“What’s not to be happy about? I’ve got a beautiful wife, her sister’s singing soulful songs, and I’m with family. I’m a lucky guy.” He put his arm around Danica.
“Savannah, Treat tells me that you went through Jack Remington’s survival camp. He’s got such a great rep. How was it?” Blake asked.
She couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “Awesome. I learned a lot.”
Josh raised his eyebrows. He masked his comment—that’s not all—with a cough.
Savannah and Riley both punched him in the arm.
“Oh, did you meet someone there?” Blake asked. “I’d be surprised if Jack allowed that. He’s a surly guy these days.”
Surly and passionate. “He is surly, to most people.” Savannah moved out of the way for someone to pass and repositioned herself beside Danica. “But there was a young couple who hooked up and he didn’t seem to pay much attention to it. He kind of ignored that aspect and just went on with the course.” Probably because we were too busy trying to keep our feelings in check.
“Remington? That’s Rush’s brother? The one who lost his wife?” Danica asked.
“Yeah,” Blake answered. “He closed himself off from everyone, and I don’t think Rush even knows where he lives these days. Anyway, did you meet someone special there or just a weekend fling?”
His family doesn’t know where he is? “I’m not really sure yet,” Savannah answered.
Kaylie began another song, and Savannah was glad for the distraction. She really wanted to bend Danica’s ear. As the others turned their attention to the stage, Savannah moved closer to Danica.
“Can I pick your therapist brain for a few minutes?” Savannah asked.
“Of course. What’s up?” Danica turned away from the stage and stood shoulder to shoulder with her, giving Savannah her full attention.
“I know you helped my brother Dane and his girlfriend, Lacy, deal with her fear of sharks and relationship anxieties, and I’m a little worried about my ability to choose the right men in my life. I wondered if you’d mind helping me sort of figure out why, or at least how to stop doing it.”
“Well, Lacy’s my sister, so I knew a lot about what she’d been through already. I don’t know that much about your background other than your mother passing away when you were little and your father raising you, and he seems warm and loving, but also stern enough to have raised you all to be successful—and, I thought, confident.” Danica furrowed her brow. “A lot of times we can get clues to our issues from our own thoughts. Why do you think you pick the wrong guys? And how often do you pick these guys?”
“Well, I’m thirty-four and I haven’t picked the right guy yet, so that must mean I’ve picked a lot of bad ones, and I’m not sure why.” The music had become white noise in the background of their conversation. Luckily, the others were wrapped up in the white noise and not in Savannah pouring her heart out.
“Tell me about your last three relationships,” Danica said.
Savannah sighed. “Last three. Well, I dated Connor Dean, and he cheated on me several times and I kept going back to him. Then there was Paul Chaste before him. He was an attorney, and we dated for a few months, but he was just too boring. No spark, you know?”
Danica nodded.
“And before Paul I dated Matt Brewer, and we got along great, intimacy was great, but we had different goals in life. He didn’t want a family and I did.” Savannah shrugged.
“I’m not seeing a pattern here, Savannah. Clue me in on what I’m missing.”
“What do you mean? There’s a definite pattern. I can’t seem to pick the right men. Am I insecure? Am I needy? Bossy? I know I’m a royal pain and stubborn sometimes. Is that the issue? I can take it, Danica. Whatever it is, just give it to me straight.” Savannah crossed her arms, bracing herself for the painful truth.
Danica smiled.
“What? Is it all those things?” It’s worse than I thought.
“No, no.” Danica turned to Blake and said, “I’ll be right back.”
“Everything okay?” Blake asked.
“Yeah. We’re going to step away from the stage for a minute.”
Great. Now we need privacy. This must be horrible.
When they were away from the others, Danica pulled Savannah down beside her on the grass. “Okay, here goes. A pattern is when you do something over and over, like Blake or Kaylie before they settled down. They went from person to person, never forming any attachments. That’s a pattern, Savannah. You’ve dated the wrong guys. There’s a huge difference, unless each of those guys possessed some quality that made it impossible to have a relationship with them.”
“Well, Connor was a serial cheater. That makes it pretty impossible.”
“True, and we can talk about that, but the others?” Danica held Savannah’s gaze.
Savannah shook her head. “Boring and no kids. Those were deal breakers for me. But they were nice guys and they were professionals, no other glaring issues.”
“So why do you think you have the issue?”
Savannah took a deep breath. “I stayed with Connor for almost two years. He cheated time and time again, and I kept going back, and now…now I’m interested in a guy who is emotionally available only some of the time. When his past bogs him down, he’s blocked off by a wall so thick I can’t break through.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I thought this was going to be easy. You know, I tell you my trouble and you say, Oh, Savannah, it’s because you’re insecure because your mother wasn’t around to nurture you, or you’re too stubborn for any man to love you. Hell, I don’t know.” She turned away, embarrassed by her inability to even get having an issue right.
“Savannah, I didn’t say you don’t have some issues. We all do. I said I don’t see a pattern with your choices in men. So, this recent guy, is he so blocked off you can’t get through or you won’t make the effort to get through? In other words, are you trying and he’s resisting?”
