by Jane Graves
“No, Kari. This doesn’t just happen. No man on earth has this kind of shitty luck!”
Then he thought about the condom that first time they’d been together in the cottage. Expired. Only two months, though. Two months. They were good for years. Years. Could that little time have possibly made a difference? In spite of his history, he hadn’t continued to worry about it because he was a logical man and it just wasn’t logical to get uptight about those kinds of odds. He didn’t think there had been an obvious problem with it, but he was so damned distracted, so caught up in having sex for the first time in forever…
So damned irresponsible.
Marc couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand that feeling of history repeating itself, that stomach-churning feeling of his life coming to a screeching halt.
“I knew you’d be upset,” Kari said carefully. “And you have a right to be.”
“Hell yes, I have a right to be!”
She shrank away as if he’d slapped her, but he couldn’t say anything to mitigate his words. This was it. The one thing he’d feared the most. Being tied down for the next two decades.
“I know how you feel about this, but—”
“No, Kari, you don’t. You don’t have a clue how I feel about this.”
“Yes. I do. I’ve listened to you. I’ve heard you say it over and over. I know how important it is for you to finally be able to live your own life. But if we just talk about it—”
“Not now. I can’t right now.”
“But—”
“I said I can’t talk about it.”
“You blame me for this, don’t you?”
Maybe he did. Maybe he blamed her for being a crazy woman who left her own wedding and ended up on his doorstep that rainy night. If she hadn’t done that, none of this would be happening. The irony overwhelmed him. The woman who’d made him feel free for the first time in years was the one tying him down all over again.
But she wasn’t the only one at fault. Hadn’t he known what might happen? Hadn’t he known? His father’s voice echoed inside his head all over again. I counted on you to be smarter than that.
“No. I blame myself. Could I have been a bigger fool?”
He couldn’t sit there any longer. Not with Kari looking at him like that, needing him to say things he couldn’t, to tell her things were going to be all right, because right then he wasn’t sure they were.
He rose from the bed, grabbed a bag from his closet, and tossed it on the bed.
“What are you doing?” Kari asked.
He threw a change of clothes in it.
“Marc?”
“I have to get out of here.”
“Get out of here?”
“Ride.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Just for a while.” He went into the bathroom and grabbed a few items.
“What about the vineyard?” Kari said when he came back in the room.
He dumped the toiletries into his bag. “Daniel is here.”
That was all he could say. He couldn’t think any more about that, because his mind was filled to bursting with visions of a future he never thought he’d have. He needed to clear his head. Make sense of this. Approach it logically. He needed to think, damn it, and get a plan. Only idiots faced challenges without a plan.
But he had no plan this time. None at all. But all he could think about was getting on his motorcycle and putting as much distance between himself and this disaster as he possibly could.
He zipped his bag, knowing he was being a bastard for acting this way. But he couldn’t even look at Kari. He couldn’t face what was going on. He just needed some time. With his life falling apart all around him, his plans destroyed, didn’t he at least deserve that?
He brushed past her and headed for the bedroom door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“When will you be back?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“Marc—”
He wheeled back around. “Don’t ask me when I’m going to be back!”
He squeezed his eyes closed, gritting his teeth. He didn’t want to be this way. He didn’t. But wasn’t this how it always was? Answering to everyone? Being pulled ten different directions? Everybody wanting something from him?
“I went through hell back then,” he said, his voice low and intense. “Nicole leaving. My parents dying. Raising two teenagers and a baby when I was just a teenager myself. Working in the vineyard until I was ready to drop. I managed only one way. By seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t see that light anymore.”
“No,” Kari said, shaking her head. “Don’t you see? It’s not going to be like that this time. This is my baby, too. I wouldn’t even think about walking away. Do you understand that? I’m going to take care of him. Be a mother in every way there is.”
“Yeah? How do you expect to do that?”
“What do you mean?”
“A few weeks ago, you couldn’t even put food in your own mouth.”
She swallowed hard. “I’ve come a long way since then.”
“And you have a long way to go.”
“I know. And I know it’s going to be hard, but—”
“Hard? You’re a waitress in a small-town café. You make next to nothing. You work odd hours, and you’re exhausted at the end of every shift. Until you’ve tried to take care of a baby in addition to all that, you don’t have a clue what hard is. I’m sorry, Kari. But that’s the truth.”
“I won’t be his only parent.”
“But I can’t be sure that I won’t.”
“Yes, you can! Didn’t I just tell you—”
“Don’t you think Nicole told me the same thing?” Marc said hotly, his voice escalating. “When she told me she was pregnant, she couldn’t stop crying. I told her everything was going to be okay. She said she believed me, that she could do it as long as I was with her. But she left anyway. I woke up one morning, and she was gone. She got her freedom. I stayed and took responsibility, because I was raised to believe that no man was a man unless he did. But now this? When in the name of God is it going to be my turn?”
“I would never leave you,” she said.
