“fat” bridesmaid answered the door. She heard several voices cry out once the occupants spotted Phillip.
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“Phillip! Want a drink?” someone cried. It sounded like
Bret.
“Uhh…” Phillip seemed disturbed and alarmed, “Where’s
Stephanie?”
As Steph wished she had telepathy and could mentally beg
them not to tell, the bridesmaid pointed to her door. Phillip
turned in her direction, and Steph realized she was holding her
breath.
He was at the door before she could even back away from
the peephole. He knocked right next to her head.
“Stephanie?” The way his accent caressed her name brought
back too many conflicting memories. She knew she couldn’t
pretend to be asleep with that racket across the hall, and she
knew they both needed some sort of closure to this train wreck
they called a relationship. Cedric’s voice rang in her ears.
“It’s time to face your demons.”
She unlocked the door and turned the knob.
Phillip leaned against the doorframe, looking as if he’d
jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool full of ice water and
then rolled around in a box of kitty litter. His luscious lips were turning blue.
“Can we please just talk?”
Steph nodded and backed away from the door so he could
enter the room. He crossed the threshold, and she shut the door, immediately grabbing a robe from the closet.
“Here. You have to change. I’ll give you privacy.” She
tossed him the robe and went into the bathroom. She was glad
the bathroom door didn’t have a peephole. As she leaned against
the door, she heard the all too familiar sound of wet clothes hitting the floor. Steph couldn’t stop herself from imagining Phillip standing naked in her room, and she knew she couldn’t be trust-ed. She reached down to the doorknob and locked it.
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Phillip brushed sand from his hair as he heard her lock the
bathroom door. He tried to pull the terrycloth robe around him-
self as best he could. He glanced in the mirror and thought he
looked like he belonged in a gay porno set in a seedy bathhouse.
He snorted. “One size fits most, indeed.”
After ten minutes of waiting for Stephanie to reappear, he
meandered over to the bathroom door and tapped on it with his
knuckles.
“Steph?” he called out, noticing that the sound of water
running was conspicuously absent.
“Ummm…I think I should stay in here.” Her quiet voice
sounded like a small child afraid of punishment.
“You can’t be serious,” he laughed. She said nothing.
“Stephanie. I promise to keep my hands to myself.”
“Yeah. Our track record says otherwise.” She laughed a
humorless laugh. He smirked naughtily. She was in no way
wrong about that. “We can’t behave ourselves fully dressed in
public. I think half dressed in my hotel room is a recipe for disaster.”
He sighed and slid down the door, resting his back against
it. “Fine. Have it your way. Let me just start by saying if I had known you were pregnant, I would have never left your side.”
He heard her sigh and could tell that she was sitting directly
behind him. He imagined her with her back to his, the thin piece of wood all that stood between the two of them. “I know that. I
think that’s the main reason I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to be with me. Especially if you wanted kids
and there was a strong chance I couldn’t give them to you.”
He considered her snap decision and imagined how afraid
she’d been in her weak and medicated state. Her laser sharp, ever strategic brain hadn’t failed her even then. He had to admit, her 166
RAGE
choice made a lot of sense.
“What are the other reasons?” He nervously picked at the
sand wedged under his fingernails. Phillip felt reluctant to hear her response, but this conversation was long overdue.
“Things between us were…fine…more than fine. We were
really happy—at least I was. Why screw up a good thing with
bullshit vows and expectations? Quite honestly, we barely knew
each other. We definitely didn’t know each other well enough
for that kind of commitment. But I was ready to take things to the next level, Phillip. In my mind that meant moving in together. I wanted to feel like I was connected to you on some emo-
tional level. Every time we got together, it was so physical.
Don’t get me wrong—the sex was always amazing, but I hoped
if we saw each other more frequently, it might turn into some-
thing…deeper. As it was, every time a conversation turned seri-
ous, one of us usually cracked a joke.”
He opened his mouth to object and realized he had no ar-
gument. He’d wanted all the same things. “Or one of us picked a
fight. You’re not wrong. I suppose I thought if we got married,
all of those things would just fall into place.”
She paused, and he heard her blow her nose.
“I was going to tell you. That’s why I kept calling you.
Where were you?” Her voice sounded shaky, as if she were
afraid of how he’d respond. Phillip bit the inside of his lip.
“I went away. I hid out. I drank and smoked and hung out
with an Irish setter. I realize it’s not nearly as glamorous or exotic as the stories the tabloids made up, but there it is. I couldn’t be around anyone or anything that made me think of you.” He
heaved an exasperated sigh as he remembered the heartache.
“Which was everyone and everything. Then a very wise man
told me to stop being a twat and go find you and fight for you.
And I set out to do just that. Then Clive told me he’d shagged
you, and he seemed to have photographic evidence of it.”
“That bastard,” Steph muttered under her breath. Phillip
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TAMMY COONS & MICHELLE PACE
smiled to himself, but frowned immediately when he realized
how much he’d missed her casual cursing.
“I miss this,” he blurted. “Just…talking to you.”
She responded with silence. That hurt more than he cared to
admit. He quietly cursed himself for his faux pas. He didn’t want to admit any weaknesses to Steph, but it was far too late to worry about such nonsense. He blundered on.
“Maybe we should have
