Cross My Heart: A Contemporary Romance Novel

by Abigail Strom

  She sat up, scooting back so she could lean against the headboard. “I had a fight with Ellie.”

  So much for his theory. “What happened?”

  She swiped the back of her hand across her damp face, and he looked around for a tissue. There was a box on her night stand and he handed it to her.

  She blew her nose and took a deep breath. “You know how her parents were supposed to be on vacation? It turns out they were seeing a counselor. To try and save their marriage or something. Only, it didn’t work, and they decided to get a divorce.”

  His heart went out to the family. “Poor Ellie.”

  “I know. It’s a huge suck. She just found out today, and when I went over there she was crying like crazy. I stuck around because she asked me to, and we talked about stuff for a long time. Mostly she talked and I listened, because it seemed like that’s what she needed, you know? But then I wanted show her I understood, so I told her about you and mom getting divorced, and then, you know, how mom died, and—”

  She gulped. “She started yelling at me, saying that it wasn’t the same thing at all, and how her parents could still decide to get back together. And I...” Her eyes filled with tears again. “I told her that probably wouldn’t happen. Because it probably won’t, you know? I was just trying to be realistic. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up and then...”

  She trailed off.

  “You know she was just upset. She wasn’t really mad at you. She just—”

  Claire sighed. “I know all that, Dad. I just...God, I miss home.”

  It took him a moment to realize that by home, she meant Florida. And just like that, the bottom fell out of his heart.

  “You’re...looking forward to going back?”

  She blew her nose again. “I miss my friends. My real friends. I thought Ellie was a friend, but...” She shook her head. “And I miss Nana. I miss her so much. And...and...I miss Mom.”

  There was no fixing that. “Oh, sweetheart.”

  And then she was glaring at him again. “Just save it. Okay? I know you hate it when I cry, and I swear to God if you draw a diagram of a tear duct or something I’m going to kill you.”

  “I wasn’t going to—”

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone? That’s all I want. I told you to go away and you didn’t listen. Nana would listen. Mom would have listened.” Her lower lip trembled, and then suddenly she was shouting at him. “I hate you. I hate you! God, I wish you were dead instead of Mom. Why did it have to be her? Why couldn’t it have been you?”

  He tried not to let her words draw blood, but they did.

  He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He never had and he never would.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  He went back downstairs. He paused in the foyer, looking at the front door. He hesitated just a moment before he left the house and headed for Jenna’s.

  His jaw was set as he strode across his lawn and hers. She’d gotten him into this and she could damn well give him some advice now that it was all falling apart. If it wasn’t for Jenna, he never would have thought about asking Claire to move here. And now that she’d gone back to hating his guts for no reason that he could see, he needed to talk to a member of her species to get a little perspective.

  He raised his hand to knock on her back door when it opened. Jenna was there, staring at him in surprise—and she wasn’t alone.

  Derek. This had to be Derek. He had shaggy blond hair and blue eyes, and he was wearing jeans and a tee shirt. He had a tattoo that started at his left wrist, disappeared briefly under his sleeve, and continued up the side of his neck. His smile was easy and relaxed, which was more than Michael could say for himself.

  “Michael! I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

  He kept his eyes on Derek. “Yeah. I guess not.”

  “I mean...I thought you were going out with Claire. Is everything all right?”

  He glanced at her, and saw the look of concern on her face. “Sure. Everything’s fine. I just stopped by to...” His mind was a blank. “To...borrow a CD.”

  Borrow a CD? Jesus, he sounded like a high school kid. “But I can see you’re on your way out, so...” He looked at Derek again.

  Jenna bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. Derek, this is my neighbor, Michael. Michael, this is my friend, Derek.”

  He resisted the urge to squeeze the other man’s hand until all twenty-seven bones cracked like twigs, and instead shook it briefly. “I hear you’re helping out Jenna’s band.”

  Derek nodded. Michael was disappointed not to spot any overt evidence of evil, like shifty eyes or bloodstained fangs or horns sprouting out of his forehead. He seemed like a regular guy, in fact.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. Then he slid an arm around Jenna’s waist. “Ready to go, babe?”

  And there it was. Overt evidence of evil.

  He forced himself to take a step back so they could leave the house.

  “Are you sure everything’s all right?” Jenna asked him after she’d locked the door behind her.

  No, everything wasn’t all right. His daughter hated him, and the woman he wanted didn’t want him—and was heading out on the town with the ex-boyfriend who’d broken her heart.

  “Everything’s great. Have a good night, Jenna.”

  She didn’t look convinced, but he turned and headed back to his house before she could say anything else.

  Something familiar descended on him. A feeling of coldness, of distance. He found the sensation oddly comforting.

  This was a state of mind he knew inside and out. A state of mind that didn’t confound him at every turn with the uncertainty and chaos of emotion, of feelings and impulses that led him down dead end paths.

  This was the place he belonged.

