had before. Was she right? Was I proving my own theory wrong by falling in love with her all over again, but with the woman she was today?

  “The girl she was at sixteen and the woman she is today are the same, but they’re different.” She ran a hand along her belly. “And look at me. I love both of my babies. I love the baby I lost and the baby inside me,” she said in a broken whisper. Then she held my gaze. “We have so much more capacity for love than we let ourselves feel when we’re grieving.”

  I exhaled, then inhaled, letting her words expand and dig roots inside me. I knew she was right. I knew she was onto something. And I knew I needed to get out of my own way and let this love take shape.

  Because even though my father wasn’t here, I knew what he’d say. I didn’t have to wonder. He made plans for me to learn French. He wanted me to be with Annalise. He believed in love.

  He’d tell me to live with love.

  Later, I sent her an email inviting her to Ryan and Sophie’s wedding.

  Dear Annalise,

  It goes without saying that I miss you terribly. But I’ve learned that things that go without saying still need to be said.

  I miss you.

  And I want to see you again. As soon as we can.

  Would you please be my date to my brother’s wedding? It would mean the world to me to see him marry the love of his life with you by my side.

  With love,

  Michael

  That was only the start.

  But I needed to figure out what to say to her about everything else.

  When I returned home from work the next day, she’d replied with a yes.

  And an I’d love to.

  And an I can’t wait.

  That emboldened me, and I planned to write her a proper letter, to say I was sorry, to say I wanted what she had to give.

  We’d always communicated well through the written word.

  But I had to do more than write. I had to do. To act. To show. I had a plan, and I’d research the possibilities as soon as I was home in a few minutes.

  But once inside my building, there was a delivery waiting for me—a slim lavender envelope. Gripping it tightly, I rode the elevator up to the twentieth floor. My nerves were tense, tight, in case this was bad news, in case it was the end. If it was, I needed to be alone to read it.

  As soon as I entered my house, I leaned back against the door, slid my finger under the seal, and ripped it open.

  Dear Michael,

  Sometimes phone calls don’t suffice, and email becomes insufficient for expressing what’s in our hearts. But I worry I’ve been negligent with yours. That I’ve assumed too much and said too little, that my fears of losing someone I love—you, I worry about losing you—have held me back. Sometimes the fear is like a fist squeezing my voice, choking it.

  I have that fear now with you.

  So I turn to the written word. We’ve always been good with letters, haven’t we? I can write down what is too hard to say at times. And that is this. You asked me something on your last night in Paris, and I gave you an answer you didn’t like.

  But the bigger issue is this—I didn’t say enough.

  And I want to say it all now.

  A part of me never stopped loving you. How could I? You were my first, and I wanted you to be my last. That part became quieter over the years, while we were apart.

  But now that part is an active part. And what I feel is so much more than a lingering fondness for a first love. It’s an aching, hungry place in me, and a blissful, joyful one too. I want you in my life, Michael. I want new experiences with you. I want pictures of you and of us, of the places we’ll go, and the things we’ll do. Together.

  I’m trying to give you all I can. I said it badly in Paris, so I’ll say it again and again.

&nb
sp; I’m falling in love with you.

  Will you please let me fall in love with you?

  xoxo

  Annalise

  My heart beat furiously, like it had a thousand wings, trying to carry me away to her. When I called, her phone went straight to voicemail. I called a few more times but she didn’t answer.

  I wrote a letter to her. I’d send it in the morning. And then I got online, researched flights, and booked the next one to Paris. I had to see her. I called my brother, told him I needed a few days off, and he said he understood.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” I told him.

  “Go get your woman,” he said as I tossed some clothes into a carry-on.

  “I will.”

  I checked my phone once more, hoping to hear from her, but she was probably asleep.

  At some point, I crashed on my couch, the lights of Vegas flickering brightly through the windows, watching over me.

  My phone bleated sometime well after midnight. Blinking, I rubbed my eyes and hunted for it. I must have knocked it off the couch, since it sounded from the floor. I grabbed it, a slow smile spreading across my face when I saw her name.

  Sliding my thumb over the screen, I answered, my voice still gravelly from sleep. “Hey you.”

  “Hi. Is there any chance your bed fits two?”

  65

  Annalise