Neal.
Don’t be afraid, Jennifer. Let me make you happy. We don’t have to be alone anymore.
How had he known she still felt alone, even back in this town with people who’d known her since she was a baby?
Helping other people, taking care of them, was her life. A life that satisfied her on so many levels. But happy? Just the thought of trying for happy again, trying with Neal, had kept her from tracking him down in this monstrous place for days. Kept her from trying to explain how much his kisses had meant, and why they terrified her.
Hugging Mandy a little tighter, she looked through the chilly night at the Cain house, thinking of the happiness that had once ruled there. The joy that was creeping back into Nathan’s life now, because he wasn’t alone anymore. He had Neal back.
Joy she didn’t know how to grab hold of for herself and not need to shove away just as quickly.
Had it really been so long since she’d been truly happy, that she was actually afraid to want it anymore?
“HEY, TRACI.” Brett Hamilton slipped around the corner and caught Traci hiding behind her locker door. “Got a second?”
Oh, no.
No, no, no, no, no.
Mortified, even more than when she’d seen him at the church council meeting, Traci slammed her locker door and made a beeline for first period honors calculus. Please let Brett take the hint, be the good guy he’d always been before and leave her to wallow in her mess.
There was no point in saying she was sorry. Cheating on the town’s favorite Boy Scout, so she could move on to being knocked up by a loser, wasn’t something you could sorry away. Let’s be friends made even less sense. She’d given up on her friends, mostly because they’d given up on her. Even Shelly had gone out of her way to be too busy talking with another girl that morning to say hi. Traci was quickly becoming damaged goods that no one would be seen with.
At least it was Friday, and she’d have the weekend to hide away and bury herself in cleaning up the old Cain house some more.
“Traci.” Brett caught up, even though his English class was on the other side of the building. “I need to talk with you.”
She stopped at that.
No one needed to talk with her anymore. For sure not her rule-freak parents who still hadn’t visited her at the Cain place.
“I wanted to…” Brett steered her toward the stairwell. Everyone else was in class or trying to get there before the late bell, leaving the normally busy alcove empty but still smelling like sweaty socks. “I wanted to ask, you know, if you and the baby were okay?”
Okay?
Was he kidding?
Was she really supposed to stand there looking at Brett, the boy who’d worshiped her since kindergarten, and talk about the baby she’d basically punked him to make with another guy?
Had her choices really dwindled to either humiliating herself, or taking the calculus test she hadn’t studied for last night?
“Everyone’s talking about you moving over to the Cain house,” he added.
Differential equations, here she came.
Brett blocked her escape, something he’d never done before. In fact, part of the reason she’d started looking at other guys was to see if Brett would ever work up the nerve to try and stop her.
“I haven’t been listening to any of the gossip,” he assured her. “Especially all that shit Jeremy Compton’s saying about Neal Cain, and how dangerous he is, and how he and Jenn are getting it on again now that you’re all living at his dad’s place.”
Brett blushed.
Traci smiled before she had time to remember that she no longer had any right to get mushy over how cute he was.
“Okay,” he amended. “I’ve listened to some of it. But only because I’m worried you’re getting yourself into more trouble. I didn’t want to butt in, but I thought maybe if you wanted to talk… You know, maybe I could help if you needed something.”
She blinked.
He was actually giving her the chance to speak for herself? He was worried?
“You really are a nice guy, Brett.”
He shrugged her words away. “So are things okay? Over there I mean. Is Neal Cain—”
“Neal’s fine, I guess. I mean, I don’t know what goes on during the day while I’m here. But he and Jenn are working on the house all the time. Or he’s playing some stupid game with Mr. Cain. They keep arguing over which lousy old record to play. Nobody talks to me much but Jenn and Mandy, and the kid’s—”
“How about you?” More blushing. “You and the baby. Are things getting any better, you know, with your parents?”
Before she’d lost her mind with the jackass, Brett had listened to all her crap about her parents. Really listened. He’d actually been interested, not just trying to get into her pants.
And she’d tossed him away.
“You know what Bob and Betty are like,” she said. “Nothing’s going to be okay unless they have their way. And that’s not going to happen this time. I can’t go back home if they won’t even talk to me. What kind of life would that be for my baby, seeing how Grandma and Grandpa are so totally sure Mommy’s not capable of doing anything on her own? I’m nobody’s dream-mom, but I know enough not to warp a kid from the cradle like that.”
Brett’s blue, blue eyes actually smiled.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “A lot of us think so.”
“A lot of who?” He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t, not after—
“A lot of the kids. What you and Ms. Gardner are doing, making this about your choices instead of just about what your folks want, it’s great.”
Great?
“I cheated on you, Brett.”
“Yeah.” His smile vanished. His eyes filled with shadows she’d never seen before. “Why didn’t you just tell me you wanted us over? Why all the cloak-and-dagger shit, just to make me look stupid?”
“I don’t know why I did any of it.”