“Damn it, Danica. This is why I don’t go to therapists. You ask the hard questions that I don’t want to answer.” Savannah was irritated but only with herself.
“Hey, you came to me. We don’t have to talk.” Danica pushed herself to her feet and brushed off her jeans. Savannah reached up and pulled her back down.
“That’s another thing. Don’t therapists have any fight in them? You’d walk away and leave me all conflicted?”
“Sometimes the only way to work things out is to reach deep inside and pull out the muck so you can see a little clearer. If I’m here to dig you out every step of the way, you’ll never want or need to clear the way yourself. God, I really do sound like a therapist. It’s been years since I closed my practice, and here I am spouting off this shit.” Danica laughed.
Savannah watched Riley whisper in Josh’s ear, and again she longed for that closeness. “See, even you don’t like it. But the truth is, I need you to push me.” She loved Danica and she trusted her, and something told her that she needed to reach out with honesty in order to get some answers. “It’s Jack Remington. He’s the one I hooked up with over the weekend, and he’s the one I can’t stop thinking about.”
“And he’s the one whose wife died.” Danica put her hand on Savannah’s arm. “That is a tough one, but unless he’s sleeping with multiple women, there’s no connection to what you experienced with Connor, so it’s still not a pattern.”
“He’s not. Before me, he hadn’t had sex with a woman for two years.” Savannah waited for Danica’s jaw to drop or for her to laugh and say, No really, how long has it been? But Danica didn’t do either of those things. She nodded and drew her eyebrows together.
“Wow, that’s a lot of hurt, and if he really did become as reclusive as Blake said, then he’s probably buried it all beneath some other emotion.”
“Anger,” Savannah admitted. “He is pretty gruff when you first meet him, and he’s riddled with guilt, but not always, and when it falls away, he’s tender and lov
ing, and passionate, and…”
“Does he have angry outbursts? Is he aggressive?” Danica asked.
“No.” Savannah shook her head. “When I first met him, he was just walled off. And he spent a lot of time trying not to look at me. Or talk to me. You know the type. He spoke forcefully no matter what the topic was, one firm tone. No smiles, except when he spoke to the little boy who was there. He actually smiled when he spoke to him.”
“He does sound a little boxed off. How’d you two come together? What changed?”
Savannah leaned back and put her weight on her palms. She crossed her legs at the ankles as she remembered the night she’d seen the bobcat and how scared she’d been. “I went into the woods at night to go to the bathroom, and there was a bobcat that I hadn’t seen. And suddenly Jack was there, rescuing me. Before that there was all this attraction between us, a buildup of sexual energy that was red-hot, but we both had these brick walls up—me because of Connor and him…well, you already know why. And when he saved me from the bobcat, it was like all those walls came tumbling down, whether we wanted them to or not.”
Danica leaned back beside Savannah. “Well, that all sounds very normal to me, not at all worrisome. Now, if you were really the one who pulled him out of his celibacy, then that could go one of two ways. Either there’s some meaningful connection that can’t help but continue to grow, or he’ll deal with his shit and move on. Like you broke the dam, and it was wonderful, but he might want to explore what else washes in.”
“You don’t sugarcoat things, do you?” Savannah looked at Danica, and she still had a serious look in her eyes. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s funny, you know? I’m with Blake, who had too many women for any one man, and here you are with the opposite problem, but the worry is the same. Savannah, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this even though I don’t really know your full history or what you’ve gone through in relationships. And I’m going to say this as the woman who married into your family. Not as a therapist but as a friend. I would imagine that the only thing you’re up against as far as picking the wrong guys goes is that you are very successful and beautiful, and that’s a threatening combination for many men. But beyond that, you’re just looking for your forever love, so follow your heart. If Jack turns out not to be ready—and there’s a hell of a chance that he’s not—then what have you lost?”
My heart. “A little self-respect.” Her cheeks grew warm again thinking about the things she and Jack had done in the woods. “I’ve already done more—and different—intimate things with him than I have with any other guy, and I wanted to.”
A smile stretched across Danica’s lips. She leaned in close and whispered, “That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. That means you’re wildly attracted to him.”
Danica watched Blake crossing the grass, and in her eyes Savannah saw love, want, and a hint of the intimacy between them. She wondered if the look that Treat had seen in her eyes earlier that afternoon, and Josh and Riley had seen when she’d listened to Jack’s message, was similar to what she saw in Danica’s. She felt her cell phone in her pocket, and she knew the answer was only a phone call away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE KNOCK WAS so faint that Jack almost didn’t hear it. He lifted his head from his arms and pushed himself from the spot on the floor where he’d been sitting since he hung up the phone with Elise. The second he opened the door, there would be no turning back. Jack tried to picture Linda’s sister. The last time he’d seen her was shortly after Linda’s accident. She’d been as torn up as Jack was. He took a deep breath and pulled the door open.
“Jack.” Elise walked in without giving Jack time to react, and she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face to his chest.
Jack’s breath caught in his throat. She was more than a foot shorter than Jack, and she’d always worn her hair in a short pixie cut, but now her blond hair fell past her shoulders, so similar to Linda’s that when his hand brushed against it, he had to swallow the sadness that rose. She drew away from him and shook her head. Her warm blue eyes held no anger or blame, and the smile on her lips offered Jack even more relief. He felt the tension in his shoulders ease.
