Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  Silence on the other end, then he said, “I need to talk to you.”

  “You are talking to me. You’re doing it right now.”

  “No, I mean talk. I need to see your face when you say that. Cops are like dogs. We get ten percent of our information from what somebody says, and ninety percent from how they look when they say it.”

  Men didn’t talk over relationship problems. Not willingly. They walked away. She knew that. But now, he wanted to talk, and she didn’t, because there was nothing to talk about. “We can’t do anything anymore,” she said. “I mean it. It’s been too risky already. You know it as well as I do.”

  “Did I ask you to? No, I didn’t. I said I wanted to talk to you. I’m saying I want to look you in the eye when you tell me that I was some kind of transition person for you, or a bad part of your past that you needed to put behind you, and that now we’ve done that and can both move on, because it’s too hard anyway to figure out how it’d work out for us.”

  “But . . .” She began to pace faster. She was too antsy to stand still.

  He didn’t wait for whatever she would have said. “I want to see the expression on your face,” he said, “when you tell me you’re going to find somebody that you can go out to dinner with on Saturday night like a normal woman with a normal life, and then take home afterwards so you can try him out. That being with me and giving me your heart and facing up to what that means feels too hard and too scary, so you’re going to find somebody who’s happy to be your Mr. Right Now, who can’t believe his luck that you don’t want anything more. And I want to see your face when I tell you, the hell with that. If I’m not just another guy, the same way you aren’t just another woman—then get some guts and go for it. Cowboy up and take what you have to take to get where we need to get, the same way I will be.”

  He was stealing her breath, and he was taking her heart with it. He was making her flinch, too. What he was saying was impossible. She didn’t want to remind him, but she had to. “I’m leaving after February, remember? I can’t live in this town again. There’s too much hurt here for me. On February twenty-eighth, my time is up. On March first, I’ll be in Seattle.”

  Now, she wanted to see his face, because he was saying, “So everything we’ve done so far, everything we’ve said—you were just getting me out of your system. That’s all that was.”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” She started to move again, because somehow, she’d stopped. Cletus walked with her, looking up into her face as she said, “Maybe it’s easier for me to think of you like that, since I can’t afford to think of you the way I wish I could. Can’t this be it, since it’s not realistic to think we can have anything else? Can’t we just be glad we’re friends now, that the bad feelings are gone? Or maybe . . . all right, even if it’s just having that affair after all. Can’t we get together sometimes, when I’m back in Seattle, and we can be open about it and enjoy it for what it is?”

  “No.” His voice was flat, and he was right about the phone. Not seeing his face—it was terrible. “That’s not how it works. You don’t get the right person when things fall your way, when everything’s perfect. And you don’t get to say that there’s too much hurt in it, so you’ll go do something easier. You get the right person when you’re ready to work for it and you’re willing to sacrifice for it, and you show each other you’re willing. When you show him he’s more to you than a convenience, and he knows he can believe it, that you’re ready to be his steady place in a hard world just like he’ll be that for you. When you can tell him and mean it that even if he’s halfway around the world, getting shot at—hell, getting shot—and you’re lying alone in bed every night for six months, crying because you’re so lonely and so scared of what could happen, and because your little girl’s forgotten what her daddy looks like—you’re willing to keep doing that anyway. You’re going to keep lying alone in bed and waiting for him to come home.”

  There was a pause, and she tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. Her hand was shaking on the phone. She didn’t want to hear this. And then he went on.

  “You can’t do anything else,” he said, “because he’s your man, and that’s it. And you know that he’s out there himself, halfway around the world, running and sweating and hurting and bleeding, with your picture in the pocket next to his heart. That he wrote a letter for his best buddy to send you in case he doesn’t make it, telling you that you’re the one he was thinking about when the end came. That the only thing he died regretting was having to leave you. And you know that he can be in some bar after all that’s over, and it doesn’t matter how many women are in there or how pretty they are or how much they let him know that they’re willing to be his right-now comfort spot. It doesn’t matter how lonely he is and how glad he is to still be alive. He doesn’t care, because he’s holding out for the best. He’s holding out for you.”

