Her intake of breath was audible, the pain physical. Crossing her arms tightly to keep herself together, she took a step back, stumbling on the top step, then righting herself. He'd told her he no longer loved Angela, and she'd wanted so much to believe him. She'd been eager to accept his lies—hadn't even considered that he might be lying. Had never considered that he might have no more use for her than Greg had.
Cameron came tearing out of the woods, Diaz a few yards behind him. They were headed for Tyler's house when they abruptly shifted direction and came their way instead. She smiled thinly at the sight of them. "Before you came out this morning, I was thinking how much your dogs are like Greg. I guess they come by it honestly. You're both bastards." Fumbling for the screen door handle behind her, she opened the door, paused halfway through it and said flatly, "I'm not Angela and you're not the man I thought you were. Looks like we both got screwed."
Then she went inside, closed and locked the door, sank to the floor and cried. It was so unlike anything her heroines would have done. They were strong. They held their heads up and dealt with adversity calmly, capably. Not even a broken heart could keep them down.
But she was no heroine, and they'd never had a heartache like this, because she'd never had a broken heart. She'd relied on imagination to write those emotions, and it had failed her. She hadn't known she could hurt like this. Hadn't known she might literally break into pieces. Hadn't suspected that every breath would burn, that every beat of her heart would ache, that numbness would be slow to come and inadequate at blocking the pain.
And she had no one to blame but herself. Tyler had been right. He'd never asked for anything more than a little of her time. Never talked about a future that included both of them. Never implied he wanted more from her than companionship and sex. He'd never even asked her out for one simple date.
Even Greg had wanted to go out with her from time to time.
But he'd treated her with liking and respect. Sometimes he'd looked at her as if she meant something. He'd touched her so tenderly and held her close even in his sleep. He'd taken her to his family's get-togethers three Sundays in a row. He'd kissed her on Main Street
!
Even she had to admit that was a flimsy foundation for love and forever.
Of course, it was easier to see now that she knew she had just been a substitute—and a poor one at that—for the woman he really wanted.
Long after she heard his pickup truck pass, she eased to her feet. Her butt was sore from sitting on the hard floor, her eyes were puffy and red, and her nose was runny. Those were the last tears she would cry over Tyler, she promised as she blew into a tissue.
She didn't believe it for a moment.
After a shower, she got dressed, then pulled her suitcase from under her bed. One of the good things about her job—she was free to travel pretty much when and where she wanted. She could turn almost any trip into a business expense and could write anywhere she could set her laptop or her legal pad.
She and Lucy and this book were going on a trip. She didn't know where, though.
Just away from here.
* * *
When he reached the highway, Tyler eased the truck to a stop. There was no traffic in either direction, but still he sat there, his hands knotted around the steering wheel. It was the only way he knew to hold himself together. Rigid control. It had gotten him through the last five years. It would get him through this.
Please, God.
He scowled hard at the road. Daniel's house was to the left, but he couldn't bring himself to make the turn. He felt frozen from the inside out. Sick. Despairing.
He had been strong his entire damn life, but he wasn't strong enough for this. He wanted to turn the truck around, go back to Jayne's and tell her everything. He wanted to beg her to give him another chance. He wanted…
Her. And Lucy. Forever.
A honk sounded behind him, and he looked into the rearview mirror to see Sassie Whitlaw's beat-up old Ford. She steered into the other lane, pulled up beside him and leaned over to crank down the window. "You all right, son?"
He'd never been further from all right in his life. But he managed to unclench his jaw long enough to say, "Yeah. I was just thinking…"
The old woman grinned. "Well, think all you want. Once I'm gone, the morning rush hour is over. You take care." With a wave, she turned onto the highway headed for town.
Take care. He'd always tried—with Rebecca and the boys, his mother, his grandparents. He'd tried to be the best man he could be, but he'd failed repeatedly. He'd spent his first years in Sweetwater in constant trouble. He'd done the unforgivable with Angela. He'd disappointed Rebecca and Carrie. And now he'd hurt the one woman he loved most. Rebecca and Carrie would forgive him, and Angela had probably forgotten him, but Jayne…
She was going to hate him forever for his ugly lies.
