Fade To Black

“That’s not what I said,” she flared out. “It has nothing to do with the way you look. At least not in the way you mean. It has everything to do with where you’ve been these past five years. What you’ve been doing. Why you left me in the first place.”

Her anger deepened as she forced herself to meet his dark gaze. Her voice grew shaky with emotion as she spread her hands in supplication. “Can’t you understand? Maybe you didn’t leave because you wanted to, but that doesn’t change the fact that you did leave me. I thought you were dead. All these years, I’ve mourned you, and now I find out it was all for nothing. It was all a lie.”

“You sound disappointed, Jesse.”

His observation startled her. Made her feel just a trifle uneasy about herself. Was she disappointed? Or was she just feeling hurt and confused? Angry and betrayed and…wronged. “I feel a lot of things,” she admitted. “Not the least of which is fear.”

“I would never hurt you.”

“You already have,” she said. “You have no idea.”

“But not intentionally. Never intentionally.” Pierce took a step toward her, but stopped when she flinched away. “You have to believe that, Jesse. I don’t know what happened five years ago. I don’t know where I’ve been, what I’ve done, why I couldn’t come back to you. I wish to God I did.”

He raised his hand to massage his right temple. His eyes closed for a moment as though he were experiencing excruciating pain. “It’s something I have to figure out. I have all these bits and pieces of memories floating around inside my head, and somehow I have to fit them all together again. I know none of this makes any sense to you right now. To me, either. But the one thing I do know is that I never stopped loving you.”

“How can you possibly know that?” she demanded. “If you have no memory of the past five years, how can you be so sure there wasn’t someone else?”

He lifted his gaze to hers. “Because there could never be anyone else. At least…not for me.”

It took Jessica a few seconds to register the note of accusation in his tone. The brown of his eyes deepened almost to black. His gaze was intense, probing, his voice a little too calm. Jessica felt a chill of apprehension as he said slowly, “Perhaps that should have been my first question. I’m almost afraid to ask it, though.”

Jessica glanced away guiltily.

“With good reason, it would seem. Is there someone else?” he persisted.

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”

“You don’t sound too sure.”

“There isn’t anyone else,” she repeated angrily. She tossed back her hair and eyed him defiantly. “But there could have been. And who would have blamed me? You were gone all that time. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive. For all I knew, you could have had another family somewhere else. You could have been in love with someone else. You could have forgotten all about me,” she said, feeling the sting of tears threaten her anger. “I had no reason to believe you’d ever come back. Why should I have waited for you?”

“Then why did you?”

Silence. Jessica’s heart pounded in her chest as his gaze held hers. His brown eyes softened, misted, looked at her the way he used to look at her, as if she was someone so very special to him. As if she was the only woman in the world for him. As if he couldn’t wait to take her in his arms and hold her. Dear God, how often she had thought about that look, how often she had prayed to see it again, just one more time.

But how could she trust it now? How could she trust her own emotions when memories of the past were so strong at that moment she could almost reach out and pluck one from the air between them?

She let her anger blaze to life again. “I didn’t wait,” she denied. “I was busy working, raising my son, providing a stable home for us both. I was busy growing up, learning how to make my own decisions and realizing that I had no one to rely on but myself. Look around you, Pierce. I did all this by myself. I didn’t wait for you. I’ve gone on with my life. Max and I are happy. We’re a family. We don’t need—” She broke off, realizing what she had almost said.

His brow arched upward, twisting slightly from the scar. “You don’t need me? That’s what you were about to say, isn’t it? You have changed, Jessica. I remember a time when you would never have tried to hurt me like that.”

Pierce’s face looked like a cold, hard mask. At that moment, he seemed more than ever like a stranger to her. A stranger who had shared her life once, who had helped create a son with her. A stranger who had walked back into her life just when she was beginning to feel good about herself again.

“Five years is a long time, Pierce,” she countered. “People change. I’ve changed. I’m not the same woman you left behind.”

“Yes,” he agreed quietly, “but I never would have imagined you could have changed that much.”

