by Rachel Hauck
He shook the image from his mind, keenly aware of rising desire. They spoke very little as he washed, rinsed, and towel dried her hair.
Later, he heard the dryer through the closed doors. When Lexa came out to say good night she said she’d go to her stylist next week. After all, it would be two weeks since the break. She felt confident enough to venture out.
He merely agreed with a warning to be careful. “Take a cab.”
Jett faced the screen and opened a new document, testing the idea of writing a personal foreword.
“Gordon’s books come with a fragrance for me. One of hay and barley, of a warm barn floor and the gentle exhale of a mare in her stall.”
The barn. The loft. The corner where he’d tossed an old horse blanket and hidden a flashlight. The holler of their male nanny, Stovall.
“Dinner. Come now or out it goes.”
He was gruff. But kind. A steadying force. And the namesake for Jett’s Mars hero.
Jett rolled his chair to the bookshelf where the spine of Mars faced out. He had a love-hate relationship with the story.
Love, because he’d completed what he started. Having written was a great sensation. Hate, because it embodied all of his pain and disappointments. He wrestled through them with Stovall, Colonel Grancy, Amvi, and Raúl, and the cold, barren world of Mars.
Also known as his soul.
Then he dedicated the book to Lexa. Three months after their divorce. Because he’d promised himself he would.
A few days ago, he noticed the copy of Mars on his bookshelves had been moved. If she’d read it, she never said.
Back to his laptop. Should he detail his mother’s “I’m leaving” announcement? How it devastated him? How his big brother’s reaction devastated him even more? Or how he hated her for a long time? How those feelings still spiked every now and then, when the evening twilight faded too fast and shadows stretched too long?
Should he write about reading to Lexa, pausing every other paragraph to break down and analyze the brilliance of Gordon’s descriptions and insight? Or how he could close his eyes and recite prose from memory? From his heart?
Should he confess how he trusted love because Gordon proved to him story after story the value and worth of the journey?
His thoughts slipped back toward Lexa. Somehow last night, she let a bit of her guard down. When he was helping her prep for her bath, she angled forward just enough she unwittingly exposed the plump roundness of her breast.
When she raised up, their eyes met. A slight blush tinted her cheeks, and she gently closed the opening of her shirt with her good hand.
“Sorry.” He’d backed away and crashed into the wastebasket.
“It was bound to happen.”
No use lying—he left the marble and travertine bathroom hot and bothered, realizing she was both sexy and vulnerable in one gorgeous package.
He’d tossed and turned the first few nights she was in the apartment, her presence stirring passionate memories.
Yet he was making peace with his reality. She was only his friend, if he dared to even presume.
However, right now he was wasting time. An email notification arrived announcing a response from a notable GPR expert at Oxford. He’d attached a document for Jett to source and quote.
Printing the thirty pages, he vanished into the in-depth insight of Dr. Paulson, exhaling as his analysis and conclusions confirmed Jett’s. While the information was good, it didn’t add much to what Jett had already compiled in his work.
Nevertheless, ever studious, he pulled out his highlighter just as his phone pinged with a text.
As he reached for his phone, his eyes adjusted to the low, dusky twilight hue filling his office. It was Lexa.
Your mom is here???
Mom? He’d not seen her since the New Year. Not talked to her in a couple months.
At the apartment? When?
Just arrived. Asked for you. Gave me a funny look.
What does she want?
Ask her yourself.
Wilder family relationships ran taut, beginning with his parents’ divorce and doubling down since Storm’s death.
Jett hesitated with a glance at the document in his hand, then one at the door. Stay with Gordon or see his mom?
He’d rather work. But poor Lex. He couldn’t leave her to field Mom alone. She was a force to be reckoned with.
His phone pinged with a text from Mom.
You coming home?
Slapping his laptop closed, Jett packed up, threw his backpack over his shoulder, and headed for his bike.