  She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

  “That’s life,” he finally went on. “And that’s what it means to live it all the way, full tilt. It’s too short even when it’s long, and sometimes it isn’t long at all, because life can be pretty damn brutal. If being alive in the world means anything, it’s got to mean finding what you want—a man, a woman, a family, a job, whatever it is—and fighting to keep it. It’s got to mean holding on to it with everything you’ve got. It’s got to mean giving it everything, or what’s the point?”

  When she still didn’t say anything, he said, “Yeah. Well. I guess that’s what I get for saying all that into a metal box. Everything you didn’t want to hear. Tell you what. If you see me? You could wave.”

  And he hung up.

  FACING THE MONSTER

  She’d been right. She wasn’t enough, and she never would be. She’d opened up, she’d taken the risk, and she’d fallen short. Again. Always.

  She barely slept, and she spent too much of Sunday crying. Every time she thought she’d stopped, there the tears and sadness came again, along with the same unwelcome thoughts.

  Finally, though, she’d had enough. “This is not going to work,” she told Cletus, who’d been following her around the house all day. If a golden retriever could have a worried look, he had it. “We need to do something else,” she said, and since he seemed to be nodding, she took him for a run on the mountain, and then she came back and forced herself to do her planning for the week.

  No matter what, you kept going. The alternative was to give up, and that wasn’t an option. So she shoved Jim Lawson and her own inadequacies and the aching sadness into the back of her mind and got it done.

  On Monday, she woke up mad.

  She’d had a horrible dream that she couldn’t remember very well, except that it had been full of flames and shouting and running and a shadowy figure behind her, chasing her, gaining on her. She’d turned, and it was Jim, and she’d started to laugh with relief, and then she’d started to scream, because it wasn’t Jim anymore. It was a monster.

  He wasn’t a monster, she told her pounding heart when she was sitting up in bed, gasping for breath. But he was wrong. Or at least—he wasn’t all the way right. He hadn’t been fair, for sure. And she needed to tell him so.

  She got up in the predawn chill, the light just beginning to turn gray over the hills. She fed Cletus, ate a piece of toast and drank a cup of coffee, then put him in the car with her school clothes and drove into town and thought some more.

  At the school, she fastened Cletus’s leash on, but she didn’t take her usual route. She ran straight to the little house on the roughly paved street, the house that was neatly painted and had all its leaves raked. She ran up to the kitchen door with Cletus and knocked. And when nobody answered, she knocked again.

  The door opened, and it was Jim. In a T-shirt and sweatpants, his feet bare, his face unshaven.

  “Hallie.” His face was empty of expression, but his eyes weren’t. They were searching her face. Getting that ninety percent of his information.

  “Get dressed,” sh
e said. “Come for a run.”

  He opened the door. “Come in.”

  “Cletus—”

  “Bring the damn dog.” Well, that was conciliatory. Not. She stepped inside with Cletus, and Jim pointed at the kitchen table and said, “Sit.”

  Cletus sat, but Hallie didn’t. She crossed her arms over her chest and said, “No, thanks. I’ll stand. Hurry up.”

  He walked out of the room and toward the back of the house. After a minute, Hallie heard the sound of a door opening down the hall, and Mac came out. She stopped halfway through the living room and said, “Oh.”

  “Hi,” Hallie said, doing her best to shift gears. “Your dad’s going to go for a run with me before work.”

  Mac said, “No, he isn’t. He doesn’t have to work today.”

  “Oh,” Hallie said, trying not to feel foolish. “I don’t know his schedule, I guess.”

  “I guess not. I do, though. It’s his day off. He’s supposed to get to sleep in. Except that you woke him up, so he can’t.” She reached down and gave Cletus a pat. He’d crossed the room to say hello to her, of course. For Cletus, “tension in the air” meant, “Time to start loving people up!”

