Can't Help Falling (38 page)

Speeches were half an hour away. She should do one final circuit of everything. There was no room for complacency just because everything seemed to be going perfectly. Cutting through the crowd, she took the hallway to the kitchen. The same hallway where only a few months ago Peter had threatened to kiss her and she'd thrown it in his face. Her stride was constrained by her red gown. The last time she'd worn it had been the second-worst night of her life. But she couldn't afford a new one.

“Emelia! Just the girl I was hoping to see. The caterers were asking about whether you want the petit fours right at midnight or a little after.”

Emelia massaged her temples. There was a run sheet. Why could no one check her beautiful color-coded run sheet?

Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, Emelia.

She certainly wasn't going to be rude to Peter's mom, who had given up her house and had insisted on taking charge of running the catering for the evening so that Emelia could focus on everything else.

“Right at midnight is fine.” Honestly? She had lost the care factor.

“Got it.”

Emelia fished into the folder she was carrying. “Here's an extra run sheet. It should have everything on it.” The thing was eighteen pages long. Every detail was covered.

Maggie took it. “Thanks.”

“Why are you so nice to me?” The question slipped out before Emelia could even think about it. But she wasn't sorry that she'd asked. In all the time she'd spent at the house in the lead-up to tonight, Maggie hadn't said a single negative word or given her the slightest scathing look, even though she had to know the reason her son had suddenly quit having anything to do with the ball. “Your niece would still be alive if it wasn't for me.”

“You know, a lot of people seem to be taking responsibility for that.” Maggie made the observation as she arranged some chocolate truffles in a large crystal bowl.

Emelia looked at her.

“Peter blames himself. You blame yourself. Victor blames himself. You're all very determined to condemn yourselves and yet not one of you was there in her last moments. Anita was the one who made the choice that she did. None of you made it for her.”

“But I took the photo. I wrote the article.”

“And if it wasn't that, it may have been something else.”

But it wasn't.

Maggie placed the last truffle on the pyramid she'd constructed. “What the three of you are all looking for isn't going to be found in saving a charity, or winning an Olympic medal, or in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.” She quirked up a sad smile. “Emelia, even if you wanted to, you and Peter can't fix each other. Only God can do that.”

P
eter thought he'd known heartbreak after his rotator cuff had been shredded and he'd lost his shot at Olympic gold. But it didn't come close to comparing with the last two and a bit months.

Sabine looked gorgeous. Blond hair piled in some sort of fancy updo. Shimmering fitted gown. Any guy in the room would have been lucky to have her.

He felt sick. She probably thought there was a chance of their reconciling, but every second with her was proving to him that it didn't matter that she ticked all the boxes; she didn't tick the only one that really mattered.

She wasn't Emelia.

“You don't need to tell me, I already know.”

“What?” He looked down to see Sabine surveying him with knowing eyes.

“You were trying to work out a way to tell me that it's not going to be me. But I've known that for months. You've never looked at me the way you look at her.” She cast a glance across the room; he followed it to see Emelia weaving her way through the crowd in the same red dress she'd worn to Jackson and Allie's wedding. His breath caught just looking at her.

He turned back to his ex. “I'm sorry, Bine. I wish it was you. I really do.”

She shrugged. “Me too. But it's okay. I'm okay.”

He didn't know what he'd done to deserve such graciousness.

“I heard about her connection with Anita.” He couldn't quite see her eyes at the angle her head was tilted, but he didn't detect any satisfaction in her voice.

Peter couldn't find anything to say. He just stared at the dance floor traveling by under their feet.

“I'm sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Is it true that Victor checked himself into rehab?”

“That's what my mum said.” He hadn't spoken to his brother since the fight but he could only guess it had shaken Victor up as much as it had Peter. What had happened to him? He wasn't a guy who swung fists, no matter how good the reason.

“What happened to us, Seven?” Her change in conversation should have caught him by surprise, but not much did these days. “I know it's all in the past but I still need to know. I feel like one second we had this great relationship, then the next it was over. And I've been telling myself that it was because you were hurting and it was just too hard to see me still living your dream. But that's not it. Well, it's not all of it.”

Peter let his gaze travel down to her set jaw. She tipped her head up and her eyes blinked rapidly, a sure sign that she was trying to hold back tears. He'd seen it many times. After disappointing races, when she'd missed out on something she'd had her heart set on.

He didn't
want to hurt Sabine anymore. But he couldn't give her what she wanted. “Bine, do you remember our last six months? We weren't good.”

“But . . .” Sabine opened her mouth, then closed it. She knew it was true as much as he did.

“I know we had crazy training schedules, but we used that as an excuse not to deal with us. I knew it before I got hurt, but I realized how much we weren't working after. It wasn't because I couldn't deal with you still living the dream. Without rowing we had little to say to each other.” They'd tried to fill the gap with watching TV shows and seeing friends. But it didn't change the fact that when the TV was off and the friends had left, there was just awkward silence. “I didn't even know your dad had had a cancer scare.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“It's not about being sorry. I love you. I will always love you. That means I want you to be happy. I want you to be with a guy who is the first person you want to tell when you have big news. The good, the bad, and the scary. I haven't been that guy in a long time. We just didn't want to see it. Maybe we bought too much into the whole rowing-golden-couple thing. Neither of us likes to let people down.”

That was what it came to. When he was with Emelia, she had made him feel like there was more to him than rowing. That there was a life for him beyond it. Now that he'd met Emelia, there was no going back. Even if there was no going forward with her.

Sabine blew out a long breath, the resignation on her face revealing she knew it was true. “So, are the two of you going to get together?”

Peter bit back a bark of laughter. “Not hardly.”

