Back to You (8 page)

Mia rolls her eyes and pouts. “No. Sorry to burst the romance bubble, but would you mind if I throw on a pair of sweats?”

“You brought the uniform on our sexy getaway?”

“There’s no escaping the uniform. Sorry, hun.” She laughs.

I walk over to her and plant a kiss on her cheek. “You’d be irresistible in a potato sack. Go get comfortable and meet me out there.”

She heads up the steps and I go into the kitchen to plug my Blackberry into the charger. I have zero battery left and probably one hundred emails in my inbox.

I give it a few seconds to juice up while I grab a bottled water from the fridge. As soon as it turns on, the notifications start buzzing. Voice messages, emails, texts. Robert, the client, my secretary. I’m on fucking vacation and it’s nearly midnight. What the fuck?

I browse through to see what the emergency is and all I’m getting from the onslaught of shit is that they need me to call them ASAP. I check the time, then look past the kitchen wall toward the steps to see if Mia’s coming. It’s eleven thirty-eight and Mia’s still getting cozy. I guess I can make a quick call to avert whatever the crisis seems to be.

I skip over all the middle man stuff and just go straight to dialing Robert’s number. He answers on the first ring, “Declan. Shit, we’ve been calling you for hours.”

“I can see that, but you know I’m out of town and my phone was—”

“We need you in Hong Kong on Thursday,” he interrupts, cutting right to the chase. “He wants to pull the fucking account, Murphy. Archer called with a question about the quarterlies and I mentioned in passing that you had to decide whether or not to take the offer and he said he didn’t want anyone else managing the account. Only you.”

Fuck!
“Well—” Shit, I’m fucking speechless. It’s flattering but at the same time I don’t want to be cornered into a decision like this.

“Well, what? We can’t lose this client, Declan. They’re one of the top five. We lose them and they go somewhere else, we look like assholes. We lose credibility.” He sounds like someone’s holding a gun against his head—shaky and panicky.

“Whoa, calm down and hold up a minute. Let’s not shit ourselves here. First of all, I was just there last week. I left everything in order—even prepared things for the next time. Archer was extremely pleased and even told me to have a good time on my trip. I’m not coming home and I’m certainly not flying back out there for Thursday. It can wait. It
has
to fucking wait.”

“But he was—”

When the fuck did I become the one with the bigger business balls? Robert was usually composed, even when every other accountant was ripping their hair out during tax season. “He was nothing. He was being Archer. You know how he gets when he wants something. He wants it
then
and
there.
Like he’s not just one client out of the hundreds we work for. I’ll call him first thing in the morning and talk him off the ledge. In the meantime, I haven’t made a decision yet and I haven’t spoken to Mia about it either,” I say, whispering in case she’s walking down the steps. “I don’t want to feel like this is an ultimatum. I really need to think it through and make the right decision for my family. I thought you were okay with that?”

“Declan. I know I told you exactly that and I said that because I respect you and Mia and I know that this will be a huge sacrifice. But I’m also gonna tell you this. If you don’t take this offer—especially now that Archer has us by the balls—it won’t be a smart move for your career.” Oh, now he isn’t shitting himself. Suddenly his voice is stern—his balls must’ve dropped from his man-pussy again.

But now
I’m
angry. I don’t want to say anything I’ll regret so instead I just straighten up and clear my throat. “I understand. I’ll let you know as soon as I speak with Mia.”

“Good. Don’t forget to call Archer tomorrow.”

“Got it.”

“Good night.”

I don’t even say good night in return. I just end the call and toss the phone across the counter, thankful that it’s tethered to the charging wire or it probably would have crashed to the floor and cracked.

“Hey, what did the poor Blackberry do to you?” The unexpected sound of Mia’s voice startles me.

When I look over to her—her hair falling down around her shoulders, her sweats hanging loosely at her hips, her nipples hardened beneath the thin cotton tank top—all the anger melts away. “It wasn’t the Blackberry. It was… just work stuff. That office might crumble to the ground without me.”

She walks over to me and places her hands at my shoulders, kneading the tenseness away. “I can just go to bed if you have stuff to take care of.”

Selfless, understanding Mia. I kiss her on the tip of her nose and lean back to admire her beauty. “Nope. It’s taken care of for now. We have a midnight date with a porch swing, remember?”

As cliché as it may sound, we sit on that swing, holding hands and star gazing. I can swear we even see a shooting star fly by. I close my eyes tight and make a wish.
Please let us be okay. I just want our old life back.

Declan unlocks our hands to place his palm on my thigh.

I rest my head on his shoulder, contemplating. “How’d we get here, Dec?”

“I called a travel agent, we got in the car, and the rest is history.”