Better to be hated for that, though, than for his ugly secret, right? She wasn't the forgiving type when it came to little things like a man hitting a woman. One strike, and you're out. If she knew that he'd hit Angela, she would look at him with such disgust. She would be afraid to let him near her or Lucy.
He knew, because he'd looked at his father with disgust, and had been afraid to let him near Carrie or the kids.
This was for the best. He knew that in his head. But he still wanted to go back. To apologize. Explain. Beg. Plead. Promise.
His jaw clenched because he couldn't let himself be weak. He forced one hand loose and flipped on the left-turn signal. He checked traffic in both directions, pivoted his foot from the brake to the accelerator, pulled away from the stop sign and turned right. Away from Daniel's. Away from Jayne.
For a time he let himself believe he was driving aimlessly, but the pretense was hard to keep up when he found himself in Munroe on the block that housed Dr. Gennaro's office. She was just getting out of her car when he parked beside it. She walked around to his side of the truck, looked at him for a moment, then smiled sympathetically. "Come on in."
Her office filled the bottom left half of an old house converted to commercial use. The waiting room had once been a parlor and still looked the part with cabbage-rose wallpaper, old-fashioned and uncomfortable furniture and crocheted doilies on every flat surface.
Dr. Gennaro put her purse and briefcase away, removed her jacket, then went next door to start a pot of coffee. When she returned, she leaned against the edge of the desk and gestured for him to sit down. He did. "You look like hell."
"Thanks," he said drily.
In jeans and a green shirt, with her red hair held back by a band, she didn't much look like a psychologist. She'd been just out of school when he'd met her, and in the years since, she'd gotten older, married, had two babies and put on a few pounds.
All he'd gotten was older and more lost.
She watched him for a few moments before leaving the room again. When she returned with two mugs of coffee, she gave him one, then sat behind the desk. "I know you didn't drive all this way for a cup of my coffee, because it's not that good. You need to talk?"
He did. He just didn't know where or how to start.
"Okay. I'm guessing this has something to do with the woman you were with Saturday. Jayne? Is that her name?"
He nodded.
"I'm about as sure as can be that you didn't lose your temper and hit her, so…" She tapped one red nail on her coffee mug for a moment. "She broke up with you? No. You broke up with her. Why?"
He gripped his own mug in both hands, barely noticing that the ceramic was only a few degrees cooler than scalding. "She wasn't supposed to…" Fall in love with me. It was hard to even think the words. The concept seemed so impossible. He'd spent five years convincing himself that no woman would ever love him, that he could never give her—or himself—that chance. It had taken Jayne only a month to prove him wrong. "To fall in love."
"Why not? You're both single. You have a lot in common. You're close to her daughter, who, Rebecca tells me
, adores you. She likes you and you like her. Falling in love is the next normal step in the relationship, Tyler."
"Yeah, well, I don't get to have 'normal' because I'm not. Remember?"
She barely resisted rolling her eyes, though she did gaze at the ceiling for a deep breath before looking at him again. "So you broke up with her because you think it's safer for her. Better to break her heart than something else?"
He scowled at her. "Isn't it unethical for you and Rebecca to discuss me in your sessions?"
"Come on. How many times have you and I talked about her or the boys in our sessions? You're a family. Your problems all stem from the same source. You're kind of a package deal." After a sip of coffee, she went on. "You know what's stopping you from having a normal relationship, Tyler? You. Just you. Nobody else is blaming you for hitting Angela. Nobody else is waiting for it to happen again. Nobody else is afraid. Just you."
"Nobody else is waiting for it to happen again because nobody knows it happened the first time."
"Would it be so bad if they did? If you said, 'I made a mistake and I've learned from it and I'm going to do my best to see that it doesn't happen again'? People make mistakes, Tyler. Some make huge mistakes, and they deal with them and they get back to their lives."
