Pulling Home (That Second Chance)

by Campisi, Mary

  “Kara’s not your daughter,” she repeated with such disgust he wondered how she ever let him touch her in the first place. He didn’t need to wonder though because whenever they were together in those days, it was spontaneous combustion—hot, deep, and explosive. It had never been that way with any other woman since. Not even Leslie.

  “You sound so certain. I guess you had a DNA test done. Right?”

  “No. I was on the pill with you.”

  She pulled her lips into a straight line and Jack found himself staring at them, wondering if they still tasted like strawberry lip gloss. Out darted the tip of her pink tongue, sending a jolt to his crotch. He shifted in his chair, reminding himself she was the nemesis who had tortured him for nine years, damaged his relationship with his brother, brought pain to his family. “Ah, and then you weren’t with Christian? What did we have, a two week window when you hopped from my bed to his or were you hopping both beds at the same time?” The thought sickened him.

  “When you and I split up, Christian didn’t know we were together. I know I should have told him, but I couldn’t. We got close.” She looked away. “We realized we belonged together.”

  His chest tightened. “How many minutes after we split did you run to him?” Look at me, dammit. Look at me when you tell me I meant nothing to you.

  But she wouldn’t. Her voice drifted to him then skittered toward the potted peace lily. “I waited three days for you to come back to the apartment. I finally broke down and called your house but hung up when your mother answered. So, I went back to Holly Springs and there you were, loading up your Jetta for a ski trip. You wore a red and blue sweater and a blue stocking cap.” She turned toward him then, looked at him and through him. “You do remember telling me it was over, don’t you? How I’d come into your life ten years too early? If I hadn’t found you at your parents’ house you would have made me wait until you got back to dump me. And I would have waited.”

  “I’m sorry.” Christ, he’d been such an asshole. But on the way to Toggenberg, the truth smacked him so hard he almost wrecked the Jetta. He’d forced himself to stay the five days just to make sure his feelings were real, and after an absolutely miserable time, he loaded the car at dawn on the sixth day and drove home. That’s when he got the news. Audra Valentine, the girl he’d been secretly sleeping with who had stolen his heart, had fled to California with his brother and married him.

  “You did what you had to do, Jack. That was one thing I remember about you. When you were done, you were done.”

  Not always.

  “And if you’re wondering how I know Kara’s not your daughter,”—she met him straight on with this one—“I got my period the day you took off on your ski trip.”

  ***

  Christian had been the one who convinced Audra to attend the State of New York University at Buffalo. Aside from the fact that it was a great school, he told her his older brother was a third year med student there and could keep an eye out for her.

  Leaving Holly Springs was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Audra had never ventured farther than Creston, twenty-five miles away when Grandma Lenore needed support hose and then a bus trip to Washington D.C. during senior year in high school. The State of New York University at Buffalo was six and a half hours away and had twenty-eight thousand students!

  She trusted Christian to help her navigate such things. He’d been there when Grandma Lenore died, had helped pick out a headstone and even written the thank you notes to those kind enough to donate food, money, and flowers in remembrance of Lenore Valentine’s passing. Christian filled out financial aid papers and helped choose classes for International Studies, a major she’d chosen so she could travel—far away from Holly Springs, New York. She’d wanted to attend Fordham so she could be near him but couldn’t afford the tuition and didn’t have the near genius test scores he did for scholarships. The plan was she’d attend college in Buffalo and Christian’s brother, Jack, would keep an eye out on her.

  Her first memory of Jack Wheyton was his back, bent over and covered in a long stretch of gray T-shirt that read BONED. The next memory was his hair—dark curls sweeping his neck, springing from the crown in a mass of wild disarray. He was bent over three books, scribbling away with the nub of a pencil. When Christian introduced them, Jack lifted a hand and made a sound that might have been ‘hello’. Audra stood by the door of the dingy apartment after Christian left and studied the back of Jack Wheyton’s head, mesmerized by the swirl of curls and broad back. She willed him to turn so she could see his face, and in so doing, see something of Christian in the stranger who would become her surrogate guardian. Then she could relax. Then she wouldn’t be afraid. There was an arc of electricity threatening the air between them, and Audra didn’t like that feeling. She wanted safe. She wanted the contentment she had with Christian. She always wondered afterward why Christian left her with his brother that day, why he’d been so certain she was in safe hands. Competent hands. Little did he know, they would prove much too competent.

