Chapter Twenty-Two
Whitney had lied when she said she’d torn up the letter.
Worn with creases and thousands of miles of international travel, yellowed with age, it lay dormant in one of the many boxes of ignored paperwork shoved under her desk at work.
Whitney loved her office, ignored paperwork and all. Unlike the rest of the spa, which was all balmy greens and sound recordings of ocean breezes, this room was one hundred percent hers. She’d hung her Gwenyth Hogan painting above her sleek, glass-top desk. Tasteful photographs of finely shaped breasts, butts and bellies adorned the rest of the brick-red walls. There was no need to tiptoe in here. What you saw was what you got—human perfection at its most evocative.
Her own imperfections huddled under the desk and in the closet and in the filing cabinet Kendra called a hot mess of medical liability.
Except the letter. That she pulled out and crinkled flat in front of her, recognizing the hasty, almost illegible scrawl as that of a young woman nearing the breaking point.
The words Jared had flung at her were all there, verbatim. He’s turned into a self-absorbed hypocrite I barely recognize anymore. A few more he’d skipped over were there too. Afraid he’s not the man I fell in love with. Terrible mistake.
She’d written the letter one rainy afternoon when all their supplies had flooded out and she didn’t have a single pair of dry socks left. Of all the horrors of that jungle adventure, she remembered the squelch of her bare feet in sodden hiking boots the most.
A knock sounded at the door. Whitney called a cheerful “Come in” and shoved the letter into the nearest desk drawer.
“Well, it’s just like we always imagined it.” Jared came through the door, looking at ease in a pair of blue surgical scrubs. “You and me, shaping middle-class derrieres together. Not many people can bond over 600ccs of adipose tissue.”
Whitney had to smile. She was pleasantly surprised by how much she enjoyed having a second plastic surgeon on staff. It was nice to have someone to talk to about irrigation pumps and aspirators. Kendra’s face when Whitney tried to interest her in the latest research in fat transfer didn’t exactly bear the rapt expression she was going for. “You and I are a rare breed, Dr. Fine, I’ll give us that much.”
“Does that mean you’ve finally come to your senses about me?” Jared shut the door gently behind him.
Apparently, he was coming in. She gestured at the empty chair across from her. “Please, come in. Sit. I’m delighted to have you.”
What a waste of sarcasm. Jared lowered himself into the chair without blinking. “You ran out on me the other night.”
“Did I? That was rude. Who’d have had any idea I’d turn out so poorly?”
“You really aren’t going to make this easy on me, are you?”
There was just enough pain in his voice to give her pause. She’d never hated this man quite as much as she did at this exact moment. Not because of what he’d done to her in the past or because he wanted to stand by her side during surgery every day. Not even because he was bringing up all these old emotions, long buried and suppressed, as all crappy emotions ought to be.
It was because he was right. Maybe she’d never sent that letter, and maybe she’d never intended for anyone to see it—but even if he’d never read the cruel, harsh sentences, they would have still existed in her head and in her heart. He must have known they were there, felt them hovering between them, long before that terrible, awful, life-changing day.
She realized now that what Jared was asking of her wasn’t really forgiveness. It was culpability. And that was the one thing she wasn’t sure she was capable of giving him.
“You don’t deserve the easy route,” she insisted.
“And I haven’t taken it. You said it yourself, Whitney—you’ve moved on with your life. Can’t we find a way to work together without all this...”
“Loathing?”
“History.” He rose and moved to her side of the desk, an invisible barrier he had no right to cross. Sinking to his knees in front of her, he took her hands, a sincerity to his features she hadn’t known he was capable of. “I loved you once, Whitney, and I’m fairly certain—as certain as a man can be—that you loved me too.”
Whitney closed her eyes, willing herself as far from the room and this conversation as possible. Of course, reality didn’t work that way, and she eventually had to open them again. Jared was still there, and so was she.
“So what if I did?” There was no use pretending anymore. “What does love change except that it makes your betrayal that much worse? Do you have any idea how awful it was for me, watching you and Nancy the anesthesiologist find one another? I didn’t even like Guatemala. I never wanted to make the world smile.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Because you asked me to!” She got to her feet, but Jared wouldn’t let go of her hands. “There was nothing you could have asked me that I would have refused—didn’t you know that? I would have given you everything.”
“Like you gave it to Claus the very next day?”
She released a bitter laugh, her senses whirling. “I knew how much you hated him. Wasn’t that clever of me? He was the perfect rebound. Available, great with his hands, the last man on the planet you’d want me to choose after you.”
He shook her hands. “Can’t you see that he was proof we were never meant to be? You slept with the first willing body you could find, heedless of what it meant for me or Claus or the project or even yourself. You thought sex would fix things—you’ve always thought that. But it’s not a substitute for a real relationship.”
“You bastard.” She pulled away, but instead of taking the moment of separation to compose herself, her fists rose and she beat against Jared’s chest, landing blows, making almost no real impact. “I don’t think that. You made me this way. You broke my heart.”
He let her keep hitting him, the distance between them closing until he had his arms wrapped around her. “Dammit, Whitney. I’m not asking you to forgive me.” His voice cracked. “I’m begging you to. Please let me move on. Please let me begin to forgive myself.”
In that moment, Whitney stopped struggling. She couldn’t hit anymore. She couldn’t even move.
“Oh, Jared,” she murmured, going slack against him. She and this man—this almost stranger—had once shared so many hopes and dreams together. How had they managed to go so wrong?
She was struggling to find the words when the door to her office swung open.
