She kissed him and drew him to her, closer. Closer. He couldn’t resist her, no matter what the circumstances. He simply could not resist Serena.
The sun streamed through the windows. Serena got out of bed and dressed.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said, kissing him one more time before she walked out the door.
After she left, Jeff lay in bed thinking. He wanted Serena so much. Wanted to be a part of her life. Wanted to be a part of her family, which meant Elena, her only family. He wanted everything, but he still wasn’t sure he was going to get it. He felt that things were not settled yet. A feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that it wasn’t over yet with Serena and Steven.
Serena came to the bar every night the rest of the week, and every night they went upstairs to Jeff’s bed. He was in deep with her, but he remained wary.
And then, on Friday night, Steven came into the bar.
Serena was sitting at her usual spot, on a barstool down at one end of the bar. Jeff saw Steven come in and walk over to Serena. He saw the look of surprise on her face when Steven sat down next to her. Jealousy and anger roiled up in him, but he had to keep his cool. He walked down the bar and stationed himself near Serena, letting her and Steven know he was there.
“Serena,” Steven said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
Serena looked into to Steven’s eyes and saw that he was hurting. Her heart ached to see him like that.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “We have nothing to talk about.”
“I understand your feeling that way,” Steven said. “But I want to explain everything to you, so you’ll understand what happened. My feelings for you are real.”
Jeff kept his gaze on Steven and Serena, but Cindy came up with a drink order and he had to fill it. Dammit! He needed to stay next to Serena. But he halfheartedly made the drink while he kept his eye on Serena and Steven.
“Will you at least let me explain it?” Steven asked.
Serena looked at him and he was so sad. She felt the love she had been feeling for him before everything went haywire. She felt something for him.
“Yes,” she said.
“Can we go somewhere else?” Steven said. “Jeff is giving us the eye.”
“We can walk down to the bay,” Serena said. It was a place she and Steven had been several times together. Those times had been good. She didn’t think this time would be. Whatever Steven had to say, she wasn’t buying it.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s walk down to the bay.” She looked over at Jeff and gave him a signal that she was leaving with Steven, but it was all right. Jeff looked back with concern, but he accepted she was going with Steven. He wasn’t happy about it, Serena could see that, but he accepted it.
Steven followed her out the front door and together they walked down to the bay’s shore. She sat and he sat beside her.
“It’s a blue moon tonight,” she said to Steven. The full moon, the second in that month, shone full power onto the bay waters.
Neither spoke for a few minutes as they gazed at the moon and the water. Serena didn’t feel angry, as she had when she found out about Steven’s wife. She just felt resigned about the end of their relationship.
“I know you were shocked when you came over and saw Janet,” Steven said.
“Yeah, shocked about covers it,” she said.
“I don’t even know where to start about this. It’s such a long and complicated story.”
“But, you’re married,” Serena said decisively. “And that is the end of the story.”
“Yes, legally I am married. I’ve been trying to divorce Janet for a couple of years. She won’t let me.”
“Why have you been trying to divorce her?”
“Because she’s mentally ill. I never knew about it when I married her. I found out the hard way,” he said wryly. “Her parents never told me she had a problem. I think they were hoping that her getting married would solve her problems. And I think they were relieved to let someone else deal with it.”
“How is she mentally ill?” Serena asked. She wasn’t buying this explanation. Steven was making another excuse, another lie. He was good at that.
“She has some kind of personality disorder. I was in love with her when I married her. Her personality was exciting. I just didn’t realize what that meant at the time.”
“What do you mean ‘exciting?’” Serena asked.
“Oh, she was exuberant about things, like a child, really. I didn’t realize then that the child-like qualities could turn into tantrums and public embarrassment.”
“Oh,” Serena said.
“After she embarrassed me at a faculty party one night, I realized that her problem was very serious. I was tired of dealing with it. So, I called her parents and that’s when I found out that Janet had been institutionalized as a teenager. That’s when I found out she has a disorder. I had not known about that, and I couldn’t see going through the rest of my life with that.”
Serena was starting to feel sorry for Steven. She was starting to think how unfair it was for him to marry Janet not knowing she had a mental problem. That really had been very unfair of her parents not to tell him.
“If I’d known about it, I wouldn’t have married her,” Steven said. “I wanted to have a normal married life with children. I now know that Janet could not possibly handle the responsibilities of being a mother. She’s too ill.”
Steven reached over and took Serena’s hand. She didn’t jerk her hand away. She let him enclose her hand in his. Tears were gathering in her eyes.
“I started trying to divorce her nearly two years ago, but she wouldn’t let me! I can’t believe that you can’t divorce someone if you want to. Her parents got high-powered lawyers for her and they fought my lawyers and won every time.”
“I don’t understand,” Serena said. “How could they prevent you from getting a divorce?”
“There’re ways to block a divorce, if you want to. You can drag it out. Finally they started saying that her illness prevented her from fully knowing what was happening and she couldn’t make a rational decision.”
