Page 86 of Beach Cottage Kisses
Iris didn’t want to have to hide. To go back to pretending to be someone she was not. Scott was worried that Sage’s opinion, her attempts to interfere with them, to make them more than they were, would somehow come between them.
Iris had a different fear keeping her awake. “We said we’d be honest with each other,” she told him.
“Mmm-hmm.”
Not much encouragement there, but she didn’t stop. “I’m finding that I can’t go back to a life of pretense, Scott.”
She felt him tense up again, as he had when she’d mentioned Sage’s talk with her before the wedding. Tempted to slide her fingers off his arm, to move away, as was her way—to pull inside herself, she made herself stay put. She’d fought too long and too hard to take back her life, to make a life for herself. She couldn’t give up herself.
Most particularly not after finding out how much of her was still in there. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’ve spent the past three years living only part of my life.”
He didn’t move. Not toward her. But not away, either.
“Talking to you last week, it wasn’t just me sharing my past with a friend, Scott.” She lay on her side, with her fingers still on his arm, looking at the wall beyond him. “As it turned out, it was me accepting the past as part of who I am. About bringing me fully into the present. I feel stronger. Healthier. Happier, even, though I know a lot of that has to do with you. But, regardless, I can’t go back into hiding.”
She raised her glance up to him as she said the last. Afraid. But knowing she was doing the right thing, too.
His jaw was tight. She saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “What are you saying?” His question held no judgment. But there was definite reticence there. A possibility that he wouldn’t be on board.
“I’m saying I don’t want to hide,” she said. “What we do, the choices we make, who we have sex with, where, what it means…that’s fully up to us, Scott.”
“You’re telling me you want to make some kind of announcement to Sage and Gray?” His tone had gotten thinner.
“No. Of course not.” The truth. Not said because she could very likely be losing him. “But if we’re on the beach, and want to walk to my place or yours, together, we need to do that.Just like we’ve been doing all week. Sort of. Like we’d be doing if you could walk the beach.”
“They’ll figure us out the first night that happens.”
“I know.”
“So how is this different from making an announcement?”
He hadn’t left the bed. But then, they were at his place. In the bed he slept in.
“Making an announcement makes it more than it is. Like we’ve both changed, made a commitment to be a couple. We aren’t that. So to do that would mislead her. We just need to be who we are. Show her, don’t tell her. Be who we’ve always been, other than, you know, the naked part.” She wanted to touch his stomach then. Maybe move her hand lower. Figured the timing wasn’t right. Settled for talking more. “At some point, she clues in to what we’re doing, comes to us. We act casual, because this part of our relationship is just that. We tell her that it’s not a big deal. She believes us or she doesn’t. We have no control over that, nor does what Sage thinks to herself have any effect on whether or not we have casual sex. As long as we’re honest with each other, and both keep wanting what we have, we continue as we are.”
Iris rolled onto her back as she finished. She’d said everything she had to say. Would stand by it. Feeling good about it.
And she’d deal with what Scott chose to do. Either way.
Figuring she’d give him a minute or two, and then get up and head home, she stared at his ceiling. Looking at shadows cast by the hall light. Joined by the moonlight.
Illumination that met in the dark by chance. Both sources of which would work just fine, be unaffected if they didn’t meet.
“I think you’re right.”
About the moon not being changed without Scott’s hall light on? Her first thought covered the shakiness inside her. For a second or two. “You do?”
Turning slowly, Scott propped himself up and reached over to stroke the hair back from her forehead. A touch that seemed to mesmerize her. “I do,” he said. “In the first place, of course Sage is going to sense the difference in me, and in us. But more than that, no more hiding for you. And third, no more feeling like we aren’t good enough just as we are.”
Iris blinked at the tears that sprang to her eyes as Scott’s lips came down to hers. And she gave herself wholly up to him as the kiss grew into more, too.
She might have been robbed of the ability to believe in happily-ever-after as Sage did. But she believed in the moment.
And was grateful for every one of them that she could share with this man.
Scott Martin was not her twin.
But, inside, he was a lot like her. He got her.
