A Glimpse of the Dream (12 page)

“Look, Teagan, we were kids—scared and alone and we grew attached. Some would probably say too attached. You were already pulling away from me. You felt it as much as I did. What we had was great for what it was, but it wasn’t real love, it wasn’t lasting love. It was just young love. I realized that after we were separated for a while, so yeah, I wanted a clean break.”

The memory of my conversation with Camille flashed in my head, and how I had struggled to make sense of what was not understandable in the days that followed. I had been right. Kane had thought I had moved on but he had also felt guilty because he had moved on too. “You told me never to leave. Forever, remember?”

“At the time, I felt that way. I don’t anymore.”

Luckily my walls were solid fucking concrete ’cause I felt nothing, but I did want answers. He owed me that. “What changed? You bought me an engagement ring.”

“That was what changed. Seeing the ring, the permanency of what I was doing, a lifetime with one person: the only girl I ever knew, it made it real and I realized I didn’t want that.”

“Is that her, Doreen, your girlfriend?” I couldn’t even look at the woman who was silently witnessing this nightmare. Was there a child here somewhere? That thought penetrated the wall—nearly doubling me over in pain.

His next words destroyed me. “My wife now.”

Another crack in the wall, a sob ripped from my throat; I couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d wanted to. “So it wasn’t that you didn’t want a lifetime with just one woman, you just didn’t want a lifetime with me. You didn’t want me.”

I felt it, even with how hard I had barricaded it in, my heart split open and I was bleeding out, my whole world collapsing around me. My happy memories of the past crumbled to dust.

“You promised me this house, our world away from the world. We made love, fumbled through it, right under where this house is built. Was the memory so repugnant to you that you had to cover it up? You weren’t just my boyfriend, my first love, and my best friend—you were my family. I lost my family once, and it hurt like hell. Didn’t think anything could hurt worse, but I was wrong. Every happy memory I have since coming here is with you, every single one. You can have those memories now, because I don’t want them. I don’t want to remember you, because in remembering the good, I’ll be forced to relive the bad.” I started for the door. “Don’t worry, you won’t see me again.”

His last words to me felt like a knife to my heart. “No, I won’t.”

I stopped moving, my head dropped in mourning for the life I had still secretly hoped would come to pass, but now I knew that it never would. Lifting my head again, holding it high, I walked from his house. The thought of walking into the water, and not stopping, was so tempting it terrified me.

The sun was starting to rise when I finally made it back to the house. Mrs. Marks was waiting for me.

Shock had set in but I was furious too. Mrs. Marks had wanted to discuss Kane when I first arrived and considering the news, she should have fucking insisted I listen. “He’s married and living in our house and no one thought to tell me that?” She looked shattered in response, almost as destroyed as me, but I was too angry to care. “I can’t stay.”

“I know, dear girl, I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

Her voice cracked and tears slid down her cheeks but I was dying inside so her pain didn’t penetrate my own. I packed my bags and called a cab. That afternoon I was back in Boston.

Simon pulled his door open and, at the sight of me, he grabbed my arms. “What the hell happened?”

“I saw Kane.”

“Fuckhead. Come in.” He grabbed my bags and dropped them on the floor before dragging me to the sofa, since my legs weren’t working right. I understood now the odd tension at home—they all knew that Kane was living our dream with someone else and no one told me. I thought he hadn’t bothered to come home for my party, but he had been home, right there in walking distance, and yet he had made no attempt to see me. Anger was giving way to the familiar gut-wrenching pain that never seemed to ease.

“What did he have to say for himself?”

“He’s married.”

“What?”

“And living in the house we had talked about building.”

“I say again—fuckhead.”

“Simon, no one told me. I discovered that fun fact all on my own.”

“Jesus.”

On the flight home, pushing past the stunning betrayal from those I held most dear, I could think of nothing but how different Kane was. The boy I loved was gone, the man in his place was bitter and cold. It was this more than anything that churned my anger and my heartache. What the hell had happened to change him so much? “I’m angry and I’m hurt and there’s a part of me that feels nothing. What happened to the boy I grew up with, the one who laughed and teased, the one who was so kind to everyone? That boy’s gone. And I honestly don’t understand why. He didn’t want a life with me, fine, but he pushed me out of his life completely. He was so cold, so unfeeling. There was nothing in his eyes. The warmth and sparkle that I so loved seeing was gone. His eyes were dead.”

“I’m so sorry, Teagan.”

Jumping up from the sofa, I reached for my phone. Mrs. Marks answered on the first ring.

