“For someone whose job is all about the sea, you haven’t even dipped your toes yet. If you tell me you’re scared of sharks…” His words fade into a teasing chuckle.
“Not quite. In fact, I’m pretty okay with sharks. I had to get close and personal with some blacktips for an exhibition, and they were skittish creatures. Big and fast, and I wouldn’t mess with them, but…”
“Huh.” He side-eyes me with an impressed grin. “That’s kind of badass.”
“Thanks.”
“Now I’m intrigued. What other cool exhibitions have you worked on?”
“I think that working on the main tank is probably as cool as it gets, so the sharks are definitely it.”
“Hmm…” He turns to look at me, narrowing his gaze. “How about your favorite?”
“The reef and invertebrate exhibitions. I’m a sucker for all the bright colors, and there’s so much more life to it all than people think. It’s a real ecosystem where every creature plays its part…it’s not all rocks and shells.”
“It makes you happy.” He smiles, and I notice that my cheeks are starting to hurt from smiling too. “It looks real good on you, sunshine. Beautiful.”
My heart stutters at his unexpected statement. I can barely breathe as his gaze meanders over my face, flitting between my eyes and my lips. I’m overwhelmed by the heat that courses through me. I can’t remember the last time a man called me beautiful, let alone said it to my face. It baffles me even more as to how he’s divorced. He seems so good, almost too good.
You know how it goes, kiddo, my father’s voice whispers around my thoughts. If it seems too good, then…
“Can I ask you something?” I try to ignore the hard twist of my stomach.
“Anything,” he replies instantly from where he’s now leaning back on the towel.
“How long have you been divorced?”
The relaxed look on his face straightens, and his body tenses, and I instantly want to take back my question. I hate that I’ve made him uncomfortable.
“Sorry, Jo mentioned it and…” I cut myself off because I can’t bring myself to actually tell him that I don’t understand how someone like him could be unattached. Or even divorced.
If I’d been lucky enough to marry someone like Garrett Dixon, I would’ve held on damn tight and counted all my lucky stars that he was mine. Instead, I got Carl. Asshole, liar and cheater. If he hadn’t given me Iris, I would say he ruined my life.
“A while,” he says, sitting up. “A long time actually.”
“Oh, was it awful?”
“What has Jo told you?” Crossing his ankles, Garrett turns toward me. Although his usual lightness is gone, the look he holds me with promises to give me anything I ask for.
“Only that you were married and that you have the worst taste in women.” I try to inject some levity into the latter part, hoping that it will make him relax again.
Even though Garrett laughs lightly at my remark, it’s not his usual deep baritone that makes my heart sputter and my stomach fill with butterflies.
And it’s so odd that I’m only now noticing the things his laugh does to me. In this moment where I have somehow ruined them.
“I was married,” he ventures with a sigh. “It was a long time ago, and I was a very different person. Or at least I had lessons to learn, you know?”
“Yeah, I do.” I’ve learned quite a few the last month.
“And maybe my taste in women wasn’t exactly all that great, but I’m sure others could say that their taste in me wasn’t good either.”
“Oh.” My heart pinches for a beat before it hangs somewhere between my chest and my stomach.
All I know of Garrett is good. His big heart and generosity. His softness and patience. The immeasurable kindness that he has shown me and Iris. I’ve never felt anything but safe with him, yet something tells me I’m not going to like what he’s about to tell me.
“I was young, stupid, and had more money than sense. Not to mention I was a cocky shit who thought I was a gift to the world. When I decided to become a doctor, I saw the glory side of it—wealth, success, and all the trappings a guy could want. And I got it all.” Pausing, he draws a line in the sand with his finger, dotting either side of the line so that it looks like a scar. “I had it all, but it wasn’t the life I imagined. It didn’t make me happy like I had envisioned myself to be. There was always something missing.”
Falling to my stomach, my heart breaks for him. The sadness in his eyes resonates with every fiber of my being. It’s the first time I’ve looked into someone’s eyes and found my desolation looking right back at me.
“It made me miserable, and I became an asshole. I slept around on my wife, and it got ugly.”
I clear my throat, trying to ignore the way it swells, threatening to choke me. I’m not even sure why I’m so disappointed by this new knowledge. It shouldn’t hit me as hard as it has.
“Why? Why cheat?” I hiss, blankly staring at the way his hand claws into the sand, squeezing as hard as my chest is pulverizing my heart. “Was she horrible? Terrible? Was she a bad wife? Is that why…?”
Carl said I was a bad wife, didn’t he? He wanted me to be better. Maybe if I had been…
“Avery, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but my past has no bearing on what your husband did to you. Michelle and I were unhappy. We married for the wrong reasons, and…” Garrett stops, reaching toward me. When I pull back, he drops his hand. “Don’t cry,” he groans.
The pained sound cuts through me deeper than anything he’s told me.
“I’m sorry.”
His lips tip up a tad, barely a smile. “Why are you apologizing?”
“I-I don’t know.”
