Can't Hold Back (16 page)

“Thanks for holding down the fort.”

She nearly screamed, startled by the unexpected appearance of a six-foot-plus ex–Army Ranger outside her PT office. Jake.

He came inside and sat on the counter. He looked tired, but not too strung out. That was a good sign, surely?

“Sorry—I probably should have texted you I was back.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m glad you’re back. I take it this means your mom is okay.”

“She’s doing great. And my sister’s there. I’m going to go down this weekend for a half day each day to help out, but I thought given how long I was away, it would probably be a good idea to get my ass back in here.”

So it was a lucky thing, after all, that Nate had come back last night to claim his bonus time. Because she wouldn’t have wanted not to have that time with him. As much as she hurt now, she wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on a minute of it. Not only because of how good it had felt, how purely pleasurable and how deeply liberating. But also because she had learned so much from him. About herself. About what she wanted. And that would go with her wherever she went, even if last night had been the end for them.

Strange how something could feel so unfinished and yet so
over.
As when he’d said goodbye to her at the door of her room this morning, a slow, final kiss, his hands slipping out of hers, his body drawing back from hers, opening a cold space between them that widened until the door closed, so quietly, behind him.

“I’m glad you’re back. Because I’m going to go back to Seattle. At least for a little while. Until—”

There was no point in beating around the bush now, right? There was nothing to protect.

“Until Nate leaves.”

Jake’s expression barely changed. She hadn’t surprised him.

“You knew!”

He shrugged.

“You knew I was full of it when I said nothing else was going to happen with him.”

“Not that you were full of it. It wasn’t you that clued me in. I mean, I suspected. But it was Nate who gave it away, actually. He was so pissed at me when I tried to call him off you. I figured if you were just anyone to him, he’d have laughed the whole thing off.”

On a better day, that revelation might have meant something to her. She wasn’t
just anyone
to Nate. But it was small consolation right now, when last night he’d told her he didn’t want to stop seeing her but that he was going to, anyway. And why.

“It’s not—it’s not going to happen.”

Now Jake looked surprised. He shifted awkwardly, then said, “Sometimes it’s the right thing at the wrong time. I have some experience with that.”

She didn’t know all the details of Jake’s life before he’d lost his leg and left the Army, but she did know that even though Jake and Mira had been together only a handful of years, Sam was Jake’s son. So there had been a
wrong time
for them.

“I think we already had our wrong time,” she said. “I think this is our right time—it’s just more of a
right
now
kind of right time.”

“Are you sure?”

Nate’s words.
There are so many promises you can’t keep…There was this one I had left, and I had to keep it.

Several times during the night, wakeful in his arms, she’d thought about asking if she could go with him. But she hadn’t. Because he’d been dead right. There was nothing for her in Eagle Hill, nothing but feeling pathetic because she’d let a man pull her away from her own goals. And she’d also understood what he hadn’t said, that there were some kind of promises that took up all your emotional energy. That prohibited you from making another promise until you had fulfilled them. In the end, she’d been glad she’d kept her mouth shut—and her pride intact.

She nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

“So you’re going to leave. Until Nate does.”

“Yeah.”

“No,” a voice said from the doorway. “You stay. I’ll leave.”

He looked good. Relaxed, nonchalant, the way you’d expect a man who’d gotten laid to his heart’s content to look. And sure of himself in a way she hadn’t seen since—since the Becca days. The old Nate.

It hurt. She wouldn’t have thought there was much worse hurting to be done, but the fact that he’d said it so baldly, and in front of Jake—it meant it was really over. Up till this point she’d been able to hold on to a faint hope that Nate would protest the idea of a separation when it came down to it, but here he was.
You stay. I’ll leave.
Not looking like his heart was breaking, like hers.

And the chivalry of it, the fact of what he was doing, trying to save this situation for her, that hurt, too. Because he was such a good, gentle, generous man. Because—as she always had—she
loved
him.

