by Karina Bliss
Self-consciously, Rachel fumbled in her handbag and held out a wad. She’d withdrawn fourteen hundred dollars from her savings account to pay for her flight. “Obviously, it’s nowhere near enough but…”
He looked at it curiously, then at her. “You’ll use me to get to your son but you’re coy about accepting a lift?”
“I didn’t use you-” She broke off because the customs official was coming toward them. The flight, including a refueling stop in Hawaii, would be sixteen hours. Plenty of time to set the record straight.
After the formalities, Devin shepherded her aboard the aircraft. Already dazed, she found the luxurious interior only disoriented her more. While Devin went into the cockpit to talk to the captain, an attendant-Kristy-ushered Rachel past the camel-colored leather couches and armchairs, the four-seater dining room table and lavish bathroom to a smaller, private lounge, where she settled her in one of the armchairs. “I’m so sorry you’re sharing the flight,” she apologized.
Despite her gnawing anxiety for Mark, Rachel smiled. “That’s fine,” she assured her.
“Let me stow that for you.” Kristy took Rachel’s overnight bag and placed it in a lacquered maple cupboard. “Anything to eat or drink?”
“No, I’m not-”
“When did you last eat?” asked Devin from the doorway. When Rachel hesitated, he turned to the attendant. “Feed her, please, Kristy.” He glanced back at Rachel. “I’m assuming you don’t want to join the others?”
She shook her head. Small talk was the last thing she wanted.
“Then I’ll check on you later.” He disappeared again, obviously unwilling to spend any time with her.
Kristy looked at Rachel, the question evident in her eyes. What did you do? Then, recollecting herself, she smiled, indicated the bedroom and en suite, and said she’d be back with a snack. Left alone, Rachel stared out the porthole at the last traces of smeared gold and pink streaks on the horizon.
She didn’t see Devin again until halfway through the flight. By that time her thoughts were driving her mad.
He stopped at the door when he saw her. “I thought you’d be in bed.”
“Don’t stay away on my account.”
Devin glanced over his shoulder as a burst of laughter came from the main cabin, then shrugged and stepped in, holding a briefcase. “I have work to do that needs quiet.”
Rachel attempted a weak joke. “If you need help with your homework…” She’d meant schoolwork and realized too late that the comment could be read as sexual. It fell into an awful silence.
Grim-faced, Devin sat and opened his briefcase. “It’s copyright paperwork on some of my early songs.” Briefly, he filled her in on the reason for Zander’s visit-to rub salt into the wound, Rachel suspected.
“I knew Zander had invited you to rejoin the band. I thought you were avoiding telling me because you were embarrassed about…” She stopped, picked up her cold coffee and sipped it, for something to break the sudden tension in the cabin.
“Embarrassed because I’d said I was falling in love with you and didn’t mean it? No, my embarrassment came later.”
“I should have trusted you.” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, “you should have. But it wouldn’t have solved our basic problem. I was never more than a novelty toy to you, someone to play with while you waited for Mr. Right.”
He’d made that accusation before. This time it wounded the part of her she’d vowed never to expose again-her heart.
“You’re so wrong,” she said, but he’d already stood.
“I’m going back to the other cabin.”
“No!” Her anger came out of nowhere, explosively loud in the small space and catching them both by surprise. “I shouldn’t have let Mark walk away without an explanation and I’m damned if you will. Sit down.”
He folded his arms. “Make me.”
She launched herself out of the seat and kissed him, not lightly, not tentatively, but passionately, with everything she felt for him-all the love, all the aching regret. His lips tightened under hers. His hands closed around her upper arms like steel traps as he put her away from him.
Humiliated, she returned to her seat on the couch, but Devin made no move to leave.
“Steve-Mark’s father-talked me into smoking a joint the night I got pregnant.” Rachel couldn’t look at Devin, picking up a cushion and running her palm over the silky fabric. “I was crazy about him at this stage and he’d been teasing me about not drinking. He said it would make me happy. And oh, boy, it did. Happy and irresponsible.” She choked on a laugh, looked up. “When I smelled it on Mark…well, it was easier to blame you than admit I’d failed to protect him.”
Devin’s eyes were grave. “It was more than that, Rachel. You wanted to believe the worst of me.”
“No, that’s-”
“All the qualities that made me a danger to Mark-the wildness, the bad boy history-made me safe to you. Because I’d never ask you to marry me or have children with me, never make you confront the things you’d have to if I was the right kind of guy. Like why you’re so damn scared of anything approaching real intimacy. When I told you I loved you I broke the contract.”
“No guy is the right guy,” she cried. “I always chose men I couldn’t love. You were supposed to be another one. If anyone broke faith, it was you.”
“So you love me but you don’t want to. Thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
She had to make him understand.
“Just because I did the right thing in giving Mark up for adoption doesn’t mean there aren’t scars.” She hugged herself, but it didn’t help. “At seventeen, you think of self-sacrifice as something worthy, something good and ennobling that will carry you through the loss. You don’t know that the scab will still fall off on his birthdays, that you’ll still ache every time you hold a baby and smell that sweet, soft baby skin. At seventeen I made the sacrifice and at thirty-four I’m still paying. You’re just the latest price.”