  Chapter Ten

  Michael slept badly and woke up with a raging headache. He sat in the kitchen and tried to read the paper while Claire was over at Jenna’s saying goodbye.

  When she came back he drained the last of his coffee and rose to his feet. “Time to go.”

  Claire nodded without looking at him and went upstairs to get her suitcase.

  A few minutes later the suitcase was in the trunk and Claire was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. She was slouched down, arms folded, her head turned away as she looked out the window.

  He felt a moment of déjà vu. This was exactly how their visit had begun—the two of them in the car, not looking at each other, the chasm between them as wide as an ocean.

  Frustration knotted his muscles as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine started up but he didn’t put his foot on the gas.

  Nothing had changed between him and Claire. The last two weeks might never have happened. They were right back where they’d started—where they’d always be.

  Claire glanced at him impatiently but didn’t ask why they weren’t moving. She reached out to turn on the radio, flipping through channels until she found a song she liked.

  He realized with a shock that he recognized it.

  It was one of the songs Jenna had played yesterday while they were painting. She’d informed him that he’d graduated to music recorded after 1990, and she’d played a wide variety all day, telling him to let her know when something clicked with him, so she could make a mix.

  This was one of those songs. It was bittersweet, with a kind of raw tenderness at its core that something in him had responded to.

  “Coldplay,” he said after a minute, remembering the name of the band.

  Claire glanced over at him briefly. “Yeah.”

  “This is a good song.”

  “Yeah.”

  He turned off the engine, and they sat in silence while it played.

  A memory rose to the surface of his mind—a memory he tried never to revisit.

  He was younger than Claire—ten or eleven, maybe. His dad had been home for a month but he’d left a few nights before to follow the poker circu
it. It was summertime, which meant he’d been able to stay home with his mom after his dad was gone.

  He’d been watching her like a hawk. Things were always better when his dad was home—she didn’t drink so much, and there was food in the house, and she even did some cooking. They watched baseball together sometimes, all three of them, and to Michael that was as close to heaven as he ever hoped to get.

  It usually fell apart when his dad left, but this time he was determined to make things different. To take care of his mother, to take care of everything. He stayed with her every minute, hardly sleeping at night, and she actually seemed to be settling into a routine without alcohol.

  Then, one night, he woke up to hear her moving around in the living room.

  He was out of bed like a shot, and he caught her just as she was slipping out the front door of the apartment.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  She was wearing the half sly, half furtive expression he knew and hated. “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “Go back to sleep, pumpkin.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She tried for a light-hearted laugh. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  His parents both used that phrase a lot—I promise. He knew it didn’t mean anything.

  “If you need something at the store, I’ll get it for you.”

  She hesitated, and he knew she was searching for a lie to tell. They’d both pretended for so long that she didn’t have a drinking problem that it was automatic now, a habit they’d never be able to break.

  “I’m actually meeting a friend, pumpkin. I’ll be back before you know it, okay?”

  And then the feeling he hated most in the world was clawing through him—the scared little boy feeling that was his first conscious memory.

  “Please don’t go.” He tried never to say that to his mother, because it never worked. It didn’t work now.

  “Just go back to bed, angel. If you’re asleep you won’t even know I’m gone.”

  She opened the door, and he grabbed her wrist. “Please, Mom. Please stay.”

  He’d never done that before. Never begged her to stay after it was obvious she was going to leave no matter what he did.

  His mother tried to pull away from him, but he hung on. He was crying now, tears and snot running down his face, and he didn’t even care. “Please, Mom. Please.”

  She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “Stop it, Michael,” she said sharply. “You’re acting like a baby. Go back to sleep and I’ll be back before you wake up.”

  It was two days before she came home again.

  He’d gambled, and lost. He would never gamble again.

  He never cried again, either. From that point on he’d honed a quality of detachment as his best defense against his parents, until eventually it became a part of him. Instead of armor he could put on and take off at will, he’d crafted himself an exoskeleton that would be in place forever.

  It was still in place. And behind it, a part of him had never grown up. On the outside he was an accomplished surgeon, and on the inside he was no better than the little boy he’d once been, planning to be a doctor so that people would need him and not the other way around.

  But in spite of all his efforts, he did need someone. He needed Claire. Needed her just as much, if not more, than she needed him.

  If he asked her to stay and she said no, it would hurt worse than anything he’d ever experienced. It would mean that he’d failed.

  And it didn’t matter. For the first time in his life, the fear of failure meant nothing. Not when he compared it to what he might gain.

  The song ended, and he turned off the radio.

  “Claire.” He looked over at her, but she was staring out the passenger window again.

  “What.”

  There was an ache in his throat he wasn’t sure he could talk past. He took a deep breath, and then another, hoping she’d turn around. When she didn’t he spoke to her back.

  “I want you to live here. With me.”

  No response. Claire kept staring out the window and didn’t say a thing.

