All Over You, page 20
“I was so flattered. For the first time in what felt like forever, someone was choosing me, not one of the hundreds of other hopefuls. Then I sat for him and he was so charming and flattering. He told me I had perfect features, that I was a portrait artist’s dream. He told me that just capturing the texture of my skin on canvas was going to take months. He told me…It doesn’t really matter what he told me, actually, because it was all crap, really. He just wanted to screw me. And I let him, because he made me feel special again. He made me feel like I wasn’t just a waitress. I didn’t think about you, Grace. I didn’t let myself. I kept telling myself that I needed something to keep me going.”
Serena had been studying her hands as she spoke, twisting her fingers together, grasping them tightly then releasing them. Now she looked at Grace, her blue eyes clear and honest.
“None of it’s an excuse. And I know I can never make it up to you. But it’s how I felt. It’s why it happened. I hated myself afterward when I realized what I’d done. But I was a coward. I couldn’t end it because it felt like the only thing I had and I was too scared to face reality. And I wound up hurting one of the people who means more to me than anything else in the world.”
Grace broke eye contact, focusing her gaze beyond her sister’s shoulder as she mulled over the past.
“I should never have even thought about auditioning for Ocean Boulevard,” Serena said. “I knew it was wrong, but I needed the money and…Again, I was being selfish. I fooled myself into believing that you didn’t care. That you really had forgiven me. But deep inside I knew that you hadn’t. That maybe you never would.”
“Why should I? What’s in it for me?” Grace said coldly. It had taken her so long to find her rage, she wasn’t letting it go without a fight.
Serena nodded as though she accepted this, as though it was only her due.
“I want you to go,” Grace said, pushing herself to her feet. She didn’t want to look at her sister’s huddled miserableness anymore. She wanted to feel pure in her anger, righteous and justified. She didn’t want there to be consequences or feelings at the other end of the equation. Serena didn’t deserve her understanding or her consideration or her compassion.
“I’ll send you the bill for the window,” Grace said.
Serena stood and walked past Grace to fetch her handbag.
“Thank you for listening. If you have any questions, if there’s anything else you want to know — even if you just want to scream at me — you know where to find me,” Serena said.
Grace crossed her arms over her chest and locked her jaw, willing her sister to go. Serena nodded, then headed for the door. At last.
Serena had disappeared down the outside staircase before Grace registered that the phone had not rung once while they had been talking. And that no one else had pulled up with a screech of tires in front of her apartment. She hustled to the top of the stairs.
“Hey!” she hollered down to Serena.
Her sister turned back, a ridiculous expression of hope on her face. Grace almost snorted with disbelief. Did her sister really think it was going to be that easy? That Grace would just open her arms and forgive her after a bit of crying and self-recrimination?
“Did Mac say anything?” she called down.
Serena stared at Grace for a beat, then shook her head.
“I explained more about me and Owen before I came after you. But he didn’t say anything,” Serena called back.
Grace frowned. In her heart of hearts, ever since she’d calmed down enough to accept that Serena was telling her the truth, that she’d misinterpreted what she’d seen, she’d expected Mac to be hot on her heels the way Serena had been. Grace had expected him to see past her furious slap and insults to the pain and fear she’d been feeling. She’d expected him to understand. He always had before. He’d taken everything she threw at him and bounced back. He’d been patient. He’d been caring and kind.
Grace bit her lip as her sister got into her car and drove away.
Surely Mac hadn’t taken to heart the things she’d said to him? She tried to remember exactly what she had said. Something about never wanting to see him again.
But he’d know that wasn’t true. Right?
And something else about him having lied to her again and again and again.
Grace winced. She’d been so angry, she hadn’t really been rational. Owen was the one who had lied to her, not Mac. But, again, Mac knew he hadn’t lied to her.
Then she’d told him to go fornicate with himself and various other insults that were neither here nor there. If you weren’t on the receiving end of them.