He concentrated on pressing his fingers tighter against the mug. "My father beat my mother. My grandfather beat my grandmother. For all I know, his father beat his mother. It's who they are. It's a part of who I am."
"No." Her hair swung as she vigorously shook her head. "It's something you witnessed growing up. Violence isn't inherited, Tyler. It's a learned behavior. Your father learned it from his father, who was violent, and his mother, who never fought back. You didn't learn it, though. You never thought it was all right. You hated it when he hit your mother. You wanted it to stop even if it meant your father's death."
"But…" He swallowed hard. "It's been drummed into me since I was fourteen that I'm just like him and that I can't be. I have to be better, I have to be in control, I have to make up for looking like him and sounding like him and acting like him."
"Looking and sounding like him—that's superficial. It's genetics and it doesn't mean a damn thing. As for acting like him … do you get drunk every chance you get? Do you squander every penny you make on booze and women and good times while your family goes hungry? Do you get angry if someone looks at you the wrong way? Do you believe that women were put on this earth to please you, to do your cooking and cleaning and to be your punching bag? Do you believe you have the right to punish Jayne if you don't like what she cooks for dinner or if she folds your socks the wrong way or if her daughter gets cranky when she's tired?"
"Of course not," he said impatiently.
"So besides the superficial, how exactly are you like your father?"
"The worst way. He hit my mother." His jaw clenched along with every muscle in his body, but he didn't let the words go unsaid. He didn't spare himself. "I hit Angela."
"How many times did he hit your mother? The abuse was an ongoing thing for fifteen years, so it must have been a lot. A hundred times? A thousand? Ten thousand? And you hit Angela once. Forgive me if I don't see a huge, significant, unforgivable connection here."
"Angela wasn't like my mother. She left. But if she had stayed, if she'd acted like it was just a mistake, it would have happened again." As he'd reminded Rebecca, that was how it started—one punch, regret, apology, followed by another punch, with less regret and a less sincere apology, until it was a regular thing.
"Let me tell you something, Tyler," Dr. Gennaro said, coming around to sit in the chair a few feet from his. "If you were that kind of man, it would have already happened again. You wouldn't be able to control yourself through sheer will. You wouldn't be willing to live life alone. Can you imagine your father voluntarily removing himself from society? From your mother's life, from your and your siblings' lives?"
For a time he sat motionless, fifteen, sixteen years in the past. In a flash of rare courage, Carrie had once stood up to Del, had told him she was going to take the kids and leave him. You can't live without me, Del had replied. You're too stupid and worthless. Besides, I'd kill you. And then he'd proceeded to damn near do it with his fists. Numbly Tyler shook his head.
"These men can't bear to lose their victims. It has nothing to do with love or the marriage and everything to do with control and the need to dominate. They need that outlet for their rage, and it's easier to terrorize the target they've already got into staying than to find a new one. When a woman does leave, that's when he's most likely to kill her. If she's successful in escaping him, then he has no choice but to find a new victim. But look at you. Did you try to stop Angela from leaving?"
"No." He had already realized the relationship was ending. He hadn't been in love with her anymore. He would have helped her pack and made the move for her if she'd wanted.
"Afterward, you came to see me. What would it have taken to get Del to seek help?" She paused, not expecting him to answer, and smiled thinly. "Probably handcuffs and a gun, because he didn't believe he was doing anything wrong."
Everything in Del's life had always been someone else's fault. He'd never accepted responsibility for a damn thing. Why should he? Everyone else had been willing to take the blame for him.
"Once Angela was gone, did you go looking for someone else to take her place? No. You isolated yourself up on your mountaintop and kept your distance from all women—from everybody—for five years. Five years, Tyler. If she had gone to the police and you'd been arrested and convicted, you never would have gotten so harsh a sentence." She shook her head stubbornly. "You're not like your father. You don't fit the profile of an abuser. You never have."
