Loving the Chase (Heart of the Storm #1)

by Sharla Lovelace

  The odd, heavy sound invaded her thoughts at the same time the glass blew in from the back doors.

  Maddi screamed as she went to her knees on reflex. Her scream stuck in her throat, however, as she saw what had done it. A wall of angry swirling blackness broke through what had once been white rain, pulling up trees across the street like they were weeds and hurtling them in all directions.

  Wind and stinging rain blew into her face, bringing dirt and mud and pieces of things she couldn’t even identify. She watched in horror as a small tree headed straight for her, and she ducked as it impaled the wall.

  “Shit!” she screamed, speed-crawling across the living room floor, broken glass cutting into her hands and knees. “Bathtub—bathtub! Get in the fucking—”

  The hallway to the bathroom opened up in front of her, however, Sheetrock and splintered wood and pieces of roof exploding in her face. Her ears hurt with what sounded like a jet engine roaring overhead, and the ceiling crumbled away like it was made of popcorn.

  “No!” Maddi cried, falling backward. Panicked, she blinked through the debris-filled rain filling the apartment, and the Sheetrock and dust flinging and falling all around her. Sticks and pieces of debris tore at her face and her arms, and the framed picture flew at her, the corner of the frame catching her lip. Everything in the room was being tossed around like toys—actually, there wasn’t even a room anymore. Just a big moving breathing wall of hell. “God help me!” she screamed.

  There was nowhere to go. The air was sucked from her lungs as fast as she could pull it in, and she gagged on the dirt that filled her mouth. The sound was ungodly. She smelled and tasted the metal of her own blood in her mouth, saw the couch lift and come for her, and she went into a fetal position, covering her head.

  “Zach!” she sobbed, her voice lost in the roar. She heard her beloved bookshelves splinter as they twisted into each other over her head, now facing each other. All their contents rained down on her back, and then the floor went out from under her.

  “I’m guessing this wasn’t in your plan,” said a voice behind her as footsteps creaked heavy on the old wood.

  Maddi sucked in a breath, being pulled from the memory with such force, her heart hurt from the slamming. She pulled her things to her protectively as she swallowed hard and blinked back the tears that had filled her eyes.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up—” Zach leaned forward. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good,” Maddi said, her voice sounding like a lifetime smoker. “Just—I was—somewhere else for a minute.”

  The wood creaked again, and she cursed in her head as his feet landed next to hers and he sat down beside her, resting his elbows on his knees. The familiarity of it started a warmth in her belly.

  “You’re shaking,” he said, taking one hand in his and holding it on her knee.

  She laughed and swiped at her eyes as she pulled her hand free. “Yeah, well, that’s not going to help me with that.” She caught his look and was a bit surprised at her own admission of his effect on her, but she wasn’t in the best thinking place. She held both hands up in front of her. “I’m fine. Just went somewhere I shouldn’t.”

  He could do what he wanted with that. She didn’t care. This place was going to be the death of her on the very first damn day. She needed to get out of there. But oh, yeah—that wasn’t an option.

  “That truck over there run?” she asked, risking a straight-on look in his way-too-close direction.

  Zach’s eyes narrowed. “My dad’s old truck? No, why?”

  Maddi faced back down the driveway. “No reason. God, I don’t even have my car, I’m just stranded here where I can’t—”

  “Escape?”

  She licked her lips and let that one pass. She probably deserved it. “Where’s your car?”

  Zach shook his head. “Walked here. I just live up the road.”

  Maddi frowned in concentration. “There are houses up the road now?”

  “I built one,” he said. “It’s on the property, by the old workshop.”

  She turned to meet his gaze. “Seriously? You built a house? I’m impressed.”

  Zach shrugged and looked away, but she saw the look of pride pass over his face. “I guess it’s the one thing I can do right.”

  A moment of silence passed between them, and Maddi found herself wanting to stretch it out. No, quit thinking that way. He nudged her knee with his, and she bit her lip. Jesus, it’s just a knee, stupid. You’ve seen it all before.

