One Night in the Ice Storm (9 page)

“He
didn’t tell me anything. Not a single thing. Just that he’d already left the
house.”

“Then
why are you asking—”

“Something
happened. You did something to him. He sounded…he sounded broken.”

Familiar
impatience with her brother’s unreasonable behavior clashed with utter
confusion. “I didn’t do anything to him, and I don’t appreciate your—”

“I
don’t give a damn what you appreciate. How could you do this to him? Is it some
sort of payback? Use him and toss him away? I didn’t think you’d be so
heartless.”

She
almost choked. Nothing her brother said made any sense at all. “Heartless?
Me
?
You’re saying—”

“I’m
saying that David doesn’t deserve this. I don’t care what you believe about
him. He’s the best guy in the world. And I’ve had to watch him brood over you
for years. For
years
. He’s never been able to get over you.”

She
heard the words and thought she understood their meaning. But they didn’t hold
together with any basic coherency. She fell back onto the couch, since her
knees weren’t holding her up.

She
tried to respond, “I don’t understand—”

Brad
didn’t let her finish the sentence. “It’s painful,” he continued, sounding as
outraged and angry as she’d ever heard him. “It’s just plain painful, to watch
him hang on any random detail someone mentions about you. To see him steer
conversations so he can find out how you’re doing. It’s
painful
, knowing
you won’t even give him the time of day.”

She
made a choking sound.

“And
now you’ve gone and slept with him or something, and he’s never going to be
able to get over it. He doesn’t deserve this. I can’t believe you’ve gone and—”

“Stop
it!” she broke in, half-sobbing and half-screaming at him. “
Stop it
!
None of this makes any sense. I didn’t do anything to him—now or back then. He
dumped me. I loved him, and
he
dumped
me
.”

Her
nearly hysterical response seemed to pop the momentum of Brad’s tirade like a
pin to a balloon. He let out a loud whoosh of breath.

“He
didn’t,” Brad said, sounding more exhausted than angry now. “Not really. You
just never knew what happened.”

Rachel opened her mouth
to respond, but no words came out.

After
a long stretch of silence, Brad asked, “You still there, Rach?”

She
shook with emotion and confusion, and it was evident in her voice. “Tell me
what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Brad
cleared his throat. “David never wanted to dump you back then. He was crazy
about you. Still is. He just didn’t have a choice.”

“I
don’t understand. Why would he…” She trailed off, wiping tears from her face
and trying to force the world to make sense again.

“I
promised I wouldn’t tell you. I
promised
him.”

“You
have to tell me,” she almost pleaded. “I have to know.”

When
he still didn’t respond, she was on the edge of tears again. “Please tell me.
You
have
to tell me. This is my heart, Brad. It’s my heart.”

He
let out another thick breath. “Okay. Fine. It was Grandpa.”

“What?”

“Grandpa
found out about you and David. That summer, I mean.”

“But..”
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think, even in the force of her chaotic
emotion. “But what would he do—”

“What
do you think he did? He found David and told him he had to stop seeing you.”

“But
David wouldn’t have listened. He didn’t care about what anyone thought. If he
really cared about me—”

“This
is Grandpa we’re talking about, remember? I wasn’t just an empty warning or an
idle threat. He made sure David knew that, if he didn’t stop seeing you, he would
bring David up on statutory rape charges.”

“What?”
she choked.

“You
heard me. You were seventeen. He was nineteen. That’s technically against the
law in Virginia.”

“But
the courts would never—”

“In
this county? If Grandpa was the one pressing charges? You know better than
that. David could have gone to prison for a year and it would follow him the
rest of his life. And that wasn’t even all. You know those rumors about David’s
mom? Well, Grandpa threatened to—”

“Oh
God,” Rachel breathed.

“Maybe
if he was the only one threatened, he would have risked it. But you don’t
expect him to make his mother go through that as well, just so he could keep
dating—”

“No,
of course not!  But I can’t believe Grandpa would have done that.”

“You
know Grandpa as well as I do. He could be great sometimes, but sometimes he was
just a bastard. I swear he did it. You were his princess, and he didn’t want
David anywhere close to you.”

She
was silent for a long time, trying to process this truth, this explanation that
rewrote the whole story of her life. “So he…he didn’t want to dump me like
that?”

“
Want
to? Listen to me, it killed him. It tore him up. But what else could he have
done.”

“Why
didn’t he just tell me? I would have understood—I really would have understood.
And I wouldn’t have had to hate him all this time.”

“Part
of Grandpa’s terms was that no one could know—especially you.”

“How
did you find out?”

“He
wasn’t going to tell me either. I went over there to…well, to beat him up for
how he’d treated you.” Brad sounded as awkward about this confession as if he’d
committed a guilty sin. “Because of how he acted, I figured out something else
must be going on, so I wouldn’t leave until he told me.”

“Why
didn’t you tell
me
? All this time, you’ve known what I thought, and you
haven’t bothered to tell me—”

“I
told you before. I promised David I’d never tell you. I shouldn’t have told you
now.”

“Yes,
you should have.” She was still confused, overwhelmed, and far too
emotional—but something like hope had sprung to life inside her. “But I still
don’t understand. I’ve been a legal age for years now—we could have had a
relationship and no one could stop us. David’s mom is dead, and Grandpa’s been
dead more than a year. Why couldn’t he have told me himself, if he was still
interested…interested in…” She trailed off.

“It’s
your own fault, you little idiot. You put on such a good show of not caring
that he believed it.”