"But…" Tyler breathed deeply. He'd hit a woman once and had been sickened by it. Violent aggression had been an everyday part of Del's life, and he'd enjoyed it. How many times had he laughed while punching Tyler or kicking Carrie? How many times had they seen that gleam in his eyes—excitement, anticipation—just before he started hitting? Often enough for Josh, who'd been only three when Del died, to recognize it and run to hide.
"You lost your temper," Dr. Gennaro said quietly. "You reacted instinctively but wrongly. You apologized to Angela. You punished yourself for it. It's way past time to let go and move on. Quit—pardon the term—beating yourself up. Forgive yourself and live."
Live. Have a future instead of taking it one grim day at a time. Spite his father and have a normal life with a wife and kids. Be happy and contented like Daniel and Sarah, Zachary and Beth, Jayne's parents and his grandparents. Spend the next fifty years with someone who loved him. Have hope.
Without hope, according to his mother, what was the point of living?
Jayne and Lucy were his hope.
"What if it happens again?" That was his fear, and he was much more accustomed to fearing than hoping.
"I don't believe it will."
He rubbed his chest where a strange sensation fluttered, then eased. Was that how hope felt? "She's never going to speak to me again."
"Did a good job of breaking up with her, did you?" She reached across to squeeze his hand. "Tell her everything, Tyler. It'll help her understand."
"Or give her more reasons to stay away from me."
She smiled. "Never underestimate a woman in love. Give her a chance. Give yourself a chance. Live well and be happy. It really is the best revenge."
Rising, he set his coffee cup on the desk. "Be happy—there's a foreign concept." Except for the past few weeks. Though he'd been dreading the inevitable end, he had been happy. If it wasn't too late to get that back again… "Thanks, Doc."
"You're welcome, Tyler."
Jayne had said that to him once—and he'd truly felt welcome. He wasn't likely to feel it the next time he saw her, but with luck…
The drive back to Sweetwater seemed to take twice as long. Why not? When he'd left, he'd been running away. The bands in his chest tightened when he turned at Sassie's chick
en, and by the time he'd jolted over the next few miles of road, his gut was tied in knots.
All for nothing.
Jayne was gone.
* * *
"Where are we going?"
As she eased the Tahoe forward a few feet in the drive-up lane at the bank, Jayne glanced at Lucy in the rearview mirror. "I told you—on a trip."
"A trip where?"
"I'm not sure yet." Her first impulse had been to head north to Chicago, but the idea of being thirty years old and running home to Mama and Daddy because some mean man had broken her heart had seemed so immature. So she'd decided to head southeast instead. There were plenty of places to explore in Georgia and South Carolina, historical places that might give her a new book idea.
However, considering that every time she thought of her work-in-progress, all her heroine Arabella wanted to do with her hero Jake was stake him out naked on an anthill and watch the vicious little creatures finish him off, she wasn't too hopeful.
"How long are we gonna be gone?"
That question was a repeat, too. Jayne gave the same answer as before. "I don't know. A few days." Maybe forever.
"Nobody asked me if I wanted to go on a trip," Lucy said grumpily, kicking the seat with one sneakered foot. "'Cause if anyone had asked, I would've told 'em no. Charley was gonna call today to see if I could come visit, and Tyler and me was gonna paint the trim in my room."
Reaching between the seats, Jayne grabbed Lucy's foot and gave it a warning squeeze. This was not going to be a fun day. They hadn't even made it out of Sweetwater yet, and already her head was aching and her patience was wearing thin. She tried to mask it with a breezy tone. "Well, honey, that's one of the tough things about being a kid. You have to do what your parents tell you to."
"Yeah, like go on a stupid trip. Why didn't Tyler come?"
"He had to work."
"He could've taken time off. It's called vacation."
"Watch your tone, Lucky girl."
"Don't call me that. That's Tyler's name. I bet he didn't want us to take this trip, either. He'll be all alone without us. Why don't you just let me stay with him?"
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