“How can I be so smart and so stupid at the same time?” she asked.
“Because you’re human and no one is smart when it comes to matters of the heart.”
Made sense, she thought, wishing it were a year from now and the pain had lessened. Not that she expected it ever to go away. She had a bad feeling she would love Jack forever.
“He doesn’t want me,” she whispered. “He never did. I thought it was about the age difference or how I looked, but now I’m not so sure. I think maybe it was just me.”
Which made it hurt. She couldn’t change who she was any more than she already had. He didn’t want the very essence of her being. What else was left?
“He’s an idiot,” Betina murmured.
“No. He’s just a man who can’t pretend to be in love with me.” Meri sucked in a breath. “I have to go. I can’t stay here. We’ll need to regroup somewhere else. Maybe down south. Pasadena or something.”
“Don’t worry about it. Do you want me to go with you?”
Meri managed a smile as she looked at her friend. “No. I want you to stay with Colin and be in love for the both of us.”
Jack worked until dark. When he finally realized he couldn’t see anything other than his computer screen anymore, he stood and stretched. It was only then he noticed the silence of the house.
Uneasiness slipped through him as he went downstairs and pushed open the door to Meri’s room.
The furniture was exactly as he remembered-with the exception of the bed. Someone had stripped off the sheets and left the blankets neatly folded. The closet was empty, as were the drawers. She was gone.
He raced down to the main floor, where he found Betina packing up the notes from the dining room.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Leaving.” She didn’t bother to look at him.
“All of you?”
She nodded. “We’ll finish the work elsewhere.”
Work? He didn’t care about the work. He cared about Meri. “Where is she? She can’t leave. She has to stay the month.”
He’d known that from the beginning. That she was stuck here, too. Just like him. They couldn’t escape each other. Hadn’t that been the point?
Betina looked at him. “She doesn’t have to stay here. That was just something she told you. Hunter’s donation has nothing to do with her. It was always about his friends.”
She’d lied about having to stay? Why? So he wouldn’t force her to leave? To make him think he had time?
“Where is she?” he asked again.
“I’m not going to tell you. If she wants you to know, she’ll get in touch with you herself.”
He didn’t understand any of this. Why had Meri been here in the first place? What had she wanted? Why leave now?
“Is it Andrew?” he asked. “Is she upset because I told her what he was?”
Betina’s expression was almost pitying. “It’s a guy thing, right? This failure to comprehend the most basic of human emotions? It has to be. I can’t believe you’re honestly that stupid.” She smiled, then shook her head. “It always comes down to smart and stupid. How strange.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” she told him. “Meri came here because she thought she wanted closure. She got it, in a way. She’s been in love with you all these years. But the man wasn’t really you. He was someone better. The person she thought you would be. Meri embraces life. She loves and is loved. She cares about people. She thought you were all those things, too. But she was wrong. And now she’s gone.”
Meri loved him? She couldn’t. Not after what he’d done. Not after he’d let her down time after time.
“She can’t,” he whispered.
“That’s what I keep telling her, but does she listen?” Betina closed the box. “I’m done here. Colin and I will be gone within the hour. Then you can have the house to yourself. You’ve got a few weeks left, right? I hope you enjoy your time here.”
She started to leave. He grabbed her arm. “You can’t leave it like that. There has to be more.”
“Why? You don’t want there to be more. It’s not like you really care about her. She’s just Hunter’s little sister, right? An annoying responsibility. Your problem is you didn’t know what you had until you lost it, and now she’s gone forever. Goodbye, Jack.”
He released her and let her go because there was nothing left to say.
Fine. He could be fine his last few weeks here. It was just three weeks, and then he’d go back to Texas and bury himself in his work. He would stay busy and he would forget. He was good at forgetting.
Three days later, Jack knew he was damn close to slipping into madness. The house was empty. Too empty. The silence mocked him. Worse, he found himself missing Meri’s nerd friends. He missed the arguments about string theory and the scraps of paper with equations that had dotted every surface. He missed walking into a room and not understanding a word of what was being said despite the fact that everyone was speaking English.
He missed the closeness, the way Meri bullied everyone to get outside, to live life. He missed her insisting on a better telescope because the stars were so beautiful. He missed the sound of her voice, her laughter, the way her body moved. He missed her quirky sense of humor, her brilliance and how her smile could light up a room. He missed her.
She wasn’t the teenager he’d known all those years ago. The young woman who had intrigued him and at the same time scared the hell out of him. Not just because she was Hunter’s sister but because there was a quality about her that warned him she would expect only the best of herself and those in her world.
For a while he’d thought maybe he could live up to those expectations, but then Hunter had gotten sick and he’d known he would only hold her back.
He’d let her go for a thousand reasons that made sense at the time. She didn’t need him. She had to grow up on her own. She was better off without him. He was afraid. They’d both been so young and his feelings for Meri had been confused. So he’d walked away and stayed away. He’d kept tabs on her from a distance. He’d taken the coward’s way out.
He hadn’t expected to ever see her again. Then she’d been here and he’d been thrown. She’d wanted to seduce him and he knew he couldn’t let that happen. Because of what he owed both her and Hunter.
He walked into the empty living room and stared at the perfectly arranged furniture. It was all so comfortable. He wanted to throw things, break things, mess it all up. Because life wasn’t tidy or comfortable. It was a pain in the ass.
He turned to leave, then spotted a DVD case on the floor, by the sofa. Someone had dropped it. Or left it on purpose. Meri? Betina? Hunter?
He picked it up and stared at the plain black cover. Someone had stuck on a piece of paper covered with a single word.
Hunter.
Against his better judgment, Jack walked to the DVD player and put in the disk. Then he turned on the television and braced himself for the pain.
Someone had taken the time to transfer Hunter’s home movies, he thought as he watched snippets of the first confusing days at Harvard. There were shots of Hunter’s friends. All of them. And Meri. She was always hanging on the fringes.
She’d been the one to show them around, list the best places to get pizza at three in the morning. She’d been there since she was a kid.
There were shots of snowball fights and a late-night party by a bonfire.
He leaned back against the sofa and lost himself in the images. A vacation here, a camping trip there. Seven guys who had become friends. No. Brothers. Brothers he hadn’t seen or talked to in years.
The scene shifted to a yacht vacation they’d all taken one spring break. The camera panned to show the guys stretched out in the sun after a very late night. Meri walked on deck and paused, looking awkward and unhappy. She turned her gaze to him. He had his eyes closed and didn’t see the look on her face. The one that clearly showed she loved him.