His expression fell, his gaze roaming my face. “My family talks. A lot. I heard about your four years of college. Your year in France. Why come back? All that education. You’re good at what you do.”
“Because,” I told him, “my heart was here. No matter how far I went or what I did, I couldn’t escape this place.”
He shook his head. “So you’d rather be catering birthday parties and making greasy appetizers than working in a five star restaurant somewhere?”
I smiled. “Yeah … yeah, I guess I would.” Taking a cautious step forward, I asked, “And you? I always thought you’d do something with machinery.”
He shrugged. “I do now. I specialized in it in the military, and then got a job in New York soon after discharge.”
I was wearing a tank top over shorts, and my fingers fell to the belt loops of my cutoff jeans. “Is that where … is that where Ginger and Brayden are from?”
“Upstate, yeah. Not the city.” His gaze dropped to my hands, to the way my fingers fidgeted with the shorts. “I wasn’t with Ginger long. I wouldn’t even call it a relationship. I’m not good at those.”
“You used to be,” I blurted, my eyes dropping to the floor to hide the appalled expression in my eyes.
Heathcliff’s shoes came into view, stopping just short of mine. “You really think that, don’t you?” he asked. “Honey, I was never good at relationships. That was you.”
Startled, my head shot up. “What?”
His lips quirked. “Hawthorne, other than short relationships and a few experimental rolls in the hay in high school, I didn’t date long. Mostly because they all knew I was leaving. Then you came along. At first, you intrigued me, but then you sort of … kept me. You do that with people.”
My eyes widened. “No,” I whispered. “No, I don’t.”
“Yeah,” he responded. “Yeah, you do.” He closed the distance between us, his face peering down into mine. “Forget your parents. Forget about your uncle’s illness for a moment. Those are things that happened, things you couldn’t control. Think about afterwards. Think about all of the people who haven’t been able to let you go.”
I stared at him, my lips parted, my forehead creased. “No—”
“Remember that paper you wrote for us in high school? It was a beautiful paper, by the way, but it was wrong. You taught yourself to trust again. You opened up the lines of communication with your uncle. I just got lucky enough to be brought along for the ride.” He leaned forward, his face growing closer to mine. “I do like to help things, but you’re the one who saves them.” He laughed. “You think I don’t know what my grandmother has told you? She asked you to save me because, deep down, she knows I’ve always needed it. It wasn’t you that was lost. It’s always been me.”
“I don’t understand—”
Heathcliff’s hand came up to cup my cheek. “Did you know I was a twin?” I gasped, and Heathcliff smiled. “It’s tragic, but not as tragic as you’re probably thinking. At birth, one of us came out screaming, and the other came out stillborn.” He shrugged. “It’s funny, you know. I never got to meet my brother, but I always felt like I had to live two lives. It didn’t help that I never seemed to fit in with the men in my family. I didn’t want to run a store and sit around whittling on wood. I would have done it though … if it hadn’t been for you.”
“What?” I pulled away from him, backing up until I was against the wall next to the door. My eyes fell to his chest. “So I’m responsible for all of your scars?”
He stared at me. “No, those are all mine. Again, that was my mistake. I wanted to be a part of my family somehow. Following in my grandfather’s footsteps seemed like the way to go.” He gestured at me. “What you did was encourage me to be different, to embrace the desire to leave, to do other things. Even with the scars, I don’t regret going. I regret not being able to do more for the men I spent time with overseas. I regret not being strong enough to go straight to college. I regret not being … not being better at relationships.”
My hands flattened against the wall behind me, grounding me. “I didn’t expect anything from you.”
The smile he gave me was genuine. “I know. You were the first one who didn’t.” He stared at me. “How many have you been with since me?” he asked suddenly, his hand coming up to rub his forehead. “I keep trying to tell myself I don’t care …”
I watched his face, watched the war of emotions dancing across his features, and I swallowed hard. “I’ve been in two relationships since high school, but I only slept with one of them.”
Heathcliff frowned. “Was he good to you?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “He was a nice guy. The problem wasn’t either of them. It was me. It’s kind of hard being with someone when you keep wishing they were someone else.”
Heathcliff stepped forward, but I pressed myself into the wall as if it would protect me somehow from him and from me. “You’re leaving, right?” I asked.
He stopped. “I don’t know.”
My gaze searched his. “It’s okay not to know, and I’d never expect you to stay. But, Heathcliff … I’m not sure I want to go back to that … to what we were before.”