“Sorry, but you don’t have a great track record where not leaving is concerned. Christ, Kari. You walked away from your own wedding!”
She recoiled as if he’d struck her. “Should I have stayed and married him?”
“Hell no! But you didn’t exactly face the problem head-on, did you?”
Tears filled her eyes. “I mean it, Marc. I would never leave you.”
He knew she meant that right now. But let her deal with one sleepless night after another with a screaming baby, and just how long would she last? How long would it be before he woke up one morning to find himself alone all over again?
Looking at her now, he tried to see the woman who’d brought him so much pleasure for the past several weeks, but wasn’t that what had caused this problem in the first place? If only he’d held the hard line he’d laid down for himself and kept his hands off her, he wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “I’ll be back. And I’ll stay, because I don’t have any other choice. And twenty years from now, you can bet your last dollar I’ll still be here. Is that what you want to hear?”
She looked at him with a forlorn expression, her eyes glistening with tears. “I just want you to be happy.”
Happy? What chance did he have of that now? “I have to go.”
With that, he threw his bag over his shoulder and walked out the door.
Kari was still in Marc’s bedroom when she heard the sound of his motorcycle coming up the drive, passing by the house, and then heading for the front gate. She listened, tears bubbling up inside her, until the sound disappeared in the distance and there was nothing but silence.
She loved him. God, she loved him so much. She’d almost blurted it out. She�
��d almost told him she loved him, that she’d loved him almost from the beginning, that there was no other man on this earth she could imagine loving more.
But he didn’t love her.
That thought made her even sicker to her stomach than she already felt. If he loved her, he would have swept her into his arms and told her that nothing mattered but the life they’d created and the two of them being together. Instead, he’d done just the opposite.
He’d run.
She’d had a fantasy all the way home from the doctor that she’d tell him the news and he’d take her in his arms and tell her he loved her and he wanted to raise their baby together. How stupid could she possibly have been? That had been a silly delusion that only a fool would have. And he was right. As long as she was a waitress at Rosie’s, she’d have a hell of a time raising a baby without a tremendous amount of help, and he was going to be the one providing that help. Because of that, he would resent her for the rest of their lives.
She thought about the ultrasound photo she’d held in her hand as she came into his bedroom to tell him the news. When she saw the look on his face, she was too scared to give it to him, so when he grabbed some things from the bathroom, she’d slipped it inside his bag. Now she was regretting that. Would it make things worse than they already were?
In the end, he’d be back. And she knew he’d stay in Rainbow Valley. Be a father to their baby. Even though he was angry right now, she knew he’d love their child with everything he had in him. But what would she be to him?
Nothing but the mother of his child. The woman who’d been fun for a while, then tied him down in exactly the way he feared the most.
Feeling miserable, she got dressed to go to work, so preoccupied she barely realized she was doing it. When she went to the kitchen to grab her purse and keys, Daniel was coming through the back door.
“Where did Marc go? I saw him leave on his motorcycle earlier.”
She gave him a smile that she hoped looked genuine. “He decided to take it for another spin. He might be gone overnight. Wish I could have gone with him, but I have to work.”
“Getting a head start on that new lifestyle, huh?” Daniel said as he grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“Yeah. I guess so.” She headed for the back door. “Gotta get to work.”
“Kari?”
She turned back. “Yeah?”
“Marc. Just how pissed is he?”
Daniel didn’t look at her as he said it, and suddenly Kari knew that for all his bravado, he hated the fact that they weren’t getting along.
“You guys are just having a difference of opinion,” she said.
“He thinks there’s only one way. His way. I have a new method of aging the wine that’ll pay off big time for this vineyard, and he won’t even consider it. He refuses to listen to anyone else. And not just about the vineyard. I want to pay Angela’s tuition just to make things easier for him, but he refuses to let me do it even when I’ll never miss the money. How stupid is that?”
“Does that really surprise you?”
“No. I just wish he’d listen to me once in a while.” He popped the cap on the beer and tossed it into the trash. “I postponed our harvest crew until next week. I think it was the right decision. But if it’s not, I’m never going to hear the end of it from Marc.”
She wished she could tell Daniel that in the end, he wasn’t going to have to worry about making the right decisions at the vineyard. That he was going to get a reprieve. That Marc would be staying and running the place because he had a baby now and hitting the road on his motorcycle wasn’t going to be an option after all. But until she worked this out with Marc, until they came to some kind of understanding that didn’t involve him looking at her as if his life had just fallen apart, she couldn’t say a word to anyone.
The drone of the engine did nothing to drown out Marc’s thoughts as he headed down the highway. Where he was going, he didn’t know. But as the hours passed, the open road he’d dreamed of all these years seemed bleak and empty, and the longer he rode, the more unsettled he felt. He shouldn’t have left. He knew that. Not with Kari looking at him like that, needing him to reassure her. But how the hell could he do that when he couldn’t even reassure himself? He knew now there was no end to it. His life was never going to be his own.