The soft patter of rain on her face prompted her to return to her apartment.
Shutting the door behind her, she stared at the crushed glass beneath her feet with a complete lack of comprehension, her mind occupied elsewhere.
Mac wasn’t coming. He wasn’t calling. He’d had enough.
And why wouldn’t he have?
She remembered the conversation they’d had in her apartment that Sunday after her family dinner. Mac had challenged her to be honest about her feelings, to stop holding back with him. He’d told her he couldn’t make their relationship work on his own.
He wasn’t angry because she’d insulted him or because she’d slapped him. He was angry because she hadn’t told him the truth. Because she’d withheld herself and her past from him. The past ten days of increased intimacy had shown both of them that what they had together was real, lasting.
But it all had been based on a lie. Her lie. She’d kept her most painful secret hidden, locked away. And now he knew what she’d done.
And he’d given up.
The magnitude of what she’d done hit her like a freight train. She’d fallen in love with Mac and he had fallen in love with her — and she’d pushed him away because she was a coward, because she hadn’t dealt with the pain from her past.
She was already crying by the time she got to the phone. Claudia answered on the second ring.
“I’m such an idiot,” Grace sobbed.
“Where are you?” Claudia asked.
“Home.”
“Sadie and I will be there as soon as we can,” Claudia promised.
Grace ended the call and sank down onto the couch.
She occupied the time before her friends’ arrival mentally reviewing all the times Mac had reached out to her and she had pushed him away.
She felt as though she’d woken from a deep, dreamless sleep. She’d been so paralyzed by fear of rejection, so busy repressing the pain and anger from her breakup with Owen, that she had pushed away the sexiest, funniest, most clever man she’d ever known.
By the time Claudia and Sadie were enfolding her in their arms, she’d worked herself into a hiccupping state. She was so disgusted with herself that she couldn’t accept her friends’ comfort for long and she struggled out of their embraces to pace the space between her couches and her dining table.
“I’ve ruined everything,” she said. “He has been so generous, so patient, and I slapped him in the face and told him I never wanted to see him again. I’m such a coward. I never even told him I loved him — I never told him half of what I was feeling. I was always too scared. All this time I’ve been walking around doing Bette Davis and tearing men apart limb from limb — and it’s all a big joke. I’m not tough. I’m the biggest yellow belly out there. I’m a gutless wonder.”
Claudia and Sadie took up positions on the couch and Sadie nudged the box of tissues forward.
“Just in case you want to blow your nose or anything,” she hinted. Grace guessed that meant she had more than tears on her face. She grabbed a fistful of tissues and blew her nose with a noisy honk.
“I take it things didn’t go so great with telling Mac about Serena and Owen?” Claudia asked.
Quickly Grace filled them in, dropping onto the other couch halfway through and pressing her head into her hands.
“Wow, you really hit him?” Claudia said.
“I nearly took his head off.”
“A slap four years in the making. What a pity you wasted it on Mac instead of that rat Owen,” Sadie said.
Grace’s head came up and she bared her teeth in a growl.
“Don’t even say his name. How I wish I had hit him all those years ago. I should have hit him and kicked him and punched him. I should have shredded his clothes and keyed his car and given his favorite possessions away to the homeless.”
“Now you’re talking. You know, Gracie, it’s never too late to pay Owen a little visit. Sadie and I will be your wingmen. Any man who diddles a woman’s sister for six months behind her back deserves a bit of harassment.”
Grace managed a watery smile. “You guys are so good to me. And I’m such a selfish cow,” she said, dissolving into tears once more as she was again hit with the big mess she’d made of things.
“I want to hear more about Serena. She was really upset, huh?” Sadie asked, exhibiting a not entirely humane interest in Serena’s misery. “You really gave it to her, right?”
“I made her squirm,” Grace said dully. “But you know what? I get the feeling she’s pretty miserable anyway. Her career’s in the toilet. She’s essentially a full-time waitress these days. She’s thirty-four now. Not many actresses get their big breaks after thirty.”
