Falling into Forever (Falling into You) (27 page)

I bury my head in my hands.
“I’m sorry, Ben.”

He tweaks my nose affectionately. “
Yeah. You should be. Brat.”

“Nerd.”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

We both laugh.

“I’m turning over a new leaf. No more whining.”

He’s dubious. “
Really? But you’re so good at it.”

“At least that’s one thing.”

“Hey. Moaning is also a strength. Crying. Sobbing. Laughing when you’re not a total mess. Pretty much anything that involves making noises.”

“What a great talent. I should take it on the road.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. There are any number of lucrative careers built around making noises.”

“Like what?”

“Train conductor.”

“I don’t think
train conductors actually use their own noises. They have whistles for that.”

“Porn star.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Maybe. I need a name, though.”

“
Isn’t there a formula already established? Your first pet and the name of the street you grew up on?”

“Ducktales Spruce Street.”

“Um, maybe not.”

“Okay. You pick the name, I’ll make the noises.”

He laughs, lightly, and turns back to his computer. “We’ll have to work on that. But thesis first. Don’t you have a paper to write or something? No papers from student teaching to grade?”

“All done. No more teachers,
no more students, no more books. No more sitting in lecture halls. Maybe never again.”

“I thought you were going to take what was supposed to be your fourth year of college, but isn’t, since you’re some kind of
genius when you’re all lovelorn, which totally disgusts me, by the way, and do the master’s in counseling. That was the plan as of last week. New York. Teacher’s College. Sam and you tearing up the dance floor.”

I give him a secret little smile. “Decided against it.”

“What?”

“I
went to the interview at Two Rivers in Ann Arbor for the math teaching job at the school you’re going to work at, and guess what? I got the job. So, you’re stuck with me for another year, at least.”

“What?” He places the computer on the coffee table and fixes his eyes on mine. “Hallie, why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Because I just decided. You need someone to keep you in line. I think the classroom will suit me, at least for a little while. It’ll be fun. Don’t you think? Maybe we can even be roommates.”

He looks slightly sick to his stomach. I thought he would be ecstatic that I was going to
come with him, but he doesn’t exactly look thrilled at the prospect of working with me.

He squeezes his hand
s together and stares up at me. “Hallie. I wish you had told me.”

“I’m telling you now.” I search his face, my resolve crumbling. “I can probably
still go to New York, though, if you don’t want me around. I thought it would be fun. But maybe I was wrong.”

“It could be fun.
” His voice is strained, and it doesn’t match his words.

“Ben, come on. What’s wrong? If you don’
t want me interfering with your job, just say so. I can still tell them no. I can take rejection. I’m not going to crumble.”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it, then?”

He takes a deep breath. “I think I need a break from you.”

That stings. A lot. “Oh.”

I turn my head away and
start to put my computer back into its bag.

“Don’t do that.  You wouldn’t…” He looks up at me once, an unreadable expression in his eyes.

“I love you.”

My answer is automatic. “I love you, too, Ben.”

He merely shakes his head in frustration.

“No, Hallie. I think I might be in love with you. No. I know that I am in love with you. And I have been for a long time.” He groans. “Damn it. I think I just said that aloud.”

“Ben…”

I stop
myself before I can say anything else, because whatever it is that I was planning to say isn’t good enough for this incredible person who’s picked me up more times than I can even count now, who I love more than almost anything in the whole world, who’s been my best friend since we were kids and who saves my life a little more every day.

“You still love Jensen. I get it. I do.
Kind of. He’s a fucking asshole, but you love him anyways. My being hopelessly in love with you doesn’t mean that we have to stop being friends. It doesn’t mean that we have to lose each other. It just means that I need a break, that’s all. I think I just need a break from having to look into your face every single day and to think that there’s nothing I can do to ever make you love me like you love him.”

He looks over his shoulder
at me and shrugs helplessly. I want so badly to tell him that none of that is true, that I no longer love Chris, but I think we both know that would be a lie.

“Ben…”

“Stop. Don’t say it.”

I stand up and press my hand against his cheek. He holds it there for a second longer than I can handle before
he stands up and wraps me in a hug.

“Go to New York, Hallie. Go and hang out with Sam and dance all night and play cards and maybe go to class every once in a blue moon and most importantly, get over the asshole. I’ll be here. I’ll wait for you.”

I break away from his grasp and hold him an arm’s length away from me. “I don’t deserve you.”

“No, you certainly don’t.” He manages a quick grin. “Don’t forget that, okay?”

He leans in to brush his lips against my cheek, but he lingers a nanosecond too long, enough for me to feel the quick pulsations of his heated skin against mine. I turn my face to his in sudden surprise and just as I start to break free from him, he leans down and touches his lips to mine, just once, enough for me to smell the chlorine from our morning swim that’s still sticking to his hair. Hesitantly, I push my lips against his again, needing to derive some comfort from his closeness.

It’s nothing like kissing Chris. Ben’s lips are less demanding, asking questions instead of answering them,
and I’m lost and confused when he finally breaks away, curling long strands of my hair between his fingers.

“We can’t do this, kiddo.”

“I know.” Even as I say it, I knot my hands into his t-shirt, letting them bunch the fabric. He lets out a low groan and slides his hands through my hair, unknotting the curls slowly, one by one, staring into my eyes as I start to run my fingernails up his chest. I lean in for another kiss and let myself forget about everything else in the strength of his arms.

