Until I Met You

by Tari Faris

  “Reporters don’t care what you mean. They care what you say. What did you say?” Olivia grabbed her tennis shoes by the door, slipped the right shoe on, and bent to tie it.

  “I said more than that. I—”

  “I was supposed to write this story, but I didn’t. I couldn’t do that to Nate.” She shoved her left shoe on. “But with a few words, it’s all gone. I lost my job, and who knows how this will affect Nate, not to mention Austin.”

  “Why did you lose your job?”

  “I told my editor there was no story.” She stood and pointed at the tablet again. “Misleading or not, there is a story there. And I didn’t write it because I don’t do that to friends. I’m going for a run.”

  Libby followed her out the door. “Olivia, wait.”

  “I can’t.” Olivia spun to face Libby again. “We can talk later, but right now I need to calm down and check on Nate.”

  Another tear ran down Libby’s cheek, and she wiped it away as she backed up. Olivia pushed out the front door and picked up her pace until she was at a steady jog, ignoring the rain.

  Five minutes later, she walked through the front door of the church and into Nate’s office. He sat expressionless in his chair as he leaned back, staring at his computer. His shirt was rumpled and his hair lifted as if he’d run his hands through it a few too many times already.

  Olivia brushed her wet hair away from her face and took a step closer. “Nate?”

  He blinked a few times and looked up. “Olivia. Hi. What are you—”

  “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t me.” Olivia circled the desk and pulled him up into a hug.

  “I know.” His warmth surrounded her as his musky scent wrapped her up. His breath grazed her neck as he seemed to lean into her for support.

  She leaned back until she could look him in the eye. “We’ll get this figured out.”

  He stepped out of her embrace, and she missed his warmth and touch immediately. She’d left a wet spot on his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I’m still done.”

  She gripped his arm. “What? No.”

  He pointed to a pile of photocopied pages. “A gift from Dale Kensington. Hand-delivered with a bow and a threat.” He dropped into the chair and rested his head back. “I think he’s been waiting for the right day to use that information. He never did like me.”

  Olivia circled the desk and picked up a mug shot of a younger, much angrier-looking Nate. Under that, there was an article with a photo of a crushed van and a destroyed flower shop. “This is your past. It doesn’t mean—” Her words failed her as a photo of Nate passionately kissing a girl in a small bikini caught her eye. Her hand shook as she picked it up. “Is this Jess?”

  “No.” He pressed his fingers into his eyes. “I don’t know her name.”

  A chilling numbness started in her fingers and spread up her arms toward her chest. He didn’t even know her name. In the next photo, he had a beer in each hand and his arms around two girls. By the look in their eyes, they were all plastered. She flipped to the next photo and the next. Each turn of the page revealed a photo more incriminating than the last. She swallowed against her rough throat and dropped the pile.

  The room tipped a little, and Olivia reached for a chair as her stomach rolled over. She looked up and found him waiting.

  “That’s not even the worst of it, Olivia.”

  There was more?

  He opened a side drawer in his desk, pulled out a photo, and slid it across the table.

  Olivia picked it up. It was a picture of a boy about five years old. A clone of Nate if she’d ever seen one. The dark hair, the silver eyes, even the cowlick on the left side of his forehead. She’d guess it was Nate from years back, but his clothes looked like anything you’d find in a Gap Kids today.

  “His name is Chase.” Nate leaned his elbows on the table as if the weight of the world pressed down on him.

  “You have a son.” When he didn’t deny it, she looked up at him. “Have you told anyone?”

  “Luke. I told him last year when I was going through some stuff.”

  Olivia’s fingers shook as she set the photo back on the desk right next to the stack of photocopied pictures.

  Nate watched her. Waiting for her to say that all of this was a part of his past. That it didn’t matter. That she still wanted him.

  She’d said it before. So why wouldn’t the words come now? Her mind was a muddle of thoughts. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was her Nate, who refused to let her close, wrapped around women he didn’t even remember.