“Boo hoo,” Claudia said unsympathetically.
Grace’s tears had slowed, and she took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I need to make this right, guys. I may have blown it with Mac for good. I may have pushed him away once too often. But I have to try to make it right,” she said.
Claudia shook her head.
“You have to sort you out first, Gracie,” she said firmly. “You’ve been sitting on a powder keg of emotion for four years, pretending that none of it mattered. But we all know it matters a lot. At the risk of sounding like a complete wanker, you need to honor the hurt you felt when Owen and Serena betrayed you. No more sweeping it under the rug.”
“It’s been four years, Gracie. Talk to us,” Sadie said.
Grace stared at her two dear friends. Inside her, the old hurt was rising to the surface. There was nowhere for it to go but out. And she realized she wanted it out, wanted it gone.
“Do you know the thing that got me the most?” she said, her voice low with intensity. “He never painted me. Not once in five years. But he couldn’t get enough of Serena. All those paintings. And they were so good. Because she was beautiful.”
The tears started again, and out it all came — how she’d felt when she walked in the door of Owen’s studio and found him entangled with her sister. How she’d stared, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
She started to get angry as she remembered Owen’s apologies, his pleas for understanding. But she saved the worst anger for herself as she recalled how much she’d wanted to believe in Owen, to accept and understand because she was so afraid of losing him.
“And then the little shit went and used all those nudes in his show after you’d taken him back,” Sadie remembered with a disgusted shake of her head.
“I will never forget walking into that gallery with you, Gracie, and seeing all those paintings of your sister staring back at us. I wanted to kill him for what he’d done to you,” Claudia said. She was crying, too, and she crossed to Grace’s couch and took her in her arms.
“I love you so much, babe. It was one of the worst moments in my life seeing you hurt so much,” she said, her voice muffled as she hugged Grace tight.
Grace held on for dear life and pressed her face into Claudia’s shoulder. Sadie and Claudia had been the best of friends that night. They’d hustled her out the door and offered to visit hellfire and damnation on Owen on her behalf. But Grace had only wanted to do one thing — go home and pack. She’d spent two hours collecting her clothes and books from the apartment she’d shared with Owen for so long and then she’d walked out the door.
And after that moment, she’d never cried or spoken about what had happened. Owen had taken so much from her, she’d reasoned. She didn’t want to give him any more of her time or energy or emotion. Sadie and Claudia had tried to get her to talk, to rant, to rage, but Grace had refused. She’d lied and said she was over it. She’d moved on. It was dust already, gone.
But really, Grace acknowledged to herself now, she’d been unable to face the depth of her feelings. The breadth of her anger. The width of hurt. She’d stuffed the monster down deep inside and pretended that she didn’t care. And she’d taken steps to ensure she would never, ever be vulnerable like that again.
And poor Mac had inherited all that grief, all that anger. He’d put his hand out to offer her love and friendship and companionship, and she’d acted as though he were offering her hemlock.
Why had he bothered? But she knew. All the time that she’d been falling in love with him despite herself, he’d been falling in love with her. She remembered the conversation they’d had about love the day after their first night together, how they’d both claimed not to believe in it for themselves anymore. They’d both been lying. But Mac had been so much braver than her. He’d been willing to take a chance on love when he recognized it.
He’d cajoled her into delaying her decision and cooked her that silly, disastrous meal to impress her. Then he’d laid himself on the line when she’d tried to have her cake and eat it too, having a relationship with him but keeping him at a distance.
But today she’d pushed him too far.
They talked long into the night, Claudia and Sadie offering their wisdom, jokes, love and support. They drank innumerable cups of tea and coffee and, finally, at three in the morning her friends tucked her into her bed. She was puffyfaced and slit-eyed from crying so much, and utterly exhausted. But she felt at peace. Four years of solid emotion had dissolved inside her. She wasn’t naive enough to think that she’d exorcised all her ghosts in one night — but she’d made a good start. She’d been honest with herself for the first time in years. And she knew what she wanted.