I lift my head from his warmth and tilt it, gawking. “I’m serious. Did you ever think a supposed ‘power couple’ like us would have to… I don’t know…
rekindle?
” Power couple was a phrase Grace donned us with. She used to tell me everyone was envious of Declan and me because of how much he visibly loved and adored me. And me? I was the wife all the guys would bother
their
wives to be more like. I couldn’t imagine that now. All of our friends knew what we’d been through—Declan and his infidelity, me and my relationship with Noah. Not so much the picture perfect role model of a couple anymore.

“No one’s perfect, Mia. And if anyone tells you their marriage is… they’re fucking lying.”

He’s right, but our past mistakes seem a little more complicated than leaving the toilet seat up or being a bad cook. “I’m just saying that I can’t believe we let this happen to us.”

Declan shifts, turning his body to face mine. He hangs his arm over the back of the swing, looking directly into my eyes. I know he’s frustrated with my inability to just let this go already. But he better get used to it, because I’m far from healed.

“We took each other for granted. We were stupid. There’s no other way to put it.”

Simple enough—but unfortunately, it doesn’t soothe me. “What if we’re stupid again?”

His eyebrows pinch together, forming a deep V. “Huh?”

“What I meant is… nothing’s guaranteed, Dec. We don’t know what we’ll be faced with in the future. I know I’ll never do
that
again,” I say, as if the word “that” can encompass what went on with Noah. I leave it at
that
and continue, “I want us back. You’re it for me and always will be, but I also thought I was it for you and I never imagined you’d do what you did either. I have zero regrets. Not even one tiny iota of a regret. Don’t get me wrong… I almost couldn’t walk down the aisle the day of our wedding from all the nerves, but—”

“Wait.
What?
You never told me that.” He doesn’t look at all hurt, more like he’s just surprised, interested even. Is that a smirk I see?

I really don’t want to get off track, especially since I was so close to getting it all out just then, but the look on his face urges me to go forward with my confession about our wedding day. “I was a nervous wreck. My mother was all flitty and giddy—no flipping help at all, the Pope was staring me down—”

“The
Pope
? His excellence was not a guest at our wedding, babe.”

I laugh, thinking back to the way I’d felt in that little back room, imagining the Pope’s eyes following my every move, visualizing him judging me for having cold feet. “I know he wasn’t actually there—forget it. That’s not the point. I only mentioned it because, well, do you ever think if we would have waited until we were older things would have played out differently?” Like maybe he would have slept around a little more and not had the temptation to play the field
after
we were married.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“You really are the king of optimism and one liners these days, aren’t you?”

He twists his body again, deflating against the back of the swing and groaning. “I’m just trying to move forward. What’s the use in rehashing or worrying about
how
we could have avoided it? There’s no fucking use.”

This is where he’s wrong. This is where Declan can’t possibly understand my inner turmoil. “There
is
a use. It’s therapeutic, it’s part of the healing process. Ever hear of denial, Declan? You’re in denial if you think that a little vacation is going to patch up all our issues and make it all better.”

“Am I now?” he asks, not even looking at me.

“Yes! You are! I
need
to talk about this. I need to get it out. To tell you my fears, my regrets, to get the fucking guilt off my chest!” By the time I’m finished with my speech, the tears are fighting to burst through. Nope, now they’re streaming down my face.

Declan rakes his fingers through his hair and takes a deep breath. “Please don’t cry, baby,” he pleads, taking my hands in his. “It kills me to see you hurting and it breaks me in two to know there’s nothing I can do to fix it right now.”

“Letting me talk about it will help fix it,” I manage to get out between wiping the tears from my face.

He releases my hands and when he stands up, he doesn’t turn around to face me. Instead he walks to the edge of the porch, gripping the worn white wood. “This is exactly what I was trying to avoid—at least for a few days.”

We stay silent for a few brief, uncomfortable moments before I decide to break it. “We can’t avoid it forever. I
won’t
avoid it forever.”

When he turns around, the wetness in his eyes glistens in the moonlight. He’s holding back, but I can tell he’s upset. Declan’s never been more open with his emotions than he has this past year. I guess it’s par for the course.

“If I promise we can talk about it… all of it… in a few days, can you enjoy our time together? Can you put it out of your head for just a little while longer so we can go back to laughing, and smiling, and just having a fucking good time?”

I know this is hard for him. He has his own guilt to live with and I’m sure reliving our separation and talking about the what-ifs isn’t something a prideful man wants to do, but I give him so much credit for allowing me this. “Yes. As long as you promise.”

“Cross my heart, hope to die,” he says, marring his body with an imaginary slash across his chest to solidify our deal.

I can live with it not happening right now as long as I know it will indeed happen.

Regrets… fucking regrets. Mia has them? Who knew? I mean I know we got married young, had kids young, but after the initial shock… this shit just all seemed normal. When I proposed to her in college I had not one doubt in my mind that I was making the best decision of my life. She was my everything—I’d have proposed to her on our second date if it wouldn’t have made me look like a complete lunatic. Even before sleeping with her—I mean what
virgin guy
picks his wife before ever dipping his dick?