“What happened to him?”

“Teagan?”

“What happened to Kane? Why is he so different?”

She hesitated and I knew she knew more about Kane than she was saying, even more than the crushing secret about his wife. “Tell me, damn it. I have a right to know. The man living in that house is not Kane. He’s altered. What the hell happened to make him that way?”

“Sometimes people change.”

“Bullshit.”

“Language.”

“No, seriously bullshit. Kane, the big-hearted Kane, as you’ve said yourself. Where is that Kane?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you’re not alarmed that he’s so drastically different? What do we know about his wife, except for the fact that she has changed him so completely? Relation to Mrs. T or not, who the hell is she?” And then a thought made me worry. “Do you think he’s on drugs?”

“I think he needs time to deal.”

“With what?”

“Whatever happened that’s changed him.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I know that he’s been through a great deal, and, when he’s ready, I’m sure he’ll reach out to you. You are still his best friend.”

“You do know. He told you, but he won’t tell me. I’m tired of trying to understand when no one is offering me a damn thing. Take care of him, Mrs. Marks.”

“Teagan?”

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this anymore. Now I’m the one who needs time.”

“You will come home.”

“My home is here in Boston. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Good-bye, Mrs. Marks.”

I hung up before she could reply. It was time to move on.

Looking around the space that would one day be Simon’s and my antique store, pride burned through me. Six months after I’d severed all ties with my past, I was finally healing, and a huge part of that was due to this store. The building was much like the TARDIS—bigger on the inside. When the contractor started work, his crew discovered walnut floors under the carpeting. Why someone would cover hardwood with carpeting, I didn’t know. The load-bearing columns added a nice touch to the open space. Simon was working with the painter on custom colors, because apparently there was a science behind the colors used: colors that soothed, excited, and even encouraged people to buy.

I had tapped into more than half of the money my parents had left me between my schooling and the store, but I really did believe we were going to be a success. Simon had a real knack for finding treasures. He was a natural salesman, and we both genuinely loved antiques.

Checking my watch, I called to Simon, “I have to go. Meeting Erik.”

“Okay. Have fun.”

Erik and I had met at the local coffee house, both of us coming in at the same time for our morning coffee. It took him a month to work up the nerve to say hi. We’d been to dinner countless times, which had evolved to where our relationship was now—great sex, dinner optional. I enjoyed his company. As much as I had healed in the past six months after learning that Kane had married, it had been four and half years since Kane had ended us, and I was still unable to commit to someone. I could admit to myself that I was broken and suspected a part of me always would be.

Hurrying home, I showered and dressed in one of my flowing skirts and a Lycra top, slipped on my sandals, and pulled a brush through my hair. Erik had offered to pick me up, but I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. This was fun, this was sex, nothing more.

He opened the door of his apartment dressed in faded jeans, a tee, and bare feet. Erik looked comfortable and sexy as hell. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Come in.”

I liked his apartment—dark walls, masculine furniture, sparse but nicely done.

“You want a glass of wine?” he asked.

In answer, I pressed myself against him, my mouth finding his. His arms immediately wrapped around me and pulled me close. His tongue pushed into my mouth, tasting me with a thoroughness that left me weak. I liked sex. It made me feel—for just a little while, I was content.

“I’ll take that as a no.” He lifted me into his arms and carried me to his bedroom. Dropping me on his bed, he looked wicked. “I’ve been thinking about this since the last time I saw you.”

In answer, I lifted my skirt and spread my legs.

Two hours later found me on the floor searching for my panties. Erik rested back against his pillow, his arms behind his head, his eyes on me. “Stay the night.”

“I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

Finding my panties, I pulled them on before the search began for my bra. “Where’s the fire, Teagan?”

“There isn’t one. I just like sleeping in my own bed.”

Silence met that as I continued to find my clothes and get dressed.

“He really did a number on you.”

Everything inside me froze with those words. He wasn’t wrong, Kane had destroyed me, but I thought I had been better at hiding it.

“You gonna leave me some money on the dresser?” He was only partly teasing.

Guilt moved through me, because I didn’t want to hurt him. I liked him, but I couldn’t give him more of me, because there really wasn’t any more of me left. I settled next to him on the bed. “We talked about this. I’m not looking for a commitment.”

He brushed his finger down my arm, and I was sure he was going to tell me he didn’t want to see me anymore. He surprised me.

“I won’t call you. You want to see me again, you know my number.”

Leaning into him, my lips brushed lightly over his. “I’ll call.”

