Second Opinion (20 page)

CHAPTER 19

EIGHT YEARS EARLIER

“I’m scared, Grant.”

Her voice was a whisper, her breath warm against my cheek.

I was, too. I was terrified, actually. I’d never lost anyone close to me, and I wasn’t sure what to do to help her through it. So I helplessly stroked her hair and held her close, knowing words weren’t enough to calm her fears.

Her mom had been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She hadn’t told anyone and had suffered alone through it until it was too late. She didn’t want her daughters to worry about her when nothing could be done to save her, and so it wasn’t until Mrs. Carter was literally on her death bed that she’d clued in her kids to the fact that she wouldn’t make it to Christmas.

It was early December, one of those rare days in Phoenix where it just rained all day long. The sky was one long strip of gray, and rain pounded next to my ear as I leaned with my head against the window in Rachelle’s mother’s hospital room.

I was cradling Rachelle in my arms, holding her like a child while her sister, Alyse, sat on the other side of the bed, holding her mom’s hand. I stared out the window, wondering if my parents should be here, too. I’d wanted to introduce Rachelle to my family a million times, but I’d just never done it.

And now it would just seem like I was only doing it because of this. I couldn’t replace her mother with my own. Life just didn’t work like that.

So I didn’t even bring it up. I couldn’t add more stress to Rachelle’s plate when she was barely holding on by a thread.

The first time I had met Rachelle’s mother, Helene, was two nights before. She’d told Rachelle she wanted to meet the man who had put the smile on her daughter’s face before she died, and so they had invited me for dinner.

It had never struck me as odd we hadn’t met each other’s families. It just hadn’t come up. And now so much time had passed it seemed like this huge deal.

I’d already had it in my mind I wanted to propose to her. I had already started planning how I was going to do it, started saving my money for a ring.

But the timing wasn’t right.

It didn’t matter, though, because I’d wait forever for her. I’d wait until our time was right because I loved her with my whole heart and I was fully convinced we would be together forever.

The rain started to beat harder against the window. Lightning streaked across the dark sky, and a rumble of thunder followed.

And it was in the quiet moments when the rain let up and the thunder ceased that Helene took her last breath. Rachelle and Alyse cried quietly, and I just held her because it was still all I knew how to do. Saying I was sorry just wasn’t going to be enough.

I was there for Rachelle in the days that followed in a way I’d never been for anyone before her. I took the week off of work to support her. I made phone calls and paid bills and helped with arrangements. I froze casseroles and reheated meals and cleaned the dishes. I did whatever I could to take some of the load off of Rachelle and her sister, and in the quiet dark of night, I held her close while she sobbed tears of grief.

It rained for the entire week.

It was torture seeing the pain she was enduring. I would gladly have taken on her pain as my own, but I couldn’t.

And when Helene Carter was laid in her final resting place on yet another rainy day, I held Rachelle’s hand and wiped her tears away, knowing while the worst was over, she had a long road of grief ahead of her. Her life would never be the same, but I would do everything I could to make her smile again.

It was three days after the funeral when I first saw a glimmer of the smile I’d fallen so hard for. We’d just finished a day of cleaning out closets and dusting off old memories, and we headed to my place, a place devoid of everything that reminded her of her loss. I lived in a small apartment by myself. It was convenient and close to work.

“I have a joke,” I said.

She looked over at me. She was always the beautiful girl I had fallen in love with, but dark circles shadowed her eyes. She looked worn-out and run down.

“What do you call a stick?”

She shrugged, not into my joke at all.

“Fuck!” I said. “I messed up the joke!”

The tiniest smile tipped up the corner of her mouth. “Start over.”

“What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?”

“A stick?”

I chuckled, and I saw her chuckle, too.

“That’s really stupid,” she said, but that tiny smile still lit her face.

“I know. But it did the trick.”

“Grant, thank you for being here for me this week,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist and tucking her head under my chin. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

I didn’t know how to reply, so I just tightened my arms around her and kissed the top of her head.

CHAPTER 20

PRESENT TIME

I must’ve driven in circles for hours. The Loop 202 freeway literally made a giant loop with the help of another highway, so I just kept driving.

In circles.

Like a goddamn crazy person.

But I couldn’t stop.

I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know what to do.

Someone once told me the dictionary definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.

I looked it up. It’s not true.

But if it
was
true, I’d be insane.

For starters, seeing Rachelle would only end one way. It always ended the same way.

Yet I wanted to see her.

There was really only one thing I was certain of: I was fucking tired of driving in circles.

I looked at the time on my clock in my car. It was a little after three in the morning. I still hadn’t responded to Rachelle or to Avery.

I was afraid to look at my phone. I wasn’t sure what sort of jeopardy I’d placed my fledgling relationship with Avery in. I was fully aware I hadn’t made the right decision. Driving in silence for more than three hours with nothing but my thoughts on repeat gave me plenty of time to consider what I had done. It also gave me plenty of time to consider what I was going to do.

But, perhaps worst of all, it gave me plenty of time to remember everything about my past, most especially why Rachelle had been placed on that unmovable pedestal so many years earlier. There wasn’t any one thing. Our relationship had been easy from the start of it. We worked naturally together. We rarely argued; we never fought. We just enjoyed spending time together.

In fact, as I look back on my college years, I fondly remember two things: playing ball and dating Rachelle.

