After Hours with Her Ex

by Maureen Child

  He inhaled sharply. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, he did. And I said no because—” her voice broke off, she swallowed hard and pinned him with a hot look designed to singe his hair. “Because if you could leave Lacy, how could I possibly trust that Tony would stay with me? What’s the point, right? I couldn’t make myself believe, because you ripped the rug out from under me.”

  “Damn it, Kristi.” Talk about feeling lower than he would have thought possible. Somehow in screwing over his own life, he’d managed to do the same for his baby sister. One more piece of guilt to add to the burden he already carried. Sam gritted his teeth and accepted it. Then he dropped both hands onto her shoulders and held on.

  “You can’t use me as an excuse for not trying. I messed things up pretty well, but they were my decisions.” Bitter pill to choke down, but there it was. “You can’t judge everyone else by what I did. Tony’s a great guy and you know it. You’re in charge of your own life, Kristi. Make it or break it on your own. Just like the rest of us.”

  “Easy to say when you’re not the one left behind.”

  She had a point, though it cut at him to admit it. Damn, the repercussions of what he’d done two years ago just kept coming. It was like dropping a damn rock into a pond and watching the ripples spread and reach toward shore. But even as he acknowledged that, he tried to cut himself a break, too.

  When Jack died, Sam hadn’t been able to think. Hadn’t been able to take a breath through his own pain, and he’d reacted to that. Escaping the memories, the people, who were all turning to him for answers he didn’t have. The emptiness he’d felt at his brother’s death had driven him beyond logic, beyond reason. Now, his decision to come home again meant he was forced to face the consequences of his actions. Acknowledging the pain he’d dealt others was hard to swallow.

  He looked at Kristi and saw her in flashing images through his mind at every stage of her life. The baby his parents had brought home from the hospital. The tiny blonde girl chasing after him and Jack. The prom date Jack and he had tortured with promises of pain if he got out of line with their sister. The three siblings laughing together at the top of the mountain before hurtling down the slope in one of the many races they’d indulged in. Slowly, though, the memories faded and he was looking into her eyes, seeing the here and now, and love for her filled him.

  Going with instinct, he pulled her, resisting, in for a hug, and rested his chin on top of her head. It only took a second or two for her to wrap her arms around his waist and hold on. “Damn it Sam, we needed you—I needed you—and you weren’t here.”

  “I am now,” he said, waiting until she looked up at him again. She was beautiful and sad, but no longer furious and he was silently grateful that the two of them had managed to cross a bridge to each other. “But, Kristi, don’t let my mistakes make you miss something amazing. You love Tony, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No.” He cut her off with a shake of his head. “No buts. You’ve always been nuts about him and it’s clear he loves you, too, or he wouldn’t put up with all of those self-help books you’re always quoting.”

  She snorted and dipped her head briefly. The smile was still curving her mouth when she looked up at him again.

  Shaking his head, Sam said softly, “Don’t use me as an excuse for playing it safe, Kristi. Nobody’s perfect, kid. Sometimes, you have to take a chance to get something you want.”

  She scowled at him, then chewed at her bottom lip.

  He smiled and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Trust Tony. Hell, Kristi, trust yourself.”

  “I’ll try,” she said, then added, “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “Me, too, kid. Me, too.”

  Nine

  The talk with his sister was still resonating with him when Sam stopped at Lacy’s cabin later that night. For hours, he’d heard Kristi’s voice repeating in his mind as he came to grips with what he’d put everyone through two years ago. Realizing what he’d cost himself had brought him to the realization that he not only wanted but needed Lacy in his life again. Now he had to find a way to make that happen.

  The occasional night with her wasn’t enough. He wanted more. And Sam wasn’t going to stop until he had it.

  He brought pizza and that need to be with her. To just be in the same damn room with her. To be able to look into those eyes that had haunted him for too long and realize he had a second chance to make things right.

  “Bringing a pizza is cheating,” Lacy told him, settling back into the couch with a slice of that pizza on a stoneware plate.

  He laughed. “How? Gotta eat. You always loved pizza.”

  “Please.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Everyone loves pizza.”

  “Not many people love it with pepperoni and pineapple.”

  She took a bite and gave a soft groan of pleasure that had his body tightening in response. “Peasants who don’t know what’s good,” she said with a shrug.

  Ordinarily he might enjoy bantering with her, but tonight, he couldn’t seem to settle. Sam set his pizza aside and looked into the fire that burned cheerily in the hearth. The hiss and crackle of flames was a soothing sound, but it did nothing for the edginess he felt. He couldn’t shake that conversation with Kristi.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He looked at her, firelight dancing across her face, highlighting the gold of her hair lying loose across her shoulders. That same flickering light glittered in her eyes as she watched him. She wore jeans, a deep red sweater and a pair of striped socks, and still, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “Sam? What is it?”

  He got to his feet, stalked to the fireplace and planted both hands on the mantel as he stared into the flames. “I talked to Kristi today.”

  “I know. She told me.”