She couldn’t look at him, at his golden hair, at the body she’d had under her and over her and every way she’d asked for, at the hint of mischief she remembered from the old days lurking behind his eyes.

Most of all, she couldn’t look into those eyes, because no matter what she saw there, it would hurt worse.

“I have to leave anyway,” she told him. “I can’t stay here. Not after—”

She looked to Jake for confirmation, but his eyes were on Nate.

“You’re sure you’re ready, man? You were in bad shape three weeks ago.”

“I’ve been handling it. I did some kayaking with Braden while I was down there, and a couple times, yeah, it hurt, but I dealt with it. Li taught me good tricks.”

There was no wink-wink, nudge-nudge behind his words, and that hurt, too. He was being careful with her.

“What’s been working best?”

“Mental stuff helps. Relaxation, focus, all that. It’s not like a magic cure, but I feel more on top of it.”

His eyes found hers, then. Damn the gratitude in them. Damn him for being a fast learner, for being determined, for being tough. For being the kind of guy who didn’t really
need.

“Does that work for you, Li? He goes, you stay?” Jake crossed his arms.

“Seriously? After I waltzed over the ethical line and then betrayed your trust?”

“You told me at the first possible opportunity, in each case, yes?”

“I could have told you on the phone yesterday morning.”

He laughed. “Then I probably would have told you to go to hell. Good for you for waiting till I had a clearer head.”

“But I—”

“You told me you had a conflict. We straightened it out. Now you’ve got another issue—”

He looked to Nate as if expecting an argument from him, but when he didn’t get one, he continued: “And you’re offering me a solution to that, as well. All I see here is a good problem solver.”

And, she reflected bitterly, a woman who would be jobless as well as heartbroken if Jake weren’t generous enough to keep her on, even though she’d done everything she could to screw things up.

Jake’s charity hurt, too.

“I found a couple donors, enough to pull together a pretty darn decent salary for you,” Jake said. “So if you still think R-and-R could be the right place for you—I’ve got a job for you.”

She let herself look at Nate. He was beaming. So pleased for her. So sure she’d been given exactly what she wanted.

Three weeks ago, this
would
have been exactly what she wanted.

After all, she’d said it herself, in the beginning. The goal had always been to make him not need her anymore.

“You
bastard.
”

Alia had left, and Jake’s fists were clenched tight. Nate thought Jake was going to throw a punch. Knock him against a wall.

“You selfish bastard. I told you to leave her alone. I told you not to mess with her head.”

If it had been only Jake’s rage, even the threat of violence, Nate would have taken what was coming to him. But the way Jake was painting Alia, like she’d had no agency at all, like she had no idea what she wanted—he couldn’t stand it.

“Don’t you dare make her a victim. You’re not her big brother. She’s not some helpless—you don’t know a thing about it.”

Startled, Jake released his fists and took a step back.

“I did the best I could. I don’t owe you an apology and I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“No, but you owe her
both.
”

He thought of last night. He hadn’t apologized, and he didn’t think she would have wanted him to. He couldn’t be sorry. Not for any of it. Not for one single second of what had passed between them, and even less as time had gone on and she’d opened herself more fully to him. He could never be sorry for the last two days, especially for the sexting, for the way she’d slowly showed him what she wanted, told him what she’d needed. He couldn’t be sorry for having been right about
MenInUni242,
who had been there all the time, all Alia, waiting for him to invite her out to play.

And he
had
explained. He’d explained the best he could, and she’d listened, the way she always listened, and she’d understood, the way she always understood. The way she had in the letters, before he’d known it was her. Before he’d known she was real.

“What I owe her is between her and me. Did she tell you I’d messed with her head?”

Jake shook his head. “No.”

“Did she tell you she thought I was unfair to her? That I used her?”

“No.”

I rest my case.

He turned to go.

“Hey,” Jake said.

Nate turned back.

