by Brenda Novak
“It wasn’t like that in the beginning,” Harper said.
“He’s always been sensitive, temperamental and high-strung.”
“As well as larger-than-life, ultra-creative, dynamic and just plain fun.”
“I’m not saying he’s all bad. Until he broke your heart, I liked him a lot. But look at how he made you feel when you were around him—as though his happiness was somehow your responsibility. As far as I’m concerned, he sucked up all the sunlight and left you to try to flourish with what was left.”
“He didn’t intend to do that,” Harper argued.
“Doesn’t matter. That was the reality.”
She drew a deep breath. “Maybe that’s true, to a point.”
“It is. One day you’ll see it, too.”
“I hope so. Anyway, give the girls my love.”
“I will.”
Once they disconnected, Harper stared at herself in the mirror. “Is she right?” she asked her troubled reflection. “Will you be better-off without him?”
Although it was tough to see that now, she had to admit Axel hadn’t made her feel very good about herself during the past few years. He blamed her for everything that disappointed or annoyed him. She’d ascribed the difficulties they’d faced to the stress of his career and his high-strung temperament. Challenges were to be expected. But it was more than that. He pointed out the negatives in any situation—and in her.
Trying to fulfill someone like that was exhausting, because there were negatives in every situation. She could never compensate for them all, could never be perfect enough.
Maybe, once her heart healed, she would be happier on her own.
* * *
Tobias Richardson had the door cracked open when she arrived, and she could hear music coming from inside.
OneRepublic. Thank God it wasn’t anything by Pulse.
“Hello?” Harper knocked on the doorframe so she wouldn’t inadvertently push the door open before he was ready. She’d already seen an older gentleman, who she figured must be his landlord. Not entirely sure where to go, she’d pulled onto the property and stopped, and he’d come outside. But before he could actually approach her car, she’d noticed the smaller house behind his and realized that had to be where Tobias lived. After all, Tobias had texted her, It’s the second house. So she’d just waved to let the old man know she was fine, and he did the same as she rolled by.
“Hello?” she said again when Tobias didn’t answer. She’d knocked timidly the first time, so it was possible he hadn’t heard her.
She glanced at what she guessed was his truck—an older Ford parked to one side. Her car was behind his, and for a brief second, she was tempted to get back into it. Visiting him at his house suddenly seemed more intimate than she’d imagined, especially when he finally appeared and she could see that he’d just stepped out of the shower. He’d pulled on a pair of faded jeans, but he was toweling off his hair and hadn’t yet put on a shirt.
Axel was so thin he was downright skinny, his entire chest and arms were covered in tattoos and he wore his hair long. He looked like what he was—the quintessential rocker. Tobias, on the other hand, didn’t look like that at all. He had long hair, too, and a couple of tattoos, but he was quite a bit taller than Axel, had broader shoulders and a more athletic build.
“Come in.” He gestured at the table as an invitation to put down the food. “I’ll be with you in a sec. Just need to grab a shirt.”
As he disappeared into the bedroom, she breathed a sigh of relief that he would soon be fully clothed. She’d certainly seen other shirtless men in her life. It shouldn’t have made her feel awkward. But her new friend was particularly attractive, and that somehow changed things.
“Something wrong?” he asked when he returned to find her still standing in the entryway, holding the food.
She cleared her throat. She was already here; it would be stupid to leave, especially because she could tell he hadn’t thought twice about letting her in before finding a shirt. Even what he’d chosen to wear—an old T-shirt and jeans—suggested he wasn’t trying to impress her.
“No, nothing,” she said and put the food on the table.
“Can I get you a drink? A beer or...” He checked his fridge. “A beer?”
She laughed. “A beer would be perfect.”
“Great. I happen to have plenty.”
As he got out the beer and pulled the food containers and chopsticks from the sack, she walked around his living room. He didn’t have many furnishings, nothing beyond the basics. His most prized possessions seemed to be a mountain bike and a fancy backpack he had stashed in one corner. “You mountain bike?”
He looked up. “Whenever I get the chance.”
“You hike, too, I see.”
“I do.”
Returning to the table, she watched as he got two plates from the cupboard. “You told me you’ve only lived here for five months. What first brought you to the area? Your job?”
“No, my brother’s here.”
In one of his texts, he’d indicated that he and his brother had basically raised themselves. “How old is he?”
“Maddox? Not quite a year older.”
“And you two are close?”
“Always have been.” After opening the food boxes, he held up the chopsticks. “Should we use forks instead?”
“I could show you how to use the chopsticks, if you’d like to give them a try.”
He considered her for a second. “Okay. Why not?” he said with a shrug.
She broke apart a set of chopsticks and positioned them in her right hand, showing him how easy it was to manipulate them if he held them correctly. “Now you try.”
He seemed to handle them okay, but he put a couple of forks on the table just in case.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked after they’d both sat down and he’d waited for her to dish up some honey-walnut shrimp, pork fried rice, chow mein and cashew chicken.
“LA,” he replied as he got his own food. “You?”
“Boise.”
“Axel went to school at Boise State, if I remember right. Is that where you met him?”
“Yeah. He’s from Denver, but his brother, Rowen, played football for Boise State, so he wanted to go to school there. They roomed together Rowen’s senior year.”
“Is that when he started Pulse—while he was in college? Or did he know his bandmates before that?”
“He grew up with one of them. The other two he met at Boise State. That’s when they started playing in earnest.” She didn’t mention it, but she also sang. That was how she’d first met Axel—at a Battle of the Bands event in Boise. She’d been a backup singer for a competing band, a band she’d thought was good. But when she’d watched Pulse perform, she’d known they were better. And the panel of judges had agreed. Pulse had won the contest.