  Then there was Chase. What did that even mean?

  Her breaths shortened as everything in her ripped apart. Every picture she’d created in her mind of their future shattered on the floor. She needed more air. She needed to think.

  She pushed to her feet. “I gotta go.”

  Nate’s eyes shut a moment. Then he stood and nodded at her, his eyes red with emotion. “I know.”

  “I’ll talk to you later.” She stumbled toward the door. It was raining harder now, but that didn’t even slow her down. She needed a long run.

  She pulled the door shut behind her but didn’t miss Nate’s quiet words that followed her out. “Goodbye, Olivia.”

  What had she been thinking? Libby’s front door rattled as Austin pounded his fist against it. He flipped through the pages he’d printed off as thunder echoed in the distance and dark clouds covered the sun. The wind whipped stray leaves through the porch, one smacking him on the side of the face. He peeked through the window on the door and banged again.

  Libby pulled the door open as she held an excited Darcy back. When she looked up at him, her eyes were puffy and red. “Austin, I’m so sorry.”

  “For which part? For telling this Randy Kruger that I wasn’t qualified?” He waved the article in the air. “Or for the part where you claimed to design the square because I couldn’t come up with a good idea?”

  Libby winced and shrank back down. “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s in black and white.” He lifted his voice to be heard above the thunder.

  A low growl rumbled from Darcy’s chest, and Austin took a few breaths to calm down.

  Libby pushed the dog behind her, walked out on the porch, and shut the door. She wrapped her sweater tighter around her. “He twisted my words. That’s not what I said.”

  Austin paced to the edge of the porch. Drops speckled the sidewalk and the road. He paused and drew a few breaths. “Why were you even talking to him?”

  “I was trying to help.” She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand. “Give you better press.”

  “Better press?” The pages wrinkled in his tightening grip. “I couldn’t get much worse press than this. I’ll be lucky if anyone will hire Williams and Son after this. But that doesn’t matter because they’ve frozen all the money until Reader’s Weekly can look into the claims that Nate misused the funds.”

  “That’s the crazy thing.” Her hair whipped around her face in the wind. She pulled a band from her wrist and tied it back. “The reporter never asked me about the money. I don’t know where he would have come up with that idea.”

  The sky opened up, sending rain angling down in sheets. His house was half obscured through the rain. “He had to get it from somewhere, and it seems like you were his only source in town.”

  “I promise it wasn’t me.” She put her hand on his arm, but he flinched away.

  “I have to go.” Austin charged down the steps into the rain and across the driveway. The cool rain soothed the fire that burned inside.

  “Austin, wait.” Libby’s muffled voice carried through the rain, but he didn’t stop. He yanked open his front door, walked in, and stood dripping in his entryway.

  Libby burst through the door behind him, her hair plastered to the side of her face.

  She wanted to talk? Fine. He grabbed the notice he’d gotten from the bank on Friday and held it out to her. “Do you know what this is?”
/>   “No.” She took it and scanned it over.

  “A notice saying that if I don’t make a large payment by this coming Friday, they are going to repossess my truck.” He sank down into the recliner and buried his head in his hands as the reality of his situation threatened to choke him. After a moment he looked up at her. “Guess when I was supposed to get paid.”

  “F-Friday?” Her chin quivered as her hands shook.

  “But now the money is frozen and I have no way to pay this. Without the truck, the company is bankrupt.” He stood and grabbed his U of M sweatshirt, then stopped in front of her. “I didn’t think anything could be worse than watching you run to my brother.”

  He closed his eyes against the memory that still burned through him. He’d never known an ache like that. He didn’t know if he wanted to hurl or punch a wall.

  He handed her the sweatshirt and turned away. “But that article has destroyed me.”

  “But if we explain—”

  “No.” He spun back to face her. She had the sweatshirt on now, and his mind flashed back to the night in the greenhouse. It had been raining then too.

  As if reading his face, she took a hesitant step toward him, her teeth biting her lip.

