Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series (24 page)

The sun streamed through the
windows. Serena got out of bed and dressed.

“
I’ll see you tonight,” she
said, kissing him one more time before she walked out the door.

After she left, Jeff lay in bed
thinking. He wanted Serena so much. Wanted to be a part of her life.
Wanted to be a part of her family, which meant Elena, her only
family. He wanted everything, but he still wasn’t sure he was going
to get it. He felt that things were not settled yet. A feeling in the
pit of his stomach told him that it wasn’t over yet with Serena and
Steven.

Serena came to the bar every
night the rest of the week, and every night they went upstairs to
Jeff’s bed. He was in deep with her, but he remained wary.

And then, on Friday night, Steven
came into the bar.

Serena was sitting at her usual
spot, on a barstool down at one end of the bar. Jeff saw Steven come
in and walk over to Serena. He saw the look of surprise on her face
when Steven sat down next to her. Jealousy and anger roiled up in
him, but he had to keep his cool. He walked down the bar and
stationed himself near Serena, letting her and Steven know he was
there.

“
Serena,” Steven said. “I’ve
been trying to get in touch with you.”

Serena looked into to Steven’s
eyes and saw that he was hurting. Her heart ached to see him like
that.

“
I don’t want to talk to
you,” she said. “We have nothing to talk about.”

“
I understand your feeling that
way,” Steven said. “But I want to explain everything to you, so
you’ll understand what happened. My feelings for you are real.”

Jeff kept his gaze on Steven and
Serena, but Cindy came up with a drink order and he had to fill it.
Dammit! He needed to stay next to Serena. But he halfheartedly made
the drink while he kept his eye on Serena and Steven.

“
Will you at least let me
explain it?” Steven asked.

Serena looked at him and he was
so sad. She felt the love she had been feeling for him before
everything went haywire. She felt something for him.

“
Yes,” she said.

“
Can we go somewhere else?”
Steven said. “Jeff is giving us the eye.”

“
We can walk down to the bay,”
Serena said. It was a place she and Steven had been several times
together. Those times had been good. She didn’t think this time
would be. Whatever Steven had to say, she wasn’t buying it.

“
Okay,” she said. “Let’s
walk down to the bay.” She looked over at Jeff and gave him a
signal that she was leaving with Steven, but it was all right. Jeff
looked back with concern, but he accepted she was going with Steven.
He wasn’t happy about it, Serena could see that, but he accepted
it.

Steven followed her out the front
door and together they walked down to the bay’s shore. She sat and
he sat beside her.

“
It’s a blue moon tonight,”
she said to Steven. The full moon, the second in that month, shone
full power onto the bay waters.

Neither spoke for a few minutes
as they gazed at the moon and the water. Serena didn’t feel angry,
as she had when she found out about Steven’s wife. She just felt
resigned about the end of their relationship.

“
I know you were shocked when
you came over and saw Janet,” Steven said.

“
Yeah, shocked about covers
it,” she said.

“
I don’t even know where to
start about this. It’s such a long and complicated story.”

“
But, you’re married,”
Serena said decisively. “And that is the end of the story.”

“
Yes, legally I am married.
I’ve been trying to divorce Janet for a couple of years. She won’t
let me.”

“
Why have you been trying to
divorce her?”

“
Because she’s mentally ill.
I never knew about it when I married her. I found out the hard way,”
he said wryly. “Her parents never told me she had a problem. I
think they were hoping that her getting married would solve her
problems. And I think they were relieved to let someone else deal
with it.”

“
How is she mentally ill?”
Serena asked. She wasn’t buying this explanation. Steven was making
another excuse, another lie. He was good at that.

“
She has some kind of
personality disorder. I was in love with her when I married her. Her
personality was exciting. I just didn’t realize what that meant at
the time.”

“
What do you mean ‘exciting?’”
Serena asked.

“
Oh, she was exuberant about
things, like a child, really. I didn’t realize then that the
child-like qualities could turn into tantrums and public
embarrassment.”

“
Oh,” Serena said.

“
After she embarrassed me at a
faculty party one night, I realized that her problem was very
serious. I was tired of dealing with it. So, I called her parents and
that’s when I found out that Janet had been institutionalized as a
teenager. That’s when I found out she has a disorder. I had not
known about that, and I couldn’t see going through the rest of my
life with that.”

Serena was starting to feel sorry
for Steven. She was starting to think how unfair it was for him to
marry Janet not knowing she had a mental problem. That really had
been very unfair of her parents not to tell him.

“
If I’d known about it, I
wouldn’t have married her,” Steven said. “I wanted to have a
normal married life with children. I now know that Janet could not
possibly handle the responsibilities of being a mother. She’s too
ill.”

Steven reached over and took
Serena’s hand. She didn’t jerk her hand away. She let him enclose
her hand in his. Tears were gathering in her eyes.

“
I started trying to divorce
her nearly two years ago, but she wouldn’t let me! I can’t
believe that you can’t divorce someone if you want to. Her parents
got high-powered lawyers for her and they fought my lawyers and won
every time.”

“
I don’t understand,”
Serena said. “How could they prevent you from getting a divorce?”

“
There’re ways to block a
divorce, if you want to. You can drag it out. Finally they started
saying that her illness prevented her from fully knowing what was
happening and she couldn’t make a rational decision.”

“
That’s terrible,” she
said.

“
So, I decided that I would
leave,” he continued.

“
Were you still living with
her?” Serena asked, incredulous.

“
Yes. We had a townhouse and I
wasn’t making much at the college. I kept thinking she would leave,
but she never did.”

