Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

Evie

“I wasn’t sure you’d come today.” I sat down in my usual chair, across from the patient couch. “Today is your last day, right?”

Colette nodded. “It is. But I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. I thought it might help to talk to someone. I don’t have a lot of friends anymore, and the ones I do have I’m more likely to discuss my day’s buy orders than feelings with.”

“Well, then I’m glad you came.” I pointed to a giant tray of cookies on the table. “Please have some. I’ve been on a baking spree, and if I take them home, I’ll eat them.”

Colette smiled and grabbed a cookie. Biting into it, she looked around the room. “This place was my first job out of college. For the last three years, I couldn’t wait for this day to come, but now that it’s here, I don’t feel relieved and excited like I thought I would.”

“What are you feeling?”

She shook her head. “Sad, mostly. Maybe a little regret.”

“Regret for leaving?”

“No. It’s time. The regret is more to do with Merrick.”

I wished I could have said, “I feel your pain, Colette.” Then maybe cracked open a bottle of wine and shared stories. But I was a professional, and my own feelings needed to be kept out of it. So instead, I said, “Tell me about that. Can you pinpoint what it is you regret?”

She shook her head. “It’s so many things… Some of them don’t even make sense.”

“Like what?”

Colette looked down. “Well, for some reason, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the times I went out to dinner with my then boyfriend and Merrick and Amelia. I knew she was having an affair, yet we all went to dinner and acted like everything was normal. I’m not sure why those memories keep popping into my brain after so long.”

“Oftentimes the secret we keep is irrelevant. It’s the fact we kept it that bothers us most.”

She nodded. “Maybe.”

“You said lately you’ve been thinking about the secret you kept during dinners. Does that mean these are new thoughts, or that they’ve just popped into your mind more in recent times?”

“I never gave the fact that I kept my friend’s affair a secret any thought until the last month or so. That might not say a lot about me, but it’s the truth.”

“Did something happen recently that made you think of the affair?”

“Not really. But I did notice a change in Merrick. I’m not sure if that’s relevant or not.”

“What kind of a change?”

“Well, he hasn’t been around much the last couple of weeks, but before that I noticed that he smiled more in meetings. And he laughed more. It wasn’t until I saw him seeming happy the last few months that I realized how long he must have been unhappy. It made me realize how much he suffered after Amelia’s death.”

My forehead creased. “Did you think he didn’t suffer?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I blamed him for her death. But maybe I just needed someone to blame.”

“Why would you blame him for her death?”

“Because he was her health care proxy and made all the medical decisions. He found out she was having an affair when she was brought into the hospital, and then got to decide what drugs she would take and what procedures she would undergo.”

Oh, God.

Colette noticed my face and nodded. “Yeah. It was screwed up.”

It was difficult not to take what she’d just told me and focus on Merrick, but he wasn’t my patient. He wasn’t even my boyfriend anymore. So I forced myself back to what I should’ve been doing—helping Colette untangle her feelings.

“Let’s back up a moment. It sounds like you’re starting to question whether the things you’ve been holding Merrick accountable for are really his fault. And at the same time, you’re reminded of things you kept from him when you were once friends. You’re bringing a lot of guilt to the surface. Why do you think that’s coming up now? Because you’re leaving?”

Colette smiled sheepishly. “Well, I’m taking some clients with me. That’s against my noncompete. Merrick won’t be happy about it, though it won’t make a blip in the firm’s profit. But I also know he won’t do anything about it because I’m not the only one who’s held him accountable for what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only person who was tougher on Merrick than me was Merrick.”

• • •

That evening, even though it was Friday night, I didn’t feel like going home. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Merrick since my session with Colette earlier in the day. I’d even broken my week-long streak of staying on my own floor and not going upstairs in an attempt to catch a glimpse of him, but he was nowhere to be found. It was just as well since I was feeling vulnerable, and the last thing I needed was a reason to justify the way he’d acted and give myself hope that things could work out.

It was a beautiful night, so I decided to take the bus to Glass Bottle Beach in Brooklyn instead of going home. I walked the shoreline for an hour, picking up sea glass and sidestepping sharp pieces the ocean hadn’t taken for a long-enough tumble yet. But even my happy place wasn’t cutting it tonight. I sat down on a big rock at the ocean’s edge to watch the sunset. The sky lit with a mix of purples and pinks, and I closed my eyes to listen to the soft jingle the beach played as it hit all the glass. It seemed louder with each breath—so much so that I opened my eyes to look around and see if the waves had changed. But it wasn’t the ocean jingling; it was a set of keys.

I blinked, assuming the person holding them in his hand was an apparition.

But he wasn’t.

I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the sun as my heart started to race. “Merrick? What are you doing here?”

