Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) (31 page)

"And now you are?"

Indignation flared within her. "Of course I am!" she retorted,
no longer cautious. "How can you think I'm not?"

"I remember..." He thumped his hand on the folder. "I look
at those pictures and I remember that you walked away from me.
I was ready to lie down and die for you, and you walked away."

"I was a kid. We both were. Come on, Ted-if I'd agreed to
marry you then, we would have been divorced ten years by now.
We couldn't have handled marriage then."

"And you're so sure we can now?"

Her outrage increased as his seemed to wane, replaced by bleak
resignation. What the hell was wrong with him? They were going
to get married. He'd gotten her parents' approval. She had folders stacked all around her on the bed. How could he doubt that
this was going to work out?

"You still have no idea how badly you hurt me," he said. His
voice was low, tight, as if the hurt was just as acute today as it had
been sixteen years ago.

He was right-she had no idea. She could guess, but no one
had ever hurt her that badly. She'd lived a lucky life.

"I will never hurt you again," she promised, tamping down her
fury over his having the nerve to question her devotion to him. "I
love you."

"You loved me then, too. For a while, at least."

"Comparing then with now isn't fair, Ted."

"So why do you want to put these frickin' photos of then on
our wedding invitations? Christ." He shoved away from the table
and stood. "I've got to get out of here."

"Out of where? It's two o'clock in the morning!"

Busy buttoning his shirt and stepping into his shoes, he
ignored her question. "I need some air."

"Don't you dare walk out of here!" She leaped to her feet, unsure whether she wanted to block the door or slap his face.
"Don't you walk out on me when we're fighting."

"We're not fighting," he snapped, his voice even lower and
tauter, as if emotion was twisting his vocal cords. "You're yelling.
I'm remembering that I've always loved you more than you loved
me.

"That's not true!" Forget slapping him; she wanted to throttle
him. She wanted to wrap her hands around his throat and shake
him until he came to his senses. "Who the hell are you to tell me
how much I love you?"

"Who the hell am l?" He gave her a bitter smile. "I'm the guy
you sliced to ribbons sixteen years ago."

She didn't throttle him. Or slap him. Or stand in front of the
door, denying him the chance to escape. Instead, she stood paralyzed with rage, and watched as he swung the door open, stepped
outside, and slammed it shut behind him.

Three a.m. wasn't the best time in the world to be wandering
around Manhattan, but Erika's neighborhood was relatively safe.
The actual Gramercy Park, a city block enclosed within a tall
wrought-iron fence, was kept locked; only residents of the neighborhood had access to it. So it wasn't full of homeless people or
thugs. The expanse stood empty, the manicured grass fading to
beige and the trees showing the first tinges of color on their leaves
as autumn settled over New York.

Ted stood beside the fence, his hands wrapped around its vertical iron bars as if he were a prisoner pleading for freedom. Of
course, he was free. He was on the outside, not trapped in the park.

You are free, he reminded himself. You are not trapped.

Unlike SoHo, or Times Square, or even his own semi-gentrified
neighborhood in Hoboken, Gramercy Park wasn't exactly hap pening at this hour. In the distance, he could hear the hush of cars
cruising up and down Park Avenue, and the buzz of the mercury
streetlamp casting a rose-hued glow over the park, and miles away
the whine of a siren. But here, on this patch of sidewalk less than
two blocks from Erika's building, Ted was totally alone.

How could she look at those photos and think they were cute?

When he looked at them, he saw his own blindness and stupidity. He saw the trusting, naive boy he'd once been, a boy so
wildly, passionately in love, the universe seemed too small to contain his emotions. He saw a boy so frill of trust, he couldn't have
conceived of the possibility that Erika could hurt him.

But she had. God, had she ever.

He looked at those photos and saw not just the lovesick fool
he'd been but the anguish he'd endured after she'd left. The
nights he'd spent curled up on his parents' blue living room sofa,
so crippled with grief he could scarcely move, let alone eat or
think or live. He saw the despair, the loss, the certainty that he
would never recover.

He'd recovered. And he'd promised himself he would never let
himself become that vulnerable again.

So how did he get here? How did he allow Erika to break
through his defenses? How had he fallen under her spell a second
time, torn open his soul for her, given her access to his stillwounded heart? What was the point of enduring such agony if
you didn't learn from it?

If she broke that heart again, he wouldn't survive. He knew
that.

The bars of the fence were cold and hard, denting the skin of
his palms. The weight of the long night pressed down on him. He
needed sleep, but he couldn't go back to Erika's apartment.
Hoboken seemed so far away, though.

Didn't his old high school friend Ryan live in the city? Maybe
he could crash on Ryan's couch. He'd spent many Saturday
nights crashed on people's couches when he'd been that stupid,
naive kid in the photos Erika had shown him.

But if he called Ryan, and Ryan told him to come over, and he
arrived at Ryan's apartment, wherever it was ... Ryan would ask
him questions. "Yeah," he'd have to say, "I'm still a stupid, naive
kid, too dumb to save myself. Can you save me? Do you have an
antidote for Erika?"

Right. That would work.

He snorted, forced his fingers to unfurl, and pushed away from
the fence. He would walk for a while. Shake off the spell. Regain
his footing. Try to find his way back to safety.

As if he could ever be safe from hurt as long as Erika was in
his life.

Miles above him, a few brave stars twinkled in the gray-black
sky, visible despite all the ambient light New York City emitted.
He sent a message upward, aiming at the brightest star and wondering if it would bounce off and somehow reach Erika: Make me
believe. Make me believe that loving you won't destroy me again.