She wanted Mac. She was going to try to get him, too.
She just hoped he had it in him to believe in her one more time.
MAC WOKE WITH GRITTY EYES and a frown on his face. For a few seconds he had no idea what was wrong and then memory returned. Grace. The scene in his office. The revelation about her sister. The knowledge was like a weight landing on his chest.
He’d been so angry last night. He couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told him about Serena and her ex from the beginning. He had been building some pretty substantial castles in the sky where she was concerned. He’d been thinking kids, a bigger house, shared projects, shared forever. And she’d been keeping a pretty damn substantial truth to herself.
He’d known she’d been hurt, that she was vulnerable. Right from the start he’d sensed that about her. And he’d been patient. But he was beginning to suspect that Grace had been speaking the truth when she’d said that she didn’t want a man in her life. Maybe she was just too damaged. Maybe that shit Owen had snapped her heart and her trust in two and it would never be the same again.
As he stared blindly at the sunlight speckling the ceiling, he made the decision he’d put off making last night, knowing that he was too angry, too reactive to think clearly. Maybe it was time to give up on the dream of him and Grace and acknowledge to himself that she was unable to meet him halfway.
God, what a miserable conclusion. He dropped his forearm across his eyes and took a deep, rib-cracking breath.
Feeling distinctly grim, he showered and dressed for work and drove out to the studio. He threw himself into work all morning, narrowing his thoughts to just the matter at hand. It didn’t stop him from thinking about her entirely. He wasn’t completely reconciled to the decision his rational self wanted to make. He was aware in the back of his mind that he was disappointed she hadn’t called. Just like she hadn’t called him last night, either.
Was she waiting for him to run to her again?
He was all run out.
Which meant that his gut was right — it was over between them.
He spent the morning wrangling with a local council official in Hawaii and by the time he put the phone down he’d successfully negotiated for the sand regrading to be delayed a few weeks. He had his star location back. He felt a warm glow of satisfaction and anticipation, closely followed by the realization that he had no one to share his good news with.
Damn Grace and her ironclad fortress of a heart. Double damn her sister and her faithless ex for making her that way.
“Mac.”
His head shot up as he recognized Claudia’s voice. He’d been so absorbed in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard her knock on his door.
“How are you doing?” she asked neutrally, her dark eyes scanning his face searchingly.
“Good. Managed to sort out the problem with Ko Olina Lagoons, so we’re back on there.”
“That’s great, but I meant how are you doing?” she asked, propping her butt on the edge of his desk.
He shrugged. Obviously Sadie and Claudia knew what had gone down last night.
“How is she?” he asked neutrally.
“Getting there, I think. I gave her the day off work,” she said.
“Good.”
“Mac, I think you’re a nice man. And I think you’re good for Grace and I know she feels very strongly for you, so even though I hate people who interfere in other people’s love lives, I’m going to break my own rule for Grace,” Claudia said.
She made sure she had his attention before continuing.
“The thing with Grace is she’s the most generous person in the world with her time and attention and love, but she refuses to share her hurts. Sadie and I have been trying to train her out of the habit, but as you’ve probably realized, she’s pretty damned stubborn,” Claudia said. There was a break in her voice and a suspicious sheen to her eyes. She blinked rapidly a few times.
“Grace has always had to fight long and hard to feel good about herself. She grew up in a house where beauty was the ultimate commodity. You’ve seen Serena — Hope and Felicity are just as gorgeous. Grace has always felt like the ugly duckling. She’s always tried to fight on her own terms, her own ground. None of it was helped by the fact that she never had a lot of luck with men. She really thought Owen was different. But when Owen chose Serena over her, I think something inside her just couldn’t fight anymore.”
