Page 52 of Beachfront Pages

She tucked the pamphlet into her bag and slipped past the tourists.

Chapter 17

Fiona had her hands in soapy water, washing last night's dishes, when she heard a knock. She dried her hands on the dish towel and crossed the small front room of Sea Glass Cottage, not hurrying. Probably Winnie, dropping off a treat. Winnie was always bringing her food.

She opened the door.

Winnie stood on the step. And beside her, half a head taller, in a pressed blue shirt the exact shade she'd seen a hundred times, stood Drake.

For a second her brain wouldn't process what she was seeing. Wouldn't make the two facts fit. Winnie. Drake. Here. On her porch. At the same time.

The dish towel was still in her hand. She was gripping it, she realized, the way you grip a railing. Her whole body had gone still and cold, the way a pond goes still right before the ice. Some far-off, useless part of her noticed her heart was going much too fast.

"He says he's your husband," Winnie said.

The words hung on the porch, taunting her. Accusing her.

Husband. She opened her mouth but no words came out. There was a whole tangle of things that needed saying, and not one of them came. Ex. The man who said. The man who left her. She reached for the start of a sentence and there wasn't one. Heat climbed her neck and into her face, the slow burn of being caught at something, though she hadn't done anything. She'd just been standing in her own doorway with dish soap drying on her wrists.

"He's Drake," she finally said.

That was all. Just his name, like that explained anything. Like it explained the months, the papers, the drive across three states to a town nobody back home had heard of.

Winnie looked at her. A long look, that asked a question. Her eyes went from Fiona to Drake and back. Whatever she saw on Fiona's face, she didn't push.

"Well," Winnie said. "I'll let you two talk."

And she went, down the porch steps and along the shell path, and she didn't look back. Fiona wished she would. Wished it hard, for one foolish second. Come back. Stay. Don't leave me standing here with him.

But Winnie was already gone, growing smaller against the dune grass, and there was nothing to do but turn and face the man on her step.

"Fee." Drake's voice, soft. Nobody else called her that. "Can I come in?"

She stepped back from the door. Why was she letting him in? But her body just did it, the old habit of making room for him, and there he was, inside the cottage, taking up more space than the cottage had.

He'd always done that. Filled a room until there wasn't quite enough air left for her in it. She'd forgotten, somehow, in the months of small quiet rooms that were only hers. Now she remembered all at once, the way her shoulders crept up, the way she found herself standing closer to the wall.

"You found me," she said.

"It wasn't easy." He smiled. That smile. The one that used to undo her in a parking lot, in a crowded room, across a dinner table when she was angry and trying to stay angry. "You really went and disappeared, didn't you?"

"That was sort of the point."

He laughed, low, and looked around the room. At the secondhand sofa. The jar of sea glass on the sill. The mismatched mugs. She watched him take it in and waited for the thing he always did, the little comment, or the eyebrow raise. He didn't do it. He just nodded, like the place was fine. Like she'd done fine.

"It's good," he said. "It suits you."

A small warmth moved through her before she could stop it, and she hated that it did. Hated that his approval still could do that to her. She'd built this whole life with no help from him. Chosen every mismatched mug. And one nod from him and some hungry part of her sat up like a dog at the door. She turned the warmth over and found the shame underneath it, exactly where she'd left it.

"Why are you here, Drake?"

He turned and faced her full on. The smile went, and something more careful came in behind it. He'd practiced this. She could tell. He'd practiced it in the car.

"I made a mistake," he said. "A terrible one. I've known it for a while, and I kept telling myself you'd be better off, and then I couldn't tell myself that anymore." He took a breath. "I let you go and it was the dumbest thing I've ever done. I want to try again. I want us again. I want you, Fee."

I want you.

The words went straight through her, past every guard she thought she'd built, all the way down to the place she'd been pretending wasn't there.