  He stepped back. “This isn’t one of those situations you can just talk your way out of. There isn’t research that’ll make enough money appear to pay my bills. It’s over.”

  She shivered and hugged the sweatshirt closer. “What’s over?”

  “Everything. My business. My time in Heritage.”

  “Us?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. “We were done the minute you believed Nate over me.”

  “Austin—”

  He took another step back, his dad’s words echoing in his head. He has impossibly high standards sometimes. Maybe he was being unreasonable, but he couldn’t get the image out of his head of her sitting on her car with Nate—listening to Nate . . . believing Nate.

  “I was a fool enough to believe you might actually choose me.” His voice was strained, and he cleared his throat. “But I was wrong. He won you over, and I’ll always be second-best in your eyes.”

  She took another step toward him. “Austin—”

  “You should leave.”

  Tears ran down her face, but she didn’t argue. She walked out the door and out of his life. He couldn’t be with someone he didn’t trust, and he’d never be with someone who didn’t trust him fully.

  He had to remember that as the bile rose in his throat. He tugged his soaked shirt over his head and whipped it at the laundry room, then clenched his fist to keep from punching a wall. Then again, a broken hand might feel better than this. Not that he could afford the hospital bills.

  Shiro peeked out of the bedroom and ambled over to lick his hand. He dropped onto the edge of the couch and buried his hands in her scruff. “Where have you been, girl?”

  At another crack of thunder, the dog whimpered and jumped up next to him on the couch. She’d probably been hiding under his bed.

  An alarm sounded on his phone. He eyed the screen and tossed it aside. It was a reminder to call a guy in Canton back about a contract for next summer. He’d have to call and tell him it wasn’t going to happen. Williams and Son Landscaping was officially out of business.

  seventeen

  How could this have happened? Libby opened her suitcase, dropped it on the bed, and wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. She’d messed up everything. Austin, Olivia, Nate—they all hated her.

  Her phone rang and Libby snatched it up. “Hello?”

  “Libby?” Her mom’s voice reached through the phone, tugging at her heart.

  “Mom.” A cry escaped as she said the word. She dropped to her bed and pressed her hand to her mouth to hold back the sob, then swallowed back the rock in her throat. “I’m coming home. I’m packing now.”

  “Libby, honey. Deep breath.” Her mother spoke slowly with controlled words. “I talked to Luke, and it isn’t as bad as you think.”

  Right, Luke. He’d stayed in Heritage Sunday night when she was so upset after her fight with Austin. He’d probably heard the whole saga when he stopped at Donny’s for breakfast on his way out of town. Or at least some of it. But he didn’t know she was at the center of it all.

  “If Luke said it wasn’t that bad, then he doesn’t know everything.” Libby grabbed her wireless earbuds, stuck them in her ears, and connected the call through them. She started pulling her shirts out of her dresser and tossing them toward the suitcase. “Austin’s company has to file bankruptcy, Nate is leaving the church, and Olivia got fired. All because I trusted the wrong person again.”

  She gave her mom the rundown as she tossed the shirts toward the suitcase, two-thirds of them unfolding as they went.

  Her mother cut her off. “You made a mistake, yes. But you didn’t make all the mistakes that put Williams and Son Landscaping that close to bankruptcy. You didn’t cause Pastor Nate to make his choices, and you didn’t tell Olivia not to write the story she knew was there. They made their own choices, honey.”

  She scooped up her socks next. “I know, but—”

  “Mistakes happen. The question is, what are you going to do now?”

  “There is nothing I can do.” Libby dumped the armful of socks in the suitcase. “That’s why I’m coming home.”

  “Libby, I loved the three years you were home. We had so much fun, and selfishly, I wanted you to stay. But over the past month, I’ve seen the Libby we used to know reemerge.”

  Libby dropped onto the bed and lay back to listen to her mom.

  “The Libby who was fearless. The Libby who wanted to move to England and work in a bookstore. The Libby who was always determined to find a solution to every problem.”

