"It's okay to need me. I need—"
He kissed her again before she could get the words out, stealing her breath and scattering the rest of her thoughts.
"I'm lost," he whispered between desperate kisses.
She didn't want him to be lost. She wanted him to feel safe with her.
She offered with each touch what comfort she could. The frantic clash of lips and teeth slowed into a drugging, slow kiss. She held the back of his head in both her hands, and a slow sweep of her thumbs down the sides of his neck relaxed his tense grip at her waist.
She was the one who broke the kiss this time. She didn't pull away. She touched his jaw with the bridge of her nose and then swept her nose up the line of his jawbone.
"You're as bad as Honey Bear." His voice was raspy. His chest heaved as he fought for breath.
"Maybe I am. You're about to get snuggled on the couch."
As she settled beside him, she tried to form some rational thoughts in the wake of his kisses.
His embrace didn't mean things were fine between them. If anything, it meant there was more to work through.
He’d said he needed her, and the fierceness of his touch made her believe his words.
But he was the same man who’d tried to push her away.
* * *
"Why didn't you call me last night instead of Aiden?" Jilly's words were soft, and he heard that quiet hurt that laced them.
There was a part of him that didn't want to say, but he beat it into submission.
"Pride, maybe. Or... I don't know. I'm not supposed to care so much about a cat." After how quickly she'd pulled away at the park, he'd been scared to open himself up to her.
She made a cute little snort that expressed her amusement. "Anyone with eyes can see that tiny kitten has you wrapped around her tail."
He was close enough that he caught her wince in the brief blip of tension that went through her.
Anyone with eyes.
"Sorry."
He squeezed her hand, accepted her apology.
She let go of his hand, and he felt bereft. But she didn't shift away from him. She rested her arm along the back of the couch and touched the hair behind his head. He leaned into her touch. Would there ever be a time he got enough of it? A time he stopped craving every brush of her fingers?
"I'm not very good at this stuff," he admitted.
"What stuff?"
"Sharing my feelings. Being in a relationship." Relationship. Just saying the word aloud sent a fissure of unease through him. If he named this thing between them, it would make it real.
"There's never been anybody?"
Her curiosity warmed him. It sounded like one of his mom's fishing expeditions.
“I dated some when I lived in Houston. One relationship—Shari—lasted a few months, but things never got serious.” He’d still been working through his grief over losing his sight, but that hadn’t been the reason he couldn’t open up to Shari. After what’d happened with Cord and Callum, he’d vowed not to make himself vulnerable again.
So what was he doing here, tonight?
He found himself saying, "I've been in denial about just how lonely I was."
She leaned forward and brushed a kiss on his cheek. Her fingers flattened on the nape of his neck. And then she sat back, resuming the gentle stroke, playing with his hair. Her affection was a reward in itself.
She was silent for a moment, and he was feeling a little foolish for opening up so much.
"I told myself that it would be enough for me," she admitted quietly. "To have the kids and the farm and maybe a dog someday. I didn't think I could let somebody else in after the way Eddie hurt me." She inhaled a shaky little breath. "And then, before I knew it, I was looking forward to every visit to your house, no matter how short. I would be in the middle of doing chores and catch myself thinking about you, anticipating seeing you again."
Her words were an affirmation, an echo of everything he'd been feeling for weeks. His heart pounded as he realized what it meant.
Her hand went still on the back of his neck. "There's something else we should talk about," she said. "Just so we're on the same page."
She was trusting him with her feelings, telling him that she was open to this thing between them. But she didn't know everything.
"You should probably let me go first." His throat was suddenly dry. He swallowed once, then again, trying to generate some moisture to be able to speak.
Why was this so hard? Oh yeah, because the last time he’d told someone about his past, his entire life had fallen apart.
"Whatever it is, it's not going to change how I feel about you." She said the words with a quiet confidence, but he couldn't help feeling like he was on a precipice staring into darkness.
She could sound confident because she only saw who he was now.
He'd spent decades trying to overcome and atone for the actions of a stupid kid. But if there was one thing he'd learned, it was that the past couldn't be changed. It was still there, still daring him to want what he couldn't have.
There was nothing for it.
She wasn't going to give up now that she knew there was something he hadn't told her.
"I'm the reason my dad died." He pushed the words through a sandpaper throat.
Her fingers flexed again.
"My parents separated when I was five. At the time, I didn't know what was going on between them or what it really meant. I just knew my dad wasn't around anymore and my mom was sad all the time. I wished and whined for my dad to take me on a camping trip, and he finally capitulated." He had to stop and steady himself for a minute, only then realizing he was shaking. He carried on, because he didn't know if he could get through this if she said anything. "On the morning he was supposed to come and pick me up, he never showed. My mom called him a few times and then the cops for a well-check. He was DOA when they arrived. He’d had an undiagnosed heart problem. No one knew. It looked like he was in the middle of packing his car for our camping trip when he died."
She murmured something softly, maybe "I'm sorry," but he was quick to silence her with a squeeze to her leg.