  Mac said, “I’m going back to bed,” and turned around and went.

  “Cletus,” Hallie told the dog when she heard the sound of a door closing, “I have the feeling we aren’t welcome here.”

  Cletus, of course, just wagged.

  Jim came back in about three minutes. Same clothes, but he’d added a sweatshirt and running shoes.

  “One sec,” he said. “I’ll leave a note for Mac.”

  “She knows where you’re going. She came out to say hello. Or maybe that was, ‘What are you doing with my dad, you slutty home-wrecker.’ Or something similar.”

  As a joke, it fell flat, because Jim just shot a glance at her and said, “Let’s go.”

  When they hit the sidewalk, Hallie took off running hard, and Jim, of course, kept pace with her. She ran that way for two blocks, then slowed to a jog and said, trying to keep her voice level and failing at that, too, “I am not Maya. I am not the perfect woman. I never will be. And expecting me to be that isn’t fair.”

  There was a long pause, and then Jim said, “I didn’t say she was the perfect woman.”

  “Oh, yeah? I’d say you said just exactly that. I’d say you made your point. And I agree.” She blinked the tears back and tried to pretend it was the cold. “But how do you think it feels to know I’ll never measure up to that, and to have you tell me so? I can tell you how, because it isn’t the first time somebody’s told me that kind of thing. I spent most of my life hearing that. So why have I put myself in a spot to be told that again? And why is it fair for you to do it?”

  “I didn’t do that.” He was still running. He looked like he wanted to run away, judging by the strain on his face and the set of his shoulders, but he didn’t.

  “Yes,” she said, “you did. You’ve got this set of rules that you’ve made up, that I’m supposed to follow, or I’m not good enough. Well, I’m not going to give somebody my heart and know even as I’m doing it that no matter what I do, I’ll never be enough. That I’m not strong enough and brave enough and tough enough for him. For you. I’ll tell you right now, I’m none of those things, and I know it. I’m scared all the time. When people get mad at me, I shrivel up inside and want to hide, because I know I’ve failed. The same way I felt yesterday. The same way I cried until I didn’t have anything left, because I was failing at life. That you couldn’t love me, because you’d already loved somebody who could do life the way you needed her to. The way I know I should be doing it. I get it, all right? But—you say that loving somebody means being brave? I say it means being honest. I say it’s saying—this is who I am. I’m scared. I’m trying my hardest and knowing that sometimes, that isn’t enough. I’m never sure. I’m doing my best, and if my best isn’t good enough for you? Then s-s-screw you.”

  That last part had come out on a puff of air, and she was hauling breath into her lungs, trying to run past it. To run through it.

  “Hallie.” Jim had stopped running, and she didn’t realize it until Cletus started dragging at the leash, holding her back.

  She circled around, came back to him, and said, “I’ve never said that to anybody before. Do you realize that? And right now, I’m trying not to cry. I’m not brave, and I’m not tough. I love you, and I’m scared to love you. That’s never worked for me, and I’m scared to try. There you go. I’m scared. I know you think I’m living on the surface, and I’m sure you’re right. But I don’t know how to love a man and make it last. I don’t think I can. My aunt was right. I’m not the kind of woman that men—”

  She wouldn’t cry, she told herself fiercely. She wouldn’t. “That men love no matter what. That they’re crazy about. I’m the kind of woman where men say, ‘Oh, Hallie. She’s nice. She’s sweet.’ And then they leave and fall in love with somebody else. Somebody exciting. Somebody who can live full tilt, no limits. That’s why I can’t tell you to go away until you can do better, the way Maya could. If I said that, you’d do the leaving part, and that would be it. I know what you want from a woman, and I know I’m not it. If I don’t hang on hard, the way you want? That’s because I know I couldn’t really hold you. I know I am your transition woman. You need somebody to help you get out in the world again, and here I am. I need your help, and I’m crazy about you. You know I am, because you’ve always known it. And I’m willing to be that person for you and then to . . . to leave afterwards, to have my real life, and to let you have yours with that woman who’s strong and brave and tough, the one you can fall in love with and stay in love with.”