  Libby rolled to her side as Austin’s scent surrounded her. She jerked her head up. Austin? His sweatshirt lay next to her pillow. She fingered the edge of the soft cotton. “I can’t be that person. After Colin—”

  “What Colin did was wrong, and I struggle with my anger toward him often. But you get to choose if it defines you now. He stole three years from your life.” Her mother’s voice softened as if she fought with her own emotion. “Don’t let him steal any more.”

  Was that what she was doing? Had she really allowed Colin to steal her life? She closed her eyes and pictured him with the gun barrel pointed at her. Only this time, the sting wasn’t so sharp. This time it was overlaid with the image of Corrie ten Boom with a gun pointed at her head. Only the police hadn’t come to rescue Corrie, and Corrie hadn’t been able to run home. At least not for a long time and not until after many more horrors.

  Libby pulled Austin’s sweatshirt to her face again, then tossed it toward her desk. She couldn’t hold on to the hope he’d change his mind. Austin didn’t give second chances. “I read The Hiding Place. I finished it two days ago.”

  Her mom cleared her throat as if to find her voice again. “I didn’t know you were reading it. It’s a powerful story.”

  Libby stood and picked up the book from her nightstand. “I wondered why she spent so much time in the beginning of the book on everyday life that had nothing to do with the war. Then it hit me partway through. Corrie ten Boom wasn’t an exceptional person.”

  “Many may disagree with that.”

  She set the book aside and dropped onto her stomach on the bed, pulling a pillow under her. “But if the war hadn’t happened, we’d never have heard about her.”

  She rolled onto her back and stared at the water-stained ceiling. What had Olivia said? Maybe that was why people could identify with her—because her faith wasn’t perfect.

  Libby sat up, picked up the book again, and ran her hand over the cover. “Her life was difficult and messy from her perspective. But she always held to the truth that there was a Master at work. And as the war and hard times came, instead of running she simply sought God and did what she could with what she had that day. And day after day of doi
ng what she could for God evolved into an exceptional life.”

  Corrie didn’t allow the Nazis to steal her life, and maybe it was time for Libby to take hers back as well. Her life wasn’t exceptional, but maybe day after day of doing what she could with what she had was enough.

  “I think I need to stay, Mom. I don’t have all the answers, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe today I just need to work with the answers I do have.”

  “That’s my girl. Call me later.”

  Libby ended the call and pulled out her earbuds. She wiped away the smudge of mascara under each eye and walked across the hall. Her hand hesitated over Olivia’s door before she gave it three solid knocks.

  “Come in.”

  Libby opened the door. Olivia lay on her back on her bed, her eyes red from crying. Her hair had been pulled up in a messy bun, but it was wet. Her shorts and shirt looked soaked as well, but Olivia didn’t seem to notice as she tossed a basketball straight up and caught it. “Yes?”

  “I have an idea.”

  Olivia tossed the basketball and caught it again. “No thanks.”

  “I know you’re mad at me—everyone is mad at me. I deserve it.” Libby pushed the door open all the way and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I’m not mad at you. I know the guy twisted your words.” Olivia sat up so her back was to Libby and spun the ball on her finger.

  “Then why are you shutting me out?”

  “I’m just . . . mad.” She caught the ball and smacked the side of it. “I’m mad that people like that have a job as a reporter when I can’t even get my foot in the door. I’m mad that Nate’s walking away from the church.” She flopped back on her bed and covered her face with a blanket. “And I’m mostly mad at myself because after everything I said to Nate about his past not mattering, when I was faced with it head-on, I crumbled under the weight. I couldn’t think of one thing to say. I just . . . left.”

  Libby tugged the blanket until it slid off Olivia’s face. “Have you tried to talk to him?”

  “He won’t answer my calls. And when I go to the house, he’s either not there or not coming to the door. Outside of breaking in the window and waiting until he shows up, I’m not sure how I can talk to him.”