"That's not all of it." If anything, the words were harder to push out. He inhaled a shattered breath. "After that, I was a bratty little kid who didn't know what to do with the hole inside of me. I made things really rough on my mom. I acted out in school. I was probably worse than Casey and PJ put together."
She wrapped her arm around his biceps and squeezed, cuddling closer to him.
"I didn't have any friends. Who would want to be friends with a little jerk? When I was in fifth grade, I was flunking all my classes. The principal called my mom in and told her that if I didn't start working harder, I'd fail and have to repeat the grade. Nobody liked me, but I didn't want to be a laughingstock. So when my mom said she wanted to get me a tutor, I agreed. This lady was a read hard case. She figured out that I was way behind on reading, and she never let me skip an assignment.
“When I started reading this book about a wizard and his adventures with his friends, I realized that what I wanted most, even more than passing the fifth grade, was a friend. So I started changing how I acted. I joined the wrestling team. I was this scrawny little guy, but I’d had a lot of experience with fighting.
“There was one guy on our school team who saw through the tough guy I showed everybody. Chad." Like before, he choked on the name. "I wanted and wished for a friend for so long that, at first, I tried to be everything he wanted. He wanted to ride bikes, we rode bikes. He wanted to play video games, we played video games. But after a while that got old. I was a stupid kid, but I knew deep down that if somebody couldn't like me for myself, it wasn't going to be the kind of friendship I craved.
“My mom worked a lot. One day, Chad and I were messing around at my house right before she was supposed to be home. We started fighting. It was so stupid. Some dumb video game that he wanted to play and I didn't. We started really wrestling. He punched me, and I ended up
with a bloody lip." After all these years, the memories of those last twenty minutes with his friend were broken. There were pieces missing.
"Noah—"
He pressed her leg where his hand still rested. "Better let me finish while I still can."
If she got up and walked away after this, he'd have his answer.
"We both lost our tempers, I think. All of a sudden the wrestling match turned violent. I had him in this headlock that we'd practiced in a scrimmage. But I did something wrong. When I let go of him, he wasn't breathing." He'd crushed Chad's windpipe, but he hadn't known it until later. "My mom came in the door—" He couldn't finish it. He didn't have to.
"He died?" she asked.
All he could do was nod. He'd wanted a best friend so badly, and that desire had led to Chad's death.
Chad definitely hadn't deserved that. Noah had been messed up. He hadn't been able to go back to school. Kids had talked, Chad's parents had been inconsolable, full of rage toward him, which was their right. He’d killed their son. It had taken almost a year, but finally his mom had moved them out of their hometown to Sutter's Hollow.
He'd kept to himself, content to be a loner. Until freshman year, when Cord and Callum had insinuated themselves into his life. They'd been three misfits. Cord with his horrible grandmother, Callum as a foster kid, and Noah. Noah with the secret past.
"Have you ever talked with anybody? A therapist?" Her question was tentative.
He felt amusement, but the feeling was ethereal, gone before he could grab hold. "Mom made me go to trauma therapy for a while."
"Have you ever told anybody else?"
He nodded. Closed his eyes. "I told Cord and Callum. Two days before graduation." For months, he’d felt his secret festering inside him. How could he claim these guys were his best friends when they didn’t know the real him?
He’d made the difficult decision to tell them. Afterward, they’d said knowing about it didn’t change anything. But for the two days leading up to graduation, he’d felt the distance both Cord and Callum had built in their friendship. Like a wall. They were on one side of it and he was on the other.
When the five of them—Noah, Cord, Callum, Iris, Jilly—had gathered at Cord’s place the night of graduation, Noah had brought a six-pack of beer. Not enough to get any of them drunk—so he’d thought—but something to take the edge off. He’d hoped to maybe reclaim the friendship that was slipping away from him.
And when it had started raining, Jilly had driven Iris home. He and Cord and Callum had piled into Cord’s old pickup. Callum had been driving.
And the rain had turned the dirt roads into soupy mud and Callum hadn’t been able to keep the truck on the road. The truck had plowed into a tree and the next thing Noah remembered was waking up in the hospital. Blind.
"And then they both left town," she said as if she was finishing the very thought from his head.
He knew now that there had been extenuating circumstances.
A sheriff’s deputy had come to take his statement in the hospital. The man had tried to talk Noah in circles, demanding to know who’d been driving. Demanding to know where Callum had disappeared to—he’d run off without a word to anybody.
Cord had faced a sham of a trial at the county courthouse. Noah hadn’t been able to attend. He’d still been hospitalized.
Cord had gone up on charges of underage drinking. He’d gotten out of it without jail time, but his awful grandma had driven him out of town soon after the trial ended.
Both of Noah’s best friends had left town. And when they hadn’t called or tried to get in touch with him after months, he’d known.
They'd heard his story and judged him unworthy of their friendship.
* * *
Jilly rested her chin on Noah's shoulder and reached her arms all the way around him. She held him like that until his breathing steadied.
How had she not known about this?
He'd lost two of the people closest to him. It was no wonder he had trouble opening up, letting people in. Yet, he'd trusted her with his painful past.
