Never is a Promise(46)

“That was…” I shrugged. “It was what it was.”

“So can we go to counseling? Can we try again?”

“This is coming out of nowhere, Harrison. To be honest, you’re kind of freaking me out. Can’t you go back to having a stick up your ass and only discussing work things with me?”

I pushed past him, making a beeline for my suite.

“It’s him, isn’t it?

Stopping in my tracks like a rabbit in front of a dog, I didn’t even turn around when I asked, “Pardon?”

“Beau.” The sound of Beau’s name uttered in my home coming from the Harrison’s mouth was a jarring combination. “Talked to your mother the other day. She told me all about your little history with Beau.”

My mother didn’t know half of what went down with Beau and me, but still, I could only imagine what she’d told Harrison. Never ill-intentioned, the woman just loved to gossip and stir pots.

“Your mother told me you and Beau used to date. Said you were quite distraught over him when he left you,” Harrison’s tone held me at verbal knifepoint.

Damn it, Mama.

She’d been stirring pots since the day I was born when she’d told two different men they were my father, garnering all sorts of attention and becoming the talk of the town. When I came out looking damn near identical to Bobby Andrews, Mama latched onto him for dear life, keeping him close until the day he passed away in a motorcycle crash outside Louisville.

“He didn’t leave me,” I corrected him. “I went off to college and we decided to break up.”

“And then he turned into this famous musician and you were left trying to carve a name for yourself in order to make yourself feel better.” The ugly part of Harrison’s personality was still alive and well. I’d only seen it a small handful of times during the time I’d known him, but when he took that tone with me, it always sat heavy in the center of my body and turned the sky red. “Is that why you wanted to go into journalism, Coco? Because it was the only way you could become famous and show this ex-boyfriend of yours that you could succeed without him by your side?”

“Not. At. All.” The words gritted like sandpaper in my mouth as I turned to face him. It was the truth. Growing up, we never had cable. Watching T.V. at our house mostly consisted of watching major network news programs. Barbara Walters was my idol. I used to switch on the closed-caption function and practice reading the news in front of Addison and an assortment of stuffed animals.

“It is, isn’t it?” Harrison laughed a hearty laugh as he walked to the mini bar and poured himself a glass of single-malt Glenfiddich. “God, it’s so junior high, Coco.”

I silently cursed my mother for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. And why had those two been talking in the first place?

“This whole jealous ex-husband thing is really unattractive.” I crossed my arms, squaring my shoulders. We weren’t married, and I wasn’t with Beau. I didn’t need to explain or defend a damn thing.

Harrison downed the rest of his drink and slammed the crystal tumbler on the table. His eyes locked into mine as he lunged toward me like a fire soaring upward.

“I still love you, damn it,” he said, cupping my face in his shaking hands. “Imagining you with…with that hick, that cowboy…imagining his hands on you, his mouth…imagining him touching your body…”

His eyes flickered like a shattered mirror, like a man who’d just lost everything he’d suddenly discovered he’d ever wanted.

“I love you, Coco,” he said. “We belong together. We’re cut from the same cloth, you and me. I knew it since the moment I first saw you at that audition.”

He’d been working at a local news station in New York, and I’d auditioned for a morning anchor position. I didn’t get the job, but he called and offered to help me work on some things. At the time, a handsome producer several years my senior showering me with all kinds of affection was a kind of exhilaration and excitement I’d never known before. That’s when the wonderment had started.

“We had a good run, Harrison,” I said, feeling his scotch-tinged breath upon my face. Our lips held in limbo mere inches apart, as if he was two seconds from trying to claim them as his again.

Reality hit halfway into the second year of our marriage, when work took a front seat and everything he’d said or done that had once given me butterflies suddenly felt overdone and contrived. That’s when the wonderment ended.

“We didn’t try hard enough,” Harrison said. “We should’ve tried harder.”