Page 67 of Reckless Temptation

“You will always love him,” I said, not knowing how and where I found the courage to act like I knew anything about this. “And that’s not a crime.”

“Yes. But it’s holding me back. I remarried so my son and I wouldn’t be on the streets. All those treatments, and the parents of that teenager who crashed into him had the gall to sueus. Fortunately, David’s old college friend stood with us. If it wasn’t for George’s legal assistance, I never would’ve been able to win that case.”

I was relieved that Lorsen & Spengler could take on “good” cases and fight the good fight too.

“George knew how dire our finances were, though, and while my son and I never had to go without, we would have. I quit my job ten years ago to help David through his treatments, and with how so much has changed with technology and the workforce, I never would’ve been able to go back to my former career.” Once more, she looked at me, as if needing to see that someone was listening, and perhaps, that I wasn’t judging. “So, when he offered to marry me, I agreed. I wanted to move on. I neverlovedGeorge, but I wanted to believe that even friends could have a form of a loving bond.”

“That makes sense.”

She arched her brows. “You think so?”

“Love isn’t cut and dry. The love you have for a parent will be different from the love you have for a friend. The love you have for a significant other will be different from the love you have for your neighbor. But all forms of love can matter.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I frowned. “But you don’t anymore?”

“No. I can’t.” She lowered her gaze, as if she couldn’t bear to keep that bench in view. “I married George knowing we’d be friends. But I started to wonder if anything else could grow between us. We’d known each other forever. We both cared about David. But just as soon as I started thinking that I might want to open up to him more, or open up to something beyond grief, I realized he wouldn’t reciprocate. How could he when he’s cheating on me already?”

Whoa.I wasn’t counting on that bombshell. Professor Lorsen was cheating on his wife?

“Maybe it’s wrong of me to expect him to be faithful to me when we never were intimate at all.”

“No, that’s not fair,” I protested. “I’d… I’d feel the same.” I had no experience to speak of, but this connection with Nick was opening my eyes. It took guts to love someone, and it required a risk to allow someone close enough to break your heart. It sounded like this widow had miscalculated on her leap of faith, and that angered me on her behalf.

“At first, I wanted to think that. And I kept wondering if he was just being patient with me. But then I started seeing signs of him cheating… He’s got all those nanny cams all over the house, and I happened to see…” She sighed. “I won’t—can’t—go into details. That’s inappropriate. Nor do I want to bog down a stranger like you…” She peered at me closer, studying me so intensely that I wondered if she remembered me, after all. She hadn’t been present at the meeting at her home, but maybe she saw me in passing.

“No. You’re not bogging me down or anything like that.”

Another heavy sigh left her lips. “I feel bogged down myself. I’ve always tried to keep the beast of depression under control. It’s a constant worry. And then I worry about my son, too.” She lifted her hand to rub her brow. “He’s so mad, angry that he lost his dad, bitter and sad about the loss.”

Hearing her tell me something so personal about Nick felt wrong, like I was going behind his back. But I wasn’t. And it wasn’t so hard to know this had to be true. Nick was that dark.He did carry a lot of resentment. I would know. He’d projected it onto me.

“He’s so mad at the world about losing his father. All I’ve wanted to do since we lost David was do right by Nick. I’m so broken inside that I feel hopeless, but especially with him, I feel like I’m failing.”

“No, that can’t be true,” I said.

“I just want him to have a home, and others besides me to lean on.” She shook her head, sniffling. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to unload all of this on you.” She laughed once, incredulously, as if she couldn’t believe she had. “A stranger. And here I am acting like you’re a shrink or something. My God. I’m so sorry.”

“No.” I reached my hand out and held it up. “No. It’s okay?—”

“I’m sorry to burden you with all this and…” She backed up a step, shaking her head as shame covered her face.

“It is okay,” I argued.

Shaking her head faster, she turned and fled the beach. Sure, it was kind of strange for her to unload all of that like she had, but maybe venting to a stranger was what she’d needed and didn’t know it. Mom and Dad, Elise, too, they all said that I was a good listener and that I just prompted people to open up. Perhaps that was what happened with her.

As she ran off, I felt terrible that she was this distraught and so wrecked about it. I had no experience with a loss that they’ve dealt with—her losing her husband and Nick losing his father. But I felt for them. And now that I had more backgroundinformation, I understood more about why Nick might be behaving the way he was.

Elise told me that he had switched from engineering to art, and his grades had fallen quite a bit. That suggested a dramatic change in his goals. And more recently, he was a jerk to me, bullying me before giving in to intimacy with me.

He’s just acting out in anger because he’s hurting inside.

I didn’t want to make excuses for him, but it rang true. I believed that bullies, or anyone who was being mean, acted like that because they were wounded and insecure inside.

And he’d gotten close enough to matter already. It pained me to think of his hurting like this. I didn’t like the idea of his reacting in anger because he was stuck in grief and sadness.

Instead of going home, I drove toward campus. I couldn’t seek him out at his home, the Lorsen mansion. If I went there to find him, I could run into his mother again and she’d realize I wasn’t such a stranger to her family, after all. Or I could encounter Tiffany, and I wasn’t in the mood for her meanness. Or I could see Professor Lorsen himself, and I wasn’t sure what to think about him now knowing he was a cheater.

---