Something inside me is wrecked by what he’s told me. Since Jo first said that he’s divorced, I’ve gone over every possibility in my head. Another thing that I don’t understand—why I’ve thought about it so much. I shouldn’t care at all.
Except, I thought he was different. All the sides I’ve seen of him until now have been so perfect.
There’s no such thing as perfect, and if it seems too good to be true… My father’s voice taunts me.
Maybe it’s better that I steel myself. I need to trust myself. Stop entertaining hopes and ideas when there is nothing to them. My life is a big enough mess as it is without adding more feelings and hopes to it.
“I should go make sure Iris is doing okay,” I tell him, fully aware that she is more than okay. Iris is in her element, but I need to put some distance between me and him.
Garrett nods, offering me his hand to help me up. It’s the first mistake I make, because his touch wreaks havoc through me. The current reaches every nook and cranny of my being. It takes every ounce of my strength to pull back and hold myself together.
And like that first mistake, I already know that there’s going to be more.
Chapter Twelve
GARRETT
Shit! I’ve never wished I could be someone else more than I do right now, watching Avery walk away. A heaviness sets in my chest, like all my fears and anxieties are congested in my lungs, suffocating me. All the while I watch her talk to Jo, the weight getting greater by the second, the sun getting hotter.
For the first time since I left New York almost ten years ago, I want to fucking run like a pussy from everything I’m holding back.
The truth is that Avery has enough on her plate—she doesn’t need more shit to weigh her down. Besides, I’ve shouldered the past, kept it quiet long enough that it doesn’t need to be spoken of to anyone else. Jo might have gotten it out of me a few years back, but no one else needs to know all the details. It’s easier to be the asshole than to be the poor guy whose marriage fell apart because he couldn’t get his wife pregnant.
That’s not true. I could. She did. It just didn’t stick. It never fucking stuck. And all the jokes that everyone likes to make about practicing got really old when you’re trying so damn hard that it doesn’t even fee
l right anymore.
“Are you going to explain it to her?” Jo asks when I help her down, beside me.
“Explain what?”
“The circumstances,” she snaps like she’s the one being crushed on the inside. “You’ve obviously told Avery about the divorce.”
“No, you told her.”
“It slipped out when we were talking. If you could see the way she looks at you.”
“How does she look at me, Jo?” My question comes out short and frustrated.
“Now? Like you’re a cheating asshole.” Taking her hat off her head, she fans herself with it. “Before, like you could hang her moon.”
The disappointment that downturned Avery’s face earlier twists in my gut. And with it comes a low-simmering anger at her judgment, like it was her I hurt.
“Why did you tell her anything?”
“It’s better she knows now. You don’t want her to find out later on when she’s in love with you and it will feel like a betrayal or a lie.”
“Fall in love with me.” A scoff blusters from my lips, trying to dampen the warmth that the prospect breathes through me.
“She’s half in love with you already.”
That’s not true. Avery is all the things that every woman I’ve ever been with wasn’t, even the one I married. Regardless of whether she believes it or not, she’s something extraordinary. So easy to get lost in and carried away with. Her and the little girl she’s paddling in the rock pools with. They deserve the world and every treasure it has to offer.
“Garrett—” Jo stops as I get to my feet and start down the beach. “You can run away, but it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the fact that you feel it too,” she calls, bringing me to a halt before I turn and head back to her.
“No.” Trying to take a deep breath, I look up at the blinding sun. It only serves to irritate me that it’s not enough that I still feel her closeness, but the stupid fucking sun reminds me of her too. As though it’s taunting me.
“No what?”
“No, we don’t even know each other. She doesn’t know me, and I don’t know her.”
“If that ain’t the biggest pile of shit you’ve shoveled, I don’t know what is. But say you’re right—which you’re not—that’s exactly why she should know it all. Let her in, Doc. Let her know everything, especially the parts that make you uncomfortable.”
“Why? Why do you even care?”
“There’s no redemption without forgiveness. You can’t redeem your past if you can’t forgive yourself enough to allow yourself to be happy. And if she looks at you like you hung her moon, you look at her like she is the sun. And this old lady here is watching it all and thinking that it’s a sin to waste something so special.”
With her voice breaking, she takes a deep trembling breath while putting her hat back on to shadow her eyes.
I feel like the biggest ass for making her cry. That on its own is a miracle—add the fact that she’s tearing up in front of me…
“Jo…”
“Take it from someone that’s been there and done it all. Your side and her side. I’ve been on both, and I can tell you that she’s going to need someone to stand beside her and endure what’s coming with her.”
“How can I be what she wants or needs when I’m no better than—”
“Finish that sentence and I swear to Christ I’ll whack you so hard with my stick you’ll be seeing stars to go with her moon.” Looking up at me, she sighs. “It’s a goddamn tragedy if you have the brain and heart to help others, but not yourself, Garrett Dixon. Don’t be a fool, or even worse, a coward.”
“You know, most people would just say sorry for getting in other’s business.”