Eventually, he breaks away, panting heavily.

“Hallie, you need to stop this before I can’t.”

“I don’t want to.”

It’s true. I’m not selfless, or charitable enough, to care about the cost—to him, to me. It feels too good to feel his worshipping hands against my skin, to be secure in the knowledge that he would never hurt me.

As he begins to gently strip away my last pieces of clothing, I know irrevocably that I love him, that I will always love him.
I have to believe that it will be enough, because I can’t bring myself to hurt someone that I love so much again.

Maybe it’s not the passionate fire that I once had, but maybe this is better, the slow, gentle kind of love that washes you in warmth and light.
The biggest fires burn everything in their path, and I’ve had enough of that. Maybe this, a slow-burning flame that rises and falls but never entirely dies down, is exactly what I need.

So, I respond
to his touch, arching my back and moving silently against him, letting him possess me, body and soul, letting him take away the endless ache in the place where I think my heart used to be.

It still feels like a betrayal
of Chris and me.

As we move together, I try to forget
that.

I love Ben. He loves me.
Everything will be fine.

His eyes, soulful and sweet, stare into mine and I tell myself one last lie—everything will be fine.

*
* *

4 Years, 9 Months Later

Chicago

“Mommy?”

Grace is staring at me with huge eyes, so much like Ben’s that I want to scream.

“Yes, baby?”

“I said, if there’s no zoo today,
I want to go to a zoo sometime really soon, like tomorrow, and if there’s no zoo, I want to go to the park when we get home. Can we go to the park, please?”

Frantically, I unbuckle her car seat and gather her up into my arms, clasping her wiggling form close to me.

“Yes, Gracie. We can go to the park.”

I think. I do quick calculations in my head, trying to figure out when the press will descend. Eva and my mother left strict instructions for us to go home, to pack, and to be ready in the
morning to move to whatever hideout they’ve managed to find. I’m pretty sure we have at least one night, and I can’t begrudge Grace a trip to her favorite park.

“
Mommy, that’s excellent news.”

She sounds exactly like my mother, and I grin
and put her back into the seat. After checking to make sure that she’s secure, I settle myself behind the wheel and take a moment to adjust the mirrors and another long moment to make sure that I’ve regained complete control of myself.

“Ready to go?”

When I look back, I realize that she’s already dozing against the seat, obviously exhausted from all of the driving. Ben always had that particular talent, too, the ability to sleep wherever, whenever. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep anywhere, even on the damn planes which always made me a little weepy.

As I start to drive, I check the backseat every few minutes
, just to make sure that I hadn’t imagined this perfect person that had somehow emerged from my body.

I have a lot of regrets. Given the fact that I rarely stop to think before I speak, it’s not really all that surprising. But there are other
little thoughts that shame me and they have nothing to do with all of the times when I’ve stuck my foot inside my mouth. The more serious regrets torture me a little bit every day.

I regret that I wasn’
t the wife to Ben that I should have been. He deserved a wife who loved him and him alone for all of his existence. That person wasn’t me, even though I tried to love him with my whole self. It hurts me, even now, to think that he must have known it, felt it somehow. But I could never regret our marriage or our daughter or the brief time I had with him, filled with jokes and teasing and ice cream sundaes and laughter. I could never regret Grace and our flower house and Two Rivers and the teenagers who he taught in history class and I talked to about jerk boyfriends and high school cliques. I couldn’t even regret the fights over who was going to take the garbage out or make dinner.

That’s what I didn’t u
nderstand, all those years ago—perfection never lasts. It’s how you manage the imperfections that creates a life. It’s how you decide to make it through another day. It’s how you decide to take a chance, even if your instincts towards self-preservation tell you not to.

I pick up the phone to call Chris
. I need to explain the pictures, because I know Marcus forced him to look, even if Eva demonstrated some uncharacteristic sensitivity. I need to explain everything.

But a phone call isn’t enough, this time.

There’s a pretty great zoo in New York. I think Grace would like that.

CHRIS

“You
r fan club is waiting for you,” Claire says, pointing to the opposite side of the lobby. I can see the start of a smirk on her face.

S
he’s right. I follow her finger and see a small crowd gathering. There’s a sea of cell phones raised at the two of us. At least one of the amateur photographers probably captured the visual evidence of the shock I just had. Great. Like I needed another thing to worry about.

“Wave to your public, dear. It’s rude not to.” She smiles beatifically at the prepubescent teenage girls
who are scampering closer to us, before taking my arm in hers to skillfully sidestep the small crowd. “We should get a coffee, I think. And perhaps we can see if your knowledge of anthropology has deteriorated over the years.”

“Dr. Caldwell…”

“I think perhaps we’ve grown past that, Christopher. Claire will do. However, I do think we want to avoid those unscrupulous characters.”

I follow her gaze
and see the cluster of paparazzi outside, their numbers growing by the second.

“Yes.
We should definitely avoid that.”

Five minutes, a detour through the kitchens, and a mad dash down the street later
, we’re sitting in a hole in the wall coffee shop just off Michigan Avenue. I stir my latte until all of the foam has disappeared. The fake mustache makes it hard to drink, anyway. I’m trying not to demand answers, since Claire Caldwell is probably the last person in the world who will give them to me, but the picture of the curly-headed little girl lingers in my mind. I have to wait for her to make the first move.