  “Hallie,” Jim said again. “Wait.”

  She didn’t. She had to finish this. “So if that’s weak?” she said. “Maybe it is, but it’s my best. What you said—it isn’t fair. It hurt too much, and you didn’t need to hurt me like that. You could just have said something . . . something nicer, to let me know it wasn’t going to be me. And I had to—to tell you so.”

  “Oh, God.” Jim dropped his head and scrubbed at his still-unshaven jaw. “Damn it to hell.”

  She started walking, and then she started running. She had to move. Cletus was coming, and then Jim was, too. He said, “I never said Maya was perfect.”

  “No, you didn’t. You didn’t have to. You just told me all the ways she was.”

  “She wasn’t perfect. She got mad at me plenty. The same exact way you just did. You say you’re not able to tell me to go away until I can do better? What do you think you just did? And I wasn’t perfect either. That, I know for sure. All she did—all either of us did—was stick.”

  “Yes,” Hallie said. “That’s what she did. She held on to you, and she held on to Mac, and she held on to her baby. No matter what, she held on.”

  “Yeah. She did. And I told you what that did. It killed her. She might’ve been too stubborn. She might’ve been a lot of things. I loved her with all my heart, but she wasn’t perfect, and I’m not holding her up as some saint that no other woman can measure up to. You’re completely different from her, and you’re pretty damn terrific. But you’re wrong, too. I see you. I know you’re scared and that sometimes you’re fighting yourself all the way to do what you have to do. You’re so sure that it’s right to put that hand out for somebody else, so you’re going to do it no matter what. You’re here in the first place, and it’s not because you want the money. It’s because you don’t. You want to give it away.”

  “But I bought a pool table.”

  “So you bought a damn pool table!” It came out in almost a shout, and she flinched, and he said, “All I want to do right now is to stop right here and hold on to you and tell you I’m sorry, and I can’t. So let me tell you this. Yeah, you bought a pool table, and you bought a little furniture, too. You could buy yourself a brand-new car, and there’d be nothing wrong with that, either. You deserve good things as much as anybody else.”

&nbs
p; “No,” she said. “I don’t. I had it easy. So much easier than Cole. So much easier than you.”

  “You did not have it easy. Why did Maya have so much confidence at twenty-two that she could toss my butt out until I got it together? How did she know she was worth more than that? Because she had two parents who thought she’d hung the moon. They kept their kids’ pictures on the mantel, and every one of them knew that, no matter how bad he screwed up, he could come home and his mom and dad would give him a hug and tell him they loved him and they were behind him no matter what. I had that, too, at least with my mom. And my sister, too. And you didn’t.”

  “My mom’s all right.”

  “Where was she that night, then, when some redneck punk with no future who’d never even taken you out drove off with you and put you on the hood of his car and took your virginity like he had a right to it? Where was she any night? Where has she been since you got back here?”

  “I’m an adult.”

  “So was I when Maya got sick. So was she. And her folks helped me take care of her and Mac, and then my mom did. They all jumped in there, because that’s what loving parents do. And look at what you’ve done, all by yourself. You’ve taken what was worst in your dad, all the bad he’d done, and turned it around and made it good. Eileen Hendricks is driving his truck, and I saw a guy at the Quik Mart the other day wearing what I swear were his alligator boots. Henry spent his life in this town trying to be better than everybody else, trying to shove them down so he could climb on top of them, and you’re spending yours pulling them up. You’re teaching kids and taking Eileen’s dog and being a stand-up woman. That first night, you didn’t want to stay in that house, and you did. Because you’ve got guts, and you’ve got heart.”