“I’m not most people, and I’ll tell you what I told Avery.” Leveling me with a glare, she holds her head high and mighty. “We’ve all made mistakes. We all have a past, some that hurt others and some where we hurt ourselves. Others where we hurt and get hurt. But if there is one thing I’m certain of, it’s that you will do anything for her and Iris.”
“Why would you tell her that?”
“Because it’s the truth, and we both know it.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a meddling old bat?”
Jo laughs, sticking her tongue out at me before she retorts, “Thanks, asshat.”
Iris falls asleep the minute she sits on the couch at my place, and Jo isn’t far behind her. It’s late afternoon, and the sun is just starting to set. Avery has barely said a word to me since our conversation earlier, and the sting of her silence is running through me.
Looking around the place, she appears tantamount curious and surprised. I notice the way she runs her fingers over every surface, as though she’s physically trying to get a feel of her surroundings. Everywhere her fingers touch, I have to trace mine.
“Avery,” I murmur, stepping around her so that we’re standing face-to-face at the long kitchen. “I don’t want things to be awkward between us.”
“They’re not.” Maybe I would’ve believed her if her tone wasn’t so high-pitched and awkward.
We’re silent for a second as I try to think of a way of addressing the elephant in the room.
“You have a really nice home. Not really what I expected.”
“What were you expecting?” I flatten my hand down beside hers on the counter and observe the way her fingertips curl.
“A lot more white.”
“I’ve spent too much of my life in sterile environments to live in one.”
“Makes sense.” She blusters a half-smile, backing away when I step closer, gaze flitting over the slate-tiled wall over my shoulder and then to the floor. “It’s beautiful.”
Taking her hand before she has the opportunity to pull away anymore, I lead her through to the small yard. It’s the size of a postage stamp, but it has a decent outdoor kitchen that boasts one of the few sea views left in Sandbridge.
The breeze wraps around us as I guide her to my favorite seat in the house—a half wall that hasn’t been touched since Charlie had Mark landscape the yard when she first moved in here.
“This is pretty.” She looks around the kept flower beds as I sit. They’re mostly verdure, but there are random pops of color here and there. Mainly lavender and lilac sea daisies that Makenna insisted on planting last year.
“Charlie’s responsible for it. The garden was as is when I bought the house off of Mark with the exception of the flowers. Makenna went through a phase of obsessing over bees.”
“Was that after your divorce?”
“No, I lived closer to Virginia Beach town when I first moved here.”
The memory of the old place makes my skin crawl, and as if she can sense it, Avery sits beside me. Not near enough to touch, but close enough that I can smell her honeyed scent mixed in with the soft lavender.
“Mark and Erik knew each other, and it was close enough to the clinic and central to downtown, but some shady shit went down. Mark could’ve died… Charlie and I had no real clue what the fuck was going on even though Erik and I lived in the same place. I remember him acting odd, but I was too self-absorbed to think more of it.”
I should’ve been a better brother and been more aware of everything that was happening, but I was too busy paving the same road with my ex-girlfriend that I had with my ex-wife. They could’ve been two peas in a pod—Michelle and Annika.
“You can’t blame yourself for what other people do,” Avery whispers, nudging my arm with her shoulder. “I keep telling myself that. Maybe it’ll stick sometime soon.”
Maybe it’ll stick. There’s a phrase I’m familiar with. Maybe this time it’ll stick. Maybe next time. Why isn’t it sticking?
“Michelle desperately wanted kids.” The words bluster from me without warning. “I think she wanted a Band-Aid for our marriage.”
Avery sits straighter, pulling at the hem of her white cotton dress before clutching her hands between her thighs.
“We already had issues.
We weren’t exactly a match made in heaven, but she was devoted to making it last between us, no matter what and by any means necessary. I didn’t realize how much she wanted to stay together until she went from waiting for the right time to wanting a child more than a waitlist designer purse.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Avery asks with an audible swallow. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“I know.” But strangely, I want to. The last few hours have possibly been the worst I’ve had in so long. That constant fret of what’s going through her mind and what she thinks of me. Of the possibility that she might not trust me anymore.
“It makes no sense for me to care about your past. It’s not like you owe me anything or like you lied to me. It’s not like we’re…you and me…we…it’s not like—”
“Isn’t it?”
Her stumbling murmur cuts deeper than a knife. Avery is the first woman in longer than I can recall to make me want to please her in every possible way. She’s all I can think of. A constant craving I can’t sate.
“We barely know each other, Doc.” Avery looks at me with tears lining her eyes.
Where she’s caught the sun, her freckles are a little darker, and her cheeks are a ruddy rose that makes me want to reach across and kiss her with everything I have in me. The need to lick and bite those plump lips of hers is overwhelming enough that I cup her face and draw her to me as I shuffle close to her on the wall.
Avery is so fucking beautiful, and there isn’t a single part of her that’s fake. Not aesthetically or characteristically. She’s so fucking honest and good. So perfect. All I want to do is haul her to me and lose myself in her. Forget everything that has ever been and just be with her.
“Garrett,” she whispers when our noses brush.
Endurance: A Salvation Society Novel Page 10