“That’s terrible,” she said.
“So, I decided that I would leave,” he continued.
“Were you still living with her?” Serena asked, incredulous.
“Yes. We had a townhouse and I wasn’t making much at the college. I kept thinking she would leave, but she never did.”
“So you decided to leave,” Serena said, wanting to hear the rest of Steven’s sad story.
“Yes. I got a job offer for an ocean institute in Virginia. But she found out about it on my email. I stupidly left it open one night and she got to it. She called the institute and told them I was an alcoholic. I couldn’t change their minds.”
Serena felt terrible for Steven, being locked in such a horrible situation and not being able to get out of it.
“But you did eventually leave,” she said.
“Yes, finally. I got smart after that. I bought a laptop that I kept at the college and handled my next job offer through that. When I left, I had to sneak out of the townhouse one day when she was getting her hair done.”
“That sounds awful,” Serena said. She really did feel bad for Steven and what he had suffered.
“After I made my escape, I told her I’d gone to Tampa. I didn’t want her to know where I was. But I kept my phone. I felt if she could still get in touch with me, that it might diffuse her. She wouldn’t come looking for me. It worked for a while.”
“When you said there was an oil spill, were you really going to see her?” Serena asked, still not fully understanding how Steven could have lied to her so much.
“Yes. I was going to Charleston to try to talk her into signing the divorce papers. After I met you, that’s all I wanted to happen. I wanted to be free and clear of her so I could be with you.”
Serena looked out at the water. She felt the pain of his lie about the oil spill all over
again, acutely.
“You said you texted me that you would be gone, but I never got that,” she said.
“But I did send you a text. I don’t know why you didn’t get it. But I sent it.”
“You didn’t call me at all,” she said.
“After I got up to Charleston and realized how strongly Janet was still fighting the divorce, I decided to just let you go. I knew it wasn’t fair to you. I wanted to let you go, so I didn’t contact you. But then I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
“So you made up a story about not having cell phone service,” she said.
“Yes. I needed to have a reason to still be in your life after not contacting you. I knew I wanted you.”
Serena understood that. She still felt that his lies were wrong, but she understood where Steven’s thinking had been.
“I finally figured things out about Carlos,” she said. “I know he wasn’t calling you like you said. I know it was Janet.”
“I feel bad about that,” Steven said. “Using Carlos that way. He’s a good guy and so is his girlfriend. It was just another way I was trying to keep the whole Janet situation from you. So you would still be with me.”
“That was wrong of you,” Serena said.
“I know that now,” Steven said with a sigh. “I acted out of desperation. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“How did Janet know where you lived if she thought you were in Tampa?” Serena asked.
“When I was up there this last time trying desperately to get her to sign the papers, she followed me when I left. She actually followed me for five hours. She was very cunning, staying behind other cars so I never suspected. I was heartsick when she knocked on my door that night. I thought it might be you.”
“Is she at your house now? Is she still here?”
“No. I had to call her parents to come get her. I told them that they needed to take care of her.”
“Did they come?”
“Yes. I had to go through a whole night and the next day with her. But they did come and get her.”
“It sounds like they needed to get her,” Serena said.
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “I had to trick her. I had to placate her so she wouldn’t know what I was doing. She fell for it hook, line, and sinker. She wanted to believe it.”
“Did you have sex with her?” Serena asked in a choked voice.
“No! I haven’t had sex with her for years. Our marriage has been over for years! I’ve just been trying to get out of it.”
Serena believed him. She was relieved he hadn’t had sex with Janet. Jealousy was in her heart, but she believed him.
“When her parents finally got here, she threw a big fit. They brought a doctor down with them and he gave her some drugs to calm her down. He didn’t force them on her. She took them. She accused me of tricking her. And I did that. It was how I had learned to deal with her.”
Serena put her hand over Steven’s as he held her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It sounds terrible.”
“If there was any way that she could have gotten well, I would have stuck with it. I loved her when I married her. But the doctors said it was incurable. Seeing her leave like that with her parents was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”
In the light of the bright full moon, Serena saw tears roll down Steven’s cheek. Her heart went out to him and she pulled him to her shoulder, where he wept. Like the night she had wept on his shoulder in the very same spot. He wept.
They sat on the bay’s shore for a long time as Serena held him.
“Serena,” he finally said. “I love you. I know I don’t have a right to your forgiveness for what I’ve done. I hope you can understand that I did it for love. Loving you. I was trying to control the situation with Janet so it would never affect you, but I should have known that it would.”
“I don’t know what to think right now,” Serena said. “I believed in you and then found out it was all a lie.”
“I know,” he said. “Being married to Janet forced me to find ways to cope, to deal with her. But that’s not how you deserved to be treated.”
Serena stood up and Steven stood up beside her. He reached for her and she put her arms around him, nestling her head on his chest where she used to feel so safe. Even after everything that had happened, it still felt safe. Steven tilted her face to his and kissed her, gently and lovingly.