  When Jack Wheyton finally spoke it was to tell her he was ordering pizza as soon as he finished his chapter on the endocrine system and if she wanted to stick around she could have some, too. He told her there was beer in the fridge. Audra hadn’t been paying attention to what he said. She was too lost in his voice, a rich, low timbre that sent tingles through her body. She waited while he flipped page after page, jotting down here and there. Minutes passed, then an hour. The sun began to dip, her stomach grumbled, and she figured he’d forgotten she was there. She slid off the sofa and walked toward him.

  “Jack?” His hand stilled and he turned around. Her first thought was the man staring at her with those icy, silver eyes looked nothing like Christian. This one was hard, angled, unsmiling. And the eyes—they were not warm, friendly eyes. These eyes pierced, captured, stripped. He scared her as much as he excited her. Jack Wheyton smelled like danger.

  “Are you Christian’s girlfriend?” The silver gaze slipped to her neck, her shoulders, her breasts.

  “No.” Desire trickled from her breasts to her belly.

  He caught a lock of her hair, stroked it, worked it between his fingers. “Beautiful,” he murmured.

  “Thank you.” She wanted him to go on touching her hair forever. Then her skin, her lips. Her heart.

  “Audra. Right?” Those eyes slid back to her face, met her gaze.

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak and break this perfect moment.

  “Audra,” he repeated, soft as a caress.

  Then he smiled and she was lost.

  After, she would recall many things—the sound of his medical books thunking to the floor as he lifted her onto his desk, the feel of his tongue stroking the curve of her neck, the weight of his palms on her breasts. The last scraps of sun glinting through the dirty window, the thrum of Sweet Emotion filtering from the floor above. It was all there, all intensified, to that moment when he stripped her clothes and her self-consciousness with a touch, a kiss, a smile, and fitted himself between her legs, making her believe she would die, die, die, if she didn’t have him. Making her believe he would die, too.

  They made their way to Jack’s crumpled bed, though how or when she never could remember. And then he was on top of her, his breath hot against her mouth, his tongue touching hers, his hands cupping her butt. They were both naked, his penis pressing against her belly. The need killed her as she clung to him, arms wrapped wide around his back, whimpering, then squirming, for an end to this torment.

  When he entered her, she cried out. Just once. He pulled back, shock on his face, but she buried her hands in his hair and forced his mouth to hers. She would not have him feel guilty for this. She became the aggressor then, as if to show him shedding her virginity was a willing act, which it was. She rocked her hips, flung her legs across his back, and let years of loneliness and shame erupt, spilling into passion, need and cleansing. Jack exploded first, back arched, eyes closed, filling her emptiness wi
th his seed and desire. Audra pulled him close, the feel of him still pulsing deep inside as she burst into a million tiny pieces, free at last.

  They ordered sausage and mushroom pizza later that night and ate in bed, naked. Audra drank her first beer, a Miller, which sent fizz up her nose but squelched the thirst from the pizza. And the sex.

  Jack didn’t know her last name until the third time they made love. When she told him he merely shrugged and ran a finger along her back, making her crazy all over again. She never did check into her dorm that night other than to retrieve her suitcase and the box of food Christian bought for her.