She wanted to make it better for him, but she knew that sometimes a hurt like this never healed.
There was so much she wanted to tell him. About the pending adoption. About her dreams for the future.
But now wasn't the time.
"I should go," he said after a time. "It's getting late."
She knew he was right, but she didn't want to let go of the closeness of this moment. What if tomorrow he woke up and regretted telling her everything? What if he put back up the walls they had meticulously knocked down tonight?
She had to trust that what they’d forged would last. She followed him through the darkened kitchen. Waited while he pulled on his boots and coat. When he turned back to her, it was the most natural thing in the world to step into his arms. She wound her arms around his waist beneath his open coat.
"Good night." He placed a gentle kiss at her temple, and she tilted her face up for his kiss. He obliged her, his mouth covering hers with what almost felt like desperation. He held her close, and again she tried to offer comfort through her touch.
He broke the kiss and squeezed her more tightly for a brief second before he let her go.
It took until he had wrenched open the back door and was stepping through to the white world beyond for her to find her voice. "Be careful going home. Text me when you get there."
He smiled a tired smile before the door closed behind him.
She was floating on the dreams of a new relationship as she turned off all the downstairs lights and climbed the stairs. Until she saw the boys’ door ajar, and all of the hopeful feelings crashed to the ground in shards at her feet.
19
It was mid-morning before that Noah realized he had a voicemail from Jilly.
The timestamp on it read three a.m.
Her voice on the recording was thin and sounded as if she were close to tears. "Hey. The kids ran away last night. I found them, though. Lindsey and Casey are fine. Cold and upset. But PJ fell in a creek and by the time I found them, he was hypothermic. I'm at the hospital—"
He didn't listen to the end. He called Aiden, putting the wheels in motion for a car service to the hospital. While he waited for the car, he castigated himself for not realizing she'd needed him. Had he been so deeply asleep that he hadn't been able to hear the phone ring when she called?
He replayed the message as the car bounced over rutted dirt roads. Hypothermia was dangerous. Was PJ all right? What about the other kids? Was Lindsey meowing again because she was scared for her brother?
And what about Jilly? She must be frightened and upset and angry that the kids had run away. Was her sister at the hospital with her? A friend?
The message got to the part he’d missed before. "He was hypothermic. I'm at the hospital now. Look... don't come up here, okay? Call me later, and I'll answer if I can."
What?
His head buzzed with white noise. Don't come up here. She didn't want him there? Why?
It was like being hit from behind on a passing play. The wind was knocked out of him, though he hadn't moved from his seat in the back of the car.
He tried to talk himself through it.
It’d been late. She’d been worried about the kids. Maybe she’d known PJ was being released and they were going home. Or maybe PJ had been transferred somewhere else.
Don’t come up here. It didn’t mean anything.
But he'd bared his soul to her last night. Was she rejecting him? Or had she said it because she knew how much he hated the hospital? Didn't she know that his discomfort was nothing compared to how he felt about her?
He needed to make sure she was all right.
"Sir?" The driver's voice shook him out of his musings. "You wanted the ER, but there's a couple of ambulances at the curb. Looks pretty busy. There's a lot of folks in scrubs out here. You want me to take you around to the other entrance?"
"Yes. Thank you."
He and Jilly had walked through the atrium weeks ago, when she'd had her follow-up appointment. Today, the echoing space seemed cavernous.
He knew the emergency wing was off to the left. He navigated the space by sticking close to the curving wall and then walking down a long hallway that gradually declined. No one spoke to him, though he passed several people.
He was in full-on invisible mode.
He didn't have enough headspace to care. He needed to find Jilly and PJ.
The chaos his driver had described in the parking lot had moved inside the building. There was a cacophony of voices and machines and even a gurney being wheeled through the bustling intake area.
How was he supposed to find PJ in this mess? He could call Jilly. But what if she told him to get lost? His gut was already tied in knots just thinking about the possibility.
He was considering making a retreat back to the atrium lobby when he thought he heard her voice. He tried to still his pounding heartbeat.
There it was again, somewhere off to his left.
He followed the sound, using his cane to make sure there were no obstacles in his way. No one challenged him or told him he couldn't be here.
His cane connected with something soft, and he realized he was outside a curtained-off area. Machines beeped from inside. And there was Jilly's voice again.
"I told you. I checked on the kids after they went to bed. When I came back upstairs to go to bed myself, all three of them were gone."
Who was she talking to?
It was a woman's voice that answered, one he'd never heard before. "Why would the children run away? Did something happen?"
Jilly's voice was tight. "No. We had a great day yesterday. Played in the snow and then watched a Christmas movie and played games. The kids were happy."
"Then why would they run away?"
"I don't know!" Jilly burst out.
He was frozen in place, trying to figure out who was questioning her. Should he should go in there, or would he be interrupting? The woman didn't sound like a cop, but she was asking hard questions.
"You know everything," Jilly said. "I called you when Casey put graffiti on our neighbor's house. He's been difficult, but I never thought he would convince Lindsey and PJ to run away."
Cowgirl Next Door (Sutter's Hollow Book 3) Page 15
