People liked him better when he was playing at being someone else.
Except he’d never really been playing someone else, he realized suddenly. Those parts had always been the real Sean but just in a different skin. It was safer to be “real” when he was playing a role because the vulnerability couldn’t hurt him. Not like this had.
He shook off his doubts and fears and walked down the hall to the stairs, and once he stepped outside, he noticed it was snowing and bitterly cold. The driver was still at the curb and started to get out of the car as Sean approached, but he waved at him to stay inside and opened the back door for himself.
“Take me home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fifteen
Two days until Christmas, five days since she’d told Sean about the baby, and she was in the mall, walking around looking for...well, she wasn’t sure what.Something.She stopped under the big tree that was in the center of the mall and just looked up at it.
“Knew I’d find you here and not just because of our friend-finder app,” Olive said, slipping her arm around her. “Every time you leave the office you come here.”
“How’d you know?” she asked. Olive was right. Every day since Monday, when she’d come back to work, she’d found herself down here. Looking for some kind of sign in the people around her or in the shops. Something that would trigger a good idea of what she could say or gift to Sean to make him see she knew she should have trusted him sooner.
“I asked Lyle to follow you,” Delaney said, coming up on her other side. “We know you are sad.”
“I’m not sad, not really. Maybe I am. It’s just I can’t figure out how to fix this. I mean, when Dad took Mrs. B’s savings and her house to pay for my college, it was easy to find the solution.” Giving back Mrs. B’s home, even though it wasn’t the one she’d lost, was something that was doable. But how could she win back trust that she’d shattered?
“You don’t fix this,” Delaney said. “You screwed up and you owned it. It’s up to him to find his way back.”
“Except he won’t,” she lamented. “I saw his face. I mean in that moment when I told him and saw what it did to him, I realized how much I loved him.”
“Did you tell him that?” Olive asked.
“No, do you think it would have helped? He was pissed,” she said, remembering the anger, but also the way he’d stepped away from her and brought it under control.
Olive shrugged. “When I found out that Dante had been the boy I humiliated in college, I was furious at him for keeping our past a secret. But once I calmed down, my love for him made me realize that it was both of our responsibilities to each other to forgive and move on.”
“It was the same with me and Nolan,” Delaney said. “He thought I’d played him and that made me mad because for the first time I wasn’t trying to be anyone but me. It hurt that he saw in me what everyone else did. But once I had time to think about it...well, a life without him and Daisey was the last thing I wanted.”
She put her arms around both of her friends. “Thanks, but you were both the one hurt and this time... I did this.”
“But he started it, sort of. Like I did with Dante. If I hadn’t been such a mean girl in college, I wouldn’t have created something that he had to hide,” Olive admitted. “Seems to me if Sean had been honest, then maybe you would have been too.”
“Maybe. Truthfully, if I’d known he was Sean O’Neill I would never have flirted with him.”
“Silly goose, you would too. There is something damn hot between the two of you,” Delaney said.
“How do I win him back?”
“Big gesture?” Olive suggested.
“I don’t think a big gesture will work for Sean. He’s so careful about who he lets see the real man,” she said.
“So do something big in front of the people who matter to him and to you,” Olive said.
Something big. But what? She had hurt him by not trusting him, which meant she had to be vulnerable to him in a big way. And Olive was right...it needed to be in front of the people who mattered to them. The circle was small.
“I think he misses you,” Delaney said.
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s still in town,” her friend said. “Nolan mentioned that he’s seen Sean at the gym every day this week.”
“I didn’t know that.” She’d have thought he would have gone back to LA, but she knew he had no one out there except his assistant, who was getting engaged.