A Timeless Romance Anthology: Spring Vacation Collection (21 page)

She crossed her arms over her chest, gaze turned away. It was the same posture he’d seen that day by her car. How had this happened again so quickly?

“I didn’t leave,” he said again. “
You
did.”

“Before you could leave me,” she tossed back. “I left first. I had to.”

Before I could leave?
What made her think he ever would? “I didn’t say I was leaving.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s what everyone does. Everyone. And I wasn’t going to let that happen, not with you, not when it would have—” She turned away, walking back in the direction they’d come.

He followed after her. “Would have what? Not when it would have
what
?”

She didn’t answer. If anything, she walked faster.

“Talk to me, Maddi.”

“I don’t want to.” She kept going, not looking at him, not slowing. “I can’t talk about this, not now.”

“Then when? You’re leaving in two days. I know what that means—that I won’t hear from you for months. That when you do come back, I’ll only see you by accident.”

He grabbed hold of her arm to stop her from running off. He turned her around.

“You left with no explanation. You never told me why. I have wondered for two years what went wrong.” He kept his hands on her upper arms and looked her in the eye. He couldn’t help the tense and unhappy tone. That moment from two years earlier was coming back hard and fast. “Don’t you think I deserve an explanation? After everything we were together, I think I at least should have been told why.”

“Because I had to.” The words snapped out of her. “Things were getting too serious. I didn’t want—I didn’t want it. I didn’t want
this
.”

“What this? Me?”

She didn’t deny it.

“But we were good together.”

She dropped her eyes. “I know.”

Those two words took the fight out of him. “Then why did you leave?”

“I had to,” Maddi little more than whispered. She took a quick step backward. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head then shook it again. “I never should have come home.”

They had driven to the lake separately, so when she practically ran up the path toward her parked car, he knew she didn’t have to wait for him. She would get in her Altima exactly like she had before. And she would leave.

And, once again, he couldn’t stop her.

 Chapter Seven

Mom came in while Madison was packing. “Where are you going?”

“I have to get back to work.” She dropped socks in her suitcase.

“You said you were staying until Sunday.”

In went a pair jeans. “I’m not worried about Grant anymore. And you seem happy, so I’m heading back.”

“What about Derek?” Mom dropped onto the bed. “You two seemed to be enjoying each other the last few nights.”

Had she seen them together? “I don’t know what you mean.”

Mom actually rolled her eyes. “The two of you are great people, but you’re terrible spies.”

Madison sat down next to her mother. “Did Grant see us too?”

“Of course. But don’t worry; he didn’t act any differently than he always does.” Mom patted her hand. “He really is as fabulous as he seems.”

“That’s hard to believe. Our family track record isn’t very promising.”

Madison scooted back, sitting up next to the headboard. Mom did the same. They’d had conversations in that position many times when she was growing up.

“I haven’t made many good decisions where men are concerned,” Mom said. “I’ve gone with the cream of the loser crop.”

Madison could actually laugh a little at that.

“But you have done so much better than I have.”

She shook her head. “You only say that because you haven’t met some of the guys I’ve gone out with since I moved away.”

“You’ve mentioned a few of those dates.” Mom smiled over at her. “Men can be such idiots.”

Madison thought of Derek. He wasn’t that way at all. He was the nicest, most sincere man she’d ever known.

“How many of those idiots did you go on more than a couple dates with?”

“None.” They had fallen so far short of the bar that Derek had set, she’d never wanted to go beyond a date or two. They just didn’t compare.

How pathetic is that? You haven’t had a relationship since you broke it off with him because no one was as great as he was. Pathetic.

“Do you know why I started going with Grant?” Mom asked.

Madison shook her head.

“Because he reminded me of Derek.”

“What?”

Mom turned enough to face her more directly. “I watched you two the whole time you and Derek were together. I saw how he treated you, how he looked at you. And I realized how happy you were together. I wanted that.”