Except she did. Hours of talking with Jenn while they worked around the Cain house the last couple of days—spending hours at night by herself, since her parents and the friends who thought she was doing the right thing had conveniently forgotten to come around—had helped her figure out more than she’d ever wanted to know about the shallow, selfish things she’d done. She hadn’t wanted things over with Brett, as much as she’d been trying to prove to herself that being with him wasn’t all she was. That what her parents expected wasn’t all she’d ever be.
Never once had she stopped to think that she didn’t have the first clue who she wanted to be herself. The hot single chick with the older guy thing had certainly been a bust. And hiding out at the Cain place waiting for everything to magically work out on its own hadn’t been going much better.
“I’m not sure I know anything anymore.” Looking at Brett’s confused frown, the strength in his mile-wide shoulders, made her want to throw her arms around him and beg him to take her back. To make everything okay by loving her again. Like that was going to happen. “But I’m learning, thanks to Jenn. She’s the one who’s great.”
“You don’t seem to be doing so badly.” It was a reluctant smile this time, but the fact that he could still smile at her at all had the mushy stuff inside turning even mushier. “I can’t see Shelly Ackerson or the rest of the crew buckling down and going the full ten rounds with their parents. You’re tougher than you think, Carpenter.”
He gave her a guy’s nudge to the shoulder that felt better than a thousand hugs.
“But if you need anything in that crazy place you’re living in, I want you to…” He ducked his head. “You know… Call me. No matter what’s happened, I want you to be okay. You and your baby both.”
He was jogging away before she could say anything else. Running from what he’d said, and from the tears streaming down her face.
It was a bunch of crap, him saying she was stronger than her friends. That she was up for this ridiculous stand she’d taken. She’d felt strong f
or, like, a minute when she stood up to her parents at that meeting. Now, days of puking up her breakfast later, she was back to wanting to run like the scared little girl she still was.
You’re stronger than you think.
Maybe Brett could clue her parents in, if he was so sure!
All Bob and Betty saw when they looked at her was their baby girl, and their biggest disappointment.
The darkness of the empty stairwell closed in around her. The sound of another girl’s laughter filtered down from one of the floors above. Someone else’s happiness echoing just how alone she really was.
Stop being such a baby!
She had Jenn in her corner, and even sick old Mr. Cain. And hadn’t Brett just offered to help if she needed him. An offer of unspoken forgiveness she so didn’t deserve.
Giving up, wasting even a second feeling sorry for herself would let everyone down, her baby most of all. The tiny life that just yesterday the clinic doctor had said was perfectly healthy as she did an ultrasound. The life growing deep inside her that she couldn’t believe she’d ever considered ending.
No matter how easy it would be, giving up wasn’t an option. And she was tired of waiting for her parents to come to her, too. If she was so strong, what was she waiting for? After school, she was heading to her parents’ house and inviting them to dinner. Something Jenn had been on her case to do since the church council meeting. Tomorrow was her night to cook, and she and Jenn had already planned the menu—one more thing she could do now that she’d never even thought about just weeks ago.
Things with her parents were going to work out or they weren’t. But thanks to Jenn, she knew she was going to be okay, even if it meant being by herself.
THE SOUND OF CHIRPING filtered through Neal’s apartment window. He growled and buried his head farther beneath the feather pillows he’d spent a fortune on because he’d slept on them as a kid. There must be a new family of birds nesting in the tree outside. The one his landlord wouldn’t cut down.
The high-pitched, happy tune continued, taking him back to where he never went anymore—to the lazy summer mornings of his childhood. Half dreaming, half awake, he let himself remember days filled with nothing important stretched out before him, an open invitation to run free. School was out for the summer and life was good. He could do anything he wanted.
Sunlight warmed his closed lids, tempting him to wake. He never slept this late. He was usually in the office before sunup. But this morning he couldn’t move. He rolled away as he had several times already, no longer fighting the pull of remembering. Letting the dreams come.
Then the sound of giggling joined the bird’s noise. Followed by the oddest sensation along his right side. He jerked and was rewarded with another giggle. Lifting an eyelid, he saw a hand snake along the mattress, headed toward his side again.
In an instant, prison instincts took over. He grabbed the hand, yanked whoever it was against the bed as hard as his awkward position would allow, and was rewarded with an ear-piercing scream. Jackknifing more fully awake, he rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the impossible appearance of a life-sized Tweety Bird floating beside his bed.
“What the—” He winced as the next scream split his head in two.
“Mandy!” The door banged open.
Then time stood still as Jennifer Gardner flew into the room, gasping at the sight of Neal holding her squirming daughter by the arm.
The world righted itself. Visions from childhood and prison dissolved into the here and now. Fight-or-flight instincts receded, leaving behind the sharp tang of adrenaline coating his tongue.
He was on the outside now. He was safe.
More to the point, he wasn’t in his apartment in Atlanta sleeping a work morning away. It was a Rivermist Saturday, he was in his old room and he’d just scared Jennifer Gardner’s daughter half to death.