  Of course she had. Women told each other everything—a fact that gave most men cold chills just to think about it. He turned to look at her. “Did she tell you that she’s been putting her whole damn life on pause because of what I did two years ago?”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  He pushed one hand through his hair, turned his back on the fire and faced her dead on. His brain was racing; guilt raked his guts with sharpened claws. “I never realized, you know, how much my decisions two years ago affected everyone else.”

  Lacy set her pizza aside and folded her hands in her lap as she looked at him. “How could they not, Sam?”

  Scrubbing the back of his neck, he blurted, “Yeah, I see that now. But back then, I couldn’t see past my own pain. My own misery.”

  “You wouldn’t let any of us help. You shut us all out, Sam.”

  “I know that,” he said tightly. “I do. But I couldn’t reach out to you, Lacy. Not when the guilt was eating me alive.”

  “Why should you feel guilty about what happened to Jack? I don’t understand that at all.”

  He blew out a breath, swallowed hard and admitted, “When Jack first got sick—diagnosed with leukemia—that’s when the guilt started.”

  “Sam, why? You didn’t make him sick.”

  He choked out a sharp laugh. “No, I didn’t. But I was healthy and that was enough. We were identical twins, Lacy. The same damn egg made us both. So why was he sick and I wasn’t? Jack never said it, but I know he was thinking it because I was. Why him? Why not me?”

  A soft sigh escaped her and he didn’t know if it was sympathy or frustration.

  Didn’t matter now anyway. He was finally telling her exactly what had been going through his head back then, and he had to get it finished. But damn, it was harder than he would have thought. Shaking his head, he reached up to scrub one hand across the back of his neck and started talking again.

  “I was with Jack through the whole thing, but I cou
ldn’t share it. Couldn’t take my half of it and make it easier on him.” His hand fisted and he thumped it uselessly against his side as his mind took him back to the darkest days of his life. “I felt so damn helpless, Lacy. I couldn’t do anything.”

  “You did do something, though, Sam,” she reminded him. “You gave him bone marrow. You gave him a chance and it worked.”

  He snorted at the reminder of how high their hopes had been. Of the relief Sam had felt for finally being able to help his twin. To save his life. “For all the good it did in the end.”

  “I never knew you were feeling all of this.” She stood up, walked to him and looked into his eyes. “Why didn’t you talk to me about this then, Sam?”

  He blew out a breath. Meeting her eyes was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Trying to explain the unexplainable was just as difficult. “How could I tell my wife that I felt guilty for being married? Happy? Alive?” He pushed both hands through his hair, then sucked in air like a drowning man hoping for a few more seconds of life before the sea dragged him down. “God, Lacy, you were loving me and Jack had no one.”

  “He had all of us,” she countered.

  “You know what I mean.” He shook his head again. “He was dying right in front of me.”

  “Us.”

  She was right, he knew. Jack’s loss was bigger than how it had affected Sam. He could remember his parents’ agony and worry. The whispered prayers in the mint-green, soulless, hospital waiting room. He saw his father age and watched his mother hold back tears torn from her heart and still... “I couldn’t feel that then,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t feel it. I was watching my twin die and I was so messed up I couldn’t see a way out.”

  “But you finally found one...”

  “Yeah,” he said softly, looking into those eyes of hers, seeing the sorrow, the regret, and hating himself for causing it then and reawakening it now. “I don’t know if you can understand what I did, Lacy. Hell, I don’t even know if I do, now.”

  “Try me.” She folded her arms across her chest and waited.

  God, two years he’d been holding everything inside him. Letting it all out was like—he couldn’t even think of the right metaphor. It was damned painful but it was long past time he told Lacy exactly what had happened then. Why he’d done what he’d done.

  “After the bone-marrow transplant, after it worked and Jack was in remission, it was like...” He paused, looking for the right words, and was sure he wouldn’t be able to find them. Not to explain what he had felt. Finally, he just started talking again and hoped for the best. “It was like fate had suddenly said, ‘Okay, Sam. You can go ahead and be happy again. Your brother’s alive. You saved him. So everything’s good.’”

  He could remember it so well, the nearly crippling relief, the laughter. Watching his brother recover, get strong again, believing that their world was righting itself.

  Lacy reached out and gently laid one hand on his forearm. It felt like a damn lifeline to Sam, holding him to this place, this time, not letting him go too deeply into a past filled with misery. He covered her hand with his, needing that warmth she offered him as he finished.

  Sam looked down at their joined hands and said softly, “Jack was full of plans, Lacy. He was well again, and after so long feeling like crap, he couldn’t wait to get back out into the world.”

  “I remember,” she said quietly.

  The snap and hiss of the flames was the only sound in the room for a few seconds. “He showed me his ‘list.’ Not a bucket list, since he wasn’t dying anymore. It was a dream list. A life list. His first stop was going to be Germany. Staying with some friends while he skied the slopes and reclaimed everything the cancer stole from him.”

  She didn’t speak, just kept looking at him through eyes gleaming with the shine of tears she wouldn’t allow to fall.

  “He was well, damn it.” Sam pulled away from her and scrubbed both hands over his face like a man trying to wake up from a nightmare. “Jack was happy again and on the road and then he dies in a damn car wreck on the freeway? It was crazy. Surreal.”