And I did. For six months, we had fun, but he wanted more, and I was unable to give it to him. As much as I liked him, my heart could not be reached. Kane had done that to me—irrevocably changed me—but life went on, and so did I.

2015

Teagan

“Damn, that’s beautiful. Where did you find that?” The rosewood French Napoleon rolltop desk that Simon found was from the mid-1800s, I would guess, the leather inlay with nailheads in pristine condition.

“Some farmhouse in Concord. They were spring cleaning.”

“How much did you pay for it?”

“Three thousand.”

“You stole it.”

“I gave them their asking price.”

“Well, why not? We’ll get fifteen thousand for it easily.”

“You know it. Who’s the king of antiques?”

I bowed, like I did every time he made a great deal, which was fairly often. “You are, O mighty one.”

“I think you should take me to dinner.”

“Absolutely, anywhere you want to go.”

In the five years since we’d graduated, Simon and I had built a wonderful antique business located on Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay of Boston. For the past two years, we’d run firmly in the black. The store was set up like a home, with furniture arranged in clusters, and every part that made up those clusters—the rugs, the lighting, the knickknacks—was for sale. A large glass case where our ancient brass cash register sat was filled with vintage jewelry, some real, most high-end cosmetic pieces.

Simon and I had upgraded our apartment to a nice two-bedroom on Harrison Street in the South End, walking distance to the shop. It was a community and, though we didn’t socialize often with our neighbors, it was nice to know they were there if we wanted to. Life was good, maybe not where I had once hoped it would be, but I thought I had done really well at picking up the pieces.

The phone rang, pulling me from my reverie.

“Teagan.”

My heart dropped into my stomach, “Mrs. Marks, hi.” Bitterness burned through me because despite the fact that she and the others had tried countless times to reach out, they were still keeping a secret from me.

Silence for a beat or two. “Teagan, I need to talk with you. There’s something you need to know, and I’ve kept quiet about it for far too long.”

So she was finally willing to give up the secret. I couldn’t deny I was curious, especially since I knew it related to Kane, but so much time had past that it was really of no consequence any more and yet I found myself agreeing. “Okay.”

“Will you come home? What I have to say cannot be spoken over the phone. It’s very important.”

The idea of going home was not pleasant, but then again, neither was the tone of Mrs. Marks’s voice. “Is next weekend okay? We have a big sale going on this weekend.”

She signed audibly. “Yes, next weekend would be fine.”

“Is everything okay?”

“It will be, honey. I think it will be. Maybe you could bring Simon. I would really like to meet him.”

“I’ll ask him.”

“I won’t keep you. I’ll see you next weekend.” She hesitated before she added, “I love you, Teagan.”

My heart, the one I didn’t think could be reached, squeezed hard in my chest, but the words flowed easily out of my mouth, because they were true. “I love you too.”

Colin’s name flashing on my phone’s screen made me excited—the man knew his way around a woman’s form.

“Hey, stranger. You home?” I asked. Colin was a photographer for
National
Geographic
, and was usually all over the world for work. We’d met through a mutual friend. When he was in town, we usually got together. It was fun, casual, and comfortable, because he didn’t want anything more from me than I wanted from him.

“Three days and then I’m off to Paris.” He paused for a moment. “As much as I want to see you, I want you naked and under me more. If I showed up on your door step, would you let me in?”

How I managed to answer without panting was beyond me. “Yeah. I’d welcome you in.”

“I’ll see you this afternoon. Oh, and Teagan?”

“Yeah?”

“Rest up, sugar, it’s going to be a long night,” he said before hanging up.

The urge to fan myself almost made me do so. Simon appeared with a pint of ice cream and a spoon. Dropping down next to me, he handed it over. “Colin?”

“Yep.” Shoving a huge spoonful of ice cream into my mouth, I handed it back to him.

“You getting lucky tonight?”

“Yep.” I
was
going to be getting lucky, quite a lot of lucky since Colin was a stallion. Just thinking about it was getting me hot.

“I guess I should make myself scarce.”

“You don’t have to. We’ll be quiet.”

“You shouldn’t need to be quiet.”

“Are you going to stay at Michael’s?”

“No, Michael and I called it quits.”

“What? When?”

“Two days ago. He was just too damn needy and jealous. He was even jealous of you.”

“I know. He never liked me. I always had the sense he thought I was going to turn you straight and steal you.”

“If anyone could, it would be you.”

“Well, now, I don’t want to kick you from the apartment.”

“I’ll go hang with Sunshine. Maybe I can get her to bake some brownies.”