They walked back to the parking lot in front of Rossetti’s and Serena got in her car. She didn’t want to go back inside to face Jeff’s questions. She needed to get home to bed, to think. She kissed Steven goodbye before she closed her car door and backed out of the parking space. On the drive to the cottage, she started to cry. Her tears wracked her body and she pulled over to the side of the road. She put her face in her hands and cried as hard as she was able. She tried to get it all out before she had to go home.
Chapter Seventeen—Jeff
Jeff stood to one side of the front window and watched Serena and Steven walk back from the shore. Steven had his arm around Serena and it was all Jeff could do to stay still. He was alone now in Rossetti’s, and he was grateful that no one could see him watching Serena. When they got to her car, Serena kissed Steven. Was it a goodbye kiss? He couldn’t tell. It seemed longer than a goodbye kiss should be. Jeff’s heart began to break a little.
He went up the stairs to his lonely room. He would be alone that night and maybe every night from then on. But this was no surprise, he told himself. Hadn’t he expected this? Didn’t he know that Serena still had feelings for Steven?
After a few minutes of allowing every negative thought he could think of run through his mind, Jeff decided to call Serena. He had to know what had happened with Steven. He had to know if he still had a chance with her. Her phone went to voice mail. “Just calling to make sure you’re all right,” he said to her voicemail. “Call me.” He hung up the phone.
Jeff had always been honest with himself. Well, nearly always. When he was at the firm, he was constantly working on a deadline, preparing for a hearing or deposition or trial. Or writing the incessant briefs the partners were always dumping on him. He had been willing to do all of that to make partner. He let his better sense go somewhere to the back of his mind. Until one day.
He had been talking to a new associate about a case they were working on. Jeff blustered on and on about the other side’s counsel, how he was going to beat them with a flood of motions that would keep them busy every night for a year. It was the lawyer’s game and Jeff knew it well. The young lawyer sat trapped behind his desk, saying all the right things, laughing in all the right places. Because that’s how the game was played.
“They aren’t going to believe what hit them,” Jeff said, laughing loudly.
And then Jeff heard himself. Really heard himself. He had become one of them, the partners, loving the sound of his own voice. He had arrived. He excused himself abruptly from the new associate’s office and went back to his own office. He sat down and was honest with himself for the first time in a long time.
Surely this wasn’t going to be his life. How many more years would he have to play this game until he made partner? How many more briefs and hearings? How many more all-nighters sitting at his desk, the light from his office the only light on in the building? He was letting his life slip through his fingers. His real life.
Serena had been in Luna Bay for several months when he had his epiphany that day. He had seen her a couple of times and had started to have deep feelings for her. But she was gone, not a part of his daily life anymore, and he had let work take over. He wanted to see her right then. He wanted to see what was real.
As if she were reading his mind all the way down in Luna Bay, Elena texted him in that crisis moment. She invited him to Rossetti’s Fourth of July party. It was his opportunity to see Serena, to test the waters with her. That had not turned out well for him. But it didn’t turn him back from wanting to carve a new path for himsel
f. He may have lost Serena, but he didn’t want to lose out on the rest of his life.
And now, here he was, pursuing that life. It was painful, but he was feeling. Jeff poured himself a shot of whiskey. Time to be honest with himself again. He had to face the fact that he was probably losing Serena to Steven. He didn’t know what that guy had told her about his being married that had brought Serena around, but it must have been compelling.
Serena had been discontent in her relationship with Steven for a while. That was obvious in the way she sat at the bar, lonely. Was that the reason she had let Jeff in, made love with Jeff? Because she was hurting? And then, when she found out Steven was married, Serena had clung to Jeff. He had to acknowledge that Serena was probably on the rebound. And everyone knew, rebound relationships don’t last.
He heard his text signal. Serena wrote, “I’m okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” At least she had cared enough to send him a text. She might even be at Steven’s right now, sending him a text from the bathroom or something. She might be over there making love to him. That thought went deep into his heart where it began to fester. He spent a sleepless night. Sleep finally came to him in the early hours of the morning and he didn’t wake up until noon.
Chapter Eighteen
Nonna was already asleep when Serena got home, and she was grateful. If Nonna had seen her puffy eyes she would have known something was wrong, and Serena didn’t know if she could lie to Nonna about it. She tiptoed up the stairs and went to bed. Sleep did not come easily as she thought about Steven. She was heartsick about him, heartsick at the life he had led with Janet, at what he had to do in the end. Was it enough to be able to forgive him, to go back to him?
What about Jeff? Where did he fit in this tragic picture? She loved Jeff, but she might still love Steven, too. She didn’t know what to think, what to do. Sheer exhaustion finally brought sleep to her, though it was not restful. When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t think she could make it to work.
Nonna was in the kitchen making breakfast when Serena walked in. She took one look at Serena and said, “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series Page 17