Page 31 of Shuttered Hearts

“Thanksgiving? I don’t think I know anyone who loves Thanksgiving that much.” I laugh. His excitement over the festival is kind of contagious.

“What’s not to love? All the food, the pie, and I know it’s cheesy, but people are nicer around the holidays.” His excitement fades slightly. “I will admit, Thanksgiving itself has been a bit of a bummer the last few years, especially since my divorce, but I can still find plenty to love about the day.”

I’m quiet, not sure what to say. I didn’t know Declan had been married before. “I do get to see my sister, which is a major bonus.” Declan looks at me when I still don’t say anything. “What?”

“Sorry.” I shake my head, turning back to my food. “I didn’t know you were divorced.” I shrug slightly.

“Don’t apologize.” He wipes his mouth with his napkin before balling up the trash from his lunch. “I should have realized you didn’t know. It’s just one of those things your family knows, and I guess I assumed they mentioned it. I forget we’ve only known each other for a little more than a month.” He smiles in a self-deprecating way.

“I got divorced about a year before I moved here. My parents’ opinion on the divorce was a major motivator in that move.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” I rush to tell him.

“No, I don’t have an issue sharing. It’s not a secret.” He turns in his seat to face me directly, his legs sandwiching me between them. He takes a moment, seeming to steel himself for what he’s about to say next. “I know we’ve talked about my art, but I guess I’ve never really talked about why I stopped.”

“No, you haven’t, and I don’t understand it. I’ve researched your work. It’s amazing.” I put my lunch down and turn to face him as well.

“My ex-wife Melissa is a big part of that.” That self-deprecating smile returns.

“You know I was always interested in painting. It was something my parents begrudgingly allowed me to do as long as I pursued something they deemed acceptable. So, while majoring in business, I was still pursuing my art. I sold my first major piece when I was nineteen. I was so …” He pauses, searching for the words. “I was happy and proud.”

“As you should be.”

“Making that first sale convinced my parents majoring in art wasn’t the craziest idea in the world. So, I switched majors and worked my butt off to still graduate on time. All while working professionally in the art world.” He looks down at his hands for a second.

“It was right after I turned twenty when Melissa and I started dating. I’d known her my whole life. Our families were close.” He studies me briefly before continuing. “She’s a Whitaker.”

“Ahh. Gotcha.” It’s not like Declan and I haven’t talked about his past at all. He’s told me about how his family and the Whitakers co-founded the town of Harborview and how they’dalways been close friends. It seems he’d missed a pretty big piece of information when he told me that story.

“Right. We knew each other, but I’d never really seen her as anything other than a friend. She was two years younger than me and my best friend’s little sister.” I try to smother my smile before it breaks free, but he catches it and chuckles, shaking his head at me.

I know nothing has happened with Declan, but there are feelings there that are getting harder and harder to ignore. And unless I’m reading the room wrong, I’m pretty sure Declan has been experiencing the same struggles.

“That summer, right before I went back to school for my junior year, things changed, and we started dating. It was good for a while. So, right after I graduated and moved back home, I proposed. She said yes. Both of our families were ecstatic.” He’s quiet, staring over my shoulder as if he’s caught up in the past.

“Declan.” I reach out and touch his arm, trying to bring him the comfort he’s always offering me. “You don’t have to tell me about any of this.”

He shakes his head and turns back to me. “We both wanted and expected different things from each other. Honestly, that’s all it comes down to. She didn’t want to stay in Harborview, and she wanted the prestige she thought would come from selling my art. I wanted the small-town living, and while I wasn’t mad about how my art career was going, I didn’t need it to be happy. I never wanted the recognition she craved.”

“I get that,” I tell him. I could have gone a very different path with my photography, but I preferred existing under the radar. I loved how I felt with a camera in my hand, and I didn’t want the pressures of trying to make critics happy to warp that.

“I went to New York for an art exhibit. Normally, Melissa would go with me, but things had been strained for a while, soshe stayed home. When I got home, she told me she’d slept with someone.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t seen that coming. I had gotten to know Declan pretty well since meeting him, and everything I’d heard from my family and the town had been right—he was a good man. I couldn’t understand how someone would want to hurt him, not if they really knew him, and definitely not if they claimed to love him.

“She was devastated about it,” Declan rushes to say as if he doesn’t want me to think badly of her. “I’m not saying she didn’t do anything wrong. She did, but it hadn’t been intentional. We had a really good talk about all of it.” He scoffs slightly. “It was probably one of the few real conversations we ever had throughout our relationship.” He glances at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

“Sometimes the big conversations need the big pushes.”

He nods his head. “Maybe. But we both decided we weren’t making the other person happy, and we didn’t think we could. So we decided to get divorced.” He smirks. “My parents weren’t happy about it. Actually, they were furious. It felt like I spent my whole life doing whatever was expected of me, trying to make them happy. I couldn’t do it anymore.” He sighs.

“I tried to continue living in town, but it was hard. Melissa and I were fine. I think we even became friends again. But it was hard being around my parents. It didn’t matter that my best friend—Melissa’s brother—supported me in the divorce. I just wasn’t happy there anymore.” He shrugs. “Maybe if Ava had been around more, I might have been able to make it work, but she’d still been in law school at the time.”

“So, you left and ended up in Ashford Falls, being pulled into the Marks family craziness and never breaking free from it.”

Declan laughs softly. “That’s one way to put it.” He’s quiet, thinking about something. “No, your family saved me when Ididn’t even know I needed saving.” He swallows visibly. “I’ll always be grateful to them for that.”

We’re both quiet, taking time to absorb everything he told me. I’m glad he opened up to me, but just as he hasn’t treated me any differently for sharing my past with him, I won’t treat him any differently either.

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