A Fresh Start

“Isn’t there, though, Alan? Isn’t there a need for that?”

“I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about,” said Alan, and Grace glared at him.

“All right,” said Grace, sweeping inside and walking straight to the curtains. She drew them, letting in a bright shaft of sunlight.

That’s when she got a good look at Alan. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He hadn’t shaved. He looked positively disheveled, and not really in the charming manner of it.

“Then let me tell you what I’m talking about,” Grace went on, refusing to be softened by Alan’s rather haggard looks.

“I’m talking about the fact that once, in these rooms, you nearly made love to me. You stopped yourself, and you ordered me out. I did. I didn’t know what was wrong with you, so I decided that you just hated losing control of situations. I could deal with that. I could live with things being on your terms. We both know that everything’s on your terms, anyway. What real difference does it make to me? But this is different. I gave you a good day. That’s what I was trying to do – give you a good day, give us a chance to get to know more about each other. Get to know more sides of each other. And you did. Everything that happened yesterday, you had a choice. You chose, every single time.”

Grace stopped to take a deep breath.

Alan looked rather taken aback.

“After you make a choice that pleases you, you can’t just turn around and say sorry, just to walk away as if it was a mistake that could be undone. It can’t be undone. It wasn’t the first time. You knew where it was heading. You chose. I might have put it together, but you chose. I didn’t force you into anything!”

Grace ran out of words and stopped, her anger draining away and leaving her with just heartache and exhaustion.

Her shoulders slumped.

Alan watched as the fire that had made her so bright and beautiful burnt out, leaving her hollow, and he knew that she was right.

He had known all along that she was right.

He had been horribly unfair to her. All of the day before, he had known where it was heading – what option she was giving him. He had known that it would be his choice. He could turn her down, and she would have sat there when he left.

But he had chosen to take first one step, then another, and another, until he had found himself holding her, making love to her.

He had walked away callously after taking the pleasure he’d wanted, and he had known that she had been offering more than just that pleasure. She had been offering herself.

She didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

“Sit down,” said Alan, his voice soft but weary.

Grace had no energy left to argue or disagree. She sat.

Alan didn’t sit. He paced, giving her the vague beginnings of a headache with his prowling.

“Grace, I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. It’s not like you took advantage of me. You planned a date for us, and it ended as dates often do. I chose the direction in which it ended. You deserve the truth.”

Grace should’ve felt elated when she heard that. Finally, she was getting something! But she felt the cold weight of despair pressing down on her chest and knew that she was about to get her heart broken.

“Grace, I can’t love anybody.”

She was nonplussed. What did he mean?

“I learned the hard way that love and trust are suckers’ games. You open yourself, you leave yourself vulnerable. I took that risk once and I paid that price. I don’t believe in making the same mistake twice, so since then, I’ve guarded myself and my heart very carefully. Part of the advantages of our marriage is that women stop trying to tie themselves to me and my money and my reputation. But if we have more than companionship… Then I’m back in the same trap that I’ve been trying to avoid.”

Grace marveled at how easily he said those words, when they felt like sharp tools being used to stab her, twist and stab over and over again. Had he no inkling of how much he was hurting her with those thoughtless words?

Apparently not.

“Alan, are you really telling me that you were once hurt by somebody and now you have decided to never let anybody have the power to hurt you again?”

Grace did have a way of cutting through bullsh*t, thought Alan, a touch of pride in that thought.

“When you cut away all the frills, I suppose that’s what it is,” admitted Alan.

Grace wanted to cry, to scream at him. But she decided to be as dispassionately rational as he was apparently being.

“All right, so tell me about this person who hurt you. I deserve to know all of the truth, Alan. Not just what crumbs you choose to throw my way.”

Alan sighed. Grace wasn’t going to make it easy on him. Why would he expect her to? He hadn’t made it easy on her.

“I was twenty-two when I met the woman I thought was the love of my life. She was older – not by much, she was just twenty-eight – and she was everything I wanted. I had nothing. She had more, but she never felt like she had enough. I thought she believed in me. I thought I could trust her. I did trust her. I shouldn’t have.”

Grace shouldn’t have made him go on, but she wasn’t feeling quite compassionate enough to let him stop.

But her damn heart was beginning to soften.

“She was rich. I wasn’t. She took me with her to parties. I knew that people snickered. I didn’t care. I was so sure that what we had was real.”

The penny dropped for Grace.

“Mrs. Winters,” she whispered.

Alan looked at her with a crooked smile. He had known that she’d put it together.

“It’s true?”

Alan nodded.

Grace could still remember how she had cried for the young artist who had been mocked and derided by the older, beautiful woman who had only been toying with him. She could remember how her heart had hurt as he asked her to marry him, and she laughed at him.

Grace couldn’t remember hating a character as much as she had hated Mrs. Winters, from his second book. Beautiful, but heartless, she had used a young artist, in all ways, until she finally discarded him, leaving him broken.

“But you’re not Kevin,” she murmured.

Alan looked at her steadily, refusing to let his gaze drop.

“You didn’t let her defeat you and destroy you. You’ve become successful. She must have tried to get back in touch with you once you did.”

Alan smiled again, this time in admiration as well as bitterness.

“She did,” he admitted.

“So you won – or so you think. But don’t you see that as long as you let her shape your future, your destiny, she wins, anyway? If her actions have had such a hold on you that you won’t let yourself even explore a chance of real happiness, then she has won. All you are is safe, and safety is cold comfort. She keeps you from risking happiness. She keeps you from risking pain. She should be irrelevant to your life, but the biggest decisions in your life are being made by her, not you. Don’t you think that means you’re losing? Maybe not in the way Kevin did. But you’re losing what matters. Maybe you’ve already lost it. You’ve done it all by being a coward – too afraid to live now because you were hurt once.”

Grace didn’t wait to see how he reacted to that. She got up and walked away, leaving Alan stunned and speechless.

He stood there, exactly where he was, for a long time.