“
So you decided to leave,”
Serena said, wanting to hear the rest of Steven’s sad story.

“
Yes. I got a job offer for an
ocean institute in Virginia. But she found out about it on my email.
I stupidly left it open one night and she got to it. She called the
institute and told them I was an alcoholic. I couldn’t change their
minds.”

Serena felt terrible for Steven,
being locked in such a horrible situation and not being able to get
out of it.

“
But you did eventually leave,”
she said.

“
Yes, finally. I got smart
after that. I bought a laptop that I kept at the college and handled
my next job offer through that. When I left, I had to sneak out of
the townhouse one day when she was getting her hair done.”

“
That sounds awful,” Serena
said. She really did feel bad for Steven and what he had suffered.

“
After I made my escape, I told
her I’d gone to Tampa. I didn’t want her to know where I was. But
I kept my phone. I felt if she could still get in touch with me, that
it might diffuse her. She wouldn’t come looking for me. It worked
for a while.”

“
When you said there was an oil
spill, were you really going to see her?” Serena asked, still not
fully understanding how Steven could have lied to her so much.

“
Yes. I was going to Charleston
to try to talk her into signing the divorce papers. After I met you,
that’s all I wanted to happen. I wanted to be free and clear of her
so I could be with you.”

Serena looked out at the water.
She felt the pain of his lie about the oil spill all over again,
acutely.

“
You said you texted me that
you would be gone, but I never got that,” she said.

“
But I did send you a text. I
don’t know why you didn’t get it. But I sent it.”

“
You didn’t call me at all,”
she said.

“
After I got up to Charleston
and realized how strongly Janet was still fighting the divorce, I
decided to just let you go. I knew it wasn’t fair to you. I wanted
to let you go, so I didn’t contact you. But then I couldn’t bear
to lose you.”

“
So you made up a story about
not having cell phone service,” she said.

“
Yes. I needed to have a reason
to still be in your life after not contacting you. I knew I wanted
you.”

Serena understood that. She still
felt that his lies were wrong, but she understood where Steven’s
thinking had been.

“
I finally figured things out
about Carlos,” she said. “I know he wasn’t calling you like you
said. I know it was Janet.”

“
I feel bad about that,”
Steven said. “Using Carlos that way. He’s a good guy and so is
his girlfriend. It was just another way I was trying to keep the
whole Janet situation from you. So you would still be with me.”

“
That was wrong of you,”
Serena said.

“
I know that now,” Steven
said with a sigh. “I acted out of desperation. I didn’t want to
lose you.”

“
How did Janet know where you
lived if she thought you were in Tampa?” Serena asked.

“
When I was up there this last
time trying desperately to get her to sign the papers, she followed
me when I left. She actually followed me for five hours. She was very
cunning, staying behind other cars so I never suspected. I was
heartsick when she knocked on my door that night. I thought it might
be you.”

“
Is she at your house now? Is
she still here?”

“
No. I had to call her parents
to come get her. I told them that they needed to take care of her.”

“
Did they come?”

“
Yes. I had to go through a
whole night and the next day with her. But they did come and get
her.”

“
It sounds like they needed to
get her,” Serena said.

“
It was the worst thing I’ve
ever done,” he said. “I had to trick her. I had to placate her so
she wouldn’t know what I was doing. She fell for it hook, line, and
sinker. She wanted to believe it.”

“
Did you have sex with her?”
Serena asked in a choked voice.

“
No! I haven’t had sex with
her for years. Our marriage has been over for years! I’ve just been
trying to get out of it.”

Serena believed him. She was
relieved he hadn’t had sex with Janet. Jealousy was in her heart,
but she believed him.

“
When her parents finally got
here, she threw a big fit. They brought a doctor down with them and
he gave her some drugs to calm her down. He didn’t force them on
her. She took them. She accused me of tricking her. And I did that.
It was how I had learned to deal with her.”

Serena put her hand over Steven’s
as he held her hand.

“
I’m sorry,” she said. “It
sounds terrible.”

“
If there was any way that she
could have gotten well, I would have stuck with it. I loved her when
I married her. But the doctors said it was incurable. Seeing her
leave like that with her parents was the saddest thing I’ve ever
seen.”

In the light of the bright full
moon, Serena saw tears roll down Steven’s cheek. Her heart went
out to him and she pulled him to her shoulder, where he wept. Like
the night she had wept on his shoulder in the very same spot. He
wept.

They sat on the bay’s shore for
a long time as Serena held him.

“
Serena,” he finally said. “I
love you. I know I don’t have a right to your forgiveness for what
I’ve done. I hope you can understand that I did it for love. Loving
you. I was trying to control the situation with Janet so it would
never affect you, but I should have known that it would.”

“
I don’t know what to think
right now,” Serena said. “I believed in you and then found out it
was all a lie.”

“
I know,” he said. “Being
married to Janet forced me to find ways to cope, to deal with her.
But that’s not how you deserved to be treated.”

Serena stood up and Steven stood
up beside her. He reached for her and she put her arms around him,
nestling her head on his chest where she used to feel so safe. Even
after everything that had happened, it still felt safe. Steven tilted
her face to his and kissed her, gently and lovingly.

They walked back to the parking
lot in front of Rossetti’s and Serena got in her car. She didn’t
want to go back inside to face Jeff’s questions. She needed to get
home to bed, to think. She kissed Steven goodbye before she closed
her car door and backed out of the parking space. On the drive to the
cottage, she started to cry. Her tears wracked her body and she
pulled over to the side of the road. She put her face in her hands
and cried as hard as she was able. She tried to get it all out before
she had to go home.