Things We Never Said: A Hart’s Boardwalk Novel Read online

  He’d brought a twenty-five-year-old as his date, and by the very little attention he was paying her, I knew it was deliberate.

  Now and then, I’d feel his attention on me, but when I’d turn to look, he was glaring sullenly into his water like a teenager.

  The longer we sat with his treating Nina like a ghost and not talking to my family, the more the ball of emotion tightened in my throat. This wasn’t the Michael Sullivan I’d known and loved. This guy was bitter and selfish and needed to grow the fuck up.

  The remorse I’d felt for leaving him eased a little every time I saw him. Or maybe it was the chat with my dad. Or years of therapy kicking in. All I knew was that, yes, I was at fault for leaving him, for not coming back. It was a big mistake, and I was sorry. However, he’d never given me a chance to fully explain. And he’d made mistakes too. Dating Dillon was the catalyst in everything changing so dramatically. I’d let that go because it was the right thing to do. Yet he was sitting there seething.

  Who was this guy?

  “I do hate you.”

  “Do you blame her?”

  I wanted to confront him. I wanted to scream at him. Make him listen!

  “Let me buy the next round.” Nina’s voice drew me out of my angry inner diatribe.

  She was staring at Darragh, who was half standing from the table. I assumed that while I was lost in my thoughts, he’d offered to get another round of drinks.

  “Oh, that’s—”

  “No, let me.” She frowned at Michael. “Mike, another water or do you want a tonic or something?” He’d already told us he was driving so he was foregoing alcohol. That meant he didn’t even have a depressant to blame his foul mood on.

  He shook his head. “You’re not paying. I’ll pay.”

  That was the old Michael. Old-fashioned to the core. I curled my lip in annoyance.

  Nina shrugged nonchalantly. “Not going to argue with that.”

  Either she was very laid-back, or there was something I was missing here because who acted like they didn’t care if their date was behaving like a total asshole?

  Giving a reluctant nod, Michael stood from the table as Nina asked everyone for their order. When she got to me, and I said I’d have another soda water and lime, she cocked her head and frowned at my glass. “Are you the designated driver tonight too?”

  Usually, whenever anyone asked me why I wasn’t drinking in a social situation, I told them I didn’t drink alcohol. No explanation. It was nobody’s business but mine.

  The tension I felt from my friends and family, however, choked a response in my throat.

  “Dahlia doesn’t drink,” Michael answered, his eyes cool and flat. “She can’t handle her drink. Turns her into a lush who betrays everyone around her, isn’t that right, dahlin’?”

  His words prickled all over me like tiny, biting bugs. They were meant to wound, to eviscerate my emotions.

  And just like that, I was determined to kill whatever feelings I had for him. His hateful words made that easier than it sounded. Maybe there was more of his father in him than he thought.

  If I was done being my mother’s punching bag, I was definitely done being his.

  Outrage emanated around the table, and I sensed Bailey was going to be the first to speak, so I put my hand on her arm to stop her. Trembling with indignation, I got up out of my seat, grabbing my purse.

  Michael watched me like a man defeated.

  I was done with that too.

  Just because he felt remorse for saying horrible things to me didn’t mean it was okay.

  The truth was I’d said worse over the years with my negative self-talk. But I was trying to be kinder to myself, which meant not allowing others to fill me up with their poison anymore.

  I never thought Michael would be one of them.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  He flinched ever so slightly. “What?”

  “For killing it.” I nodded. “Yeah, for finally killing it. The way I feel about you. The guilt. All of it. The Michael I knew would never have treated me the way you’ve treated me since I came home, no matter what I’d done. You hate me?” I remembered Bailey’s words earlier and shrugged with an ambivalence I wished I felt. “I don’t hate you. I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”

  The muscle in his jaw ticked as he glared at me.

  Breaking eye contact, I looked down the table to my dad. “I’ll call a cab and see you all at home.”

  Thankfully, no one protested. They let me walk out of there with dignity.

  He watched her make her way out of the bar, and his knees shook.

  “I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”

  Fuck.

  Cold sweat beaded under his arms and above his lip as he watched her leave. What he’d said …

  What had he been thinking? As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to shove them back in. She made him crazy. He said shit he shouldn’t. All because of the anger in the pit of his stomach. All because he’d assumed all these years he’d loved her more than she’d ever loved him, and he’d resented her for it.

  But what if he’d been wrong?

  “I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”

  Panic suffused him, and he looked across the table at Cian. A man he respected. Cared about. A man who was looking at him in disappointment.

  “I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”

  That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Not when he felt so fuckin’ much.

  They weren’t done.

  She couldn’t walk away again.

  We’re not done.

  He whipped his head around and looked down at Nina. What the hell had he been thinking bringing her here? Why did he keep screwin’ up like this? “Thanks for coming but I’m sorry,” he said. “I gotta go. One of the guys will see you home.” He knew the McGuires would give her a ride. He knew it didn’t make bailing on her after she’d done him a favor any less shitty, but right now all he could think about was getting to Dahlia.

  None of them stopped him going after her.

  They knew like he knew, they weren’t done.

  Apparently, they never had been.