Her mother had never said that before. They’d never really discussed relationships.

“Grant treated me the same way. He was kind and thoughtful. He wasn’t selfish and controlling and...” Mom shrugged. “He was nice. So I gave him a shot.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll hurt you like all the others have?”

“A little. But not because he, personally, worries me.”

Madison knew exactly what she meant. “But because everyone else has.”

“I’m beginning to realize that my mistakes have made you afraid. You’re afraid of being abandoned because your father left, because every guy I’ve dated since then has walked out on me. You’re afraid of being hurt because you’ve seen my heart break so many times.”

She shook her head. “No, Mom, don’t blame—”

“It’s true. I can see that it is.”

Madison pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. She
was
afraid. The only emotion that had been stronger than her heartbreak when she’d left Folsom Lake two years earlier was fear. “I love him, Mom. I love him so much that it will kill me when he leaves. It’ll hurt so much, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.”

“You would die a little inside.” Mom spoke from obvious experience. “But living without him—how is that working out?”

Madison took a deep breath, surprised by the emotion bubbling inside. “I’m fine. I have friends and things I like doing. And I don’t spend every minute worrying that someone’s going to break my heart.”

“So you’re not really
living
without him. You’re surviving.”

Madison bent her neck and rested her head on her knees.

“You need to go talk to him, dear. Before you go, talk to him. Before you decide he’s going to walk out on you, find out how likely it is that he’d walk out on you. You might just find out trusting him is worth the risk.”

* * *

Madison had seldom been so nervous in her life. She waited at Derek’s apartment door, trying to decide what she would say.

He opened the door. “Maddi.” Was that a good look of surprise, or a bad one?

“You were right,” she said. “You deserved to know why.”

He looked hesitant, unsure. “Why you left, you mean?”

Madison nodded. He motioned her inside, pulling the door open all the way. She stood in the middle of the living room, trying to gather up her courage. “You’ve redecorated.”

“A little. My parents gave me some furniture when they downsized.” He moved to stand in front of her.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. “I left because I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of you.” That hadn’t come out right. “Not you as a person.”

“Then what?”

The confession she’d come to make wasn’t proving easy. Opening herself up more only meant that he could hurt her that much more deeply.

Derek took her hands in his. “I don’t know for sure what you were afraid of—
are
afraid of. But I have some idea.”

She could feel heat rushing across her face. Making personal confessions was not her favorite thing.

“Do you know how many people I’ve dated since you left?”

Did she know? She didn’t
want
to know.

“None. I’ve had a date here or there, but not a relationship.”

If she’d doubted before that she still had feelings for him, the relief she felt at hearing that would have told her for certain that she did.

“No one I went out with was ever what I wanted.” His hands slid up her arms, her shoulders, her neck, and settled on either side of her face. “No one was ever
you
.”

She closed her eyes, unsure if the tears she felt building up were happiness or confusion or fear.

“I know your dad walked out on you,” he went on. “Every man your mom has ever been involved with has left too.” His thumbs rubbed gently along her jaw. “I have a feeling what you were afraid of was that I would eventually do the same thing. I thought, while we were together, that you knew that wasn’t me, that you got that about us. Obviously I need to be more blunt.”

She felt him lightly kiss her forehead. His lips trailed past her temple to her ear.

“No one will ever be you, Maddi,” he whispered. “I haven’t moved on after two years, even though
you
walked out on
me
.”

She rested her hands against his chest. She wanted so badly to believe him, but he was promising her the moon. She could not pin all her hopes on impossible dreams.

“You cut off everything between us, but my heart couldn’t move on. There was no one who fit there like you do, no one who fit me like you do.”

His arms wrapped around her, but his face stayed close to hers, his words whispered directly into her ear.