“Kendra said you weren’t with a patient, so—”
She and Jared jumped apart. Even though there was nothing amorous about their embrace, even though Whitney was sure Matt would approve of her burgeoning compassion for the man she’d been so sure she’d never stop hating, being caught in the act of physical affection had a way of assigning guilt. Flustered, Whitney gave in to an overpowering impulse to adjust her clothes and smooth her hair.
“Whitney?” Matt’s voice was small. “What’s going on here?”
She offered a shaky laugh and extended a hand. “You’re just in time. You won’t believe the breakthrough Jared and I were having.”
Breakthrough? Is that what they’re calling it these days? It looked more to Matt like an embrace—and not one that invited a third-party viewing. Jared’s arms had not just been around Whitney, but holding her aloft, their faces close, eyes shining. It was the kind of embrace he and Whitney only recently mastered, the fusing of emotion and desire into one.
Matt’s jaw clenched so tight he could hear his teeth grinding, and he was surprised to find that his hands had formed fists. He kept them balled up tight at his sides, unsure what to do with them. The urge to plant them in Jared’s face was overpowering. But Matt was a peaceable man, an understanding man.
Wasn’t he?
“What the hell is going on here?” he said, and even though his pulse sped up, he sounded flat and cold to his own ears. “There had better be an exceptionally good reason for all this.”
“I told you.” Whitney’s smile stretched falsely across her face, and Matt could see that her outstretched hand shook. “I think I’m finally beginning to realize how it is that you and Laura can coexist in the same city.”
“Oh, you are, are you?” He turned to Jared, his voice dangerously low. There was no way this was happening. Not again. Not with Whitney. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to talk to my girlfriend alone right now.”
Jared held both hands up and backed away slowly, and it took Matt a moment to realize that the trepidation he saw in his face was directed toward him. “It’s not what you think. Whitney and I go way back—”
“I know the story,” Matt said through clenched teeth.
“Then you know how it ended.” Jared nodded, as if that was all the explanation required. With one last, lingering look at Whitney—a last, lingering look that made Matt’s head feel like it was home to a pressurized water heater—he escaped out the side door.
Whitney came forward, as if to embrace Matt, but he stepped aside. He didn’t want her to touch him. Like a wound rubbed raw, the tiniest brush of her fingers against his skin was likely to send him over the edge.
Who was he kidding? He was already flailing into it.
“Matt, come on,” she admonished softly. “This isn’t like you.”
“What isn’t like me?” he demanded. Even though Jared had left the room, Matt could still smell him, still feel him. Like a caged predator, Matt began pacing the room, the walls suddenly too small to contain the breadth of his emotion. “That I’d be upset to walk in here and find you wrapped in another man’s arms? Should I have walked out and given you another minute to yourselves? Let you finish? Jesus Christ, Whitney, I know you’ve always felt I’m too understanding when it comes to this kind of thing, but I’m still a man.”
“I know you are. You’re my man.” She tried again to approach him, but Matt angled himself behind a chair. He didn’t trust himself to get any closer.
Whitney’s face fell as she realized a few soft words weren’t going to cut it. “Just sit down for a second. Please.”
“I’m fine standing. I don’t think this will take long.”
Whitney wasn’t sure why, but it seemed imperative that Matt sit down. Maybe it was because he held himself so tense, like he could be off and running out the door in a matter of seconds. He couldn’t be off and running. He needed to hear her.
Didn’t he realize she’d had her breakthrough? She’d done it. She’d finally found a way to forgive.
“I see now why it is you’re so close to Laura,” she offered—feebly, she knew, but she wasn’t sure how else to start this conversation. Jared was right. She’d always thought that sex would fix things. Between the two of them. As a cure for Matt to move on. But so much more powerful than the physical manifestations of love were the emotional ones. “I know I’ve been the biggest advocate for you tossing her to the curb—and I still think she’s one of those women who go to terrible lengths to avoid being alone—but I was wrong.”
“No, I’m the one who was wrong.” Matt thumped the chair on the floor. “I can’t believe I was so stupid to think you actually wanted to be with me. Me! This whole time, I’ve been nothing more than a passing phase, a sexual conquest.”
“No,” she tried.
She failed.
“Don’t patronize me.” Matt swore under his breath, something he almost never did. It scared her almost as much as the white-hot fury she read in his face. “I f*cking love you, Whitney. I know you think it’s too soon for that, and I know I’m supposed to just bury my feelings until you’re ready for them, but that’s not me. I love you and I don’t care if you know it.”
That was the second time a man had used the L-word in this office in the past hour, and while Jared’s declaration had left her feeling all the nausea of regret, Matt’s words made her feel lighter—happier—than she had in years. Love. Such a complex, twisted emotion rendered pure when it came from this man.
“Matt, I lo—” she began.
He cut her off. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t do this again, do you hear me? I refuse to sit by and watch the woman I love throw me away for someone else. You, of all people, should know that. Since the day we first met, you’ve been trying to get me to realize what kind of a horrible human being would cheat on someone they cared about. Well, guess what? I think I’ve got it now.”
Her heart lodged somewhere in the region of her throat. “Matt. No.”
“What was it you said to me once? About what you felt for your cheating ex? Hatred, anger, pulsating revulsion?”
No. Not those. Anything but those.
Whitney’s legs gave way and she fell to her chair. And just as she thought the moment couldn’t get any worse, Matt added, “I came over today to tell you that Laura asked me to move back in with her.”
She shook her head, unable to form the words that would prevent him from making such a catastrophic life decision. The jeggings could not win.
“I’m not asking your opinion, Whitney. I just wanted you to know.”
Before she could do more than let out a strangled cry of protest, Matt turned on his heel and left, slamming the door as he went. Behind her, the Gwyneth Hogan painting fell to the ground and the air filled with the sound of cracking wood as the rack splintered and ripped the canvas in two.