What was Miranda Wilder up to now? And why was she in the city? Shouldn’t she be on location with Dad’s show, running Going Wild?
Pedaling home, he tried not to imagine her purpose. As much as he loved her—she was his mother after all—her presence always filled him with conflict.
But she was the one who’d walked out. He owed her nothing.
“Hello?” he said as he bumbled his bike through the door and hung it on the hook. “Mom?” He found her on the couch with Lexa, drinking a cup of tea. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you on location?” He glanced at Lexa as he deposited his pack and bike gear on the table.
“We finished shooting for the month. In fact, we’re taking off until November.”
“Taking off?” The show filmed eight weeks in winter, ten in the summer, and six in the fall. “Is Dad sick?”
“Of course not. He’s a beast. In fact, we’re expanding to sixteen shows next season. As you know, show prep never ends. Advertising partners must be appeased. I thought I’d run down to the Big Apple and make the rounds. Do people still call it the Big Apple?”
“Old-timers,” Jett said with a glance at Lexa. She looked pretty, and the bruise around her face had faded to a brownish-gray.
“Then I guess I’m an old-timer.”
Mom lived an hour up the road in Chappaqua. In the house where Jett was raised. Only then it was just Dad, Storm, Jett, and Stovall.
Mom ran away to California for two years when she left Dad. Then returned to a rented farm in Chappaqua. Five years ago Dad sold the family homestead back to her, and Jett’s boyhood betrayal flashed forward again, tainting all his childhood memories.
The laughter on the lake, the fall football games in the pasture, the bonfires with his and Storm’s friends. The comforting hour after hour of reading in the barn loft, thinking, imagining. Even the feel of Bessy’s soft nose under his palm.
Mom didn’t belong there. She’d gone. Given up her rights to even be a shadow on his teen homestead where his memories lived.
“I have news, but first, you never said Lexa moved back.”
“I told her I didn’t move back.” Lexa pointed to her arm.
“I’m helping a friend in need.”
“A friend? I see.” Mom sipped her tea. See? See what? “She was telling me how you helped her when she tripped and fell in front of a taxi.” She glanced at Lexa. “Take care, concussions are nasty business. Storm and Jett both suffered with them in their teen years. Especially when Bear started taking them climbing. How’s that bruise healing?” Mom started to reach for Lexa’s face. But enough.
“Mom, again, what are you doing here?” The subtle tension, along with skipping lunch and the fast ride from the Upper East Side, had him trembling with hunger. “I’m ordering a pizza.” He pulled out his phone and searched for Bleecker Street Pizza.
“None for me. I’m heading back home. But I came to tell you something.”
Mom waited while Jett consulted with Lexa for toppings. Then asked her if she needed anything from the kitchen. Which she did not.
“Are you finished avoiding me? I want to tell you my news.” She smiled as she set aside her tea.
“Well, then, shoot.” Arms folded, he stood between the living room and the kitchen banquette.
“I’m engaged.” And there it was, said with aplomb as she raised her left hand, showing off the large diamond hugging her r
ing finger.
Engaged? He lowered his arms. Weakened his stance. “To whom?” He hadn’t even known she was dating. Typical Mom. Not a word to anyone until she’d decided and her plans were set. “Who’s the poor schlob?”
“Jett.” Lexa’s rebuke surprised him. “Congratulations, Miranda.”
“Thank you.” Mom beamed. “The lucky schlob is Oz Griffin. We’ve known each other—”
“Oz? The outfitter?” Jett remembered him. His company was one of Going Wild’s first sponsors.
“Yes, the outfitter. You liked him when you met first met him.”
“Yeah, sure. Oz?” Jett crashed down in the nearest chair as an image of the angular outdoorsman with the rock-hard features and commanding voice holding and kissing his mother flashed across his imagination.
He shuddered. Never doing that again.
“How long have you been together?” Lexa brought in the civility.
“About two years. He came to us with the idea to create the Bear Wilder brand within his Griffin Gear line. Did I tell you the line launches this fall, Jett?”
