EMBER - Part Two (The EMBER Series Book 2) (2 page)

"Do you want me to stop at the market on my way over tomorrow?" He walks back into my bedroom, his naked body on display. "All I could find was this apple and a few slices of bread."

He's exaggerating, but only slightly. My mother had gleefully handed her credit card information over to the market that's a block away once she realized that they delivered groceries. She's not wasteful though and so she had purchased only what we needed each day. This morning, her and my father had enjoyed a large brunch before they packed up some sandwiches for the train ride home. I guess when I told her I could take care of myself, she took it literally.

"No." I reach forward to take a small bite of the apple when he holds it out to me. "I'll go myself."

He takes a hearty bite of the fruit and smiles as he chews. "You're so independent."

It's a compliment that I'll greedily accept. I've always been independent and if I've learned anything from the accident, it's that I can take care of myself, even if my mother can't see it. I'd taken the time to listen intently when Vanessa instructed me on how to wrap the cast up before I showered each day. I'd dutifully done the exercises my doctor, Ben Foster, had shown me to help heal my ribs and I'd gotten an appointment with a physical therapist so that she could help me get back to my prime as quickly as possible.

"I've taken care of myself for a long time." I nod towards the apple and I'm rewarded with a smile and an outstretched hand. I take another bite.

"I like that about you. You don't expect anything from anyone."

It's the perfect segue into a discussion about the one subject we've been dodging around for the past few weeks. My mind hadn't been focused on anything but getting better so I hadn't even formed a thought about Maisy the first week or two after the accident. Since then I've brought it up twice and both times Dane has told me that he's handling it. In the broad range of the meaning of those words, I haven't found any comfort.

I expected him to invite me back to his place at some point just to escape the incessant questioning of my mother, but it hadn't happened. When I asked him about it last week, he told me his ex-girlfriend was still living in the house and that lawyers were hammering out the details.

As much as I want to believe that it will all be settled soon and Dane's life will no longer be bound in any way to Maisy's, the nagging voice of my mother is pulling on my doubts.  I had confided in her, in a weak moment that he had lived with a woman in the past. She had quickly jumped into her role as my protector to warn me that lingering feelings can pull a man from the warmth of a new relationship back into a dark place if the woman he once loved is waiting there for him.

"I've been meaning to ask you about something…"

"I have to meet with my lawyer tomorrow." He interrupts as he tosses the apple's core into the wastebasket. "I can come over once I'm done with that."

"How's that going?" I pull the twisted sheet from the bed around my body. It's a feat better left for someone with two functioning hands, but I do my best. "You haven't said much about that."

He leans down and tugs his boxer briefs up his legs. The simple gesture suggests that he's feeling as protective of himself as I am. "There hasn't been anything to tell. She still refuses to leave."

Considering the fact that he told me that he purchased the house before she moved in, the law seems clear to me. I may not have hours of law school lectures to back me up, but I've watched enough courtroom dramas to know that he has more claim to the property than she does if his name is on the title documents, especially in New York where there aren't any clear laws in place regarding common law relationships. "Does she even have a case? I mean, aren't you the sole owner of your house?"

His left brow cocks as he swallows hard. There's a hesitation there that only fuels the fire of suspicion that has been brewing within me for weeks.  "I do own it but she helped me with expenses. We lived there together."

I don't need the reminder. It's not that there's a spear of jealousy that darts through me when he mentions the depth of his connection with Maisy. I'm well aware that he loved her and the knowledge that they shared a home is evidence enough of their intention to have a future together. There's just a nagging voice in the back of my mind, which sounds a lot like my mother, telling me that there may be more to their relationship than he's let on.

"What will it take to settle things between you?" I ask not caring that the words sound pointed and brash. "Is she planning on moving out ever?"

His gaze falls to the floor and his shoulder surge forward. I hear the faint sound of a curse word beneath his breath. "She's going to move out. She has to."

Someone should probably tell Maisy that. I want to say that to him only because I sense that there's a small part of him that he's holding back from me. I can't pinpoint it and even though we've grown closer the past few weeks, I want his past to be just that. I don't want it to creep into our future and stall what is growing between us.

