TJ realized he’d reached the front door, but Norah hadn’t. She was still standing at the edge of the dining room. “TJ, I’m sorry I yelled at you. It was uncalled for.” Her voice was only a brush above a whisper, and she looked upset with herself.
“It’s okay. It hadn’t even occurred to me to donate it.” He would have gone back to the dining room and grabbed her hand, but he was waiting to spend his efforts on the track, and he already wasn’t feeling like a speeding bullet.
She slogged her way out the door, past where he held it open, and again he was assaulted by memories of their morning together.
Silently TJ berated himself. He’d just decided not to get that physically close to her. Maybe he was stupid. Maybe it was some sick twisted form of passive-aggression against himself.
She climbed in her car and waited until he was in the passenger side.
He started talking again. At least the communication had gotten better between them, even if it still wasn’t there yet. “Do you have to go straight to the studio? Do you think you could come back here one day and help me get back into driving?”
She looked at him. “Depends on what you want me to do.”
“Stand on the porch and be sure to call 9-1-1 if I crash into anything.” He grinned.
“And what will you be learning to drive on?” Her hands clutched the steering wheel tighter as though afraid he might suggest he use her car.
“The Mercedes.”
Her mouth fell open again for a split second before she regained control. “You’re going to practice on that brand new Mercedes?”
“I don’t see anything else. I got in the handi-van and the emergency brake is foot activated.” He explained all his reasoning, and he could see that she still thought he was plum crazy.
She nodded slightly, then rescinded before she agreed. “Not today, but in a few days if you still want.”
There was something in the way that she delivered that last line—like he might actually not want her to—but TJ shook it off.
Chapter 33
They were at the track in no time, descending the steps with her small hand tucked in his, ready to offer her support if he needed it. As usual, she had sandwiched him between the railing and herself. From the looks of her, she wouldn’t be too much help if he fell, but he knew from experience that she was far stronger than she appeared.
They started walking, counterclockwise, the opposite direction from their usual way. TJ wondered if something was up, she seemed more tense now, when she had seemed less tense before. Maybe it was about the equipment. He had been a monumental moron.
A half lap later he tried for an apology.
“Norah, I’m sorry I was such an idiot. But I just knew you’d know what to do. I hope I didn’t offend you too much.” For some reason his legs felt sore this morning.
“No, it’s nothing. I was really rude. I’m sorry.”
Again, silence settled between them. The only sounds were the half-scraping noises of their feet on the rough, chipped-rubber surface of the track.
There were several times where he wanted to stop, to grab the fence beside him and just take a breather. But Norah was a little ahead of him and he wanted to keep up. Something was off. He was certain of it. He just didn’t know what it was, or how to get her to tell him.
In little pieces, it ate at him, and he was walking just behind her, his eyes on her feet, his brain churning, when she threw him the curve.
“I’m not pregnant.”
He stumbled, but righted himself, then threw in a few stuttering jog steps just to catch up beside her. She gave away nothing, keeping up the pace she had set earlier, and looking straight ahead.
She didn’t say anything else, so he pushed. “I knew that. So why are you telling me now?”
“Because I didn’t know.”
Jesus, the woman was a riddle and she wasn’t doing a damn thing to help him solve it. “But you made certain that you didn’t get pregnant.”
God help him, he was angry about it again. TJ tried hard to shake the feeling and stay the course on this one.
“I didn’t take it.” She kept walking, still not looking at him.
“That’s what you lied to me about.”
She shook her head. “I took it.”
“Damnit Norah, do we play Twenty Questions now, or are you going to tell me what this is about?” He was racing just to keep up with her. She’d been increasing her speed, probably trying to get away from him and he wasn’t going to let her off that easy.
Her lips pressed for a moment then she began. “I got the pill, I took the pill. I got sick to my stomach.”
Her mouth started shaking and he fought hard against the sympathy that was springing up inside him.
She took a breath, “It wasn’t the drugs, it was the thought that maybe I had prevented my own baby. So I did take it, but when I got home I vomited it up.”
That was when he did stumble. He went down, hands hitting and scraping the track surface. The burn on his hands and knees was secondary to the one in his brain. The one where she’d wandered around for a week and a half, maybe pregnant with his kid, and hadn’t told him what was going on.
“Jesus, Norah.”
She turned then, finally making eye contact with him, and he saw what it had cost her to wait. “It took a little while to see if I was pregnant or not.”
He rolled himself over to a sitting position, and rested his head in his scraped palm. For a minute he breathed. In and out.
She’d been walking around not talking to him and harboring that.
“Norah, why didn’t you tell me?”
She was leaning over him, her hands on her knees, and she was breathing heavily like she’d run too fast, even though she hadn’t. “Because you would have brought your opinions to the table, and I was having a hard enough time dealing with my own.”
He looked up, for a moment grateful that the track was usually empty. “Why didn’t you tell me that you needed me to just listen and keep my mouth shut?”