* * *

Jessica lay wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking how strangely quiet the house seemed without her son. She could hear the soft whir of the ceiling fan overhead, the chime of the Tompion grandfather clock down in the foyer, the rustle of leaves in the trees outside her window. If she listened closely enough, she could almost imagine she could hear the sound of Pierce’s breathing.

She turned her head and gazed at the side of the bed that had been his. She’d slept on the same side all these years, never giving it a second thought, even when Pierce’s would have been more convenient for getting up in the middle of the night with Max.

Had she unconsciously been waiting for Pierce to come back? Had she known all along, somewhere deep inside her heart, that he wasn’t dead? That he was alive…and still loving her?

Don’t, she told herself harshly. Don’t believe everything he says. How could he have loved her and left her like that? How could he have loved her and not gotten in touch with her all these years? How could he have loved her and forgotten all about her?

Maybe there was a perfectly logical reason to explain where he’d been all these years. Maybe he hadn’t left by choice, just as he claimed. Maybe he’d been in an accident and hadn’t remembered her at all until now.

Surprising how that thought gave her very little comfort. Her own husband couldn’t remember her? Couldn’t remember what they’d had together? Maybe because it hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to her, Jessica thought with a new flash of anger. Maybe because—

Oh, God, stop it! she commanded herself. What good did it do to go over and over all the possibilities in her head? Whatever had happened to Pierce didn’t change anything. Not really. Five years had gone by. Five years of her growing and maturing and taking charge of her own life. She hadn’t meant to hurt him earlier when she’d said she and Max didn’t need him anymore, but it was the truth, wasn’t it?

She’d learned everything there was to know about Pierce’s business, and it had flourished in the past few years. She’d redecorated the house to suit her own tastes, and the result was elegant and beautiful, if a little cold. She’d raised Max all by herself, with no help from anyone, and he was an adorable, well-adjusted, happy little boy.

Jessica’s life was ordered now. Completely secure. For the first time, she felt in control of her own destiny. She didn’t have to depend on anyone else for her security and happiness. She’d made a safe, stable life for herself and Max, and she wouldn’t let anyone, not even Pierce, threaten her peace of mind.

What right did he have to come back here now?

A little thread of guilt wove through her anger as Jessica punched her pillow, then turned her back on the empty side of the bed that had once been Pierce’s.

If only he didn’t look so hurt, so badly in need of someone to take care of him. She sniffed, telling herself she must be catching a cold.

If only he didn’t have those horrible scars to remind them both that the past five years hadn’t been kind to either of them. If only she didn’t have to wonder how he’d gotten them, about the pain he must have endured.

She tried to harden her heart at the rush of emotion that swept through her. She’d suffered, too, hadn’t she? She had her scars, too. She’d taken charge of her life and become her own person, but not without a price. She’d grown harder, colder, even bitter at times. She seldom laughed anymore, except with Max. It wasn’t a pretty image she drew of herself, she knew. Perhaps this change in character wasn’t one of her finer triumphs, but it was life. It was reality.

It was just the way things were now.

And Pierce, well…Pierce would learn soon enough that you can never go home again.

* * *

It was good to be home.

Now that he was back, Pierce didn’t intend to ever leave again.

He didn’t care what the hell the agency said. He’d paid his dues. Five years of his life gone, and Pierce had no idea what purpose they had served. What good he might have done.

Standing in the shadows of the backyard, he let his gaze roam over the familiar, yet changed, surroundings. The cherry trees he and Jessica had planted together had grown so tall, so thick and hardy. The flower beds were neatly tended, the grass freshly cut.

With a sharp pang of guilt, Pierce wondered if Jessica hired someone to come in regularly to do the chores that he’d once done. He’d always hated yard work, but now he found himself resenting yet another usurpation of his position here at home.

His home.

He sighed deeply. He only had to look at his reflection in the mirror to know that wherever he’d been in the past five years, it wasn’t a place he would have called home. The scars, the gauntness, the haunted look in his eyes suggested he’d been through hell.

He grimaced, remembering the first time he’d seen himself in the mirror. He certainly wouldn’t be winning any beauty contests, that was for damned sure. No wonder Max had been so afraid of him this morning.