Never.
For hours, Marc drove blindly down Highway 28, and as the afternoon became evening, he wasn’t even completely sure where he was. Soon he came to a more populated area, where hundreds of acres of farmland became smaller acreages dotted with houses. The speed limit dropped to thirty-five, evidence that a town was up ahead. He rounded a bend and came upon a small cinder block motel with a diner attached. A weathered sign out front said, “Sunnyside Inn.”
He slowed his motorcycle and pulled into the parking lot, but it wasn’t until he brought it to a halt and stepped off of it that he realized how tired he was. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see he’d been driving for almost six hours.
He went into the office, where a grandmotherly woman ran his credit card and gave him the key to room number 6. He unlocked the door and found a small room that was trying too hard to be cheerful, with blue walls, a flowered bedspread, and cheap art nailed to the walls. He tossed down his bag, then glanced out the window to see a bar and grill a block down the street called Buck’s Roadhouse, its red neon sign shining through the dusky evening light. He could stay in this room with nothing but cable TV and his own thoughts for company, or he could go get a bite to eat and a couple of drinks and forget about everything.
Five minutes later, Marc walked inside the bar to find a big, dark room lit mostly by neon beer signs and a couple of TVs behind the bar. One wall was filled with nothing but fishing trophies and cow skulls. Country music assaulted his ears, and the smell of deep-fried food filled the air. He took a seat at the bar and ordered a burger and a beer from a balding, middle-aged guy who just happened to be Buck himself. A couple of young guys with long, shaggy hair and baseball caps sat at the other end of the bar, their hands around beer bottles and their eyes glued to a monster truck rally on the nearby TV.
I’m pregnant.
Those words circled inside Marc’s mind until he thought he’d go crazy. As soon as Kari told him the news, it was as if he was looking through a different lens, one that refused to let him see all the joy she’d brought him for the past several weeks.
And Daniel. He’d lucked out the way he always did, and now he was going to get to leave the place he hated and get on with his free and easy life. The unfairness of that settled over Marc like a giant black cloud.
He finished the first beer, and when his burger came, he ordered another one. But he still couldn’t get his mind off what had happened with Kari, so he drank that one and asked for one more. Soon the place started to fill up. No wonder. It was probably the only entertainment within twenty miles.
The bartender switched one of the TVs to a baseball game, and Marc tried to concentrate on that, but he couldn’t keep his mind from wandering again. He thought about City Limits, a place where he sat down at the bar and Terri was there to bring him his usual drink and chat a little. He could look across the room and see his friends and neighbors, and he knew every song on the vintage jukebox. It was an unsettling feeling to look around this place and see not one familiar face. And not a single person there recognized him. He remembered how much he’d craved that sense of being lost in a crowd, but now it unnerved him, as if he’d been dropped into an alternate universe where everybody was a stranger.
Then the door opened and a woman walked in, late twenties, dark hair, wearing jeans, boots, and a tank top. She slid onto a stool two down from Marc. Buck immediately drew a Bud and set it down in front of her. She pulled a cigarette and lighter from her purse, lit the cigarette with a flick of her thumb, then blew out the smoke.
She’d taken only a few sips of her beer when she turned to Marc. “I’d ask you if you’re new in town, but honey, believe
me. I know the men in this town, and you’re definitely not one of them.”
“I’m just passing through.”
“Where are you from?”
“Rainbow Valley.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I’m not surprised.”
She told him she worked at the hardware store down the street. Divorced. No kids. But her ex was a pain in the ass because he wanted to get back together and she wasn’t interested. Not that he was abusive or anything like that, she said, but he had no ambition. She was going to beauty school as soon as she saved the money, and all he wanted to do was smoke pot and go fishing with his buddies.
Fifteen minutes into their conversation, she moved to the barstool next to him. Marc ordered both of them another beer and told Buck to keep them coming. But as much as Marc tried to pay attention to the woman, her voice was nothing but white noise to him. He spoke often enough to keep the conversation going, but if somebody held a gun to his head and told him to repeat anything she’d said, he’d be a dead man.
“You seem a little down tonight,” the woman said. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Far as I’m concerned, we can stop talking altogether.”
She accompanied those words with a provocative smile, sliding her hand over to rest it on top of his. She was nice. Reasonably attractive. And available. He’d told this woman he was just passing through, so he had no doubt a one-night stand was all she was looking for. All these years, he’d thought that was exactly what he would be looking for, too.
So why did the thought of it leave him cold?
Somewhere in the depths of his alcohol-soaked mind, he remembered a time when riding the back roads, seeing the sights, staying at tiny motels, and drinking at local bars had seemed like a great thing to do. And if a willing woman presented herself, he’d planned on going for it. But now as it was happening, it seemed odd and surreal, like a dream that started out pleasant enough, only to morph into a nightmare.
He pulled out his wallet and tossed money on the bar.
“Don’t leave now, sweetie,” the woman said. “The party’s just getting started.”