“No.” Oz? His mother?
“Two years?” Lexa’s soft voice hammered on. “Right after Storm died?”
“In truth, right before. I’m not sure how I’d have gotten through without Oz.”
“You could’ve called your other son.” The confession riffed from his lips with a bitter power.
Mom leveled her calm gaze at him. “I could, yes, but he was as dark and wounded as I. If not more.”
“Ever think a call from you would have helped?” Even to him, his bitterness sounded slightly unjustified. But since when did she deserve his loyalty? His benefit of the doubt?
“And what do you think I was doing? The cha-cha?”
“Isn’t that what you do when times get rough? Leave? Seek your fun?”
She reached for her handbag and stood. “I’d hoped you’d celebrate my good news, but I can see we are no further down the road than when you were a boy.”
She started for the door and he was on his feet before he could calculate what he was going to say or do.
“Mom, wait. Is that all? You just wanted to tell me you’re engaged?”
“There’s more if you care to hear.” She hesitated, then went on. “I would like you to be there, but if you feel it’s too much of a strain, I suppose I’ll have to understand.”
“When is it? I have a lot on my plate. My dissertation is being published at the end of the month.”
“Oh, I see. Then congratulations are in order for you as well. Oz and I are finalizing the date. But it will be in a few weeks. At the farm.” She smoothed her skirt under her as she returned to the couch. “Lexa, perhaps you can convince him.”
“Leave me out of it. I wasn’t much good at that when we were married, never mind now.”
Both women glared at him. Cleary he was on trial. Yet he was not the unfeeling, selfish parent who walked out. Or the cold, stony-silent wife who filed for divorce.
“I’ll come if I can. Either way, I take it you’re still going to marry the guy. My presence or not doesn’t make a difference.” Where was that pizza? He was ravenous.
“There’s one more thing.” She shifted her fancy bag from one hand to the next. “Your dad has finally agreed to scatter Storm’s ashes over the lake. We hope that’s okay with you. Did he ask you? He said he would. Anyway, I’ve been after him for two years and he’s come to peace with it, so we’re going to do it after the wedding.”
“No, he didn’t ask me, but it’s good. Storm would have liked to rest on the lake.”
The lake where they swam, canoed, and fished all summer. Played hockey in the winter. Until Jett went out too far and broke through the ice.
“I’m a bit conflicted about a wedding and a funeral. Sounds like a rom-com plot.” Mom stared at her feet. Her odd manner, seemingly uncomfortable, forced Jett to see her in a new light. “But I’d like both of my sons at my wedding.” A contemplative hush descended. “And if only one attends, frankly I’d prefer the one not in the urn.” Her voice warbled a bit. “And everyone who matters will be there. We won’t have to draw them back at a later date to put Storm to rest.” She turned toward the foyer. “I realize you and I have not been close over the years, Jett, but you are my only child. I’d like you to be there. If not for me, for your father and Storm. Lexa, see if you can talk some sense into him. And you are most welcome to come too. Storm saw you as the sister he never had.”
“Mom, please, Lexa doesn’t need a lecture on what Storm felt about her. She probably won’t come anyway.”
“I can speak for myself, Jett. Miranda, we’ll see.”
Mom walked over to Jett and, with tenderness, brushed aside his wavy, unruly bangs. “Have you talked to anyone about what happened on that mountain? A counselor? A stranger?”
Her question froze any sort of reply he might have mustered.
“I see. Well, someday you’re going to have to tell someone what happened.” She exited with the soft closing of the front door.
Jett fired to his feet and paced the narrow space between the banquette and the balcony, a vise around his chest.
“Jett, what is she talking about?” Lexa clutched the opening of his blue button-down over her tube top and yoga pants as she rose off the couch.
“Nothing. And how do you like her? ‘Come to my wedding.’ Like she didn’t walk out on her first marriage and her two sons. Just burns me up, burns me up.”
