Page 140 of Pull Me Under

‘This is actually good,’ he says, surprised.

‘Don’t sound so shocked.’

‘I burned the onions.’

‘I salvaged them. It’s a skill.’

He laughs, pressing a kiss to my collarbone. ‘Teach me more things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Everything.’ His voice goes soft. ‘Teach me everything, Brynn.’

We make love again – slower this time, gentler – and fall asleep wrapped around each other, the empty pasta bowls abandoned on the nightstand.

I wake in the dark.

My heart is pounding. My skin is damp with sweat. For a moment I don’t know where I am – the cottage, the unfamiliar shadows, the warm weight of a body beside me.

Jude. Right. Jude is here.

He’s still sleeping, his face peaceful in the moonlight. One arm is thrown across my waist, anchoring me to the bed.

I lie very still, trying to work out what woke me. A dream? I can’t remember. Just this feeling – this creeping sense of a monumental thought hovering just out of reach.

Helen Harding. The woman who couldn’t wait to escape small-town life.

My father’s letters. The ones I’ve been reading. The apologies that never land, the grief that soaked through every page.

Her. Always her. The woman he destroyed himself mourning.

I’ll always love you. H.

I sit bolt upright.

Jude stirs beside me, murmuring incoherently, but I barely hear him. My mind is racing, pieces clicking into place with horrible, inevitable precision.

H.

Helen.

Helen Harding.

My father’s letters were about her. Jude’s mother. The woman who left Sea Salt Bay the same year my family fled in disgrace.

It wasn’t business rivalry. It wasn’t a collapsed deal or wounded pride.

It was an affair.

My father. And Jude’s mother.

That’s why Reuben can’t forgive. That’s why he looks at me like I’m poison. I’m not just a Trelawney – I’m the daughter of the man who destroyed his marriage.

And Jude is lying beside me, peaceful and trusting, with no idea that our families aren’t just tangled by geography and grudges. No idea what his mother did. What my father did.

No idea that the woman who abandoned him might have done it for love.

For my father’s love.