"Have you talked to Garrett about it?" I ask knowing it's a silly question. His cousin is a probate attorney so I'm not even sure he could offer any legal advice that would help Dane see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's worth a suggestion.

"I did." He reaches down to pull on his jeans.

Nothing follows those words. He silently puts on the sweater he was wearing when he arrived before he pushes his feet into the black loafers he kicked off when he came into my bedroom.

If I learned anything that night when I was hit by the car it's that life is fleeting and everything can change in the blink of an eye. There's a question that has been sitting on the edge of my tongue since he first told me he'd left his girlfriend the night we met. If I don't ask him now, when we're immersed in this subject, and he's already headed out my apartment door, I may never find the courage again.

"Dane?"

He turns towards me as a brilliant smile courses across his lips. "Bridget."

I swallow hoping that the motion will dislodge the words from deep within me. I close my eyes briefly before I look directly into his eyes. "Did you ever think about marrying Maisy?"

He steps towards me and for the briefest moment I wonder if he's going to kiss me to try and quiet my need to understand about his past. He stops before he reaches the edge of the bed to look down at me. "I had a ring in my pocket at the restaurant. I was going to ask her to marry me the night I met you."

Trying to get dressed with both a broken arm and a reeling mind isn't an easy task. Add to that the fact that I'm still nursing tender ribs, and it's a disaster waiting to happen.

I struggle with my panties before Dane silently drops to his knee to help me. He reaches to grab my right hand, pulling it up to his lips for a light kiss on my palm before he places it on his shoulder. I hold onto him, balancing myself as I raise one foot off the floor, before I move the other so he can slide my panties on for me. He does the same with my jeans and as he carefully guides my casted hand through the arm hole of my t-shirt, he says my name in no more than a whisper.

"Her plan for the past year was for us to get engaged on her birthday."

The words feel foreign given what we just did and even though he's not talking in a raised tone, they feel and sound too loud for the small space. I brush past him, wanting to escape the sight of my bed where we've just made love.

"It was your birthday," I say quietly as I walk into the living room. "I met you on your birthday."

He shoves one of his hands into the front pocket of his jeans. "Her birthday was five months ago. I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to ask her then."

I should take some comfort in those words but I can't. He may have put off the inevitable popping of the question along with the presentation of the token diamond ring for a few months, but he just told me not more than five minutes ago that he was prepared to propose the night before we first slept together. If I'm not the poster girl for rebounds right now, I should be.

"You were going to ask her to marry you?" I ask as much to hear the words from my own lips. "Why didn't you tell me that before?"

His eyes scan my face looking for something that I can't give to him right now. It's reassurance. He wants me to give him a sign that I understand but I don't. I can't. "I couldn't do it, Bridget. I couldn't ask her. I realized that night that it was over."

Call it cold feet if you will. Maybe it was engagement ring buyer's remorse but they were close enough for marriage to be part of the equation. He may have ran for the hills, or my bed, before he popped the question but the emotions that led him to the store where he bought the ring, and the desire to get dressed in a suit for the celebration of his birthday and planned engagement can't just disappear in the blink of an eye.  "I don't know if I would have been with you…"

"What?"

I look up and into his face. His expression is unreadable. "I wouldn't have slept with you if I had known you were that close to getting married."

He rakes his hand through his messy brown hair. "Don't say that."

I rest my casted arm against my chest, suddenly feeling a dull ache in every part of my body. "I mean it. I didn't know it was that serious. I wouldn't have done it if I had known."

"I didn't want to be with her anymore." He heaves out a sharp breath. "I've moved on."

In record time and apparently with the first woman he saw, who just happened to be me.

I shouldn't be standing here judging his life choices but the fact that I'm one of them makes it unavoidable. The man moved effortlessly from a near engagement to being my lover all in the span of a day.

I smooth my hand over the cast before I look down at the floor. "I don't want to be your rebound, Dane. I don't want to be that."

