Breaking the Rules (16 page)

Adam would never understand women. As far as he knew, they were two adults who loved, or at least cared for each other a hell of a lot, so why was her desire to stay and not go home a stupid thought? He felt the same way every time he had to leave her apartment. He felt the same way knowing she was getting ready to leave his house.

“I don't think that's stupid
; I think that's human.” He bent over, trailing kisses from her forehead, to the tip of her nose and then softly against her lips. “We've spent so much time saying goodbye, I think it's hard on both of us. And if you said the word, I'd clear out half of my closet, fly to New York with you and bring you home with me permanently.”

Actually saying the words made Adam's chest constrict. He didn't regret saying what he did, but it added a layer of weight to their relationship that he hadn't seen coming. Before she could see any doubt in his eyes, he kissed her again, this time allowing his tongue to trace along the seam of her lips, begging entrance into her mouth.

After kissing him deeply, Carly pulled away. “But that's not realistic, is it?” She asked sadly. “I don't have a job here, and what happens if you get sick of me? We've been staying together a couple days here and there; what would happen if it was full-time and it didn't work?”

Adam stared into the distance for what seemed like minutes, but he knew it wasn't nearly that long. If he said the wrong thing, it was going to scare her off. If he said the right thing, the words she wanted to hear, it wouldn't be what he wanted to say. He ran his free hand through his
hair while he thought about what to say.

“Seriously? You're already thinking about the end?” It wasn't anything close to what he should have said, but it was starting to piss him off that she seemed so obsessed with the demise of their relationship. “Because let me tell you something...I don't think that way. Do you know why?”

Carly shook her head, turning her body slightly away from him, staring at the ceiling.

“I don't think that way because I can't see a time when that would happen. When we're together, I wish we could wake up in each other's arms every morning. When I'm at work
, and I know I'm going to see you at the end of the day, I feel motivated to get through everything so I can get to you as fast as possible.” He pulled her face to his, lightly kissing her before wrapping his arms tightly around her body. “I think part of me has been in love with you most of my life. I didn't know what it was back then, but I wanted to find ways to be around when you would come over. I tormented you because I wanted attention from you. Looking back, I can see that for what it was.”

Carly snorted, obviously not believing him. “Right, is that why you not only tore the heads off our
Barbies, but you also chopped off their hair and drew mustaches on them?” Okay, so he had been a little shit of a baby brother back then, but he knew that now.

Adam slid his arm out from under Carly's head. “Hang on,” he said, walking across the room to his closet. Retrieving what he needed, he climbed back into the bed. “About that,” he said, handing
Carly the shopping bag from Toys R Us.

She opened the bag and doubled over laughing as she pulled out six Barbie dolls. “What do I want these for?” She asked. “I think I'm past that age now.”

Adam shrugged. “I know, but I wanted to make things right.” Yes, it was cheesy, but when they'd walked into the toy store on their first official date, he wanted to get something for her that she'd never forget. Once he remembered how he used to torture their dolls, he couldn't think of anything better to buy her as both a peace offering and a memento.

“It works, but I don't have a spare inch in my suitcase. Can you bring them with you when you come out?” She asked, her eyes turning sad. “Do you know when that will be?”

Adam bit his lip. “I really don't. Patrick keeps sending me out to the west coast and has me pretty well booked up out there for a while.” He hesitated before pressing the issue about her moving back to Wisconsin. In his head, it was the most logical choice, but how could he get her to see that? “That's why I brought up you staying here. That way, we could at least see each other when I'm home.”

“Adam, I'm just...I can't do that right now,” Carly sighed. “I have to get back to New York and find a job and a new roommate. I can't keep delaying my flight home.”

Turning off the light on his side of the bed, Adam rolled back towards Carly, pulling her body tight against his. “I wasn't talking about postponing. I was talking about moving in with me. I meant it, Carly; I love you. I hate being here when you're there. I hate, even more, knowing that I'll be on one coast with you on the other, not knowing when I'll see you again.”

Carly's body tensed
, and he knew he had gone too far. “How can you know you love me?”

“How do I know the sky is blue? How do I know the grass is green? It's just one of those things that simply is. I can't explain it
, but I already told you there's been something there far longer than we've been together. I don't question it.” 

Carly let out a deep breath, rolling her body so
that they were facing one another. “Okay, sure,” she said sarcastically. “So, let's say that is the case. It doesn't change the fact that I have a life in New York. I can't just walk away from that.”

“Why not? Seriously, what do you have there right now?
You're having problems finding a gig, your roommate is bailing on you and you have a shitty apartment. What kind of life is that?” Adam closed his eyes tightly, preparing himself for whatever was coming. He'd
obviously
crossed the line. In less than a minute, he'd managed to minimize every aspect of the life he knew she was damn proud to have created for herself. This wasn't going at all like he wanted it to.

“Goodnight, Adam,” she said, abruptly ending their conversation. In some ways, he figured that was better than the alternative.

The gray morning matched Carly's mood. Had it been a sunny day, she would have
turned around, unable to resist the pull of the country home she was growing to love, or her mood would have soured further because she was leaving. 