  He was pretty sure that when she did speak it would be to say no, thanks—or more likely, hell, no. But the important thing was that he’d told her. He’d told his daughter he wanted her with him, that she was more important to him than anything in the world.

  Because they weren’t back where they started. The gap between them didn’t seem so deep and wide any more. The last two weeks had changed things—had changed him. And he wanted Claire to know it.

  After a long minute, she turned to look at him.

  Tears were streaming down her face. “Do you really mean it?”

  His heart spasmed in his chest, and he reached over to hug his daughter, harder than he’d ever hugged her before. “More than I’ve ever meant anything.”

  “What are we going to tell Nana?”

  He pulled back and stared at her. “You mean—you really want to move here? To Iowa?”

  She nodded, tears still running down her cheeks. “But I don’t want to hurt Nana.”

  He tried to focus, but his mind was a jumble of thoughts and emotions. “Claire, you should know...before you decide for sure...I don’t know how this is going to go. I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at this. At being your dad.”

  She threw her arms around him. “I’m scared, too,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “I’m scared you’ll be disappointed in me all the time, because I’m not like you.”

  “Thank God you’re not like me,” he said, his voice shaking. “Thank God you’re exactly the way you are. I’ve got so much to learn from you.”

  Claire pulled back and knuckled the tears from her eyes. “What about Nana? She’s been so good to me. I don’t want her to think I don’t love her anymore.”

  “She won’t think that.” He thought about it for a minute. “Okay. How about this. Why don’t you fly back to Florida today like we planned, since everyone’s expecting you. You can spend a couple of weeks there. That’ll give you a chance to see everybody, to say goodbye. And to pack, of course.” He took a breath. “I’ll talk to your Nana today, before your plane even lands. Okay? I’ll make everything all right. I promise.”

  “Okay, Dad.” She gave him a watery smile. “I thought about asking to stay, like, a hundred times. But I couldn’t stand the idea that you might say no.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “I’m so sorry for the things I said last night. I didn’t mean any of it. I was just so miserable—”

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. It’s all forgotten. The only thing that matters is that in two weeks, you’ll be back for good.” He hugged her again, tears stinging his eyes. “I love you so much, Claire.”

  “I love you, too, Dad.”

  ***

  Jenna watched the sleek BMW pull out of the driveway and felt a hand squeezing her heart. She’d been so sure Michael would ask Claire to stay—that he wouldn’t let her go back to Florida.

  Or maybe he had asked her, and Claire had said no.

  She sighed and went back into the dining room, where she was painting the window trim. Was that why Michael had come by last night? Had he needed someone to talk to?

  It had been good to spend some time with Derek, to see that she really had forgiven him...and that he really was trying to change his life for the better. Both were good things to know, but not at the cost of letting Michael down, if he’d needed her last night.

  He’d be back from the airport in a couple of hours. If he didn’t stop by, she’d go over to his house. One way or another she had to make sure he was okay.

  She got lost in the rhythm of painting, a task she actually loved. She found the back and forth motion of the brush on the wooden trim soothing and hypnotic, especially with Miles Davis in the background.

  She found herself riffing off the music in her head, putting the bones of a song together
for the first time in years. She hadn’t written anything since the Mollies broke up.

  Not bad, she thought after a while, smiling to herself as she finished the last window and started painting the chair rail that ran the length of the room. Now for lyrics...

  She let herself free associate, plucking phrases out of the air, keeping some and discarding others. The song took shape gradually until she thought it might be worth writing down. Maybe she should grab her guitar and—

  She heard the back door open. She turned and saw Michael coming towards her, crossing the room with long, determined strides.

  When she saw his expression her heart began to pound. The paintbrush slid out of her hand and landed on the floor.

  He was there in seconds, gripping her shoulders and pulling her flush against him.

  “Did anything happen with Derek last night?”

  She should have been outraged at the question, at the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes. But she wasn’t outraged. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, and she felt her nipples harden. “No. Of course not. I don’t feel that way about him.”

  He eased back the slightest bit. “I hated seeing you with him. When he touched you I wanted to rip his throat out.” He closed his eyes briefly, and a muscle twitched at the corner of his jaw. “I’ve never felt like that in my life.”

  She felt herself starting to quiver. “Nothing happened with Derek. Nothing ever will.”

  He looked down at her for a long moment, his eyes burning into hers.

  Then he kissed her.

  His mouth was hot and hungry and she opened to him eagerly, the slide of his tongue so erotic she felt a jolt between her legs.

  She needed him closer. She locked her arms around his neck and rose up on her toes, trying to press every inch of her body against every inch of his.

  Suddenly he broke the kiss. “Wrap your legs around me,” he said as he lifted her off her feet.

  She complied, and the feel of his hard length against her made her helpless with want. Her head fell back as he grazed his teeth along her neck.

  He was carrying her somewhere, but she couldn’t focus on anything but his mouth and tongue, trailing wet heat across her skin. Then he was laying her down on something soft, the couch maybe, and her hands fisted in his hair as they kissed again.