Page 27 of Veiled Fantasies

His eyes dropped to the floor. “I keep the picture to remember what’s important.”

Right away he caught himself. If family and love were so important, why didn’t he keep them in his life instead of in a picture? No wonder Jill thought he was a liar. He was. Just not in the way she suspected.

He felt her nodding like she understood. Her voice, hushed and sincere, sounded like she might. “What about his family?”

He pictured them the last time he visited, too long ago. The kids and his widowed sister-in-law. What happened to his vow to make it up there every couple of weeks?

“They’re all right. Both sets of grandparents are there, that helps.” He trailed off as the past renewed its grip on his throat. “His wife, she has a boyfriend now…” He shrugged the rest and wondered for the first time if the boyfriend was the reason why he’d started visiting less frequently. That or work. Always work.

Her voice came in a whisper, like she didn’t dare ask. “How do you feel about that?”

A question he’d never quite had the balls to ask himself.

A heartbeat went by and another, slow and ponderous. “It’s sad,” he admitted. The face looking back at him in the glass looked tired. Worn out. “It should be him with her, with the kids.” A guilty pang hit him, and he rushed to correct himself. “Of course I’m glad she has someone. And maybe if it works out, the kids will have someone, too.” He tried to sound upbeat even as his gut went all heavy. What choice did he have? What choice did any of them have but to move on?

Only not all of them were moving on.

“It was…a bad time.” Major understatement. Martin died. Erik stopped living. Just like his reflection said: he was there but not there. Transparent. Empty. He’d lost faith—faith that things would work out all right. Because they didn’t. The world was cruel and unjust and full of pain.

“My girlfriend then, Anna…” He trailed off. Since when did Anna get downgraded from fiancée? Since she left him, probably. “She…” What was he trying to say?

Jill didn’t need to know this part. How they were all set to get married, have kids, the whole deal. How it all seemed so right until fear froze him into a solid block of ice. What if something happened? To him? To her? Worse still, the kids? He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t imagine the pain that would bring. So Anna had moved on and found a guy who would. By the time he’d started to think a little more clearly, it was too late. She was gone. So he had simply retreated back into the cold. Because numbness kept feelings in check and dulled the pain, like a good stiff drink.

He skipped all that. “She left. Married another guy.” His eyes traced the pattern in the carpet as he finished up. “She’s pregnant with their second child now.” Even he could hear the bitterness in his voice. He looked up to deliver the punch line. “I even went to the baptism of their first,” he said, wearing the same forced smile as he had on the occasion.

Jill’s jaw dropped.

“We’re all from the same town,” he explained, the smile coming a little easier now. “It’s a very small town.” A small town, so far away.

Where the hell was he now? And how did he ever get here? His throat dried up as he shoveled emotions from one side of their padded cell to the other, determined to keep them locked away.

What a mess.

Then. Now. All of it.

* * *

Grief groped a greedy path into the room, a creeping fog bank that hovered briefly before swallowing Jill up. It would hang there like a satisfied sludge until it was good and ready to go, she knew. Even the weather god couldn’t call out enough sun to burn that fog away.

Her eyes filled with the tears he kept bottled up. It was all her fault for bringing it up. If only she could go back to the point right before she wrecked everything. The part with the kiss. Not so much for the kiss, but the feeling of optimism she’d had at that moment. The tenuous belief in a just world. But Erik was right. Life could be so unfair, so tragic. She looked at the window, the reflection of her sagging shoulders highlighted by city lights. His, too.

Let go, she wanted to whisper to him. Let go.

The only movement in the room was his chest, rising and falling slightly with each successive breath. She slid an arm across his shoulders almost by reflex. A lean and her lips were on his ear. They didn’t whisper; they just touched lightly. A soft touch of compassion. Nothing more.

Except that it was more, and both of them knew it.

Chapter Nine

It was wrong, Jill chided herself, completely wrong. He needed to be left alone right now. Slowly, she pried herself free with that little bit of extra force needed to break two magnets apart. Back into the fog’s ugly chill. She would stand by in silent comfort, do the right thing.

City lights lit the room coolly, distant points of nothing in the dark. Jill wondered how many other hearts were aching in this strange metropolis tonight.

A touch reached her, the whisper of a breath from the right. She leaned toward it, tracing its source. It was Erik, wishing her back. Wanting her.

Maybe there was some sun somewhere behind the fog, after all. She reached for it, letting her arm brush back across his shoulders. A feather light touch, more warmth than weight. She felt Erik exhale with a soundless sigh and bend his head toward hers. Softly, quietly, she let her lips move on him a second time. Something to cover up the pain.

Erik tilted his chin toward her, seeking. The way opera lovers closed their eyes and listened to something beyond the notes. So she did it again. The softest hint of a kiss, right at the crest of his ear. Her lips gave him a moment to consider, then touched down again, bolder this time. Touching was healing. He was so close.

---