“I just don’t want you to make the same mistake I made,” he said.

“What, getting a chick pregnant and then abandoning her for the next seven years?”

Jake held up his hands. “Okay. Okay. I deserved that.”

“No,” Nate said with a heavy sigh. “You didn’t.”

“I don’t want you to lose years of your life you could have because you’re…because you’re afraid.”

Nate shook his head. “I think you have it all backward,” he said. “I’m not afraid of her. Being with her is—”

Last night she’d told him everything she’d wanted. One after another, the requests, the demands, falling like Seattle rain, surrounding him like a mist, all his senses tuned.

Do this.

Give me.

Like this.

I want…

“—the sweetest, least threatening thing there is. It would be the easiest thing in the world to—”

To let myself love her.

“—just throw in my lot with her. But I can’t. I can’t do that. I’ve got things I have to do.”

“Things you
think
you have to do.”

“Things I know I have to do,” Nate said. “Things I’d hate myself if I didn’t do.”

“You might hate yourself if you don’t give this a chance.”

“I’m not you, and she’s not Mira. What you wanted to do and what you needed to do were the same thing. That’s not true for me. If I stay here for her, I will always know I made the selfish choice. And I will never be whole. And that’s no basis—for anything. Like trying to build a skyscraper on a bad foundation.”

Jake turned toward the window, then back. Ran a hand through his hair. Then said, “You’re right. You’re right. I’m making assumptions. I’m making assumptions because of my own situation. And that’s not fair. I’m sorry. And you’re right—she never said any of those things. That you treated her badly or any of that.”

Nate knew she hadn’t. That she wouldn’t have.

Here.

Slower.

Tease me.

Touch me.

Now, now, now.

It had been everything he’d hoped for, and yet—

When she’d emptied herself of everything, when she’d begged him for what she needed, there had been one thing missing.

All those wants, golden things to behold, under his skin, in his ears, filling all his senses, all those things she’d asked for, and she’d never once asked the one he’d most dreaded—and most hoped for. The request he would never have been able to refuse, the plea that would have swept away duty.

Please stay.

Until he’d appeared in Jake’s office, she’d held out hope that he would change his mind. That by some miracle when she opened herself completely to him, when she asked him for all the things she had wanted but not been able to speak aloud, he would realize that he had fallen in love with her and that managing a hardware store and tending to another man’s family was not, in fact, as important to him as she was.

But that hadn’t happened.

And now she knew it wasn’t going to.

She was so far inside her own head, so hurt and sad, so worn out from the day’s honest work and what the last forty-eight hours had put her through, that she almost tripped over her own sister.

Becca was sitting with her back against the door to Alia’s room, her knees pulled up, waiting.

No.

Instant guilt. She’d never had a
no
in her heart for her sister. Never. Not once. Not through all the days and weeks, stretching into months and years, that she’d been Becca’s parent.

But she was so tired. So hurt. She wanted to crawl into her bed and pull the covers over her head and—

She didn’t think she even had the energy to cry. Not now, not yet. Maybe soon. Maybe when the exhaustion wore off and she remembered the good moments, when Nate was gone from R&R and she began to register his absence. When she began to reckon up what she’d had and lost and had and lost again.

“What are you—what are you doing here? And how did you know where to find me?”

“Someone named—Gabi?—gave me your room number. She’s very friendly.”

Ah, Gabi.

“I can leave—”

Her face must have looked as unwelcoming as she felt, and reflexively she pulled her mouth into a smile, even though she knew it probably wasn’t reaching her eyes. “No. Of course you won’t leave. Come in.”

“I—I had to get out of Seattle. It felt claustrophobic.”

Becca was on the brink of tears. And Alia—with a surge of relief—felt that strange gratitude rising in her, the pleasure of being able to draw her sister to her feet and put both her arms around her. The familiar warmth, the home scent of Becca’s hair, the way hugging family felt different and more comfortable than any other contact.

