Page 25 of Give Me More
“It’s just dinner,” he said. “I wanted it to be special, but if you don’t like it, all you have to do is say the word and we can go back to the café or order something to your room. I really just wanted to have some time with you tonight, away from everyone else.”
He sounded earnest and his hand on her arm loosened so that if she did really want to leave, she knew he wouldn’t stop her. “I’m fine with an evening sail.” Over RJ’s shoulder she glimpsed a guy dressed in all white. He gave a hand signal to someone she couldn’t see and the yacht began to move.
After a few seconds, she said, “You created this to look like that night at the restaurant. The night you proposed.”
He dropped his hand from her arm and slipped it into his front pocket. “You’re right,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t been able to move forward since that night, Grace.” He shook his head. “Yeah, I’ve gotten up every day and I’ve gone about my business doing my job, and being with my family, but that’s it.”
She took a step back from him, realizing now that in addition to wanting to do something special, this dinner was an attempt to find closure. “Don’t say you haven’t moved on, because you’ve dated, RJ. I’ve seen pictures of you in the tabloids with dates.” But not girlfriends. There’d only been about three or four times that she could recall that there’d ever been any mention of RJ with a date, and those few times were usually during some big high-profile function on the company’s behalf. She’d told herself to let it go at the time, but now, tonight, it felt like they were both still holding on to everything that did or didn’t happen in the last ten years.
“And I’m sure you’ve dated, too, although thank all that’s holy I didn’t have to see any pictures of that.”
His tone was grim and she knew why. RJ wasn’t a jealous man, but he did protect what he deemed to be his, and those he cared for deeply. Seeing him in pictures with those women, despite how few, hadn’t been a joyful experience for her, either.
“Okay, so we did move on.”
“I want to know why we had to, Grace.” He walked to the railing and stared out at the water. “I told myself I wasn’t going to ask you this question and so far I’ve resisted the urge over a dozen times. But then we were together the other night and it felt like no time had passed between us. It felt good and right.”
She didn’t respond because there was truth to his words. That night every touch, every kiss and stroke between them, had felt more than good and better than right.
Truth was, she’d wanted to be with him in any way she could for any amount of time possible. If that was wrong, then she was definitely guilty.
“Why didn’t you accept my proposal?” He asked the question she knew had been on his mind all this time.
“I couldn’t,” she said simply. He wanted to hear more; he deserved to hear it all. She cleared her throat and continued. “I couldn’t marry you and become Mrs. Ronald Gold III, when Grace Hopkins hadn’t made a name for herself yet. Can you understand that?”
He ran a hand over his beard and then folded his arms across his chest. “You didn’t want to marry me because you thought my name would overshadow yours? You could’ve kept your last name, Grace.”
“No, RJ. It’s not that simple.” She took a step toward him. “I could’ve kept my last name but the world still would’ve known me only as your wife. Another member of the Gold family. Part of the fashion industry. I would’ve been all those things and somewhere in the footnotes it would’ve said, ‘Oh yeah, and she writes stories sometimes.’ That’s not what I wanted my life to be.”
“I thought you wanted your life to be with me.” His voice was bereft and a tiny part of her crumbled at the sound. “We’d talked so many times about where we’d live, the kids, the dog. All of it. We’d planned our whole future together and then when I thought I was giving it to you, you threw it back in my face and left without a word.”
And the hurt from that night filled every word he’d just spoken. She wanted to cry or better yet, to scream in frustration. “I handled that badly, I know. There were so many times in those first few weeks that I thought about coming back to tell you how sorry I was for not being honest with you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “I thought it was too late.”
“I loved you,” he said quietly. “I never stopped loving you.”
If words could totally demolish a person’s spirit, RJ would get an award for casting a death blow right now. “I never stopped loving you, either.” She spoke a lot softer than he did and with much more doubt than she’d heard in his tone. But that wasn’t because she doubted that she loved him—that was the truest thing she’d ever known in her life—but that also didn’t seem like enough.
“Then tell me why, Grace. Because your last name, my last name, what was printed about you in the tabloids, I don’t give a damn about any of that and I know you don’t either. Now I’m not saying that I don’t respect you wanting to make your mark in your career, you know I understand that better than anybody, but you had to know I’d always support you and your career. Always.”
She walked to railing now, standing there next to him and staring out at the water. The sun was just beginning to lower in the distance. The sky was a brilliant mix of orange, blue and golden-yellow stripes, shimmering over the water.
“I wanted to be a good investigative journalist and I knew I could do that. I just needed a little more time.” She sighed. “I didn’t know if I could be a wife and mother. Not like my mother and my sisters planned to be. My mother had her career and her family and she made it all look so easy. And my sisters were eager to do the same, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my career. So didn’t that mean I couldn’t do the same? Or at least not at that time. Hope, Charity and Trinity, they’d all made marks in their careers by the time they started thinking about having it all. I needed to do the same. I needed to make my mark first and then perhaps I would’ve been ready for the family.”
When he didn’t speak, she was certain he thought she’d lost her mind. He came to stand closer to her, until their arms touched but they both continued to stare out at the water.
“Why didn’t you tell me that’s what was going on? You threw away everything we had because you were afraid?”
She’d never, not once in ten years, said it that way. It had always been a choice for her—career over family. Establish who and what she was before becoming the other half of someone else. Admitting she was afraid would’ve been just like accepting that she’d always been the least accomplished of the Hopkins sisters, a burden she’d carried on her shoulders all her life.
“I threw it all away because I didn’t think it was for me at the time.” Her chest ached with the realization that she’d succumbed to her fear of not being enough. Again.