I smiled every time I thought about our neighbor. She looked like a Sunshine: long blond hair that reached her ass, faded jeans, and tight T-shirts with her Birkenstock sandals. “If you do, I want one. No, two.”

“You got it. Have fun. Tell Colin I said hi.”

“Will do.”

Hours later, I was dressed in a simple black dress minus undergarments, since I didn’t have anything sexy clean. A knock at the door signaled Colin’s arrival. Pulling it open, I had only a second to enjoy his messy blond hair and green eyes before he stepped into me without a word and sealed his lips over mine. His hands moved to my hips, pulling me close. He was hard and ready, pressing into my stomach, and immediately the place between my legs swelled. His hands moved around my back to cradle my ass; he pulled his mouth from mine.

“You’re not wearing anything under this.”

“Surprise.”

In the next second, the front door had closed and I was pressed up against the wall with my dress around my hips and my legs around his waist. While Colin spread hot kisses down my neck, his hand moved to between my thighs to stroke me in just the right spot. I moaned.

“Front right pocket,” he whispered against my lips. My hands moved over him, lingering a moment on the hard bulge, before my fingers brushed against the condom wrapper.

“You come prepared.”

“I’ve been hard since our phone call.”

“That couldn’t have been very comfortable.” My fingers worked his button and zipper before slipping in and finding him—hard and velvety smooth. It was his turn to moan, and when I pulled him free and ran my hand up the length of him, squeezing as I went, he actually whimpered.

He pinned me to the wall as I ripped open the condom wrapper, and, with our eyes locked, I slowly covered him with it.

“This is going to be fast.” And I couldn’t have agreed more when I moved the head of his dick right where we both wanted it. With a shift of his hips, he buried himself deep inside of me. His body froze, his muscles tensed, and lust took over his expression. “So fucking tight.”

My legs pulled him even deeper. “Move, handsome.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He was hitting just the right spot with each thrust that, in only a manner of seconds, my body started tightening before my orgasm ripped through me. He pulled me closer, moving harder and faster, until his body jerked with his own release. Resting his head on my shoulder, he gave himself a minute before he said, “That was a good start, but we’re far from finished.”

By two in the afternoon the next day, I was still in bed. Colin had left earlier after spending nearly twenty-four hours with me as we worshiped each other’s bodies. Dear God, the mouth on that man should be bronzed. And yet, as crazy good as Colin was in the sack, he wasn’t the best I’d had.

We were kids and really had no idea what we were doing, and yet I had never experienced anything even close to as good as my first. Not that my bedroom had had a revolving door, but I couldn’t lie, I wanted to feel what I had felt with Kane, and knew I never would again, because none of them were Kane. It was a vicious circle. I suppose the difference was that I had loved Kane.

I tried not to think about him, but sometimes, like now when my mind was mellow, I couldn’t help it. Five years, that’s how long it had been since I’d last seen him. Remembering that night always caused a pain that was hard to breathe through. How he became the man he did, when he had been such a beautiful soul when he was younger, I didn’t know. I missed him, missed the boy who used to slip into my bed and hold me close, the boy who brought me chocolate milk and whipped cream every morning, the boy who knew when I needed a hug or to have my hand just held. I hated myself for that, that I could be so weak as to still hold a torch for him after everything he’d done. My therapist tried to explain it using technical terms, but I didn’t really care. It was what it was: My cross to bear.

Most of the time I was successful at pretending that he never existed, but sometimes, like now, memories of him seeped through. I didn’t feel emotion like I’d used to, like most people do, because my mind had shut it down. Remembering him was too much, too painful for me to handle. My therapist reasoned that Kane had become a surrogate family to me, that the pain I felt at his loss wasn’t just about him but about what he had come to represent. When our relationship died, it was symbolic of the grief I had felt after losing my parents. And the pain was staggering. Sometimes I feared what would happen to me if I let it in, if I really processed the pain I had so successfully banked. I’d probably go mad.

Life went on, and I came back to Boston and buried myself in the shop. Long hours, late nights, and weekends, focused on nothing but making at least one of my dreams come true. Simon was my anchor; without him I would have been unreachable. Our business was a success, our friendship was top rate, and if there was an emptiness in me that nothing could fill—not success, Simon, or even the men I distracted myself with—what was to be done? Life happened, sometimes it sucked, sometimes you had to start again, and maybe you headed in a direction you never saw coming. The trick was to make it work regardless. I had. But late at night, I cursed Kane for showing me that glimpse into perfect and then taking it away. I hated him as much as I loved him. My therapist was having the time of her life with that conundrum.