“Rachel.” Devin sat down beside her and reached for her hands; she pulled them away.
“I know what you want. You want all of me and I can’t…love you like that. Giving up my baby changed me… I can’t love anybody that much again, can’t risk that kind of loss. It hurt too much. It still hurts.” She swallowed, forced herself to meet his gaze. “My only regret is that I hurt you.”
For the rest of her life she’d remember the compassion in his eyes. “I’m a big boy. I can survive a few rounds in the ring with the Heartbreak Kid.”
A laugh escaped her, then a sob. Ignoring her protests, he sat beside her and put his arms around her.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered against his shoulder, “not even for you.”
“It’s okay.” There was nothing but comfort in his hold. “You don’t need to explain. It’s going to be all right.”
She lifted her face. Devin had never seen such agony. “Is it? Now Mark’s making me doubt the only thing I thought I got right.”
Tears slid down her pale face, silent sobs shook her body. Rachel put her hands over her mouth, trying to stop.
Devin stroked her hair. “Let it go.”
Shaking her head, she stood and stumbled to the adjacent bedroom, shutting the door. He followed her. She lay face down on the bed, her shoulders heaving with the effort of self-control.
He locked the door, then lay down beside her and gathered her into his arms. Rachel pushed him away, trying to curl in on herself and disappear. He pulled her arms free and put them around his waist, pushed down her bent knees and entwined their legs. He wrapped himself around her, trying to cover as much of her as he could with his body. “Let go.”
Rachel stopped fighting and burrowed into him, her nails digging into his back as she cried, jagged heartrending sobs that seemed as if they’d been held in check for seventeen years.
At last the weeping abated, her grip on him loosened and her body slowly relaxed against his, until Devin felt as
if he held something ethereal, she lay so lightly in his arms. Exhausted, Rachel slept.
Releasing her, he swung his feet off the bed and stood up. Moving stiffly, his muscles still tight from absorbing her tension, he took off her shoes and pulled the covers over her inert form. She slept like the dead. Then he sat on the bed, pushed damp tendrils of hair away from her face and stared at her, his emotions mixed and powerful.
He still had the ability to minimize the damage she’d done to him, to protect himself with emotional distance.
In her sleep, Rachel sighed deeply.
Devin laid his palm against her cheek. Had anyone really loved this woman? It didn’t seem so. And yet she’d still had the courage to defy her parents and do what she thought was right by her unborn baby, even at the cost of her relationship with them. She’d been alone in the world from the age of seventeen.
His life had been charmed by comparison, his losses self-indulgent. He’d been a kid in the world, too, and stumbled; but she hadn’t. Not his Rachel.
Because she was his, no matter what she said. All his trials had been preparation, strengthening him to become a man capable of loving a woman who so deserved to be loved-and who might always hold something back.
He loved her anyway.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MARK WAS IN THE sound booth of OneRing Recording Studios, cleaning up after the latest round of coffee takeouts, when Devin strolled in on Friday morning. He started, his grip tightening on a polystyrene cup, and coffee dregs splashed the recording console.
“Watch it, dipstick!” One of the junior techs-bumped up the ranks through Mark’s internship-shielded it protectively. “The VPR 60’s worth more than your life.”
But Mark wasn’t listening. He answered his former mentor’s casual greeting with a scowl. Untroubled, Devin turned to the studio technician and recording engineer. “Hey, guys, long time no see.”
Both men stood to high-five and man-hug him. Even the session musicians tuning up in the isolation booth dumped their instruments to come through.
“Man, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Good to see you! Back for good, I hope?”
Mark waited for a lull. “What are you doing here?”
In all that friendliness and back-thumping, his accusatory tone struck a harshly discordant note. The other guys turned to stare at him.
“Among other things, catching up with old friends,” Devin said coolly, and turned back to his buddies. Mark had imagined that when he saw Devin again, his mentor would be full of hangdog apologies, might grovel even. His first wild thought on seeing him was that Devin had come to talk him into going home. Now Mark wasn’t so sure.
“So no one sent you to find me?”
Devin glanced over. “Why? Are you lost?”
Mark swallowed hard against a rush of homesickness. He’d been miserable in his week in L.A. Not because Zander mistreated him; in his own careless way the man had been kind, even getting him this job.
“No one sent me,” Devin added, then looked at the studio manager. “Okay if I take Mark away for a few minutes, Tom?”
“Rehearsal room four is empty.”
“We’ll catch up later, guys.” Devin left the sound booth, not even checking to see if Mark followed him. Mark dawdled to stress his resentment. Rehearsal room four was a large empty space with white, soundproof walls, a parquet floor and a comfortable couch. Devin sat at the grand piano-the only instrument currently in the room-running his hands lightly over the keys, seemingly unaware that he’d just been taught a lesson.
Bunching his hands in his jean pockets, Mark remained standing in the open door, trying to look aloof instead of sulky.
“Called your parents yet?”