Sabine stared across the room for a long few moments, thinking so hard he could practically see the wheels turning in her head. Finally, she spoke again. “I want you to be happy too. I know how much you loved Anita, but you can't hold what happened against Emelia. She was just doing her job.”

“I told her about Anita, Bine. About how I blamed myself. And she just sat there. Didn't say a word.”

“What did you want her to say, Peter? ‘Oh, by the way, that reporter was me'? I don't know anyone who would have been brave enough to do that. Especially if she feels about you the way you do about her.”

Peter rubbed his hand across his brow. “Even if we manage to find a way past all that, I don't think she's okay with me wanting to make a comeback.” That was one thing he'd learned in the last couple of months. The rowing bug was still in his blood. He couldn't give the dream up without one more try.

Sabine stepped toward him so another couple could pass behind her. “But that can be worked through. You talk about it. Work it out. Like every couple does when someone has been injured. You take too much responsibility for things that don't belong on your shoulders. Always have. Your responsibility is to forgive her. Tell her. You don't just give up on the person who might be the love of your life. The rest is in God's hands.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is. Doesn't mean it's not hard, but it isn't complicated. And, Peter? If it's not me and it's not Emelia, there will be somebody else. And she'll be even better for you than either of us.”

“You don't know that.” He wasn't sure where the words
came from, but they struck even him. They sounded bitter. Resentful.

“Except I do. You're a catch, Peter Carlisle. Even if you don't know it.” She got up on her tiptoes and dropped a kiss on his cheek. “Now I'm going to go find myself someone to dance with, because it's not a whole lot of fun dancing with someone who wishes I was someone else.”

And with that she let go of his hand and stepped away.

“Bine?”

She paused.

“Thanks.”

She tilted her head. “You can thank me by winning gold in Tokyo.”

“ ‘Y
ES
,' ”
SAID
Q
UEEN
L
UCY
. ‘I
N
our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.' ”
Emelia's words had come back to Peter as he watched Sabine walk away. They'd tormented him as he'd tried to play the role of board member. He couldn't remember a single conversation he'd had in the last hour of the event. Hadn't even asked how much money they'd raised. Whether they'd achieved their goal.

He hadn't even stopped to get himself out of his tux when he'd gotten home. He immediately went to a book that had sat in his bedside drawer for over a decade, with a bookmark that had never moved from the last time his grandfather had placed it there.

Peter rested his head against his headboard, closed
The Last Battle
, and placed it beside him on the bed cover. Everything had clicked into place. He had been such a fool. If only he'd read it sooner, realized earlier, things might have been different.

“A true Narnia fan would never ask a girl if they were a Susan or a Lucy.”
Emelia's words from the first time they'd met circled around his head.

I'm a Susan.
And he hadn't understood what she was saying. How she viewed herself. Until now. Emelia saw herself
through a distorted looking glass, condemning herself for who she thought she was.

He picked up the book again. Flicking back through its pages to the crucial scene, he read the critical line again.

“ ‘My sister Susan,' ” answered Peter gravely, “ ‘is no longer a friend of Narnia.' ”

Susan had grown up and called Narnia just a silly game from their childhood. Ultimately, the rest of her family had been summoned back to Narnia and she'd ended up alone.

A six-year-old Emelia had told her mother she didn't want to play her silly Narnia games anymore and her mother had died. Emelia's father had abdicated responsibility and she'd ended up alone. That's why she believed she was a Susan.

He might not have been able to change everything that had happened, but maybe he could change that, figure out a way to show her the truth.

There were now only two things on his to-do list. Win Emelia back. And row his way to Tokyo in 2020. One was hopeful. One was nonnegotiable.

He picked up his phone, selected the required name on his contacts, and let it ring. “Allie, it's Peter. I need your help.”

“T
HIS IS THE PLACE
.” O
F
course it was. Of all the places in Oxford, Allie had to want to buy her chair from this one. Two days before she and Jackson flew to Iowa for Christmas. What was she planning to do? Take it back on the train? Did they not have decent antiques shops in Cambridge?

She'd never told Allie which shop she'd met Peter in.

They opened the door. The grizzled proprietor was sitting in the exact same position as the first time Emelia had come into the store. She was pretty sure he was even wearing the same shirt and knitted vest. If not for the absence of cobwebs, she might have suspected he hadn't moved in the last ten months.

Allie pointed toward the archway. “It was in this next room.”

Why was she not surprised? Emelia stepped under the archway, preparing herself for whatever it was she might feel when she saw it again. Everything had changed since then.

She stopped. Turning around, she found that Allie had disappeared, the sound of the bell tinkling giving away her rapid exit.

Spinning back around, Emelia tried to take in what was
there. The room had been totally cleared out. The hodgepodge of furniture was all gone. In the middle of the room sat a lamppost—a large wrought-iron one, its head grazing the ceiling as it leaned toward her, beckoning. The one she'd commissioned for the ball. The wardrobe was where it had always been, except it had been moved so it sat against the corner at an angle.

She laughed. A row of mismatched artificial Christmas trees fanned out from either side of the wardrobe. Some looked like the evergreens they were pretending to be, others were outrageously loud versions in silver and gold, like they'd been dragged back from the eighties for the occasion.

Fairy lights crisscrossed the ceiling, their tiny bulbs flashing and dancing to something unheard and magical.

From nowhere, snow started falling. In an antiques shop in Oxford. Wisps of fake snow settled on her nose. Her hair. What in the world? She walked in farther.

On the other wall, a life-sized picture of a fireplace was taped. In front of it sat two armchairs and a small table set with plates and food. Emelia tiptoed forward and peered down. Boiled eggs, sardines on toast, cakes. Just like Mr. Tumnus the fawn had laid out for Lucy when they had afternoon tea.