She'd never received his star-sent messages all those years ago.

He realized that she wouldn't receive this one, either.

The bastard!

If she were given to grand gestures, she would have swept all
the piles off her bed and let them scatter across the floor. And
then she would have stomped all over them. Maybe she would
have donned her old riding boots first to maximize the damage.

But she was too tidy, and she'd worked so hard to compile all
that wedding information: the notes on restaurants, hotels,
florists, photographers. She gathered her piles, stacking every thing in order, and placed all the folders inside the drawer where
she stored them. The same drawer where she stored all the letters
and drawings Ted had sent her so long ago, the letters and drawings she'd never been able to throw away.

By the time she was done clearing her bed, tears were spilling
down her cheeks.

How could he accuse her of not loving him enough? How
much was enough? Enough to fill an ocean? To flood the planet?
Enough to occupy the entire galaxy? What would be enough to
reassure him?

I will never be with you again. I could never be this hurt again.

He had said that to her, and for sixteen years she'd believed he
meant it. She knew how immeasurably fortunate she was that
he'd gotten past it, that he had decided to be with her again. My
God, he hadn't just discussed marriage with her. He'd discussed
it with her parents.

And in spite of all that, he still didn't trust her not to hurt him.

Trust was her bottom line. If he didn't trust her, their relationship was over.

That thought sent a fresh wave of misery crashing over her. She
sat on her bed, shaking with sobs, soaking her T-shirt with tears.
She couldn't marry someone who didn't trust her-and Ted
didn't trust her. It was over, really over.

The worst of it was, she was in dire need of someone to comfort her as she mourned the loss of Ted-and the someone she
wanted to comfort her was Ted. She prided herself on being
strong and independent, but on those rare occasions she needed
a shoulder to cry on, the only shoulder she wanted was Ted's.

The son of a bitch.

She grabbed her cell phone from her night table and speeddialed Allyson Rhatican. After a couple of rings, Allyson's voice reached her ear, hoarse and sluggish. "H'lo?"

"Allyson, it's me."

"Erika?" Allyson cleared her throat, then cursed. "Do you
know what time it is?"

"Two?"

"Three. You woke me up. This better be good."

"It's terrible," Erika said, then started sobbing again.

"Oh, my God." Allyson sounded fully awake now. "Did someone die? Is it your parents? Your sister?"

"No. No one died." Erika struggled to breathe, to flush the
tears out of her voice with a few deep sighs. "Ted walked out on
me.

"When?"

Erika wasn't sure. It seemed as if he'd only just stormed out the
door-and as if he'd been gone forever. "Ten minutes ago?"

"Why? What happened?"

"He doesn't trust me. He doesn't think I love him as much as
he loves me. He doesn't think I can love him as much as he loves
me.

"Oh, Erika." Allyson's voice grew honey-soft and consoling.
"He's just scared."

"Scared of marriage? I don't think so. He's wanted to get married since he was eighteen years old."

"Scared of getting hurt."

"I'm the one who's hurting right now," Erika protested.

"Yes, and you sound pretty damned scared."

Erika let Allyson's words seep into her. Their truth resonated
inside her. She wasn't angry or resentful. She was frightened.
More frightened than she'd ever been in her life.

Frightened of losing Ted. Frightened that if she lost him, she
would never recover. Frightened that the pain of losing him would destroy her.

Just as frightened as he must be.

"What should I do?" she asked Allyson.

"Dust yourself off," Allyson suggested. "Get back on the horse,
and give it a kick, and fly."

Erika thanked Allyson, apologized for waking her, thanked her
again, apologized again, and obeyed Allyson's order to shut up
and let her go back to sleep. She stared at the phone in her palm,
drew in another deep breath to make sure all the weepiness was
gone, told herself to get past her abject fear, and speed-dialed
Ted's cell phone.

He answered almost at once. "Fred."

"Come home," she said. No sobs in her voice, no panic. Only
the truth. "I need you. I love you. Please come home."

"I'm in the lobby," he said. "Tell the doorman to let me in."

If she weren't so wrung out, she might have smiled. "I love you
more than you love me," she said.

"That would be impossible." Her intercom buzzed, and, still
clutching her cell phone to her ear, she climbed off the bed and
grabbed the intercom phone.

"Ms. Fredell?" The overnight doorman's voice was almost as
groggy as Allyson's had been. Erika wondered if he'd been sleeping at his desk. "Your fellow is here. Looks as if he might have
been crying."

"Good," Erika said. "We'll match. Send him up. And tell him I
love him."

The doorman snorted, no doubt embarrassed. She didn't care.
He was sending Ted back to her, and for that alone, she loved
him, too.

YOU OUGHT TO BE IN THE MOMENT at a time like this, but so
much has happened, so fast, and you feel like you need to review it
one last time before the door opens and you enter the next stage of
your life.

Beside you, the woman you love looks like a mess. A gorgeous
mess, but definitely not her well-groomed best. You know there are
things you're supposed to say to her, and you say them. You hold her
hand, rub her back, kiss her fingertips even as she's screaming and
cursing and making an all-out spectacle of herself And instead of
being in the moment, you find yourself focused on the diamond on
her hand, and you remember that crazy trip you took to Arkansas to
dig for a gem at a mine called Crater of Diamonds State Park. You
could have taken her to Tiffany's, but no, you had created a unique
design for the ring you wanted to give her, so you trekked out to
Arkansas to dig for a diamond yourself And you stood in the hole
you'd dug, and suddenly water started rushing into the hole, and
you'd thought, I am going to drown because of love.