“It was twenty years ago, Jett.”
“And do you know she’s never once said, ‘I’m sorry’? Not my fault we don’t have a good relationship.” Pace, turn, pace, turn. “A wedding and memorial. Only Miranda Wilder would combine the two. I guess to her, they’re the same. Her wedding, Storm’s funeral.” His angst adhered to his cold anger, coating him with the emotional epoxy of “What happened on that mountain?”
No one had ever asked him so directly. Not even Dad, who was there at a distance. Kicking aside one of the banquette chairs, Jett moved toward the door. “I’ve got to get out of here.” Before he suffocated.
“Where are you going?” The door slammed against her question.
Down the elevators and out the lobby door, Jett burst into fall’s first crystal-cool evening, jogged down the stone steps, and headed north.
To where, he didn’t know. He didn’t care.
Chapter 15
Lexa
With her arm cradled against her side, Lexa collected Jett’s empty glass and set it in the dishwasher along with Miranda’s cup and saucer.
“What happened on the mountain?”
She glanced toward the door, still rattling from Jett’s decisive slam.
Storm had died piloting in his wingsuit off Eiger—but Miranda’s question probed beneath the physical details to matters of the heart.
Lexa made her way back to the couch, fighting a brewing headache. This one wasn’t from the concussion but the tension of Miranda’s visit.
She pulled the throw over her legs and aimed the remote at the TV. Then switched it off again.
After Storm died, Jett shut her out as he sank into despair. Then he lost himself in his book, writing when he wasn’t working, barely sleeping.
If she asked him what was going on, he snapped at her. Then she’d snap back. The fights escalated before crashing down into a bedrock of silence.
She knew he was grieving, but she was too. She’d lost a friend, a brother. And as husband and wife, weren’t they supposed to be there for each other? For better, for worse?
“What happened on the mountain?”
Lexa kicked off the throw. She should leave him be—Jett preferred to process alone—but the exchange with his mom left her unsettled.
She’d always known Miranda’s leaving the family had marked him, but this evening she caught a glimpse of how deep and wide the scar.
His phone pinged from the table. She got up to read the screen. The pizza was on its way.
In the bedroom, she wiggled her sock feet into her sneakers and tried to tie them. Failed. Next she wrapped up as best she could in one of Jett’s Florida State hoodies.
She’d been cleared from the concussion but still moved rather slowly, careful not to bump or bounce against anything.
Dr. Haft had an emergency and cancelled her past Monday’s appointment. Everyone at the story society had been all prepared to celebrate how well her arm was healing, but she had nothing new to share.
The group endeared themselves to her more and more.
Grabbing Jett’s phone as well as her own, Lexa headed out, making sure the door didn’t lock behind her. Riding down to the first floor, she wondered where she’d start looking for him. He could be anywhere by now.
Maybe she could stand on the stoop and shout, “Jett, pizza is here.”
His dad said that worked every time when he was a kid.
“You’d see the boys bursting from the woods like wild animals.”
First stop, the gym. But the well-lit room was empty except for a perky girl on the elliptical. Next she checked the media room. But it was dark and quiet.
“Jett?” She scanned the shadows. Looked for any movement in the movie theater chairs.
Through the lobby, she stepped outside, the cold nipping against her face as the sun moved west with the last of its warmth, leaving deceptive fiery ribbons across the passing blue.
Lexa descended to the steps, gripping the iron railing, careful of the clump of men and women brushing past her in the narrow space to enter the building.
Dr. Haft’s nurse warned her on the cancellation call not to get bumped. To take all precautions. Lexa embraced every warning with intent.
Jett, where’d you go?
She scanned the sidewalk, busy with joggers and dog walkers, to the stoplight and back again. She searched through the rising streetlights down the adjacent avenue. Maybe he’d walk out of the corner store.
Taking a few steps north, she was immediately boxed in by three boys on skateboards.
Clutching her arm, she backed toward the building and pressed against the rough brick.