  Hurrying away from Rosie’s, that momentary feeling of freedom, of saying out loud that I was done with Michael Sullivan, fled completely. I didn’t feel free. Fury and hurt and resentment and hatred and love and longing and more resentment filled me until I was fit to bursting. I wanted to smack something.

  I wanted to scream and scream until the feelings inside me exploded into dust.

  Bracing myself against the bitter wind as I marched down Broadway, I remembered I’d told my dad I’d call a cab, but right then, I needed to walk it off.

  Except I was walking in the wrong direction.

  “Shit,” I muttered, drawing to a halt and turning.

  That’s when I saw the black Honda Accord pull up beside me and Michael jumped out of the driver’s side.

  Anticipation and indignation were strange emotional bedfellows, but that’s what I felt right then.

  “Get in the car,” he said, marching toward me.

  My jaw dropped at his demand. “Are you crazy?”

  “Get in the car, Dahlia.” He glowered, bracing his hands on his hips. “We need to talk.”

  “I’m done talking with you. I don’t particularly like what you have to say.”

  Michael practically bared his teeth. “Get in the fuckin’ car.”

  I pushed my face into his, refusing to be intimidated. “Go fuck yourself.”

  “There she is,” he bit out somewhat mysteriously, and then grabbed my upper arm. “Get in the car.”

  “Get your hands off me,” I hissed, trying to pull out of his grip.

  Instead, he hauled me up against him so I had no choice but to brace my hands against his chest or be crushed. The aforementioned very powerful chest heaved beneath my touch. “Don’t make me pull out my badge or my blue light because I will.”

  My eyes f
lared. “That’s an abuse of power.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve been abusing your power over me for fuckin’ years, so get in the car.” He led me around to the passenger side, and I was so stunned by his words, I was in the car before I knew what was happening.

  “What?” I huffed to myself as he got in. The car smelled of leather polish and Michael’s cologne. The doors locked as he pulled on his seat belt, and the anticipation I’d felt earlier made my heart rocket into hyper speed. “This is kidnapping!”

  He pulled into traffic, apparently ignoring me now.

  “Michael!”

  “You wanted to talk.” He cut me a hard look. “We’re going to talk.”

  “Too late.”

  “You run off again without having this conversation, I’m not going to think much of you anymore.”

  Disbelief boiled in my blood. “I thought you hated me anyway! I tried to talk! You turned it into a verbal gutting!”

  “Lower your voice.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” I seethed beside him. As soon as we got to Dad’s, I was going to let it rip. He thought he was the only victim here?

  “For someone apparently so indifferent to me, you got a lot of anger in you.”

  I narrowed my eyes and stopped myself from opening my mouth to snap back at him. However, that would only support his point.

  I kept my mouth shut as the minutes passed. Fifteen minutes was like an age. It wasn’t until we reached the Sweetser Circle on the Parkway and Michael didn’t come off onto Broadway in Everett that I opened my mouth. “Where are you going?”

  He kept driving down the Parkway. “Chelsea.”

  “Why?”

  Michael flicked me a look before staring straight ahead. He was surprisingly calm. “My apartment is in Chelsea.”

  My pulse skittered.

  Alone with Michael. In his apartment.

  Nope.

  “Turn around and take me back to Dad’s.”

  The bastard ignored me and kept driving. I stewed on this new indignation until he pulled to a stop outside a three-decker in Chelsea.

  He’d parked with the passenger side to the sidewalk, and I looked up at the building, curious and fearful all at once.

  “Let’s go inside.”

  “I’m not going in there. This is kidnapping, Michael.”

  “Stop being so fuckin’ melodramatic,” he said without heat.

  “Melodramatic?” I clenched my teeth. “You manhandled me into the car. As a cop, you know that’s not right.”

  “I know you. If you didn’t want to be here, there is no way I could have gotten you in the car. Now get out.” He pushed open his door, slammed it shut, and came around the hood of the car to open mine.

  Michael’s dark gaze shuttered. “Will you get out of the car or do I need to bring out my cuffs?”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I growled as I launched myself out of the vehicle.

  When he tried to retake hold of my arm, I yanked it away from him and hurried up the stoop to the front entrance.

  In favor of the cold day, I’d donned the only pair of boot-cut jeans I owned and a pair of high-heeled boots. They were much more comfortable to run away from him in than the high heels I’d worn the last time I’d seen him. Only I didn’t appear to be running away, did I?

  I felt his attention as he opened the front door, but I refused to look at him. He muttered something under his breath.

  “You do realize I’ve got whiplash?” I followed him upstairs to his apartment.

  He frowned down over his shoulder at me. “What?”

  “Emotional whiplash. You banged a mental Uey so fast, I can feel the burn of it up my goddamn neck.” I could also hear my Boston accent getting thicker with every angry sentence out of my mouth.

  Michael didn’t answer as he led me to the door on the second floor and I took that to mean he knew I was right about the whiplash.

  As soon as I walked inside his apartment, some of my ire died. Michael hit the lights, illuminating everything. Or, well, nothing actually. The place was almost unlived in. Bare walls, blinds at the windows but no curtains. No photos. Nothing personal at all.

  It was depressing.