  That didn’t help.

  “Sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  “Peachy. You?”

  Zach paused and then laughed, and Maddi unfortunately got to notice things like the little laugh lines next to his eyes and how the curve of his mouth was the same. He leaned forward, looking past her to her suitcase. Or what pitifully passed as one.

  “You have that thing held together with duct tape?” he asked.

  She looked at it, the blue faded, the corners duct-taped where the seams came apart, and over one major rip along the back. It had two different kinds of wheels on the bottom, as one had broken off and she’d replaced it the best she knew how. She could have bought sixty new suitcases if she’d wanted to over the years, but she just couldn’t bring herself to. This one was a survivor. Just like her.

  “Yep.”

  He met her eyes again, and for whatever reason, she saw him let it go. Maddi didn’t think he’d remember it was the same suitcase—she wasn’t that naive. He was a guy, after all.

  “You know, they’re probably taking bets in there on how well we pull this off,” Zach said.

  An unexpected chuckle bubbled up from her chest, breaking up some of the nervous energy. Maddi smiled. It felt good to laugh—she hadn’t done much of that in the last few days, and it relieved some of the crazy dancing through her body.

  She took a long slow breath of the fresh air. “Lord, this is all kinds of freaky, Zach,” she said, chuckling again.

  “Yeah?” he said, a hint of laughter in his voice as well. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Maddi turned to give him a look, and the playful look in his eyes made her stomach twist a little. She smirked. “Yeah.”

  “Especially being back here,” he said.

  “Twilight Zone.”

  Zach laughed out loud, a full hearty laugh that made her turn again and smile in spite of herself. They were the same two people. There was no reason for there to be this wall of animosity between them, especially having a job to do. The crazy altercation after the storm the other day—was just that. Adrenaline after a storm. And forgetting how to breathe earlier when she touched him? That was just one of those things that needed to be dulled down.

  “We can do this,” she said. “We’re grown-ups. Or at least I am.”

  Zach’s eyes lit up with a little spark. “Well, I guess as long as one of us is, right?” He reached a hand across. “To making this normal.”

  Maddi raised her eyebrows. “You think this can be normal?”

  He shrugged with a tilt of his head. “A new normal.”

  She put her hand in his and pushed aside the sparks that ran through her belly, the tingling in her fingers, and the fact that her mouth went as dry as sand. She watched his eyes go foggy as they dropped to look at where their hands were joined, and then he squeezed her hand and held on to it as he rose to his feet.

  “Come on,” he said, clearing his throat. “Let’s go get your stuff inside so you don’t look like the orphan train dropped you off.”

  Maddi let him pull her up, and then pulled her hand away gently, instantly missing the warmth when she did. No. Stop. New normal. New normal. Standing alone with him on his mother’s porch, however, didn’t feel much like a new anything.

  She reached for the handle of her suitcase just as he did, which not only put their hands together ag
ain, but their faces nearly nose to nose. Just as they had been when they’d been hot and yelling at each other in the parking lot of the supermarket. Except there was no anger now. With those damn eyes of his, it was something of a far different danger.

  “Yeah, new normal,” she muttered, taking the handle and standing upright before the urge to lick him won out over common sense. That’s how he got into the pants of women like Blakely.

  She let that thought steel up her wobbly bones. Let it cool her veins and smooth her nerves. She was no Blakely.

  Something in his eyes, though, was unsettling. Through the grin over her comment, and the attempt to look together as he rose slowly, there was something deeper. Something old and familiar and haunted.

  “You could at least let me look like a gentleman, bringing your stuff in,” he said, his eyes clearing of whatever had been there. “Give me some grace with my mother.”

  She mustered up all the courage she had and leaned in to him in what she hoped was mock seductive and not just like she lost her balance.

