Owed: One Wedding Night

He escorted her out of the dining room, ignoring the stares of people who remembered, or had heard, about their past together.

When they stepped out into the foggy night, he didn’t ask where she was parked, but took the path that ran along the water. Again she moved to pull away, but when he took hold of the sleeve of her jacket, she fell into step with him.

Out of habit he led her to the empty slip he’d held onto in case someday he could bear to sail the Bay again. He stopped and rested his elbows on the weathered wooden gate, one foot raised to the bottom rail. Beside him, Madison stared over at the next dock, at her family’s old slip and the yacht that her Grandfather Moore had had built fifty years ago and named after her mother. The “Dana Marie” was now the “Blue Sky”.

The mist had curled the hair around Madison’s face. Her eyes were wide and wistful, like a poor kid peering into a toy-store window at Christmas. Not because she wanted the yacht back. She’d always been more interested in sunbathing on the deck than sailing. No, she had to want her old life back.

Something sharp wrapped itself around his heart, but he willed it away.

He hadn't taken that life away from her. Her father had.

Jake hadn’t taken anything away from her. She was the one who’d walked out on him, hurt him, humiliated him…

She must have felt him watching her, because she turned to look at him. But the wistful, wanting expression on her face didn’t go away. Instead it grew darker, hotter.

A foghorn sounded. Somewhere a buoy bell clanged on the waves. A car drove by, leaving a trail of loud music in its wake.

“What happened, Madi?”

The question seemed to surprise her as much as it surprised him. She didn’t answer, but stared past him toward the water.

“What happened to us?” he asked again.

“I couldn’t be your trophy wife.”

What the hell did that mean?

He kept his tone calm. “That's a pretty dated term. Aren't trophy wives young second wives for old guys?”

“Not necessarily. A lot of people would say, have said, our mothers were trophy wives, even though they were first wives and our fathers were only a few years older than they were.”

He didn’t try to deny it.

“Your father used his family’s wealth to win the model of the year as his wife,” she went on. “My father won Dartmoor by marrying my mother. I’m not sure which one was the trophy there, but you get the idea.”

The bitterness in her voice stunned him, but he knew her better than to comment on it.

“Even if that kind of marriage was good enough for our mothers, it would never have been enough for me, Jake. I wanted to do more with my life than have babies, hand them over to a nanny, and wait for you to come home at the end of the day.”

He swallowed the sucker punch she didn’t realize she’d so expertly delivered. He couldn’t count how many times he’d day-dreamed about exactly that.

“We could have worked it out.”

“I tried to talk with you about it. The only conversation we had about it ended with you forbidding…” She paused to underscore the word. “Forbidding me to get my MBA.”

He remembered that argument. He’d been so angry and hurt to learn that Madison didn’t wanted their marriage, their family, to be the center of her life that he hadn't known what else to say. He’d ended up silencing her outrage with a soul-searing kiss. They hadn’t come up for air until the next morning.

“Your father agreed with me.”

She winced.

“And you didn't bring it up again.” His tone was harsher, colder than he intended.

“The wedding was a run-away train. I didn’t know how to slow it down so we could talk. Our mothers had every minute scheduled for weeks. You and I were almost never alone together, and when we were we always ended up in bed. I didn’t want to fight with you in bed. I kept trying to find another chance to talk to you, to work it out, but that chance never came.”

Anger tightened his voice. “So you decided the best solution was to call your father from the limo on the way to the church and tell him the wedding was off.”

“That's not what happened.”

Madison took a deep, shuddering breath.

He was waiting for her to say more. The harsh parking lot lights transformed his handsome face into a demon’s mask of pale skin and dark shadows.

“I called my father to tell him we were caught in traffic and would be a few minutes late.”

Still no reaction from him, as if he didn’t care about what had happened. Maybe, after all this time, it no longer mattered to him. But it mattered to her. She needed to tell him for her own sake, if nothing else.

“When my father answered, I heard you in the background talking to someone. Your cousin Mark, probably. You were bragging to him that I was the ultimate trophy wife. I–I couldn’t go through with the wedding after that. I refused to stop being who I was, to give up my dreams to be your trophy wife, no matter how much I loved you.”

His face remained frozen.

“I didn't think of you as a trophy wife.”

“I heard you, Jake.”

“You didn’t hear the whole conversation.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, but she shook herself free, wishing there was some way to stop time right there.

For three years she’d told herself, if only in her weakest moments, that maybe she’d been wrong, maybe there’d been some other explanation for what Jake said. How could she live with the guilt if she had been wrong? And if she hadn't, how could she live without that one tiny hope? That was why she’d never had this conversation with him. Not that he’d ever given her the chance before.

She held her breath, dreading the inevitable pain, no matter which way he answered.

He gave her a grim smile. “Mark and I were joking with each other about our ‘trophy wives’. He was married to a hot young starlet at the time, remember?”

“You sounded plenty serious when you said it.”

He didn’t say anything right away, but jammed his hands in his pocket and turned half away from her. The hesitation, the way he couldn’t meet her eyes told her it would be worse than she’d feared. Whatever he said next would be a lie.

“I was serious. I didn’t want him to think I really felt that way about you. I told him you were the ultimate trophy wife because you were so smart as well as beautiful.”

She closed her eyes against the hurt that seemed to cut her open from neck to belly.

“Don’t lie to me, Jake. Not about this.”

She had to stop to breathe. She slowly counted to ten, waiting for him to say something.

He stood silent, the demon’s mask back in place.