  When she wasn’t in class, she was with Jack in his tiny apartment on Dover—studying. Or naked. They were consumed with the need to possess one another and drown the loneliness that had owned a greater part of their lives. In this way, they were alike. There was no superfluous language spoken as niceties to pass from an acquaintance to intimate. Audra and Jack bypassed that the first night and never went back. When they did speak, it was about things that mattered to them—his sister’s death, her mother’s promiscuity, his desire to save children like his sister. Her grandmother’s inability to change her own daughter, his guilt that his mother couldn’t get past the death, her guilt she was illegitimate. His pain. And hers. Audra knew she’d found her soul mate, even if they’d both decided no one else would know about them, especially Christian, who might not like his older brother getting involved with his best friend. She spoke to Christian almost every night, telling him how well she was, how happy. At least, this was true.

  There were times when she woke from sleep in Jack’s bed to find him sitting in the corner, book propped between his knees, studying her instead of his text. His gaze penetrated her soul, dug around and scoured her heart, squeezed it until its beats tripled. Did he know her heart beat for him? Ached for him? Did he know she loved him?

  The relationship ended seven weeks later, not with the explosion of the beginning, but with a surprising disappearance act that left Audra wondering what, if anything had existed between them.

  Jack woke in the middle of the night, the day of his last final, and made love to Audra with a fierceness that spoke of commitment and forever. She was certain he would ask her to move in with him permanently, certain he’d want to tell Christian about them and introduce her to his parents. She was certain this was the man she would marry, so certain she dreamed of a white dress, a diamond ring, a house by the river, and never heard the man of her dreams leave the apartment.

  He didn’t return that afternoon or night. Or the next. On the third day, she phoned his home in Holly Springs but hung up when his mother answered. Surely there must be an explanation. There had to be. This was the man of her dreams, the one she would marry. On the fifth day, Audra took her finals, packed up her suitcase, and caught the Greyhound back to Holly Springs. She dragged her suitcase home and then trekked two miles to the Wheyton’s, on the other side of town. She saw him from two blocks away, dressed in jeans and a red and blue sweater. He was loading skis on the top of his old faithful Jetta. The motor was running. “Jack.” She hadn’t spoken to anyone since the morning he left and her throat burned to say his name.

  He looked up. Those silver eyes which had stripped her the first time she saw him, darted across her face and landed on her purse. Jack Wheyton wasn’t a liar, she’d give him that much. He told her she’d come into his life ten years too soon, that she was affecting his studies and his concentration. He told her they were through.

  She didn’t cry. Didn’t stomp or yell or demand. She merely turned and walked away, back to the house she grew up in, the misery, the sadness, the gloom settling over her once again, like a bird come home to roost. When night draped its welcoming darkness around her, she picked up the phone and dialed Christian’s number.

  ***

  There were many kinds of truths. Half truths. Whole truths. Watered down truths. Jack knew them all, used them all in varying degrees depending on his purpose. A good half truth could buy a person time or help save face. When Jack told Audra she’d come into his life ten years too early, that part was true. But he’d left off the other half because it took the entire ski trip to realize he couldn’t give her up, bad timing or not. Once he admitted this to himself, he had to tell her the truth—the whole truth—as crazy and ill-timed as it was. He loved Audra and wanted a future with her.

  Jack drove the Jetta home as fast as the old girl could handle it, anxious to unleash the other half of his truth. The closer he got to Holly Springs, the more certain he became of his decision. He and Audra would marry once he started his residency next year. Couples did it all the time. Christian would be shocked but once he saw how happy Audra was, he’d be okay with it. And his parents would just have to get over the whole Valentine stigma which was all crap because Audra was nothing like her mother.

  It was almost 10:00 p.m. when Jack rolled into town. Snow fell like a heavy curtain, draping stark hope for new beginnings. He headed straight for Audra’s, a blue box of a house with a tattered front awning and a statue of the Virgin Mary in a side bed. The inside looked black and deserted but school didn’t start for three more days. She couldn’t have gone back already. Besides, where would she go?

  He drove to his parents’ and yanked his duffle bag from the back seat. Maybe Audra had refused to accept his rejection and poured the whole truth out to his mother over coffee and a slice of Alice Wheyton’s apple pie. Or maybe she’d confided in Christian who would no doubt have an earful of grief for him.