She threw her hands up. “Oh, I should have dumped this on you and told you your opinion didn’t count? How unfair is that?”
“How unfair is this?” In anger, he slapped his hand down on the track, only to regret it the instant the pain shot up his arm. “So you just held it all in for all this time? Wandered around like a bottle with a cork in it? I know what you’ve been through. You could have trusted me a little.”
She blinked, and it looked like she was on the verge of tears.
He was on the verge of something, too. He just didn’t know if it was taking her in his arms and crushing her to him or tearing her limb from limb.
He wasn’t prepared for the next words out of her mouth.
“I told my Dad.”
TJ blinked, “I’m sorry. I thought I just heard you say that you couldn’t tell me, but you told your Dad.”
Norah stood up straight and walked in small circles. She nodded.
“What in hell did you tell him?” His breathing sped up, and he pushed himself to his feet. He towered over her, even though she wasn’t short.
“Everything.”
The ice that washed through him was like nothing he’d experienced before. Everything was wrong. He’d thought he had her. That she had something on her mind and he had to wait it out. He saw now that he’d never had anything.
“You told your Dad that I busted into your room and seduced you out of your pajamas and that you liked it?”
She gulped in air, her eyes widening as he got angrier, but TJ kept pushing. “You told him that you came apart in my arms, then did it again?”
This time he gulped air. “Did you tell him I felt the condom break but kept going? Did you happen to mention that I didn’t know what it was, because I was always a good boy and always wore a condom, but never had one break on me before?”
He was practically yelling, hell he was yelling. But Norah stood her ground, even if she did it a little shakily.
At the top of his lungs he turned on her, getting into her face. “Well, he was right!”
His hands went into his hair, and he turned away from her, his thoughts and feelings land-sliding through him. He walked away. His breathing was jagged. He had to get alone, and he didn’t have any alone right now.
His feet moved, but his brain turned over thought after thought. He only briefly turned over the ‘what if she had been pregnant’ stone. She wasn’t, and she seemed glad about it. It burned him all over again.
It burned that she hadn’t come to him. That she hadn’t wanted his advice and in fact had worked very hard to keep the opportunity away from him. Worse, she’d gone to her father.
TJ remembered how he’d felt the last time he’d seen her Dad. It would happen again and there would be a rifle this time.
What was worse was that he’d have probably gone willingly if she’d been pregnant, but now she’d shown how little faith she had in him. How much she didn’t want their lives to mingle, how much she didn’t want to share with him.
He stopped about halfway around, the ice giving up its hold to the flood that overtook him. His hands shook against the fence where he’d braced himself. Hot tears started in his chest but didn’t make it out his eyes.
More the fool he.
He had decided he was going to make Norah fall in love with him.
Instead he had fallen in love with her.
And she was further out of reach than ever before.
TJ fought the tension around his mouth and behind his eyes. He breathed in the air, admitting that he was an idiot. With a deep sigh he resigned himself to walking again. A quick dart of his eyes told him Norah hadn’t moved from her spot, she had merely sat down on the hard surface and put her face in her hands.
She looked to be crying.
Part of him thought, Good.
The other part of him realized she was damaged. She’d lost half her family when she’d run off with the man she loved, only to lose both him and their baby in a tragic accident. She’d told him she was damaged. He just hadn’t listened. She’d shown him, too. Just in case he was too slow to get it when she said it. She’d refused to go to JD and Kelsey’s. The one time she’d held the baby, she’d gone nuts, then gotten so sad.
Still he’d believed that she was functioning on all cylinders when she’d run off that morning screaming that she couldn’t get pregnant. Maybe she was functioning on all cylinders, and they just weren’t the ones he would have chosen.
Then he got mad that he was feeling sorry for her. She was an adult, and she’d shut him out.
She was still sitting in the middle of the track, her face down and shoulders softly heaving.
TJ planted his feet in front of her and waited the few seconds for her to notice that he was there. When she started to look up he didn’t make eye contact, just held his hand down to her. She accepted his help hauling her to her feet. He almost laughed out loud at the irony and symbolism of that action. But he didn’t have it in him.
“TJ I’m so—”
He shook his head, a tight, forced movement that cut her off mid-word.
She offered her hand across the track and again he refused.
What a fool he’d been.
He made it up the stairs with only the railing, wanting to collapse at the top, like he wanted to every day. The big difference was most days it was his legs that wanted to give out. His legs were dead, but it was his heart that wanted to give out this time.
She unlocked the car and he pulled open the passenger side door. Reaching down, he retrieved the wallet and cell phone he’d left there. He closed the door and stepped over into the shade of a tree at the edge of the lot.
He wasn’t about to give up and sink to the ground until she was gone, so he simply leaned against the trunk and waited.
“TJ what are you doing?” Even her voice sounded like it had tears in it.
Good.
“I’m calling a cab.”
