Page 8 of Her Kensington
3
Summer
My heart’sin my throat and my body forced back into my seat as the plane races down the runway.
“Holy shit.” Harrison grabs on to my sweaty hand and squeezes tight. I can feel him looking at me but I can’t open my eyes. I’ve never really thought about whether I’d like flying or not; it wasn’t like I saw a possibility of it happening any time in my future, but as I sit here I can’t help praying that we’re not going to die before we’ve lived any of our married life together.
“Summer…beautiful.” His voice breaks through my panic at the same time his fingers brush my cheek. “It’s okay, we’re up now. You can relax.”
Slowly, I blow out a breath and prize my eyes open. The first thing I see is Harrison’s smiling face looking back at me. I instantly feel my muscles relax and I slouch back into the seat.
“See, it wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“I guess.”
Knowing we’re stuck here for the foreseeable future, it’s the perfect time to question Harrison. He might think I’ve put everything behind me with our impending honeymoon, but that’s far from the truth. The pain of his sudden disappearance is still simmering just under the surface and the fear that he’s going to do it again is there as well. He might be my husband now, but I still don’t know him, and I’m about to embark on a life in a totally new place with people I don’t know. He’s the only thing I’m going to have, and I deserve the truth.
As I turn to look at him, he must be able to see what’s about to come because his smile falters the longer we stare at each other. The last few times I’ve tried bringing something up about the past two weeks, he’s managed to change the subject. But not this time. There’s no escape and I need to know everything before we embark on our honeymoon.Honeymoon. The word feels so weird. I can’t quite get the fact that I’m a wife and I have a husband to settle in my head, it probably doesn’t help that I only have vague memories of our actual wedding. Going to the chapel helped but there are still big chunks of the night missing.
“Why did you leave?”
“Work,” he mutters, but casts his eyes away. It’s the same excuse he’s given since he reappeared last night and I’m not buying it.
“Bullshit,” I snap, harsher than I intended. I don’t think he was expecting it either if his sudden movement and wide eyes are anything to go by.
“What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me. You know as well as I do that you didn’t go back for a work thing. You just disappeared, Harrison, leaving only a written apology behind. You didn’t even call. You just left like what we had meant nothing.” The anger I’ve been holding back since the moment I saw him in the suite at the hotel starts to burn at my insides. “You abandoned me with no warning,” I seethe, trying desperately to keep my volume down so everyone else in first class doesn’t end up with a front row seat to our first argument.
My chest heaves as I try to keep it together but when I look up and see the darkness in his eyes I almost feel sorry for him. Whatever it was clearly was important to him. He left me without a word and with no contact until he turned back up again—it was something serious, so why won’t he tell me? I’m his goddamn wife.
Our eye contact holds until he drags his gaze away and looks down at his lap. “I’ve got some family shit going on.”
“Right?”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“In case you forgot, you married me last night, Harrison.” I lift my hand and wave my ring around in front of his face. “I’m your family now, too. Don’t you think I deserve to know whatever it was that was so important that you left without even telling me? I’m about to move across the world and become a part of your life.”
“Yes but—”
“But what? I may not remember much of last night but this isn’t some big joke to me, Harrison. I didn’t agree to all this, this honeymoon, this marriage, just because I fancied a holiday and a fresh start. I’m uprooting my entire life to be with you. I’m sacrificing everything I’ve worked for. But I want this. I want us. Do you?”
He shifts in his seat until he’s facing me and he looks up a second before he speaks. “Of course I do. I love you, Summer.”
“Then tell me. Whatever it is, I can deal with it. We can deal with it.”
I watch as he lets out a breath, trying to find his words. “I have a past.”
“Right! Who doesn’t? You’re over ten years older than me, Harrison. I didn’t expect you not to have a life before me. How you’re not already married with a handful of kids is beyond me.”
“I was…” He once again looks away, and I watch the muscles in his neck work as he swallows. “I was married.” Raising an eyebrow, I wait for him to continue. When he does speak his voice is quiet and unsure. “My ex is…my ex is…interesting.”
“Okay.” Hesitation is written all over his face. “It’s okay, you can tell me. Just…start from the beginning.”
That seems to be the right thing to say because I watch his face relax as he once again grabs my hand.
“That I can do. We’ve known each other since school…” He goes on to explain a pretty traditional high school sweetheart story with his best and oldest friend, and if he wasn’t talking about his past, I would find some of his tales quite cute. “She was my everything,” he admits. The pain on his face is clear and my heart aches for him. I’ve never met this woman but that look alone makes me want to hurt her. “She was kind, caring, everything I thought I wanted. But as the years went on she…changed.”