“I came to find some lucky sea glass.”

“Did you know I was here?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been coming every night around this time for the last few days.”

“But…why?”

He smiled sadly. “Is there room on that rock for two?”

I was afraid, but I couldn’t stop the hope from blooming in my chest. I scooted over to make room for him. “Sure.”

Merrick sat down beside me and looked over at the sunset. Since I had to face his direction to watch, I used it as an opportunity to take a closer look at him. It looked like he’d aged a few years in just a few weeks. I was angry as shit at the man, but I was human, and it looked like he needed a friend. So I pulled out my lucky orange sea glass and held it out to him.

“Give it a rub. It looks like you could use it.”

His eyes washed over my face before he shook his head. “I’ve treated you like shit the last two weeks, and you offer me something you treasure.”

I shrugged. “It hasn’t been doing its job anyway, lately. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Merrick reached over and closed my open palm, leaving the glass tucked inside my hand. He stared down at my fist for the longest time before lifting his eyes to meet mine. “The day of Amelia’s accident, I found out she was having an affair and was also more than four months pregnant. I knew it was possible it could be someone else’s child, but I somehow convinced myself it wasn’t.” He shook his head. “I was certain the baby was mine. I was so damn angry at Amelia for what she’d done. But I eventually found a way to let some of that go by falling in love with my daughter.” Merrick swallowed. “It was like I had all this hatred and animosity in my heart, and the more I fell in love with a child I’d never met, the more those feelings pushed out the bad ones. I read to her for hours every night, played her all of my favorite songs, and even told her stories about her mother and me when we met in college. The nurses gave me my own stethoscope because I would borrow theirs to listen to her heartbeat all the time.”

It didn’t matter that Merrick had broken my heart, I opened my hand and entwined my fingers with his, keeping my sea glass inside our meshed palms.

“Over the next few months, I had to make a lot of difficult medical decisions. The more time that passed, the more Amelia’s life was at risk. But Eloise needed her mother because she wouldn’t have survived if she was born too early.”

“You had to make all those decisions for them by yourself?”

He nodded. “Her parents weren’t in the picture, and she wasn’t close to many people. But at the time, I wasn’t even sure I knew what she’d want, considering I’d had no idea she was having a long-term affair with another man. After a few months, Amelia’s health took a turn for the worse. It turned out she had some blood clots that were breaking off. It was still pretty early for the baby to be born—only twenty-nine weeks. But I agreed to try a new drug because they were both at risk. It caused Amelia to go into early labor. Eloise was born and went right to the NICU, but Amelia just kept declining. None of the medications were working.”

Merrick paused for a breath, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse. “In the meantime, the hospital had been served with a court-ordered paternity test by the guy she’d been sleeping with. A few days after they swabbed Eloise, Amelia flatlined, and they were able to bring her back. The next morning the social worker came in and told me…”

Tears streamed down Merrick’s face, and mine followed.

He shook his head. “It’s been three years, and I still can’t bring myself to say I’m not Eloise’s…”

The look of pain on his face sliced right through me. I reached up and wiped his tears. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.”

He took a minute to pull himself together before continuing. “When they told me about Eloise, I left the hospital, went to the closest bar, and got piss drunk. I came back and found Amelia’s bed empty.”

My eyes widened. “Oh, God. She…”

Merrick nodded. “Alone. Amelia died alone. I lost them both that day.”

I could barely wrap my head around what he’d gone through. After months of agonizing struggle, everything had come crashing down around him.

He took a deep breath. “I went to see Aaron the other day—the other man.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “He actually seems like a pretty nice guy. He offered to let me get to know Eloise.”

“Wow. Did you say yes?”

“I told him I needed to think about it. But I think I’m going to. There’s a big part of me that feels like I lost a daughter. I know I can never get that back. But maybe having Eloise in my life in some capacity is important.”

“I don’t even know what to say, Merrick.”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing you need to say. It’s me who owes you all the words. There’s no excuse for what I did to you, running away when you’d just opened your heart to me. Before you walked into my office that first time, I thought I’d moved on and was back to living. But I hadn’t healed. I’d just shut off that part of my heart. Falling in love with you opened me again. And when we ran into Eloise, everything just came rushing back, so my gut reaction was to shut down again, because that was the way I moved on last time.”

I blinked a few times, stuck on his words. “You love me?”

Merrick cupped my cheeks and looked into my eyes. “I was a goner the day you called me out for being an asshole and walked out of my office. I stupidly tried to fight it because I was a coward, but it was useless.” He pulled my face closer, so our noses were almost touching. “I am so in love with you that it scares the living shit out of me. What I feel is more than a want. I need you, Evie.”