He punched at the phone, not thinking about the cab at all. Just thinking that he’d never felt more betrayed in his life—and that it was purely his own fault.
“Don’t.” She was pleading, and he couldn’t stand it. “I’ll drive you home.”
His eyes found hers, and the tears didn’t move him as much as he had thought they would. “Only if you go straight there and don’t speak.”
She gave a small nod, and he climbed into the passenger seat. He was grateful to be off his legs, grateful that he didn’t have to wait. But he didn’t—couldn’t—look at her. Instead he stared blankly out the window, his mind finally, blissfully numb.
He blinked when Norah pulled up next to a sleek green car that took a moment to register as his own. He had the passenger door open and both feet on the ground when she spoke.
“I’ll be here at nine-thirty tomorrow to get you to the studio.”
His lips pressed. “Don’t bother.”
Using the sides of the car doorway, he pushed himself upright and slammed the door behind him. He didn’t turn or wave, just headed up the ramp to the front door. He fumbled with the key, and it was then that he noticed that his hands had a fine tremor. Lovely.
When he got in the door, he only barely registered the sound of her car pulling away. Seeing the medical equipment in the dining room made him pissed all over again.
She stood here and berated him for not thinking to donate it, when she’d known she was going to drop that bomb on him. He was half tempted to throw all of it into the front yard and have a bonfire.
TJ turned away, feeling his hands suffering through the shakes, and thinking that it wasn’t yet time to burn the chair. He congratulated himself on making an adult decision.
Not since he’d been leaving the bar in his convertible with what’s-her-name beside him had his old life looked so good.
Chapter 34
Norah drove home without the radio or any conscious thought. When she got there, she turned the key in the lock, grateful that her Dad was out and she had the place to herself.
It would be after she got back from dance before their paths would cross and he’d see her. Even though she’d keep it together for class, he would still know from her expression that she’d told TJ and that it hadn’t gone well.
She climbed the stairs thinking that was the understatement of the decade. Her father would hold her and give her a very gentle version of the I-told-you-so. Only when she got to the top, to her bedroom doorway, did she let it come. She threw herself at the bed, great gulping sobs coming in waves as she hugged the pillow.
It had been a mistake not to tell TJ.
But then again, that was only one mistake in a long line.
It had been a mistake to make love to him. And a mistake to do it with her heart involved. And if she was going to do that as she had, then it had been a mistake to not tell him then. At least if she had said I’m in love with you he could have shut her down. Instead she’d ridden him right over the edge and fallen off.
But she could go back further. It had been a mistake to let him kiss her and touch her the way he had. She’d known what he was after and she’d been flattered. Stupid.
She shouldn’t have kissed him back in the hallway that first night. But she had. Even that kiss in front of rehab with everyone watching had stolen her breath away. She hadn’t paid attention to how deep she’d gotten. Mistake number one million, nine hundred thousand, and ninety-two.
Norah cried, deep wailing sobs, until she fell asleep face down in the pillow.
Hours later she woke, knowing that her face told the story of her feelings. Getting it together enough to mask the smearing in her voice, she called Mrs. Kenner to let her know that she’d make it to class but not before.
Mrs. Kenner said “All right.
” But there was almost a question mark at the end of it. As though she wondered why Norah would call and tell her this. That maybe she didn’t really expect Norah to show up much at all as long as she taught her classes.
After all she was only the owner.
Norah sighed and climbed into the shower. The hot water felt heavenly and she stayed in it overlong. It cleared the blotchiness from her skin. But while she stood there, wrapped in her fluffy blue bathrobe, she could see that the puffiness around her eyes would give her away. She grabbed tea bags for her eyes.
Her thoughts wandered, making her want to cry again. But Norah knew the tea bag remedy would only work if she was no longer crying. So she clamped down the thoughts and shut the tears away, and promptly fell asleep again.
When she woke, her eyes were stiff and over-dry. They still didn’t look perfectly right, but they weren’t puffy any more. She prayed for the miracle of make-up. What she got wasn’t a miracle, but it was passable.
Dressing quickly, Norah chose her black leggings and a soft, fuzzy red sweater that was cropped enough to show off her waist. Her waist that would stay just as it was and not expand. The sweater was more for distraction from her face than anything else.
With a great sigh she hauled herself down to her car, passing her father on his way in.
Sure enough, he took one look at her, “You told him.”
All Norah could summon was a nod.
Her Dad still carried his side of the conversation. “It didn’t go over well.”
He held his arms out, offering her a hug, but she refused. “I can’t cry now, Daddy.” Her voice almost cracked right then and there. “I’ll talk to you when I get home.”
With that she popped up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned to get in her car. Only she didn’t get in.
Norah turned back to her Dad, knowing he valued honesty above pretty much everything else in the world. “Actually Daddy, I’m going to keep this one to myself. It’s between him and me, even if he isn’t speaking to me.”
Love Notes Page 17