She led Becca into her room and switched on the electric kettle to make them cups of tea and straightened the bedclothes without letting herself think about why they were so rumpled. And then the two of them curled up on the bed.

“What happened, baby?”

Tears spilled over from Becca’s eyes, and her face crumpled.

“That bad, huh?”

“I called him. I told him I was so sorry and I wanted to talk about it. I asked him if he’d come over.”

“Good for you, hon!”

But she already knew where this was going. The sight of Becca leaning against her door had told her everything she needed to know about the outcome.

Sometimes talking about it only made the fundamental problems more clear. It brought undercurrents to the surface.

“He came over. He was so nice, Li. I think that’s the worst part. He was
so
nice. He said he totally accepted my apology and we all have those moments when we want to flee. And he listened so patiently to what I was telling him.”

It is worse when they’re nice. When they listen and understand, but tell you, in the end, that they
don’t
love you. Not enough, anyway.

“I basically told him the whole history. How things were really chaotic when we were kids and no one caught the fact that I was struggling so badly in school. I said I’d always thought of myself as stupid, and that when I saw his books, and he said what he said, I freaked out.”

Becca was still teary, but her voice had gained strength as she talked.

“I’m proud of you, Bex,” Alia said. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

Becca shook her head. “It wasn’t some big heroic thing. I just—I just felt like it was my last chance with him, you know? I was laying my cards on the table.”

Yeah, I know,
Alia thought. And it hadn’t been any act of heroism for her, either, telling Nate how she felt about it. Just the words that had come out when it was time for truth-telling.
I don’t want to stop. Doing this. Being with you.

“He told me he really appreciated my honesty. He said something like what you just said, that it couldn’t have been easy telling him that whole story, and he respected me for doing it. But I could see it. On his face. That there was a big ol’ ‘but’ coming. And sure enough—” She hesitated. “You probably think I’m an idiot. For even caring. It was four dates, right?”

She shot an appealing glance in Alia’s direction.

Alia shook her head. Touched her sister’s soft blond hair. “I think you can tell a lot about someone in a short time.”

“I know, right? I think—”

Becca closed her eyes and put her hands over her face.

“I think I was probably already in love with him.”

Me, too.

She almost said it. But then Becca began to cry, hard, racking sobs that pulled up from the root of her, and Alia knelt up and crawled to her, put her arms around her. “Shh, hon. You’re all right.”

She held her for a long time, until Becca’s sobs subsided. Inside her own chest, her own grief was held back and frozen—still and heavy.

She thought of telling Becca the whole story. It might feel good to let it spill, after all this time. How she and Nate had gotten together, how sex had spun itself into intimacy, into a closeness so deep and thorough that it hurt now to be deprived of it. How she had hoped, how she had given everything she had, how it hadn’t been enough. But Becca felt so good in her arms, a reason to put one foot in front of the other, someone to take care of, to comfort, to pour herself into. Her story could wait until Becca felt better. Until the storm had passed.

“He said things in his life were complicated. And he wanted to be honest with me now so he wouldn’t hurt me later. He said he didn’t have the time or the energy for complicated, and that obviously I was complicated, which wasn’t a bad thing, just not—not
his
thing, not
right now.
Right now, he needed simple. And that he was sorry. Really, really sorry. Sorry he hadn’t been honest with me sooner, before we’d—” In an uncharacteristically violent move, she slammed her fist down into the bed. And then again, until Alia took her hand and held it fast in her own, a trembling thing. “I wish I hadn’t. You told me to be careful—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. You slept with a guy you liked. That’s not a crime. And what happened wasn’t punishment. It was just—it was just two people going in different directions.”

Becca’s hand had stilled. Her shoulders had slowed their shaking, and when she looked up at Alia next, her face was calmer.

“You don’t need him,” Alia said.

She’d said it as much to herself as to Becca, and with far more certainty than she felt. While her chest felt like concrete, faulty with cracks.