Love Inspired August 2014 – Bundle 1 of 2 (37 page)

Chapter Nineteen

T
he door shut behind Heather, and Max’s cabin felt bombed out, hollowed out, whatever
was twelve times beyond empty. Times like these he most hated the limitations of his
body. The urge to kick, to explode in a running, throwing rage couldn’t be contained
in arms and fists. He drew in angry, rumbling breaths, wanting to roar at something
but having no target. This anger, this ticking time bomb of pent-up frustration was
about to go off—had already gone off, if he really thought about it—and it needed
speed and force to defuse. Speed and force—the very things he lacked.

He’d done the right thing. He alone knew Kikowitz needed a good scare, and he’d seen
to it. That had to be true. The creeping doubt, the black regret that started in his
stomach and seemed to feed on the looks in JJ’s and Heather’s eyes, that was sentimental
nonsense. After all, no one was breaking down doors and shouting lectures at the other
three from GFVFD.

Well, no one except Chief Bradens. Yeah, well, what did an upstanding do-gooder like
Clark Bradens know about guys like Kikowitz? Thugs like he’d once been? People like
Bradens, like Heather, they wouldn’t last a day in his world. He was kidding himself
if he thought he was anything but alone.

Alone.
The word set fire to the exploding feeling again. Needing to smash something, Max
took the empty coffee cup and hurled it to the floor. He wanted it to break into a
thousand furious pieces, but the sturdy stoneware only bounced off the Formica, sending
off one pathetic chip. He couldn’t even reach down to pick it up and hurl it against
something else.

It was good that Heather had ended it, no matter what she said. It hurt so much to
watch her walk out that door now, it would have killed him if he’d gone ahead and
fallen in love with her. He felt as if his heart was bound in barbed wire as it was.
For the first time since the accident, Max wished he felt less instead of yearning
to feel more.

There was one person who would understand what he was going through right now. Max
scrolled though the contacts list on his cell until he found Luke Sullivan’s number.

A woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

“Is Luke there?”

“Um...who is this please?” Whoever it was Luke had chosen as his companion for the
night, she sounded decidedly unhappy.

“This is Max Jones. We’re—” he groped for the right word “—business associates.”

“Then you know Luke isn’t in a position to talk right now.” At Max’s pause, she added,
“I mean, you do know, right?”

“I’m not sure I follow you, Ms....”

“Sullivan. Terri Sullivan. I’m Luke’s sister.” He heard her let out a big breath.
“Oh, man, you don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Luke rolled his car Monday night. He was out drinking with some race buddies and
he...well, he...” Her voice broke. “He’s in a coma, okay? So it’s not like he has
time for business associates right now.”

“I’m sorry.” What else was there to say?

“Look, I gotta go. I... Well, I gotta go. I was supposed to be at the hospital ten
minutes ago.”

Max stared at the phone for a whole minute after the call ended. Sullivan’s original
injury had come from a drunk-driving accident. And now this. Some hero. Some champion.
What a waste of a life.

Suddenly, the tiny cabin couldn’t contain him. He needed space and speed, and there
was only one place to really get it. In two minutes he’d grabbed a sweatshirt and
was out the door, rolling down toward the docks and the
Sea Legs.
Who cared that it wasn’t sailing weather? It was cold, but it was windy, and wind
meant speed, wind meant power, and right now he needed as much of both as he could
grab.

Max worked so fast to get himself into the boat, he nearly slipped twice in the process.
Everything took so long in a chair! He slammed his seat into place with such force
the whole boat shook; he yanked the dock lines fast enough to send them humming along
the cleats, leaving friction burns on his palms. The pain felt good. Pain meant he
was alive, meant that he was feeling something other than the anger.

The chilly late September wind sent the
Sea Legs
hurling through the river and whipped Max’s hair hard against his face. Max pulled
the sails in tighter, wrestling every bit of speed he could from the wind. The current
put up a battle, but he welcomed it. He was itching for a fight. The craft sped across
the water, up daringly on one keel, fast and feisty and satisfying.