As she navigated her rental car through the hills and curves leading towards Madison, Adam's words from last night played through her mind on a loop that refused to stop.
You're having problems finding a gig, your roommate is bailing on you and you have a shitty apartment. What kind of life is that?

She would have slapped him if
his words weren't so true. Her life in New York was shit, but she knew it would turn around. She'd been here before, and everything had always worked out. But did she honestly want it to this time? Maybe Adam was right. Maybe it was time to come home. She could be close to Gran and keep an eye on her now that it seemed Micah was probably moving out soon. She could see Adam when he wasn't traveling. She could rekindle the friendships she, Annie and Julia had let fade over the years.

Nothing is forever, stop being foolish.

No matter how many times she'd done it, flying into
LaGuardia scared the hell out of Carly. It wasn't right to come in so close to the water. For a moment, her mind drifted to an image of Adam sitting in the seat next to her, laughing as she buried her head into his chest to avoid seeing the plane coming in low over the water. Like it or not, he was her safety. When they were together, she felt like nothing could bring her down. Ironically, that thought depressed her even more.

By now, Carly should have been used to walking into an empty apartment. In the time she and Tatyana lived together, Carly spent much of the time feeling like a storage facility rather than a roommate. She and T had been
close friends at first, but then her roommate started getting heavy into the party scene and they began drifting apart. Setting her bags down inside the front door, her apartment felt hollow. It felt like nothing more than four walls and a place to sleep.

She flopped onto the couch and turned on a mindless so-called reality show. It was funny what producers thought they could pass off as real life in whatever city this one was set in. Pulling out her phone, she decided to text
Julia. It was funny how she missed her friends already.

While she waited for a response, she shuffled
into the kitchen, hoping there was something to eat. Without a job and the balance in her savings account seeming to shrink a bit more every day, she couldn't afford to call for delivery. There wasn't much in the fridge that could pass for food, but she did manage to scrape enough peanut butter out of the bottom of the jar to make a sandwich. With a plate in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, Carly returned to the couch, ready for a good cry.

Carly mindlessly scrolled through the show listings on her TV, trying to find something that wouldn't depress her but would be entertaining enough to keep her mind off the fact that she missed her old life. Or was it her new life? The life she left behind this morning was nothing like the life she left when she had originally moved away from Wisconsin.
This new life that she'd only had a small taste of was what she wanted to hang onto.

Not finding anything, Carly turned off the television and picked up her Kindle, hoping one of the many books she had picked up would allow her to escape into some alternate reality. Books were the on
ly place where happily-ever-after truly existed. Even that didn't work. The main character in the book she chose had the same ice blue eyes and brown hair she saw every time she closed her eyes. As she read about how he struggled to make the girl he liked see that he wasn't the bad guy, she pictured Adam's face. When she got to the part that told how Derrick, the book character, had a tribal tattoo running the length of his calf, Carly had to put the book down. It was as if the author had used Adam for her muse. Not a smart thing when you're trying to forget about someone.

And yes, Carly was trying desperately to forget about Adam. She needed to pull back, to figure out if he was worth the heartache she knew
would eventually come. While she hated the thought that she wasn't going to see him for a while, she was relieved because her feelings were scaring her.

Last night when Adam made a comment about her moving in with him, she briefly considered it. She actually thought about giving up everything she had worked so hard to accomplish because he wanted her to. She was falling in love with Adam. After talking to Gran, Carly was even
more leery of giving her heart to someone else, knowing that her own mother had become so blinded by love that she turned her back on her entire family, including a toddler who needed a mother. Carly just wasn’t willing to take that risk.

The phone ringing pulled Carly out of her depressing thoughts. Seeing that it was Adam, she
shoved the phone between her couch cushions and curled up under a blanket. It wasn't fair to him, but she needed time to think. She didn't want to hear that he was already missing her as much as she missed him. She couldn't handle hearing his perfectly logical arguments about why it made sense for her to move home.

When the phone rang ten minutes later, Carly almost didn't even bother looking at the caller ID. On the third ring, she grumbled as she dug out her phone. “Hey, Jules,” she answered.

“Hey, you make it back to the city?”

“Yep, got home before noon,” Carly sighed. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m bored as hell here.”

Julia laughed. “Missing the faced paced life of Brooklyn already?”

How could Carly tell her just how much she missed it? It wasn’t about the town; it was about the people who lived there. One person in particular if she was being honest. “Yeah, it’s just not the same here. It was good to spend time with you and Annie because I don’t have anyone like the two of you here.”

“Is everything okay?” Julia sounded concerned. For all Carly’s acting classes, she wasn’t able to put on a strong face today. Her world as she knew it changing faster than she could cope with. “You seem almost sad.”

“I’ll be fine,” Carly reassured her friend. “It’s just different here. And not having a job makes it tough to be in a good mood.”

They spent an hour talking
city living versus small town living. By the time they hung up, Carly couldn't help but wonder if Julia was still thinking about running away. She had asked lots of detailed questions about New York, even going so far as to ask if Carly had found a new roommate. That wouldn't have been odd, but when she then started asking for details about the apartment, Carly got the distinct feeling something was up.