Tears rained down my face again. This time, happy ones. “I love you, too.”

“I’m so sorry I hurt you, Evie. But if you’ll give me the chance, I promise to spend the next, I don’t know—ten years making it up to you.”

I laughed as I wiped my tears. “Only ten?”

He smiled. “We’ll just take it one decade at a time.”

• • •

The next morning, I didn’t wake up until a quarter to eleven. Merrick and I had spent half the night reconnecting, and I would have preferred to stay in bed all day today, too. But I had an appointment I was dreading in a few hours—one I hadn’t mentioned to the man with his arms currently wrapped around me from behind. Merrick was still sleeping, so I tried to gently extract myself from his grip without waking him. But as I put my first foot on the floor, a long arm tightened around my waist and hoisted me back to the center of the mattress.

I yelped in surprise. “I was trying not to wake you.”

Merrick took my wrist and dragged my hand down between his legs. “I’m wide awake, sweetheart.”

That he is. I gave him a little squeeze. “You know, I think this thing might be broken. It was wide awake like four times last night.”

“I’m about to show you how broken it is…” He leaned in to kiss me, but I stopped him.

“Okay, but we have to be fast. I have an appointment at noon, and I need to shower still.”

He pouted. “Cancel it.”

“You have no idea how much I would love to do that. But I need to get it over with.” I paused and looked into Merrick’s eyes. “I’m having lunch with Christian.”

He froze. “Come again?”

“It’s not what it sounds like. Christian agreed to drop the lawsuit if I have dinner with him and hear him out. My lawyer negotiated it down to a lunch. It’s the last thing I want to do, but I also don’t want to be buried under legal costs just to defend myself in a ridiculous lawsuit.”

“Fuck that. I’ll pay your legal fees.”

“That’s very sweet of you. But I can’t let you do that.”

“Then I’m going with you to lunch.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want any reason for him to back out of this deal. So I’d rather not antagonize him.”

Merrick frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“I understand. And I’m sure I’d feel the same way if the shoe was on the other foot.” I cupped his cheek. “I promise to make it up to you when I get back.”

“What time do you have to go?”

“I’m meeting him at a diner in Midtown at twelve. So I need to get out of here by eleven thirty.”

Merrick reached over to the nightstand next to him and grabbed his phone. “I’m messaging my driver. He’ll take you and wait for you to get done.”

“That’s not necessary.”

He ignored me and continued typing. When he was finished, he placed it back on the nightstand. “I told him to come at eleven forty-five. It’s Saturday, so traffic will be light. Plus, I need the full hour to help you get ready.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You’re going to help me get ready? Like blow dry my hair and do my makeup?”

“Nope. I’m going to make sure you smell like sex, and my cum is inside you while you’re sitting with that asshole.”

I chuckled. “Possessive much?”

“You have no damn idea.” Merrick crushed his lips to mine, and it didn’t take long before I was lost in the moment. He broke the kiss but kept my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged. “I want to come inside you. Not use protection. Can I do that, Evie?”

I swallowed and nodded. “I’m on the pill.”

Merrick trailed his knuckles down my cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He buried his head in my hair and nuzzled my neck, sucking along my pulse line as he made his way to my ear.

“I’m going to apologize before we even start,” he said. “Whether I have any right to or not, I feel territorial right now knowing when we’re done, you’re going to meet another man. So I need to fuck you hard.”

I liked the sound of that. Spreading my legs wide beneath him, I grinned. “Well, get to it, bossman.”

Merrick didn’t need to be told twice. He licked his hand and slipped it between us, making sure I was lubricated. But I’d been ready since he’d said the words I want to come inside you. His pupils dilated as he realized how wet I was. He aligned his swollen head with my opening and pushed inside with one deep thrust. His eyes closed as he stayed in place, looking like he’d found nirvana. When they opened, he began to move—like he’d never done before. Merrick pulled almost fully out and slammed back in hard, over and over again.

“Fuck, Evie. I’m going to fill this pussy so it’s still dripping out of you when you go.” He pulled back to look at me and groaned as he sank in. “Mine.”

My nails bit into his back as I climbed toward climax. “I’m going to…” I didn’t even make it through the sentence before my body started pulsating on its own. “Oh, God.”

Merrick sped up. It was hard and raw, each thrust going deeper until he finally let out a roar, “Fuuuuck.” Then his hips bucked one last time before he planted himself deep inside me.

We kissed languidly for a long time after that. Merrick smiled as he brushed a lock of hair from my face. “Since you won’t let me join you for lunch, at least you’ll have a bit of me inside you now.”

“We don’t need to have sex for that to happen.” I placed my hand over my heart. “You’re already in here. So you’re with me wherever I go.”