His heartbeat settling, he scrambled to secure the sheet at his hip as Jenn dropped to her knees beside the little girl and pulled her close. Mandy buried her head in the golden hair cascading down her mother’s neck.
“She startled me.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “I didn’t know who it was. She—”
“She was tickling you,” Jennifer explained.
“What?”
“Tickling you.” Jennifer’s expression softened into a lopsided grin that had the unfortunate effect of waking a very morning-conscious part of his anatomy. “That’s how she wakes her grandfather before she leaves for school, isn’t it, sweetie?”
She jostled Mandy, kissing the little girl’s neck and nudging her chin. “It’s okay, honey. Neal doesn’t know how to play your game. He didn’t mean to scare you.” Then she looked at him, worry and understanding crowding out the fake cheerfulness she’d used with her daughter. “I’m sorry she woke you. I was trying to get out of here quietly, hoping you were finally getting some sleep.”
He’d been up half the night playing board games with his dad. They played more and more every day. Nathan tired too easily now for his favorite pastime: tinkering in the garage. But they were spending time together, his dad’s anger softening. The real man beneath reluctantly emerging to find some peace in hanging out with his son late at night when the rest of the world was asleep. Same as when Neal had been a kid.
All thanks to the beautiful woman kneeling next to his bed, close for the first time since their last kiss.
Jennifer.
“Jenn” was impossible now.
Her gaze slipped to the sheet covering his very bare lap. Her cheeks flushed, the way they had when he’d kissed her in the kitchen, and wanted to keep kissing her…. He’d wanted to lay her out on the table, strip off her nightgown and forget the reality crashing down on top of both of them.
But she’d been crying… Wanting him made her cry.
“Um…” he mumbled.
“We’re heading out.” She wobbled to her feet, lifting Mandy with her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I know.” She smiled over her shoulder, the simple beauty of it killing him. “We’re heading out with Traci to do some grocery shopping.”
The door shut as she backed completely out of the room, then he was alone. Alone with ghosts from the childhood he hadn’t let himself remember before moving back here.
The bird outside kept up its nattering, echoing the past that kept rushing back the longer he stayed in this place. Planting the seed of a killer headache directly behind his right eye. An ache that had come and gone a dozen times since helping his dad dismantle the vintage car the man had slaved over. Not more than a few words had been exchanged as they’d reduced the Mustang to scrap once more. Silently bashing away at what they should have built together.
Neal picked up his watch, checked the time and slipped it onto his wrist. It was nine o’clock, when he’d planned to be up at dawn doing something—anything he could get his hands on—as he waited for whatever was supposed to happen next between him and his dad.
His dad.
They hadn’t come close to talking about anything real yet. Nothing close to goodbye or…or saying they loved each other just one more time.
Maybe his dad would never be ready for that.
Neal grunted.
Or maybe he was still too chickenshit.
Do you have any idea what it’s like…?
And he did. He understood the prison his father had built for himself all too well. And whether they said another damn word to each other or not, whether he spent every night either jogging or staring sleepless at the ceiling, he was going to be here. He was going to make sure loneliness didn’t add to his father’s burdens.
But the drive inside him continued to churn. The need to run. Not from Nathan anymore, but from the woman living with them whose silence and loneliness were even harder to stomach.
Jenn worked furiously around the house, taught the Carpenter girl how to cook and clean when Traci wasn’t in school. Basically spent her time hiding
from the town she’d not so long ago hoped to make a fresh start in. The rumors about the two of them had been steadily growing according to Reverend Gardner—compliments of a still-pissed-off Jeremy Compton.
But Jenn had stayed, regardless, even if she’d stayed well out of Neal’s way.
He reached for the box he’d placed under his bed. The shoebox holding Jenn’s unopened letters. Letters that screamed how much he was a part of her reasons for fearing the love and passion still burning inside her. He’d shut her out. Let her down. Left her alone and hurting, and now she was afraid to ever again reach for anything close to what they’d had.
What could he say to make all she’d been through go away?
Don’t be afraid, Jennifer…. Let me make you happy. We don’t have to be alone anymore.
He’d said it. And he’d been too late.
Feminine laughter filtered up the stairs, bringing with it the sharp memory of Jennifer laughing in his arms at the homecoming dance, smiling. Her eyes shining with forever, as if she never wanted to leave that moment.
Cursing, Neal stalked across the room for his clothes.
Run.
He needed a run.
It took him less than a minute to throw on the sweats that made the temperatures outside bearable, then he bounded down the stairs. He heard someone puttering in the den and headed out the front door and down the silent street. And every step he took brought with it the impulse to turn around. To head back and beg Jennifer not to make him say goodbye to her, too, the way he’d soon have to say goodbye to his dad.
But he’d promised. He wasn’t going to hurt her anymore.
So he took the turn at the end of the street and kept on running.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Prodigal's Return Page 17
