Liberty (23 page)

Caroline fixed her eyes on Lexy and the compassion he saw just a moment ago melted away and was replaced by ice. “I assume the woman you were kissing is Ryan Beecher’s wife. Hello, Mrs. Beecher. I’m sorry to inform you that your husband is dead. The man you’ve been passing off as your husband is my fiancé.”

“Wait a minute,” Cooper spoke up, not at all liking her implication. “You gave me an ultimatum before I left. You broke it off. Lexy didn’t pass me off as anything. I’m here because I want to be.”

“I still wear your ring.” She showed him the flashy diamond he’d given her six months before he left. “I was just angry that you chose the marines over a five-year relationship.”

“You belong to somebody else?” Lexy said. “For five years?”

Yes, it had been five years. And he had loved Caroline, but the love they had was different than the one he had with Lexy. It was based on mutual respect and similar lifestyle. He never longed for Caroline. He never felt like he needed to be with her. He had only asked her to marry him, because it was expected. After five years he owed it to her, not because she was the only one he could picture spending his life with.

And she didn’t like kids. She didn’t want the life he wanted. The life he was planning to have with Lexy.

“No.” He grasped Lexy’s shoulders, looking into her watering eyes. “That part of my life is over. We can start over.”

“Cooper.” When Caroline called to him he could hear the hurt in her voice and that made him take his eyes off Lexy.

She was crying. “I was planning my life around you.”

“I’m sorry, Caroline, but you shouldn’t have. You haven’t spoken to me since I enlisted. You made it clear that when I left I couldn’t come back to you.”

“I was angry! What did you expect? One minute I’m planning a wedding. The next, the man I’m supposed to be marrying tells me he’s going off to war. You weren’t meant for that life, Cooper. That was your brother’s path. You were supposed to take over your father’s company. We were supposed to go places together.”

“That wasn’t the life I wanted.”

“It was. It was until your brother died. I didn’t realize that the day we buried him we would lose you, too.”

“I didn’t lose myself,” he countered. “I found myself. I know what kind of man I am now. I want to create my own legacy.”

“How are you doing that?” She gestured toward their house. “You want to spend your days living like trash, instead of coming home to New York and taking your place in the world?” She focused her clear blue eyes on Lexy. “With her? Somebody else’s wife? You should be ashamed of yourself, Mrs. Beecher, for seducing a man you knew wasn’t your husband.”

“Caroline,” his mother gasped. “Now is certainly not the time for this.” She swayed on her feet, but as he took a step toward her Lexy moved and wrapped her arm around her first.

“This must be a lot for you, Mrs. Thomaston,” Lexy said, supporting the older woman. “I’m very sorry. I really didn’t know.”

“Please call me Helena. Of course you didn’t know.” His mother gripped Lexy’s hand, studying her face and then Cooper’s as if she couldn’t believe that either of them were real. “He does look different. The blast must have changed him.”

“I’m so sorry that you’ve had so much loss,” Lexy said softly as they walked toward the house.

“And I’m sorry for you, dear,” she said softly. And then, as if she realized it for the first time, she said, “That means your husband is gone. I’m so sorry, dear.”

Lexy turned her eyes on him. “Yes. He is.”

Cooper could see it in Lexy’s eyes. She was shutting down and in the process shutting him out.

His heart slammed against his chest. His hands shook. The old him was calm, always controlled. The old him didn’t let life spin out of control. The old him always had a plan, but this time he didn’t know how to stop things. To stop Lexy. He didn’t have to speak to her to know that she was going to try to give him up, to throw away what they had, just because his old life had come to find him.

“Lex...I would have died it if weren’t for you. You know that. I need you.”

“Yes,” his mother said very calmly as she patted Lexy’s hand. “You’ve saved my son’s life. The hospital told us, that they thought they were going to lose him before you walked through the door. Look how we pay you back. Barging into your home, and informing you of your husband’s death this way. I’m ashamed.” She looked at Cooper. “But when I heard there might have been a mistake, I had to come here and see for myself. I couldn’t wait for the military to tell me. Thank you for being good to him. Thank you for keeping him alive.”