***

Adam's plane landed in Madison late on Wednesday night. It had been almost a week since he'd seen Carly, and he missed her. She was right; they were like a drug to one another, and he was going through withdrawals. It wouldn't have been so bad, but he couldn't rid himself of the pit in his stomach telling him there was something off between them.

Since she had walked out of his house the previous Thursday morning, they had only talked on the phone twice. She blamed it on being busy trying to find a new job and a roommate, but he
could tell she was lying. After all, who's out looking for a job all weekend, especially when that's the busiest part of the week for any company she would be applying to?

He glanced at the clock on his phone.
It would be almost one in the morning in New York. Maybe he shouldn't call her, but he needed to hear her voice.

“Hello?” Carly answered groggily. His mind flashed through images of her sprawled out on the bed wearing nothing but a tight tank top and bikini panties
with purple bunnies or something equally ridiculous on them. He wanted to be next to her, running his hands through her long blonde hair, kissing his way from her neck down to her firm breasts. God, he could almost feel them against his palm and his lips, soft but firm, the perfect size to envelope them with his hands. Maybe calling her wasn't the best idea since he wasn't home and couldn't do anything about the hard-on pressing against his jeans.

“Hey, you answered,” he sighed, trying to keep his voice steady.
I wonder if I can get on the nine o'clock direct flight in the morning.
“I miss you.”

He heard bottles clinking in the background, followed by the refrigerator door slamming shut
. “You called me in the middle of the night to say you miss me?” Carly sounded less than amused by this fact.

“Well, it seemed to be the best time to have any hope of actually getting you to answer
since you're so busy during the day.” Adam tapped a frantic beat against the steering wheel, hating that the lust he'd felt minutes earlier had been replaced by annoyance. He hated feeling like this. All he wanted to do was talk to the woman he loved, and she was pissed off that he called so late. Hell, she could call him at four in the morning, and he would have talked to her for hours, even if it meant extra coffee and Red Bull at work. “I guess I'll just let you go...”

The line was silent. Had she fallen back to sleep
? “Peanut, you still there?” He asked softly. If she were sleeping, he would hang up and try her again in the morning. As irritated as he was, there was something sweet about the thought of her falling asleep with the phone to her ear.

“Yeah, I'm here,” she whispered. He couldn't be sure, but it sounded
as if Carly was crying. She sniffled a few more times, and he was sure of it.

“Carly,” He started, not wanting to ask the question he knew he needed to. “Are we okay?”

Silence again. Damn, he wished he were sitting next to her so he could look into her green eyes and see what she was feeling. With every second that dragged on, he was more certain he had his answer.

“I love you, Adam,” Carly sighed. Okay, so that was about the furthest thing from what he had been expecting to hear.

“I love you too, Peanut. What's going on?” He could hear the 'but' at the end of her declaration of love. No matter what she had to say, he needed to know what followed.

Again with that damn silence.

***

“I just...I talked to Julia after I got home
, and it gave me some things to think about.” Carly hated herself. She hated that she was going to do this over the phone, in the middle of the night, when she knew that Adam had just gotten in from a long day of traveling. He didn't deserve this.

“And?” Adam's voice cracked.

“And I need to take a break,” she said in one quick breath. There, it was done. As much as she meant it when she said she loved Adam, he didn't deserve to have her force him to put up with her mommy and daddy issues.

Carly dumped her Coke into the sink, opting for a cup of hot tea instead. She needed something that would soothe her frayed nerves, not something to make sure she didn't get back to sleep.

“So, you tell me you love me and then you break up with me? What the fuck, Peanut?” Adam's voice sounded strained, and she could tell he was trying to keep from shouting at her.

“It's not like that, Adam,” Carly sobbed. There was no point in trying to hold back the tears. This was the hardest phone call she'd ever made. “I'm not breaking up with you. I just, I need some time to make sure I'm in a place where I can love you the way you deserve to be. I need to get past my fear that you're going to leave me if I let you into my heart.”

“And how long is all that supposed to take? It's already hard enough because we don't get to spend time with one another like most couples do. Now, you want a break from that?” Adam forced a laugh, “You're something, you know that?”

Adam's words stung. She hadn't expected him to be happy, but the anger in his voice through her for a loop. “Adam, please, I need this,” she cried. Her entire body shook, the realization that this could be more than a break to Adam starting to set in.
“I meant it when I said I love you.
That's why
I need a break. I don't deserve you being all sure that we'll make it, when I'm waiting for you to get sick of me.”

“If you really feel that way, that doesn't say much about me, does it?” He was seething, it
sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth. “The only thing I'm hearing is that you don't trust me enough to believe me when I say I love you, and I'd do anything for you. Shit, Carly, I've even been trying to push to get to New York more often, maybe even find a permanent base out there, just so I can be with you. I would have done anything for you.”

This was it. The end. Once again, Carly had pushed away someone
great because she didn't want him to hurt her. The difference was this time her heart was shattering into a million pieces. It was too late to block the pain. “I love you, Adam. I hope someday soon, you'll be out here, and we can sit down to talk about all of this.”

“We'll see,” Adam whispered before hanging up.