“Hi, Elise,” he managed, closing the door behind her. “Come in. Let’s sit down.” Elise and Linda had been as close as sisters could get. She was twenty-eight when Linda died, and Jack remembered the devastation that had lingered in her eyes afterward—and how that devastation drove his guilt deeper and deeper into his psyche. Now that despair was evident only in the shadow that flickered in her eyes and left as quickly as it had appeared. Jack thought he might be the only person who would recognize it for what it was.
They sat on the sofa, facing each other, Elise with one leg tucked under the other and her arm across the back of the couch and Jack with his elbows leaning on his thighs. His heart felt heavier than it had a few moments before, and although he didn’t see blame in Elise’s gaze, his internal guilt tethered his eyes to the fireplace.
“Jack, I’m so glad to see you.” Elise touched his arm.
He turned his head and looked at her, praying he’d have the strength to say and do the things he needed to. He wanted to move forward, but suddenly the road between wanting and doing seemed paved with glass.
He forced a smile. “I never thought I’d see any of the Grays again, and here you are, sitting on my couch.”
Elise’s smile wasn’t forced, and when it lit up her eyes, Jack sat up, taking note of the similarities between her and Linda. The high cheekbones, the way a dimple formed beside her cheek when the smile reached a certain point, and a simple cock of her head, which brought Linda’s voice back to him, Oh, Jackie, don’t be silly. How many times had she said that with the same look in her eyes?
Elise dropped her gaze. “I know, Jack. I look just like her. I always have, but now that my hair is longer…”
“It’s remarkable. Your voice, too.” He turned his body toward her so he could study her more closely. A memory snaked its way into his mind, and he had to share it. “She sat right there once with that same look on her face. We’d just decided to try to have a baby.” His throat swelled, and he paused as a chill ran through him. “She said…” He narrowed his eyes to keep the tears that burned from falling. “She said, Let’s do it, Jackie. That was all. Let’s do it, Jackie.”
“She loved you, Jack, and she would have loved your children.” Elise touched his arm. “Do you remember when you guys first got married? Remember how she made me promise to never let her turn into one of those sisters who forgets she has a life outside of her marriage?”
Jack nodded.
“She never did, Jack. She always made time for me and you.”
A tear tumbled down his cheek. He tried to blink it away, but more tears spilled, and he dropped his eyes to the couch.
“I miss her, too, Jack.” Elise wiped her own eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Elise. Not just for letting her go out that night, but for being such a jerk afterward. I loved her so much, and I missed her—miss her—so much.”
“I know you do, Jack. We all do.” Elise’s voice was just above a whisper. When she spoke again, strength had returned to her voice. “But, Jack, everyone misses you. Your family, my family. You have a lot of life to live ahead of you, and we worry about you.”
“I know.” His voice cracked. “I thought I could escape the pain. I thought if I didn’t see anyone, I could forget the blame and the accusations in everyone’s eyes.”
“Jack, no one blamed you but yourself.”
Jack shook his head. “Your father blamed me, and I’m sure everyone did.”
“No, Jack. What Dad said, he said out of anger and grief. Don’t you remember? The last time you saw him, you two argued. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was on Linda’s birthday after she’d died, and he told you to stop blaming yourself and to pull yourself together.”
Jack remembered it well. The shock of rage that
tore through him. The gall of anyone telling him to forget his pain—to forget Linda—and move on with his life. They didn’t understand that he was unable to do that. He could not physically muster the energy to even think about forgetting or letting go of the guilt.
“Jack, look at me.”
He met her empathetic gaze.
“It was you who blamed yourself, Jack. You argued until my father was red faced. Remember? Think about it, please. It’s important that you see how things really happened. You got right in his face and said that you would never speak to him again if he continued to tell you to let her go, and the whole time, he wasn’t telling you to. He was giving you permission to move on with your life.”
Jack grabbed the sides of his head and leaned his elbows on his knees again. “No. I saw it in his eyes, Elise. I saw it. His hatred was so blatant.”
“No, Jack.”
The strength of her statement drew his eyes back to her. He felt his chest rise and fall as his breathing became fast and loud.
“That was you, Jack. You hated yourself. You blamed yourself. You scared us, Jack. Dad was afraid you’d do something horrible, think about suicide or something, and the more he tried to release you from your own self-imposed guilt, the angrier you became. He finally gave up and said, Fine, Jack. Go wallow in your guilt. While away your life in some self-imposed prison. Is that what you want to hear?” Elise stood and paced. “Damn it, Jack. You’ve always been so damn stubborn. You looked him in the eye and said, Yes, goddamn it. It’s the truth.” She crouched before him and held his knees in her small hands, waiting until Jack was looking at her before continuing. “Jack, that’s when he said it. That’s when he told you that you were the reason she died. He said it to appease you, Jack, because every attempt to dissuade seemed to make you angrier and more belligerent. And do you remember what you did?”
Jack’s chest hurt so badly that he couldn’t tell if his tears were from the pain or the grief that constricted it.
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