  “I know, Sam. I was with you. We all were.”

  “That’s the thing, Lacy.” His gaze caught hers again as he willed her to understand how it had been for him. “You were there but I couldn’t have you. Couldn’t let myself have you because Jack was dead and his dreams with him. I saved him and he died anyway. It was like fate was screwing with us just for the hell of it. None of it made sense. I couldn’t bring him back. So I told myself I had to do the next best thing. I had to at least keep his dreams alive.”

  Seconds ticked past before Lacy stared up at him and said, “That’s why you left? To pick up the list Jack left behind and make it happen?”

  “He had all these plans. Big ones. And with him gone, those plans were all I had left of him. How could I let them die, too?”

  “Sam—” She broke off, took a breath and said, “Did you really think fulfilling Jack’s list was going to keep him with you?”

  God, why did it sound stupid when she said it? It hadn’t been at the time. But that’s exactly what he’d thought. By living his twin’s dreams, in essence, his twin’s life, it would be as if Jack never died.

  “It was important to me,” he muttered thickly. “I had to keep him alive somehow.”

  “God, Sam...” She lifted one hand to cover her mouth and her beautiful eyes shone with tears.

  “Keeping Jack with me meant distancing myself from the reality of his death. That’s why I had to leave. I couldn’t be here, facing the fact, every day, that he was gone.”

  God, he felt so stupid. So damn weak somehow for having to give up his own life because he’d been unable to accept his twin’s death. He rubbed one hand across his mouth, then said, “I took Jack’s dreams and lived them for him. For a while, I lost myself in ski slopes, strangers and enough alcohol to sink a ship.” He snorted ruefully as memories of empty hotel rooms and staggering hangovers rose up to taunt him. “But drinking only made the pain more miserable and even skiing and being anonymous got old fast.”

  “You should have talked to me, Sam.”

  “And said what?” he asked, suddenly weary to his bones. His gaze locked on hers and everything in him wished that they were still what they had once been to each other. It rocked him a little to realize just how much he wanted her back. How much he still loved her. “What could I possibly have told you, Lacy? That I wasn’t allowed to be happy because Jack was dead? You couldn’t have understood.”

  “You’re right,” she said, nodding. “I wouldn’t have. I’d have told you that living was the best way to honor Jack. Living your own dreams. Not his.”

  He sighed. She was right and he could see that now. He wouldn’t have then. “My dreams didn’t seem to matter to me once his were over.”

  “Did it help?” she asked quietly. “Leaving. Did it help?”

  “For a while.” His mouth quirked briefly. “But not for long. I couldn’t find satisfaction in Jack’s dreams because they weren’t mine. But I owed it to him to try.”

  She reached up to cup his face in her palms and the soft warmth of her touch slid deep inside to ease away the last of the chill crouched in his heart. God, how had he lived for two years without her touch? Without the sound of her voice or the soft curve of her mouth? How had he been able to stay away from the one woman in the world who made his life worth living?

  “Sam,” she said quietly, “you don’t owe Jack your life.”

  “I know,” he said, covering her hands with his. It was too early to tell her he loved her. Why the hell should she believe him after what he’d done to their lives? Their marriage? No, he’d sneak up on her. Be a part of her world every day, slowly letting her see that he was here to stay and that he would never leave her again. “That’s why I’m back, Lacy. To rebuild my life. And I w
ant that life to include you.”

  “Sam...”

  “Don’t say anything yet, Lacy,” he told her. “Just let me prove to you that I can be the man for you.”

  Her breath hitched and her eyes went shiny with emotion.

  “Let’s just take our time and discover each other again, okay?”

  She nodded slowly, and in her eyes he read hope mingled with caution. Couldn’t blame her for it, but he silently vowed that he’d wipe away her trepidation.

  “You can trust me, Lacy. I swear it.”

  “I want to, Sam,” she whispered, “for more reasons than you know...”

  “Just give me a chance.” When he pulled her close, bent his head and kissed her, she leaned into him, curving her body to his, silently letting him know that she was willing to try. And that was all he could hope for. For now.

  Tenderness welled up between them and in the soft, flickering firelight, they came together as if it were the first time and the shining promise that was the future was almost in reach.

  * * *

  Lacy was still smiling the next morning.

  She felt as though she and Sam had finally created a shaky bridge between the past and present. At long last, he’d told her what had driven him to leave, and though it still hurt, she could almost understand. As sad as they’d all been when Jack died, for Sam it had to have been even more devastating. Like losing a part of himself. And she could admit, too, that she hadn’t been capable of being what he needed back then. She’d been too concerned with her own insecurities.

  When Jack died, all she’d been able to think was thank God it wasn’t Sam. She’d been too young and too untried—untested—to be able to see what Sam was going through, so how could she have helped him?

  Now it was as if they were both getting a second chance to do things right. She laid one hand on her belly and whispered to the child sleeping within, “I think it’s going to be all right, baby. Your daddy and I are going to make it happen. Build a future in spite of the past.”