Lexy looked stricken but she managed to pull herself together. “Please come inside. It’s very warm out here. Can I offer you something to drink?”

Cooper reached out to touch her but she avoided him. He felt like dying right then. He had hurt her. She would never trust him again.

* * *

She wanted to vomit. Bile kept rising in her throat. Ryan was Cooper. The man she was desperately in love with wasn’t her husband and he was engaged to someone else.

But you already knew that.

He had known who he was but he’d kept it from her and that was by far the worst feeling. She had known something was off with him the past few days. That he had been quiet, and wistful and almost sad.

Why couldn’t he have just told her instead of letting this happen? Instead of making her look like a fool? Like she was too stupid to know that the man she was sleeping with was not her husband.

She wanted to have a baby with him. They couldn’t be a family. He didn’t belong in her world, but in another that was so far away she couldn’t even touch it. She studied his mother, who was lovely, with the same bluish gray eyes as her son and classically cut white hair. His supposed bride was lovely, too—educated, elevated. Caroline looked like she belonged on Cooper’s arm. Everything about them screamed money, education and sophistication. The way they sat with their heads held high, and spoke with their crisp syllables. The way they looked around her house in wonder, like it was unfit for humans.

It was so obvious that Ryan—no, Cooper—didn’t belong here.

“This was my husband,” she said finally, pulling herself together enough to speak. She was holding a photograph.

They were sitting in her shabby living room. Helena, Cooper’s mother, sat at his side. Her arm linked through his. His hand in hers. His mother. It must have been so hard for her all this time. To think her son was dead.

She thought about Mary. How was she going to tell her Ryan was gone? Deep in her heart Lexy had known her husband was gone, and even though she spent so much time hating him, she still felt sad for the loss. How was Mary going to feel? It had to be the same way Cooper’s mother felt when she thought she had lost her son. When Lexy lost her unborn baby. The grief she felt had threatened to swallow her whole. She could only imagine what it felt like to lose a child you had known and loved and held.

She handed Helena the photo of Ryan that was about eight years old, before Ryan let the alcohol really grip him, when he was thinner and handsome and looked so much like Cooper. “As you can see, they look very much alike. I just couldn’t believe he wasn’t my husband.”

“My word,” she breathed. “Of course you couldn’t have known. Caroline, you have to see this.”

Caroline looked at the photograph, but said nothing. Lexy couldn’t miss the coolness in her demeanor. Caroline blamed her. How could she not? Lexy should have been able to tell that Cooper wasn’t hers, and she
could
tell. She just didn’t want it to be true.

“You raised a wonderful son. I need to tell you that. He is kind and gentle and it has been a pleasure to know him.”

Tears slid down her face in hot splashes. She swiped at her eyes, trying to stop them. He was going to go home. He was going to disappear from her life.

“Don’t say that, Lex.” He stood up, gripped her hands and squeezed. “It’s not over yet. We can make this work.”

He sounded so sure of himself. Like everything would be normal again after today. The only comfort she took from this was that he must have loved her. That was the only reason he would stay here, in this shabby little house, in this town that had nothing for him. He loved her when she had never really been loved before.

“Cooper,” Caroline said, her voice softened when she talked to him. There was love there, too. Of course Caroline wouldn’t want to let him go. Being loved by Cooper was too good. “Everyone except you realizes that you cannot live this life. We’ve come to take you home. It’s time to tell Mrs. Beecher goodbye.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m not a child and I’m not leaving here. How can you expect me to just pick up and leave the woman I’ve spent the last three months with? She saved my life.”

“You spent the last thirty years of your life with your mother and the past five with me. Are you just going to throw us away for her? For some stranger?”

“I may not agree with everything that Caroline said,” Helena started, “but she’s right on that point. We haven’t seen you in over a year. We thought you were dead, sweetheart. Your time is ending here. I know you must be fond of Lexy but this is not your life. This is Ryan Beecher’s life.”

He shook his head. Lexy could see his resolve. She knew that he wasn’t just going to leave no matter what they said.

