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Emotionally dishonest. That’s what she’d told Kissy about him, and she’d been right. She’d had enough pain in her life, and she was bailing out. Loving a man who batted around her heart like one of his basketballs had grown too awful to bear.
Early the next morning, she found him asleep on one of the couches, his mouth slightly open, his arm dipping into the puddle of manuscript pages scattered on the floor beneath him. She located the key to his Jag and threw everything into her overnight case as quietly as she could. His truck was parked in the garage, so she wasn’t leaving him stranded.
The car started right away. As she slipped it into reverse and backed around in the drive, the morning sun struck her in the eyes. They were still swollen from the night before. She reached into her purse for sunglasses. The driveway was steep and rutted. Jake and his insecurities. He’d made the approach to the house nearly impassable, all so he could guard his precious, stupid privacy.
She started to crawl down the drive. A movement in the rearview mirror caught her attention. It was Jake running toward the car. His shirttail had come undone, his hair stood up on one side of his head, and he looked as if he wanted to murder someone. She couldn’t hear what he was yelling. Probably just as well.
She hit the accelerator, took the next curve too fast, and felt the car bottom out on one of the ruts. She overcompensated by jerking the steering wheel to the right. The Jag swerved. Before she could straighten, the front wheel was hanging over a ditch.
She turned off the ignition and rested her arms on top of the steering wheel, waiting for Jake and his anger, or Jake and his wisecracks, or Jake and whatever other facade he’d decide to throw up between them. Why couldn’t he let her go? Why couldn’t they finally take the easy way out?
The driver’s door swung open, but she didn’t move. His breathing sounded as ragged as hers had on that Fourth of July night six months ago. She pushed the sunglasses higher on her nose.
“You didn’t take your necklace.” His voice was higher-pitched than normal. He cleared his throat. “I want you to have your necklace, Flower.”
The morning glory pendant slipped into her lap. She felt the warmth of the metal from where he’d clutched it in his hand. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. “Thank you.”
“I—I had it made especially for you.” He cleared his throat again. “This guy I know. I did a pencil drawing for him.”
“It’s beautiful.” She spoke politely, as if she’d just received it. Still she wouldn’t look at him.
His feet shifted in the gravel. “I don’t want you to go, Flower. All that stuff last night…” His voice sounded hoarse, as if he were getting a cold. “I’m sorry.”
She wouldn’t cry, but the effort cost her, and her words sounded as broken as her heart. “I can’t—I can’t take any more. Let me go.”
He drew a ragged breath. “I did what you said. I read the book. You…You were right. I—I’ve been locked up inside myself too long. Afraid. But when I went to get you by the pool last night…All of a sudden I knew I was a hell of a lot more afraid of losing you than I was of anything that happened fifteen years ago.”
She finally turned to look at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. She pulled off her sunglasses and heard him clear his throat again and suddenly realized he was crying.
“Jake?”
“Don’t look at me.”
She turned away, but then his hands were on her arms, and he was pulling her from the car. He squeezed her to his chest so tightly she could barely breathe. “Don’t leave me.” He choked out the words. “I’ve been alone for so long…all my life. Don’t leave me. Jesus, I love you so much. Please, Flower.”
She felt him crumbling. All the protective layers he’d built around himself were breaking away. She finally had what she wanted—Jake Koranda with his emotions stripped raw. Jake letting her see what he’d never shown to anyone else. And it broke her heart.
She covered his tears with her mouth, swallowed them, made them disappear. She tried to heal h
im with her touch. She wanted to make him whole again, as whole as she was. “It’s all right, cowboy,” she whispered. “It’s all right. I love you. Just don’t shut me out anymore. I can take anything but that.”
He gazed down at her, his eyes red-rimmed, all the cockiness stripped away. “What about you? How long are you going to keep shutting me out? When are you going to let me in?”
“I don’t know what you—” She stopped herself and rested her cheek against his jaw. His smokescreens were no different from her own. All her life, she’d tried to find her personal value in the opinions of others—the nuns at the couvent, Belinda, Alexi. And now it was her business. Yes, she wanted her agency to succeed, but if it failed, she wouldn’t be any less a person. There was nothing wrong with her. She’d been just as much a victim of her misconceptions as Jake.
Try to feel some compassion for the kid you were, she’d told him. Maybe it was time she took her own advice and felt a little compassion for the frightened child she’d been.
“Jake?”
He muttered something into her neck.
“You’ll have to help me,” she said.
He slipped his fingers in her hair, and they kissed long enough to lose track of time. When they finally moved apart, he said, “I love you, Flower. Let’s get this car out of here and drive down to the water. I want to look at the ocean and hold you close and tell you everything I’ve wanted to say for a long time. And I think you have some things to tell me, too.”
She thought of everything she needed to tell him. About the couvent and Alexi, about Belinda and Errol Flynn, about her lost years and her ambitions. She nodded.
They got the car back on the road. Jake drove, and as they began their slow crawl down the drive, he picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips. She smiled, and then she gently pulled away. Her purse held a compact with a pocket mirror. She flipped it open and began to study her face.