His tension unraveled a notch with every mile, the speed and movement releasing the
bristling ball of anger trapped in his chest. He took in a breath and yelled across
the water, listening to the sound echo in the wide-open space. Gordon Falls and all
its expectations faded behind him; the gray blustery sky ahead matched his thoughts.
He bellowed again, just because it felt so good.

No matter how hard he tried, Max could not stop his thoughts from turning to Simon.
Simon would never be allowed escapes like this. Stranded at home, surrounded by fear
disguised as care, the kid would slowly and surely rot. He’d never know that life—even
life in a chair—outlived high school, opening up beyond that tiny, petty world into
a place where sports, camping, travel, jobs and all kinds of things awaited him. He’d
probably never kiss a girl.

Kissing a girl was the most amazing thing. Kissing Heather had been like swallowing
light, like drinking brilliance. Even now his neck remembered the feel of her hands.
Even though relationships were off the table, Simon ought to know the exquisite sensation
of a woman’s hand slipping around his neck.

And you shoved her away.

The thought stabbed hard.

His retaliation to Kikowitz had nothing to do with Heather. He’d done it to protect
Simon, not in some kind of psychobabble lash-out against intimacy. He hadn’t sabotaged
his relationship with Heather—it would have crashed on its own given time. Sure, this
felt beyond lousy right now, but numbness was his gift in the world, wasn’t it? What
had Sullivan said? The first letdown feels like being dropped a mile?

A mile? Try ten miles. Try a thousand.

And now where was Sullivan? Lying in a hospital bed trying to stay alive. Again.

The boat shuddered and lurched, yanking Max from his thoughts to realize he’d come
too close to shore and nearly beached the
Sea Legs
up on the muddy riverbank. He shook his head, pulled up the rudder a bit and luffed
the sail enough to let the boat skid back into the deeper water.
Pay attention, Jones. Don’t add stupid to stupid.

You shoved her away.
The convicting thought wouldn’t go away. Max brought the boat about, returning it
to its smooth speed through the river. He wanted to stop thinking, to outrun his thoughts
and burn off his anger. Only he wasn’t angry anymore. The wind and water had done
their trick and tamped down the storm inside him. He just didn’t like what was left.

You looked for reasons to leave her. You handed her a reason to leave you. Worse yet,
you used Simon as your excuse to do it.

He could run this river all the way up to its source, and he wouldn’t escape that
conviction. On some level—maybe not then but certainly now—Max knew he’d helped orchestrate
the revenge on Kikowitz because it would prove to Heather that he wasn’t worth her
affections. And that was so much easier that trying to live up to them, because that
meant risking an eventual heartbreak.

The thought made him laugh. Max Jones, consummate risk taker, was running from risk.
He pointed a finger at the blue heron standing gracefully in the shallows to his left.
“That’s right,” he lectured the bird. “You know what those therapists say—pain is
the mother of stupid. Fear is the father of stupid. And me, I’ve just been the prince
of stupid, haven’t I?” The bird only blinked and turned away as Max turned the boat
back toward Gordon Falls.

He thought some sort of solution would come to him as he guided the boat back home.
It didn’t. He only knew he didn’t want to be like Luke Sullivan, didn’t want to keep
everyone at a distance when that distance would eventually strangle him. Because while
the world thought Luke had everything, it turned out Luke had nothing.

Now what?
Max was pretty sure some whopping apologies were involved, only he didn’t know quite
how to make that happen. Truth was, he still wasn’t sorry for getting to Kikowitz,
just sorry for the fallout. And he was still terrified of getting in too deep with
Heather only to learn she couldn’t handle life with a paraplegic. Only he was also
just as terrified of losing her, which he was pretty sure he’d just done.

How fair was it that Alex, the master problem solver and the guy who said he was on
Max’s side, was in San Francisco for the week? This was not the kind of thing to handle
in text messages and continually dropped cell-phone calls.
Great.
He scowled to himself.
Now where do I go?

Max nearly groaned aloud when he turned the boat about to see the gleaming white steeple
of Gordon Falls Community Church poking above the fall foliage like some kind of sign
someone had put there. “Aw, come on, really? That’s a bit Hollywood, isn’t it?” Max
asked the sky.