  I hated that for him, even if I was angrier at him than I’d ever been in my life.

  The apartment door slammed behind me, and I slowly turned inside the airy sitting room to face him. Michael dropped his keys on a side table that had a lamp with a dull beige shade on it. Then he met my gaze. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  I lifted my chin, ignoring the piercing hurt as I remembered everything he’d said. “Which part?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ve said a lot of horrible things. Something about my mom being right to blame me and erase me from her life. Oh, and that you hate me. And my favorite was the recent dig at my brief reliance on alcohol.”

  Michael exhaled and rubbed a hand over his head. “I’m sorry. You just … turning up like this has brought a lot of crap back for me, and it’s made me crazy. I’m saying and doing fucked-up things—”

  “That’s not an excuse,” I cried softly. “You don’t get to hurt me like that and say it’s because I make you crazy. And don’t blame me for your actions either. Your actions are your own, and I’m not taking responsibility for them.”

  “I know!” He threw his hands in the air. “Don’t you think I fuckin’ know that? I hate myself for what I’ve said. For what I’ve done. But it was never intentional. It just happened in the moment.”

  I scoffed. “Nina wasn’t intentional? You knew I would be there and you took a stab in the dark and thought, ‘Hey, I know what I’ll do to kick her in the gut even more. I’ll bring a younger model and show her I’ve moved on!’ Well, news flash, Michael, I already knew that! I met your wife, remember?”

  “Ex-wife,” he bit out, taking a step toward me. His whole being bristled with contempt. “I’m not going to apologize for marrying Kiersten. You left! You fuckin’ left, and you didn’t come back! And don’t even pretend you haven’t been with other men.”

  I narrowed my eyes because he was avoiding the topic of Nina. “Well, a girl has needs too.”

  His features grew taut, and he took another somewhat menacing step toward me. Refusing to be intimidated, I stayed where I was. “Yeah? You fuck any of them without thinking about me?”

  My skin flushed with outrage because he wasn’t wrong. There had been only one man in the last nine years who made me temporarily forget the heat I had with Michael. But when we were out of bed, I couldn’t forget. So I’d let that man go too.

  He looked smug as he said, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Was I to assume he always thought of me when he was with his wife? With other women? I thought not. “There was someone,” I whispered. “He made me forget.”

  That stopped Michael in his tracks. Distress he couldn’t hide flashed across his face, and a flare of pain panged in my chest. “You still with him?”

  “No.”

  “Did he leave you or did you leave him?”

  I shrugged. “What does it matter? This isn’t important.”

  “Did you leave him or did he leave you?”

  “Michael—”

  “Answer the question, Dahlia.”

  I could feel that familiar electricity zinging through me the nearer he got. “I left him.”

  His shoulders seemed to relax, but he whispered, “Seems you have that habit.”

  “Is that why you wanted me here? To get in a few more hits? Because you aren’t perfect, Michael. You aren’t blameless!”

  “What the hell does that mean? Are you talking about Dillon?”

  “You made a mistake then. I made a mistake too. But I let it go, and you didn’t.”

  “Your mistake kept you away for nine fuckin’ years!”

  That was it. Something inside of me cracked. “You’re a cop!” I screamed, my chest heaving and shuddering. I lowered
my voice, the words hoarse from my shriek. “You’re a fuckin’ detective, and you’re telling me you couldn’t have found me even if you’d wanted to?”

  He flinched like I’d slapped him, staring at me with those soulful eyes that made me want to die.

  “Why did you bring Nina?” I repeated.

  “Because I’m a dick. She’s a friend. She’s also gay. She was at the station when Dermot asked me out for drinks, and I knew by the shifty way he was acting that you’d be there. So I asked Nina to pretend to be my date. I was so busy trying to make sure I was okay going into that situation, I convinced myself you wouldn’t care.”

  Relief I didn’t want to acknowledge made me relax a little, knowing he hadn’t screwed over Nina to get at me. Also, her focused interest in Bailey made more sense now.

  As for Michael’s reason for bringing Nina? I nodded reluctantly because I could understand that. Still, he hadn’t answered my previous question. “Why didn’t you try to find me?”

  Something I didn’t understand turned his gaze heavy. “I didn’t want to.”

  I gasped, the words slicing through me.

  Well, I’d asked, hadn’t I?

  Feeling numb, or rather wishing I’d feel numb, I moved to walk past him. To leave. To go home to Hartwell where I could lick my wounds in peace.

  Before I could, Michael grabbed my upper arm, hauling me against him. His tortured expression was hard to take. “You left me.” His words caught like stinging cuts on my lips. “You left me, and I was so in love with you. I didn’t want to find you because you broke my heart, Dahlia. You broke my fuckin’ heart.”

  Tears flooded my eyes as a tsunami of longing and pain filled me.

  He’d never told me loved me.

  We both knew we felt it—or I hoped, at least—but there had never been a right time to confess it.

  Until now, I guess.

  “I blame you,” he said, shaking me gently. “Do you get that? I blame you for this empty life you left me with.”

  “Stop,” I demanded, trying to pull away. I didn’t want to get sucked into another vortex of unrelenting guilt.