“There has been no one for me but you ever since the day you sat next to me in high-school biology. I didn’t get up the nerve to ask you out until college, and only after going through agony, fearing you’d pick a school in another state, and I’d never see you again.” He kissed her temple again, his arms firmly around her. “I’m not perfect. We’ve had our disagreements, even a fight or two. But we were good together. We always have been.”

“I know.” Somehow she found the voice to say what she was thinking. “But believing in a miracle only makes the disappointment worse when it doesn’t happen.”

He leaned his forehead against hers. “Then trust me. Look back on all we’ve been through together. Listen to what I’m saying now. All of those things are reasons to believe that this is real. You have to trust me that much.”

“That’s a lot.” Trusting someone with her heart was enormous when she knew how fragile an organ it really was.

“I know,” he said, repeating her earlier words. “I’m only asking you to trust me enough to try.”

She opened her eyes and looked into his, so close to hers. “Sometimes a person is too broken to fix.”

“You don’t need to be fixed. You just need to be loved.”

He shifted the tiniest bit, and their lips touched. It was a tentative moment, neither of them giving over to the sensation of being together again.

His scent. His touch. His kiss. Her heart pounded and turned. She couldn’t help but steal a moment of that to keep for later.

Her hands slipped about his middle, and she returned his kiss with none of her earlier hesitation. His fingers threaded through her hair, cradling her head and pulling her to him until nothing remained between them but the air they breathed.

Madison poured two years of loneliness and regret and fear into that desperate moment, knowing she couldn’t stay, knowing she didn’t have the strength to put herself so entirely on the line. He would break her heart, and she would never recover.

The first tear trickled from her eyes, running down her face before rolling onto his. She wiped at it with her thumb as she pulled back.

“I can’t do this.” Her voice broke. Her heart cracked a little more.

“I know.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “I know.”

She stepped back, moving toward the door.

“Maddi?”

She looked back over her shoulder.

He gave her a tiny, tender, painful smile. “When you’re ready, come back to me.”

Chapter Eight

Madison had spent so much time during her first day back at work talking about APRs and refinances and small-business loans that she was tired of the sound of her own voice. Foot traffic slowed down in the branch midafternoon. Madison leaned back in her chair as Beth stepped inside her cubicle and dropped into the seat across from her desk.

“Cancún was amazing.” Beth sighed long and dramatic. “You should have come.”

“I’m sure it was great. But it was nice being back home too.”

“So how was your mom’s boyfriend? Total loser again?”

Madison realized with a jolt that she hadn’t thought about Grant McGee much since leaving Folsom Lake. Apparently she really wasn’t worried about him. Or she was too distracted. “He seems like a really nice guy, actually. And I haven’t seen Mom so happy in a really long time.”

You were happy with Derek.
Mom’s voice spoke in her thoughts, all the things she’d said about liking Grant because he was so much like his nephew.

Beth was talking about pristine beaches and snorkeling in crystal-blue water. Exactly the things that originally pulled Madison to the idea of Cancún. She should have been writhing with jealousy, or at least hanging on every descriptive word.

Instead, her thoughts were full of hair touched by hints of gold, hazel eyes full of laughter, Chang’s spring rolls. She tried to shake it off and focus. Derek did that to her so easily. He was such a deeply entrenched part of her that she never could completely get him out of her system.

“The second night we were there,” Beth continued. “We met these guys. They were hot. I don’t mean hot like they knew it, kind of hot. They were nice-guy hot. Nice guys. And hot. At the same time. I mean, when does that happen?”

A hot, nice guy. If she’d gone to Mexico with her friends, she would have met these mystery men. But they would have turned out like every other guy she’d met in the last two years. She’d be intrigued at first, then vaguely disappointed.

No one I went out with was ever what I wanted.
Derek had said that, but she could have said it herself and meant it completely.

No one was ever
you
.
He’d said that too.

“We were all saying that we should go again next year. Or at least go
somewhere
next year.” Beth shifted forward, leaning a little against the edge of Madison’s desk. “But you have to come. You can’t miss out again.”