  The second he opened the door, Jack knew something was wrong. His father sat in his favorite recliner with a glass of whiskey. His mother was next to him, with a glass of her own, and from the looks of her bloodshot eyes and disheveled hair, it wasn’t her first. His father met his gaze head on and told him the unimaginable happened last night—Christian eloped with Audra Valentine to California.

  Chapter 11

  “Good-bye, Audra Valentine. Keep looking for that respect.”—Jack Wheyton

  “I cannot believe that woman is ripping that poor child from you. Right in two.” Joyce yanked a Kleenex from her shirt pocket and blew her nose.

  “Straight from your bosom,” Marion chimed in, her knitting needles clacking agreement. “Not a single, solitary care for your feelings.”

  “She’s an unfit mother, that’s what she is.” Tilly’s thin lips pursed together in a scowl. “Exactly like her mother.”

  “Identical.” This from Joyce.

  “No doubt about it.” Marion thrust her two cents in.

  Alice said nothing. She’d stopped crying last night after she’d exhausted a mountain of pleas to her daughter-in-law. Please, just a few more days. Can’t you find it in your heart? Somewhere? And then, Do you have a heart? I just lost my son. Can you possibly understand that? Can you?

  It hadn’t mattered. Kara was leaving in less than two hours and who knew when or if they’d see her again. The only thing keeping Alice from splintering into a million pieces was the valium Joyce talked her into taking a half hour ago. Now she was just numb. The pain would come later, after Kara left with her pink and green canvas suitcase and the stuffed gorilla Joe bought her. That’s when Alice would make her way to Rachel’s room, ease onto the bed, and place her head on the same pillow Kara used scant hours before. She’d inhale the clean Dove scent of her granddaughter and God willing, fall into a dreamless sleep. When she woke, she’d sweep her fingers over the pillow in search of stray blond hairs which reminded her of summer and sun. And Christian. She did this every visit and she would be even more diligent today.

  Nothing was for certain in this life, and definitely not where Audra Valentine was concerned. Alice sighed, rubbed her eyes and tried to focus, but the valium muted the voices and faces around her. But no amount of mind altering medication could mute her son’s entrance seconds later.

  Jack banged open the screen door like a burst of wind signaling a storm. “Where is she?”

  “Sh
e went with your father to Dairy Queen,” Alice said, wondering why her voice sounded so far away. “Kara loves the peanut butter cup blizzards and you know your father looks for any reason to sneak something he shouldn’t.” She squinted at her son. Even with the haziness of the valium, she could make out the veins bulging in his neck. “Jack?” She tried to stand but slipped back into her chair with a thud.

  “I’m looking for her mother.”

  Oh. Alice lifted a hand and pointed to the other room. “Packing.”

  He tore through the living room and bound up the stairs, two at a time. She could tell he was skipping stairs as he went. Jack always had that habit of rushing into a disaster he thought he could fix, even when there was no solution. Like now.

  Her only grandbaby was leaving. Alice slumped forward and buried her head in her hands. She needed a few minutes to rest and then she’d make a fresh pot of coffee and slice the banana bread. She’d made four loaves last night and two pumpkin chocolate chip ones. Those were Kara’s favorites. She could take them on the plane with her and think of her grandmother as she nibbled on them...

  “Poor thing. Maybe I should have started her with half a valium.” Joyce’s words sifted through Alice’s stupor.

  Marion click clacked her needles. “Maybe you shouldn’t play doctor. People have allergic reactions and die every day. Do you think we should tell Jack?”

  “Let her rest. It’s probably the only sleep she’s gotten since this nightmare started.” For once, they all agreed with Tilly.

  ***

  Jack reached the second floor and threw open the bedroom door. Audra stood among his childhood memories, her scent clinging to the bed, the walls, the carpet. Dammit, she did not belong in here.

  “Jack.”

  Her lips parted just like they used to seconds before he buried his tongue in her mouth. “What the hell is going on?”