  “Or—I could not look like all the weak females that fall at your feet,” she began. “And show that I don’t need you. Give me some grace with your mother.”

  Maddi smiled and turned to walk down the porch toward the front door, feeling her scalp break out in a sweat.

  Chapter Ten

  Zach watched Maddi walk away, dragging her battered little blue suitcase behind her. Laughing in spite of himself at her cocky words. It was better. They’d broken the ice a little, made it less awkward, but she still had a twenty-foot wall up around her.

  To hell with that, what about him? It was everything he could do to let her go once he had her hand in his. Fifty different scenarios passed through his brain in the two seconds he was pulling her to her feet. None of them involved watching her walk away. Again.

  The memory of that day never left him, but until today it had faded. Watching her walk away with that tattered case brought it all crashing in. Zach could remember the very moment he knew she was done. He saw it in her eyes. When all was said and done after he’d pulled her from the wreckage and she was checked out and released and standing in front of him, she wasn’t the same woman. She wasn’t the woman that was about to walk down an aisle and marry him. She was empty and shell-shocked and angry. And so sad. He’d never seen her look so sad.

  The voices, the chatter, the hugs and consoling and are you okay’s had become white noise. Like a constant buzz around the flashing neon sign that said Maddi was leaving. Fuck, she was leaving.

  Several hours earlier, she was holding a little white dress up to herself in the mirror, waiting to marry him. Asking him not to go—Zach buried his face in his hands and scrubbed at his skin. He felt like he’d never get the stench of that god-awful fear off of him. Now—now she was wearing the dress, tattered and torn and dirty, smeared with bloodstains. Talking to people with empty eyes.

  When he’d seen the building—their building—in a heap of concrete and metal and glass, he thought he would die right there. He didn’t even remember how he ended up on top of the rubble, he just found himself there, screaming her name. Other people, bleeding, broken, covered in concrete dust and dirt and blood, were yelling for people, too. Crawling out of the horrible mess, screaming for help, everyone was screaming for help. Sounds were everywhere, voices were everywhere, sirens wailed in the distance. But the one voice he needed to hear wasn’t yelling back.

  And then, there it was. Under a small tree that was sticking out of the mangled metal track of what was probably once a sliding glass door, was a bookshelf. His bookshelf.

  Scrambling to it, throwing chunks of debris aside, he uncovered the second one propped under the first one at an angle. And under that, curled up in a fetal position with her body wrapped around a blue suitcase, was his Maddi.

  She looked dead. She looked fucking dead. In her white dress, with her forehead and mouth bleeding and her arms scraped up and a nasty cut on her right calf, covered in dirt and mud and her hair matted to her face. Zach felt the world go out from under him. He stopped breathing. He had no memory of how he got to her, only that people were there at the hole calling out to him when he got to her and she opened those beautiful eyes.

  She opened her eyes. Nothing—ever—was that good. Not before, and would never be again. Somehow he knew that, even then.

  “Zach,” he heard her say now, making him lift his head.

  He’d heard her say his name millions of times before, in anger even, and yet nothing sounded as final as that one. They had gone around and around for hours before people started arriving at the house. People that were supposed to be wedding guests at a reception in Dallas a few hours earlier, before all that changed. She had turned off the arguing to greet people and thank them for their wishes, but her eyes were as lifeless as her body looked earlier. Like a light had turned off. Her light. Her fucking light that used to warm him from a mile away. That used to love him.

  “Please,” he said, his voice choked.

  Tears fell from her eyes again. She reached for his hands. “I can’t fight anymore, Zach,” she said. “I’m tired.”

  “I know, baby, let me take you upstairs so you can lie down,” Zach said. “People are leaving, they’ll understand. Don’t make a crazy decision right now.” He was scrambling and reaching, but he’d do anything.

  “I’ve made it,” she whispered. “Please don’t make it harder.”