CHAPTER 21

TWELVE YEARS EARLIER

I could not have been more excited that Rachelle had stayed at Arizona State University to continue her education after she finished her undergraduate work. It meant we wouldn’t need to stop living in the perfect dream world we’d been in since the night we both lovingly referred to as the Captain Morgan Confessional.

We were hanging out at her apartment on one of those perfect nights where we sat across from each other at the table. She was studying for a test. I was studying her.

Rachelle had charts and graphs spread before her, and I couldn’t help but stare at her as she worked. Her nose crinkled in concentration as her brows knit together. She tucked some hair behind her ear, and a few seconds later, it slipped forward again. The tip of her pinky finger made its way between her lips. She sucked absentmindedly on her fingernail.

Watching her lips around her finger was erotic and sensual. She didn’t mean for it to be, but seeing her lips wrapped around anything at all tended to shift things around in my pants.

She was hardworking and kind and passionate, and I knew someday I was going to marry her. Someday she would be my wife, and we would raise a family together. We would smile together in the good times, and I would hold her hand in mine during the bad.

Staring at her as she studied her graphs confirmed for me what I’d always known.

People liked to talk about how much work relationships were. What Rachelle and I shared had never really been “work.” We had far more ups than downs. Being together came easy to us even though it had taken some time for us to actually get together. But after the Captain Morgan Confessional, we’d fallen into a pretty easy relationship. We spent all of our free time together, even though free time was severely limited between baseball practice and classes. We ate meals together. We didn’t technically live together, but I was almost always at her place, and if I wasn’t, she was at mine.

We had fun together. Whether we were watching a movie, attending a concert, or just sitting in the grass in the middle of campus, we were always smiling.

And more importantly, we were always touching.

Her hand found my thigh. Our fingers intertwined. My arm slung around her shoulders. Our lips met. Sometimes we just sat close enough that our shoulders brushed. Whatever the case, we were affectionate with each other, and neither of us cared who saw.

Our relationship was fairly new still. We’d only been together for about a year, but it had taken less than a full month before I was convinced she was the woman I’d marry someday. She was the woman I wanted to spend my life loving.

One of the things I loved most about her was how understanding she was. She understood the majority of my time was taken up with ball, and she attended every single game she could.

And when I stood in my position between second and third base and spotted her standing along the fence, the adrenaline that kicked through my system had more to do with her than with the game.

She helped me focus. She helped me relax. But more than anything, she helped me just to be me.

And the sex?

She was adventurous. She was exciting. She was different from any other woman I’d been with. The others had simply been girls compared to her.

She glanced up at me. Her eyes met mine, and her lips tipped up in a small smile. She lifted her arms above her head and stretched, and I couldn’t help it when my eyes automatically flickered down to her breasts.

She rolled her eyes at me. “Perv,” she muttered.

I grinned. “How’s studying coming along?”

She shrugged. “These health care laws are killing me.”

“If you need a sex break, I’m your guy.”

She giggled. “Thanks for the offer.”

“You’re passing?” I asked.

“For now.”

“Do you need me to take off my shirt?”

She shook her head. “You better not. If you do, I’ll just want to lick those perfect abs of yours and I’ll never pass my test tomorrow.”

“Well if you need me to take off my shirt, you just say the word.”

“Got it.”

She grinned at me before returning to her graphs and charts, and I couldn’t help but think how it was just one more of those little things that made our relationship perfect.

We were always there for each other, whether it was for a quick laugh or a serious conversation. She had become my best friend, my only friend, really, outside of the baseball team. I just didn’t have much time to dedicate elsewhere, and honestly I didn’t want to. I loved my life exactly how it was, and I was fully convinced after only a year together that we would make it forever.

CHAPTER 22

PRESENT TIME

I finally got off at my exit. It was stupid to drive in circles, and besides, I was almost out of gas. I’d go home and fill up in the morning.

As I pulled into my garage, the exhaustion finally hit me. It had been a long night. I’d had a few beers, my body had been prepared to ravage Avery for the night, and then I’d ditched her for a near-mental breakdown.

I cut the engine and hit the garage button, and then I finally picked up my cell phone.

The damage was pretty brutal.

I didn’t have any new messages from Rachelle, but I didn’t really expect to.

I did, however, have a few from Avery, plus a couple of missed calls.

The first one made me feel like a dick.
Where did you go? Hope everything is okay.
She had been concerned about me while I was the asshole who ran away without an explanation.

The second one had me a little anxious about what I’d done to her:
Can you just text me to let me know everything is okay? I’m getting worried.

I’d put her through something unnecessary because I’d been too foolish to let her in on what was happening with me.

Her final text clawed at my heart.
What happened? Please just let me know you’re okay when you get this. Are we over?

Rachelle’s text threw me for a loop, and I wasn’t sure how to respond to her. It was the same argument I’d had in my mind over and over throughout the night.

It was stupid to see her, but I wanted to see her.

She’d made mistakes, and the last time I’d seen her had ripped me apart, had fucked me up forever. But maybe this was my chance to finally find out why she’d done what she’d done to me.

My loop driving had definitely shown me one thing, and Avery’s final text to me had confirmed my thoughts. It wasn’t right to see Rachelle again at the expense of what I was starting with Avery.

But just because it wasn’t right didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do it anyway.

I couldn’t write Rachelle back yet. I still wasn’t sure what I was doing where she was concerned. But I could write Avery back. I could let her know I was fine, that I was just working through something and I needed some time.

That’s what I should have done.

Instead, I stuck my phone in my pocket as I exited my car and strode through my house to my bed.