“Can I have a moment with you, Ryan?”

He nodded and she led him away from the house, all the way to the garage where Ryan Beecher had kept his shop. The real Ryan. The Ryan who was dead.

Her real husband was dead.

Being in the now-empty garage made it really hit home.

She hadn’t mourned him or accepted the fact that he was gone before she had fallen in love with another man, with a stranger.

“Lexy.”

“What is your name?”

“Cooper,” he said almost regretfully.

“Your whole name, please.” She put her hand over her eyes not wanting to look at him.

“Cooper Thomaston.” She looked into his face. His name was familiar.

“You’re the—” Her stomach rolled as she remembered the details about him. “They wrote stories about you. I read about you. Your brother was Jacob Thomaston. He died in friendly fire, so you enlisted to honor him.”

Normally that tale wouldn’t have picked up so much press but it had because the man she was looking at was the golden boy of his family’s dynasty, the CFO of a huge telecommunications company. “Your grandfather was a senator. You don’t belong here.”

“I love you,” he said, as if that explained everything, as if love was all they needed. “I never belonged with them. I only felt right here.”

She ignored his beautiful but meaningless words. It would never work between them. It would kill her but it would never work.

“How long have you known?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” He flinched as the sharpness in her voice. “You knew and you made love to me? You let me tell you I loved you? You let me think that we could have a family when you knew that you weren’t my husband? How could you? How could you lie to me like that?”

“I didn’t lie to you. Not about anything. I just couldn’t tell you until I figured some things out. I was going to tell you, Lexy. You have to believe me. I knew this was going to be hard. I just wanted a little more time with you before it got hard, before I had to merge my lives. I love you. I want a life with you. I want to be married to you. I want kids with you. Nothing has changed but my name.”

“Everything has changed. You have a family and a fiancée.”

“Caroline and I are done. We have been for a long time. Even if we weren’t, we would be now. I don’t love her.”

“You have a life that is so much better than this. You don’t belong in this hellhole.”

This place had been hell once upon a time. At least for her. There was no way they could live here. In this house. In this town with little traces of Ryan everywhere. Her tears came again and she hated herself for crying. She wished she could have turned them off. She wished she didn’t feel.

“Honey, you’re killing me. Please stop.”

“I knew, Cooper. I knew the whole time you weren’t my husband. You could never have hit me and I knew that. But I wanted you for myself, so I took what didn’t belong to me. You have to go home. You have to live your life the way you were meant to.”

“No!” He gripped her shoulders, shaking her. “I was put on this earth to be with you. God brought us together. This is all too crazy to be a coincidence. I was supposed to be the one who loved you. I knew Ryan. He didn’t deserve you.”

“And I don’t deserve you. Go home, Cooper.”

“Why are you saying that? I can make you happy. Are you afraid of that?”

“Go home!” she screamed. She was afraid. She was afraid he was stupid enough to give up his life and choose her and this place, when he had so much more waiting for him. When he had a mother who suffered needlessly because she was too blind to see that he wasn’t the man the world thought he was.

“No!” He grabbed her and held her tightly against him. “I love you,” he breathed. “I love you. I’m not going without you.”

“Without me?” She blinked up at him.

“You can come to New York—”

“No.” She cut him off, shaking her head, knowing that what they had was over. She wasn’t meant for his life, just as he wasn’t meant for hers. “It’s time for you to go.”

He had to. They were over.

“I love you, Cooper Thomaston. I love you.” She had to tell him before he went. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t say it.

He shook his head stubbornly. “We can make this work.”

She shook her head, feeling acute pain. “We can’t. We’re strangers.”

“We aren’t. You know my heart, the real me. Without the money and my family name and all the expectations. You’re the only person in this world who knows me. Everything else is meaningless.”

“You have to get back to your life. Thank you for coming into mine.” She kissed his face. “Now I know what it feels like to be loved.”

“Lexy, don’t do this to me.”

His eyes filled with tears and it was nearly unbearable. He was in as much pain as she was, but it had to be this way. It had to end.