  “No,” Zach breathed, pulling her to the side, away from prying eyes. His throat burned with tears that wanted to strangle him. “Maddi, don’t do this. Don’t walk away from us. We were getting married today—”

  “Yes, we were,” she sobbed. “And you went to chase the storm down instead. I guess it chased me down to spite you.”

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The tears won, burning his eyes, closing his throat.

  “I couldn’t get back—God, I’m sorry.” Zach reached out, needing to feel her. Needing—something. “I love you.”

  Maddi took his face in her hands, pain pouring from her eyes. “I know.”

  “Maddi,” he pleaded, his voice gone, his chest caving in.

  “I love you,” she said, sobs chopping her words. “But I’ll always be your second choice, Zach.” Her voice caught, and she shut her eyes tight. “I can’t—I can’t be that anymore.”

  Zach’s heart hurt as he shook the memory free, pulling in deep breaths to cool it down. Fuck, it had been a long time since he’d gone so heavily down that path. Turning around to slam his palm against a post, he welcomed the pain radiating up his arm.

  He shut his eyes and pulled the old walls up from the old days. The days after Maddi left, when the only way to survive from hour to hour and the sympathetic looks from friends and family was to put up a shield and drink himself numb. The numbness wasn’t necessary now, but he certainly didn’t need to go racing down memory lane from hell every time he laid eyes on her, either. She was going to be around. In his mother’s house. Walking distance up the road from his house.

  “Pull it together, man,” he said, walking up the porch and pushing the door open.

  Sounds of laughter and warm voices came from the kitchen, and as Zach moved farther into the family room, he could see Quinn and Maddi laughing at something over the kitchen island, Maddi twisting her hair up in a band she kept on her wrist, and his mom reaching past them to snag a lemon bar. The younger women laughed again, and Zach looked away.

  They looked like family in there. Like his Mom and her daughters-in-law. Except that they weren’t, and at least one of them should have been.

  You people seem to have something against spouses and children.

  Zach blew out a breath and walked into the kitchen doorway.

  “Hey, I’m headed home,” he said, looking at his mother. He darted a glance in the general direction of both Maddi and Quinn. “You need a ride home, Quinn? I can
come back with the bike.”

  “Ohh, tempting,” Quinn said with a wink. “But no, Eric is on his way to pick me up.”

  Poor Simon. He had to sacrifice bringing Quinn home to take care of Gran. If he knew she was calling her fiancé, he’d have probably dumped Gran in a ditch and come back.

  “Bye, sweetheart,” his mom said. “You want a plate to take home? There’s plenty.”

  “Nah, I’m good,” he said, lifting a hand as he headed toward the door.

  “Zach?”

  Damn it. Almost made it. “Yeah?” he said, turning around.

  Maddi stood there in the foyer, arms crossed over her chest, filling space in his mother’s house like she’d always been there. Like she’d never left.

  “Um—” She opened her mouth and closed it again, blinked a couple of times, then shook her head. “Never mind.”

  Zach nodded, and let a small smile come on. His eyes traveled the room around her. “It’s good to see you back here, Maddi,” he said softly, watching how the words made her eyes go misty. Don’t do it. Don’t say it. “New normal.”

  So much for the damn walls.

  A knock at his door brought Zach out of his own crap-loaded thoughts, and he shoved the plate of leftover spaghetti away. When his last split-second thought was the hope that it was Maddi, he knew he was screwed.

  “Hey, boy.”

  The crass and crusty old man before him was no Maddi Hayes. His skin was leathery with deep wrinkles, his eyes almost nonexistent when he smiled. Not that Harlan Boudreau smiled much. Even his wheezy two-pack-a-day smoker’s laugh was usually accompanied by a kind of grimace.

  “Harlan,” Zach said, stepping aside for the old man to come in. The telltale aroma of his six-pack-a-day Budweiser habit followed him in.

  Harlan sniffed the air as he entered. “You cookin’?”

  “Nah, leftovers,” Zach said. “Spaghetti. I have more if you’re hungry.”