The
whole world seemed to freeze. “What?”

“He
believed it. He thought you didn’t care that much about him, that it hadn’t
been serious for you—especially after you started going out with guys all the
time your senior year. He thought you’d been fine in ending things with him.”

“I
wasn’t fine,” she rasped. “I was…heart-broken.”

“But
you never let him see that. You never let me see it either, by the way. I knew
it bothered you more than you said, but I didn’t know how much. What were we
supposed to think?”

It
was too much. Just too, too much. She couldn’t begin to process it.

“I’ve
got to go,” Brad said in a different voice. “Mom’s coming down. We’ll be there
in a little while. I’d suggest that, if there’s any way you can fix this, you
try.”

He
hung up then, and Rachel just sat on the couch, staring down at the silent
phone in her hand.

She
was so dazed that she didn’t even hear a car pull up the drive. And she barely
processed the sound of the side door opening and someone moving through the
kitchen and into the living room.

She
blinked when she saw David stride toward the couch, looking intent, determined,
and simmering with nameless emotion.

He
leaned over and pulled her to her feet. Then he cupped her face with both
calloused hands. “I have something to say, and you’re going to listen to me,”
he told her, almost roughly.

She
blinked at him again, excitement and something deeper rising in her chest like
a flood. She opened her mouth.

“No,”
he continued, as if he needed to keep her from saying words her throat was
incapable of articulating. “You’re going to listen to me right now. What
happened last night was not casual. It wasn’t just physical. I don’t care what
you’re trying to make yourself believe, but it wasn’t. There’s something real
between us. There’s always been something real. I know I blew it when we were
teenagers, but you don’t know the whole story with that. I can’t explain it to
you, but I never wanted to stop seeing you back then. I never wanted to not be
with you. What we had then was real, and what we have now is real too. And I’m
not going to just give up on it because you’re trying to run away.”

She
gaped at him, rather stupidly. Her mind and heart and body were all a whirl of
feeling.

“I
should have said something before, but I didn’t think I mattered to you
anymore. But after last night…I
do
matter to you, and you’re not going
to make me believe otherwise. Maybe I pretend to be completely self-sufficient,
and maybe you pretend to be invincible. But neither of those things is true. I
need you, Rachel. And—you might not want to admit it—but you need me too.”

Something
about his hoarse, earnest declaration broke through the stupor in her mind. She
gasped out, “You need me?”

He’d
been gripping her upper-arms, as if she might try to slip away, but now he
moved his hands back up to her face again. “I need you. I want you. I’m just no
good without you. I’ve wanted to be with you for most of my life, and that’s
never going to change. Can you please at least consider the possibility?”

She
opened her mouth one more time, but the words were trapped in her throat. Her
vision was blurry with tears, which she tried to blink away, since she wanted
to keep seeing David’s hungry, tender eyes.

“You
can talk now,” he murmured, with an irresistible twitch of his mouth. “I’ve
said my piece.”

A
bubble of amusement burst, and she threw herself against his chest. “I need you
too. I want you too.”

With
a rough groan, he wrapped her in his arms, hugging her so tightly her ribs
hurt.

“Oh,
thank God,” she heard him murmur against her hair.

She
was smiling as she finally pulled away, happiness flooding her heart, her
expression. “I talked to Brad just now. He told me.”

David
lowered his brows, despite the fact that he was clearly spilling over with the
same feeling she was. “He told you what?”

“He
told me what happened. About Grandpa. And everything.”

“He
shouldn’t have told you. He promised.”

“I
bullied him into it.” She reached up to stroke his bristly jaw. “I needed to
know. You broke my heart. I needed to know why.”

The
lines in his forehead became deeper. “I broke your heart?”

“Of
course, you did. I was…I was crazy about you, and I thought you’d treated me
like dirt. I just couldn’t forgive you. I couldn’t get over it.”

“I
didn’t know.” He pulled her into a one-armed hug, holding her against his
chest. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. It killed me. I was wreck, but you seemed
to get over it so quickly. So I kept telling myself it was just as well, since
you obviously weren’t serious about me.”

“I
didn’t get over it quickly,” she admitted, her mouth muffled by his shirt. “I
didn’t get over it at all.”

“I’ll
make it up to you,” he promised. “Just give me a chance, and I’ll show you how
much you mean to me, how incredibly precious you are to me.”

“As
long as you give me a chance too.”

He
leaned down to kiss her—deeper and more ardently than even last night. She
responded, trying to show him through her eagerness, her responsiveness how
deeply she felt about him.

Despite
the fact that she was still half-crying, it was a pretty good kiss. It was
about to overwhelm her when she accidently put weight on her ankle.

She
jerked and gave a little cry at the jolt of pain. She had to cling to David’s
shirt to steady herself.

The
kiss broken, he reached out to support her. “Okay?”

“Yeah.
Pretty good.” She was grinning. Couldn’t seem to stop.

“Me
too.”

“So…so
what now?” she asked. The spiral of emotions was finally leveling off, leaving
as many questions as answers.

“I
guess Brad and your mom will show up soo—”

“I
meant what now with us, you idiot.” There was no way he could miss the soft
affection in her eyes.

His
face softened too. “I guess we should maybe start with a date. Do you happen to
be free Saturday night?”

She
snickered. “Yes. I can probably fit you. But why wait so long? Why don’t you
join us for Christmas Eve tonight?”

His
eyes were dark and rich and mesmerizing. “That’s a family thing, isn’t it?”