She parked in his driveway, not exactly sure what she was doing. She felt knocked off-kilter about their Valentine’s Day dinner. After she’d turned around to watch the couple behind them getting engaged, it had been as if a switch had shut off in Sebastien. And for the rest of their dinner, he had been disconnected from her. Oh, he’d kept up polite conversation—he was a corporate marketing professional, after all, great with making small talk—but when he’d driven her home, he’d been quiet and pensive. And he’d begged off coming in for coffee. He had a full day on Saturday, he’d said.
So had she. The funeral, for one thing. She owed it to Joe to attend. But...this thing with Sebastien was bugging her. He was her hope for her future. Her dream, her safe place. She hoped that Joe would understand she needed to set things right with Sebastien before she paid her respects to him.
She stared at Sebastien’s black Nissan, parked in his driveway in front of her. She and Sebastien had never had a misunderstanding or a fight before. He was usually so easy and laid-back. He never asked her about her old life as Jessa Hughes and she didn’t ask him about his past, either. She’d thought that had been a great part of their relationship.
Suddenly queasy, she turned her rearview mirror toward herself. She looked terrible, pale and drawn. She pinched color into her cheeks. Found her tube of lip gloss in her purse and smeared it on.
She glanced at Sebastien’s front door. Since his car was in the driveway, he very likely was home. She was sort of hoping he’d see her out here in the cold and come outside and kiss her. Act as though everything was okay, as usual.
But it wasn’t. She was the one who would have to be brave, who had to face whatever it was that had gone wrong. She got out and knocked on his door. She didn’t even have a key.
He answered, dressed, a coffee mug in his hand. “Jess? Don’t you have a funeral to go to?”
She nodded, miserable, standing on the doorstep feeling more alone than ever. “I’d rather talk to you.”
Immediately, he opened the door. “Come in.” Instead of his normally easy smile, he wore a quizzical expression. He was in his bare feet, and she gazed down at them as she walked in.
He took her coat and draped it over a leather couch. She never got over how spectacular his rental house was. On the beach, it had views of the surf. The ceilings were high, and in the kitchen, everything was gleaming modern stainless steel and white marble and real wood. The complete opposite of her dingy little winter rental in a drafty apartment beside a gas station.
Without asking, Sebastien went into the kitchen and came back, pressing a warm mug of coffee into her hands.
“I’m...sorry about last night,” she said. “It’s pretty obvious there’s something wrong between us. It feels like there’s a big distance, and it’s scaring me.”
He sat at right angles to her on the leather loveseat, so close his knees brushed her skirt. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it, too.” He frowned into his coffee. “Honestly, Jess, I wonder if I even know you sometimes. You get so closed up tight that I have no idea what you’re thinking.”
She expelled a breath. She’d been hearing that most of her adult life. She made a small laugh. “I don’t want to be like that with...the man I hope to marry.”
Sebastien froze for a moment.
“You did make hints,” Jessica said gently, setting down the mug. “At Christmas. You asked what kind of engagement rings I preferred.”
Sebastien nodded. She couldn’t read his face exactly, but he took her hand in his.
“I don’t want to be a controlling person,” she continued, “so I didn’t push. I know better than most what it’s like to be pushed. My mother...” She paused.
“It’s pretty obvious this funeral is stirring something up in you. That’s all I wanted to know about last night.”
She removed her hand from his and smoothed her skirt. It was more than Joe’s death and Kyle’s presence that was bothering her. It was as if she’d been propelled into the past, feeling helpless and broken again.
“You never explained this Joe person to me,” Sebastien said. “And there’s a will reading? Are you inheriting something from him?”
“I don’t know.” She stood and paced, irritated with herself. “I’m sorry. I’m just...I don’t like to talk about the past or my family.” She glanced at him. “Honestly, you don’t like to talk about yours, either. And I’ve never pushed you about it. I assumed that was part of why we get along so well.”
He smiled gently. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about them. Later.”
Okay. She couldn’t get out of this conversation. She had to go there and trust that he’d be fine with it.
“So...you know how I used to be a figure skater?” she said. “Well, I trained at the Wallis Point Twin Rinks. Did you know that?”
He grinned at her. “It’s on your Wikipedia page, Jess. Your skating career is pretty much an open book.”
She winced. She hadn’t ever thought about that, though she supposed it made sense. The big thing she’d loved about Sebastien was that he never pressed her about those days, specifically that one incident that strangers still occasionally came up to her and offered sympathy for.
“You were America’s sweetheart,” Sebastien said. “You got injured and had to pull out of your final competition just before the Olympic Games. When you cried on live television, everybody in the country cried along with you.”
Jessica sat down again. “That was a really bad time in my life, Sebastien.”
“I can imagine. It’s why I never asked you about it.” He sipped his coffee and gazed at her over the rim of his mug. “I thought you were over it. You never bring it up, so I assumed...”
She’d honestly thought the pain and guilt had dissolved, too. Until Joe had shown up in her physical therapy office and then had written her into his will. Kyle coming home had been her tipping point.
She closed her eyes, overcome with guilt so sharp it stabbed into her solar plexus. She felt dragged right back to age seventeen. Crushed. Under everyone’s thumb, panicked and alone, and handling the situation all wrong. She’d better pull herself out of that place if she hoped to salvage all that she’d so painstakingly built for herself since then.
Sebastien eyed her. “What’s wrong?”
“I...need to tell you about something that probably isn’t on my Wikipedia page.” She took a deep breath. Her hands were trembling just anticipating telling him.
Sebastien set down his coffee mug. All his attention—love and concern—on her.
That gave her the courage she needed. “People don’t know this...and I actually promised myself to never tell anyone, but...” She had to do this. Had to bring Sebastien back to her again. “I went to a lawyer shortly after my injury, when I was still seventeen, to look into being legally emancipated from my mother.” She wiped her eyes with her thumb. “You have to understand, Sebastien, my mother was my only family. She and I were...well, I was exhausted and I couldn’t please her anymore. For a lot of reasons I had to separate myself from her, and that one drastic step changed my whole life and not necessarily in the best way.”
She stared at her black skirt, hoping her Wikipedia page wasn’t specific enough to clue Sebastien into what was missing. Kyle’s role. Which would only lead to a secret she could never divulge to anyone.
Instead, she reached for the other, lesser thing that bothered her. “I think I’m kind of screwed up because I have to go back into that same law firm again on Monday. I think it’s messing with my head. That’s all,” she finished.
“Why?