Mark tried not to look guilty. He’d been meaning to call, except he couldn’t deal with their questions or inevitable hurt. “I’m getting round to it.” He had another day before Suz got home from Dubai and posted his letter.
He braced himself for criticism, but Devin only said, “What do you think of this?” and started playing.
“Sounds old-fashioned,” he said impatiently.
“It came out before you were born. Listen to the lyrics.”
“It’s kinda schmaltzy,” said Mark after a few minutes. “All this holding on through the coming years. It makes me think, get another girlfriend and get over it.”
“What if the singer was female, sixteen and pregnant, and had just made the decision to adopt. What if it was a love song to her baby? Does that put a different spin on it?”
Devin sang another chorus, and suddenly Mark could feel the anguish in the song. He put his hands over his ears. “Stop.”
Devin closed the lid of the piano. “It’s Rachel’s favorite song.”
Mark clenched his hands at the mention of her name. “Why did you do it, Dev? Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you found out it was her?”
“Because she asked for time to get to know you.” His expression softened in the same frustrated, affectionate way Dad’s did when he was explaining some crazy female foible of Mom’s. “She wanted you to like her first.”
Mark snorted.
“It wasn’t her best idea,” Devin conceded, “but was she wrong to worry that you’d never give her a chance to explain?” With an effort of will, Mark held that penetrating gaze. “When she finally tried, did you listen?”
Mark clung to his righteous anger like a martyr to a hair shirt. “You know what I think? She never wanted me to find out she was my birth mother and that’s why she conned you into not telling me.”
“No, that’s-”
“She’s a liar, Dev. She said she gave me up because she had to but-” he paused to clear his throat “-her mother told me they wanted to keep me, and Rachel was the one who said no.”
“What if they were both telling the truth?” Devin stood up from the piano. “Mark, you need to hear Rachel’s side.”
He shook his head. “If it’s so damn important that I understand, then where is she? Why isn’t she here defending herself?”
“I am here,” Rachel said behind him.
MARK PALED, and tried to push past her. Heart pounding, Rachel blocked his way.
“Five minutes, then I promise you don’t have to see me again.”
He hesitated. To her relief he flung himself on the couch, glanced at his watch and folded his arms.
Devin got up to leave.
“Stay,” she croaked, “I want you to hear this.”
“And I don’t want to be alone with her,” Mark said savagely.
Rachel wiped her damp palms on her skirt. This was the most important conversation of her life and her mind was a blank.
Still standing by the door, she looked helplessly at Devin, trying to draw strength from his smile of encouragement as he joined Mark on the couch.
“This is a waste of time,” said Mark.
“The only time Dad ever hit me was when I told him I was pregnant,” she said. Rachel looked at her hands. “It was the only time Mom let him, although when the body blows started she intervened. I think that’s why I made contact after he died, but…” She glanced at Mark. “Did she show you the photo albums?”
He nodded.
Rachel went over to sit at the piano stool. “My father was influential in council, in the community, in our church… I don’t think there was a charity he wasn’t involved in. He never had any problem knowing exactly the right thing to do, the right way to dress and speak, the right opinions to have.” She grimaced. “Of course, he spent his life constantly disappointed in other, more fallible, people.”
She wasn’t seeing Mark anymore, seeing only the past.
“In our home everything revolved around Dad. He was a secret drinker, always brooding over some slight, real or imagined. It infuriated him when he wasn’t given the respect he deserved, and he’d take out his frustrations on my mother. The meal wasn’t hot enough, the house not clean enough, she was letting herself go…letting him down
.”
Discordant notes echoed through the room; inadvertently, she’d leaned on the piano keys. Carefully Rachel closed the lid. “And my mother always agreed that it was her fault, always made excuses for him even when he’d hit her. Even now, when she’s finally free of him, he’s still a saint in her memory.”
She moved restlessly on the stool. “I couldn’t raise you on my own, but I couldn’t let them raise you, either. For a while I put my hopes in an open adoption, but I couldn’t trust Dad to leave you alone. So I canceled it.” Her words were coming out all wrong-bald and harsh-but if she gave way to emotion now, she wouldn’t finish what she had to say.
Rachel became aware that she was dusting the piano lid, over and over with the sleeve of her silk blouse, and stopped. “All I could give you was a future-parents who would raise you with stability, security and love. I’m sorry, but I can’t regret that.”
She’d promised five minutes. Rachel started to go.
“Devin said you wanted me to like you first and that’s why you delayed telling me,” Mark murmured.
Silly, so silly. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. He was looking down, kicking the toe of his sneaker against the floor. The lace was untied.
“My real dad wanted you to have an abortion?”
“Yes.” Rachel swallowed hard. “But I never considered it, not for a minute.” She looked to Devin for more unspoken support.
Mark bent down and tied his shoe. “Still,” he said gruffly, “three parents who wanted me isn’t so bad.”
Rachel smiled.
Her son lifted his face. There were tears in his eyes. “And I do like you,” he said.
Her own vision blurred.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IT TAKES AWHILE to believe that the person you started out thinking was all wrong for you is the one you’re meant to be with.