He knew what JJ would say. He knew what Alex would say. For that matter, he was pretty
sure what Heather would say.

The words of one of his therapists rang in his head.
If you think you’re going to fall, grab on to the nearest sturdy thing.

Well, okay, Lord,
Max tentatively informed God as he tied the boat up.
This is me grabbing.

* * *

Thursday morning, Heather stared at the vicious orange letters spray painted onto
the sidewalk in front of Simon Williams’s house. Graffiti of any kind—much less the
hateful outburst this displayed—seemed so out of place in quaint Gordon Falls. It
shouted at her from the sidewalk. It poked at her from the fingers of the neighbors
who pointed and stared. It pummeled her from the wounded look in Simon’s mother’s
eyes as she peered out their living room window.

Someone—and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who—had painted
gimp
on the sidewalk. She wondered if Jason Kikowitz had known the slur was viewed among
the worst in the disability community—something so cruel it could barely be said by
one person with a disability to another and could never be used by an able-bodied
person. Had he known and wielded that? Or had it been a terrible happenstance?

Oh, Lord, how could You allow this to go so far?
Her mother often employed the term
heartsick.
She told Heather she was “heartsick” over how things had deteriorated after the driver
of her accident seemed to go unpunished. She’d been “heartsick” at how Dad let the
injustice of it consume him. Heather was heartsick now. Unbearably heartsick at how
a situation that had once been so filled with promise now compounded sorrow upon regret
upon destruction.
It’s all gone so horribly wrong, Lord. You’re going to have to show me what to do
because I truly don’t know.

The fire chief’s red truck pulled up the street, and Chief Bradens’s eyes looked as
bad as she felt. Three other men got out of the truck and began pulling equipment
out of the back. “The boys are here to power-wash that off the sidewalk. I’ve already
talked to the police because I think these three ought to be the ones to scrub it
off.”

Heather thought she knew why, but she asked anyway. “Those three?”

“I’m sorry to say those three louts were the ones to rattle Jason Kikowitz’s cage
the other night. Well, them and someone JJ is probably yelling at again right about
now. If you’ll excuse me.”

Chief Bradens walked his men up to the front door. She saw Brian wave his arms angrily,
pointing at the three young men who had the good sense to look ashamed of themselves.
The door slammed shut. Chief Bradens shook his head with the same disappointed frustration
she’d been feeling and ordered the crew to get to work.

She looked up to offer Simon a friendly wave—just the smallest show of support—but
the shades had been drawn. Sighing, Heather walked up to the door and rang the bell.
It might do more harm than good, but she couldn’t just stand there and not at least
try to reach out to Simon.

Mrs. Williams was slow to come to the door, opening it only far enough to show her
face. “Morning.”

“I was wondering if maybe Simon would like to talk.”

She didn’t look too keen on the idea.

“Or,” Heather tried, “at least I’d like the opportunity to tell him how sorry I am
about all that’s happened. Please.”

“Let her in, Mom,” Simon called from somewhere behind the door.

Mrs. Williams reluctantly opened the door wider and gestured Heather inside. Simon
was in the living room of the tidy home, slumped on a recliner while his chair stood
empty in a corner of the room. He looked like every other fifteen-year-old boy in
the world sprawled on the chair like that, boasting a T-shirt and jeans and playing
with some electronic device he had on his lap.

Heather sat down in the chair nearest him. Mrs. Williams stood in the archway to the
room, arms crossed, watching.

“Mom...” Simon whined, glaring at his mom. “You mind?”

To Heather’s surprise, Mrs. Williams unfolded her hands. “I’ll be in the kitchen getting
lunch started if you need me.” She gave Heather an “I’m watching you” glare before
she left the room.

Simon switched off the game and tossed it on the coffee table. “They’re beyond mad,
you know. I’ve never seen Dad so worked up.”

Heather couldn’t believe Simon’s tone of voice. “They have every right to be. What
happened was horrible. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Yeah, well, that’s high school. One rotten day after another. Mom grounded me for
getting detentions, which is pretty funny, since she never lets me go anywhere anyway.
Kinda dumb.”