"Bridget." His voice softens. "I checked out of my relationship with Maisy months before I met you. I was at the restaurant because I didn't want to hurt her but that night… the night of my birthday… I realized I was hurting us both too much by staying."

I see truth in his eyes but I can't tell if it's my desperate want to find it there or if it's genuine. "I like you, Dane. I like being with you but it's too soon. It's so soon."

"It's not." He leans down to brush his full lips against my forehead. "My heart has been empty for a long time, Bridget. I finally feel things again."
              I don't say a thing. I only close my eyes as I feel his hands slide down to my shoulders before he pulls me into his chest to hold me there in the quiet silence of my apartment.

"Wait." Her hand flies into the air between us. "Just, wait."

I had to talk to someone and given the fact that my mother has been looking for an excuse to send me a one way ticket back to Connecticut and Vanessa's fiancé is related to Dane, my choices are limited.

I look at Vane first before I level my gaze back on Zoe's face. We're in Central Park. I had tried to sketch before they arrived but the muddled image of Dane dropping to his knee in Axel NY that night to ask a woman to marry him keeps clouding my thoughts. I may not know exactly what Maisy looks like but in my mind's eye, my focus is her left hand where an engagement ring almost found a permanent home.

"Zoe," I say her name in exasperation. I had barely given her time to sit on the bench next to me before I tore into a disjointed recounting of how I met Dane, how quickly I've fallen for him and his confession yesterday about almost asking his ex-girlfriend to marry him.

"Bridget," she interrupts before I can utter another word. "You're telling me that the night he met you, he was about to get engaged?"

Trying to twist the situation into something other than what it is, won't change a thing. "Yes. He had an engagement ring in his pocket when he took me home."

Her eyes drop from my face to where Vane is asleep in his stroller. She carefully adjusts the soft blue blanket that is covering his lap. "Remember the night Beck came into the pub? That first night we met him?"

It's hard to forget that night. I'd recognized Brighton Beck in an instant because of my admiration for his work. I'd fallen in love with his watercolor paintings when I saw them in an exhibit in a museum in Rhode Island during my sophomore year of college. I'd approached his table when I noticed him sitting in the pub. It was after he'd hit on one of the other servers. He'd muttered something inaudible about a woman he loved before he ordered a scotch. By the time I'd brought the drink to his table, he was eyeing up Zoe. It was obvious to everyone in the pub that he was there for two reasons. He needed to drink and he wanted to fuck. After spending ten minutes talking to her, he'd left alone.

"He was wasted, Zoe." I try to contain a small smile. "Remember how drunk he was?"

She laughs quietly. "He had a lot to drink that night. He was torn up about a girl."

"What girl?" My curiosity pushes the words out before I have time to think about masking them in something less direct. I've longed wondered about the woman he was muttering about that night but I've never felt comfortable asking Zoe. I wouldn't have known how to bring it up without reminding her of someone from his past who was obviously important to him.

She pulls on the corner of the stroller edging it closer to the bench. "Her name isn't important. She's not important anymore but on that first night when I met him, he said he loved her."

I know that my expression can't contain the utter shock I feel so I don't even try to curb it. "What?"

"It's so twisted." She scratches her left brow. "A woman he loved got married to someone else that day."

"She got married the day we met Beck?"

"A few hours before that," she says the words softly as she twists her fingers around her wedding rings.

I have so many questions but they're all running into one another in such a twisted mess that I can't vocalize even one of them. I just stare at the side of her face.

"He needed me right then." She turns to look at me. "If I would have shut him out because he was getting over someone else, I would have lost the love of my life."
              I shake my head slightly as my eyes dart down to the sketchpad in my lap. "I understand what you're saying but that's you and Beck. You were made for each other."

"We were." She moves forward on the bench so she can brush her fingers softly over Vane's forehead. "Sometimes you meet the right person when you least expect it. You don't get to choose when love walks into your life, Bridget."

"I barely know him." I look off into the distance of the crowded park, hoping she won't see my scattered emotions. "I'm not in love with him."

"Don't close off your heart because you think you know what he needs." She taps my knee. "He's the only one who knows what he's feeling and from I saw right after your accident, he's crazy about you."