Tobias managed to bring some rice to his mouth using his chopsticks, which was impressive, given that rice was one of the hardest foods to eat that way.
“Nice job,” she said.
He grinned. “Thanks. Now that I’ve learned how, I’m going to eat everything with chopsticks, even soup. Why wash silverware?”
She rolled her eyes. “Bachelors...”
He showed off by taking another bite with his chopsticks. But when he used them to flip one of the shrimp into the air and catch it in his mouth, she grew suspicious. “Wait a second...you can’t be that good already.”
“Okay, so maybe I’ve done this before,” he said with a wink.
“Why did you pretend you hadn’t?”
He spread his arms in an apparent attempt to make himself look more innocent. “I didn’t want to put any pressure on you, in case you didn’t know how.”
“I’m better with chopsticks than you are!” she said.
He arched
his eyebrows. “Prove it.”
“Fine.” She used hers to flip a shrimp in the air but it fell onto the table since she couldn’t quite catch it with her mouth. “Dang!”
“You’ve almost got it,” he said. “Here, I’ll toss you one so all you have to do is concentrate on catching it. That might be where you’re weak.”
When she missed for the second time, he tsked as he shook his head. “Not as good as me, I’m afraid.”
She pretended outrage. “Try it one more time.” She opened her mouth, but instead of tossing the shrimp, he stuck it right inside. “There you go. But I’ll expect to see some improvement the next time we have dinner together.”
“Who said there’ll be a next time?” she asked.
He didn’t seem worried. He just flipped another shrimp into his mouth. “There will be a next time. No one else has my skill with chopsticks.” He leaned forward, chewing as though it tasted much better eating it the way he was. “And I’m the only friend you’ve got here. Right?”
She glowered at him. “I could make other friends. Easily. I’m a likable person.”
“You’re on the rebound. It’ll be much safer if you hang out with me.”
The twinkle in his eyes told her he was joking again, but she was curious to hear his rationale. “Because...”
“Because I’m probably the only guy in town who wouldn’t take you to bed even if you begged me to.”
“You don’t want to sleep with me?” she said, somewhat shocked that he’d be bold enough to state that right up front. She was also a little curious. He’d told her she was beautiful. Didn’t that mean he found her sexually attractive, too?
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said.
A picture of his bare chest flashed through her mind, and she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time—a zing of sexual awareness. “You’re saying you wouldn’t even if you wanted to.”
He didn’t answer. He took a drink of his beer and changed the subject. “It’s crazy how successful Axel’s been. What was it like to be part of all that?”
She wanted an answer to her own question, but she knew it was best to let it go. She was still in love with Axel, wasn’t interested in other men—even men as attractive as her new friend. “You mean when he hit the big time? A lot of work.”
He moved his chopsticks in a circular motion as if to state, Yeah, yeah. That’s what they all say.
“Other than that,” he managed when he’d swallowed.
Everyone imagined fame and fortune as the be-all and end-all, that life would be easy from then on. But it was more like those stories she’d read about people who won the lottery. They weren’t always happier afterward. As a matter of fact, she’d been happier before Pulse had become so popular. “Exciting. Exhilarating.” She drew a deep breath. “And challenging, because it introduces entirely new pressures.”
“Like...”
“It’s difficult to explain, but it’s so hard not to get lost in it.”
“I don’t think I’d like it,” he said simply.
Didn’t most people want to be rich and famous—or at least believe they did? “Why not?”
“The lack of freedom,” he replied without hesitation.
“What do you mean? More money equals more freedom, doesn’t it?”
His chewing slowed. “I wouldn’t mind being rich. But famous? I would feel like my life was no longer my own. So if the two have to go together, I’d say no to both. Freedom is what matters most to me. I’d rather be poor than lose that.”
She quit eating as she considered his answer. “Things definitely got a little out of control. I never felt I could ask my husband to stay home and watch the girls so I could run to the store. His time was suddenly too valuable, you know? He’d get upset when I complained and would tell me I could hire someone if I needed help, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t want to be surrounded by hired assistants. I just wanted to have a normal family life.” She stabbed her chopsticks into her chow mein several times without picking up any food. “I also wanted another baby, but he wasn’t interested. He said it was hard enough feeling guilty about not being able to do things with the kids we did have.”
“His focus changed.”
“No question. And the weird part is...I can’t even blame him. He’s extremely talented. He should be making music. But it wasn’t fun to feel like excess baggage he’d rather dump.”
“So you left him?”
“No, the divorce was his idea. As imperfect as it was, I was willing to tolerate the situation for the sake of my marriage and my girls.”
“Well, this might not be what you want to hear, but have you ever considered that maybe he did you a favor?”
“My sister’s tried to tell me that. Just tonight, as a matter of fact.”
“It could be like open-heart surgery. Doesn’t feel good. Isn’t anything you’d ask for if you could avoid it. But if you need the operation, it could save your life.”
She smiled. “It’s hard to have that kind of perspective now, but...we’ll see.”
“Well, in case you’re still tempted to call him, I have something planned to keep you busy.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re going ice-skating.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no, we’re not. I’d rather not be out in public. People would take one look at us and assume we’re on a date.”
“You won’t be out in public. It’ll be just the two of us.”
“How can you arrange that?” she asked skeptically.
“I have my own rink.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Where? It’s not cold enough in this part of the state.”
“It’s an indoor rink, and it’s not actually mine. It’s at the school where I work. But I have the keys to all the facilities, and I have permission to use them whenever I want.”
“Okay. But we still have one problem left.”
“And that is...”
“I don’t know how to skate.”
“No worries. I’ll teach you.” He got up, scooped his keys off the counter and lifted them for her to see. “You interested? It’s nearly Christmas, after all. Isn’t ice-skating something people like to do at Christmastime?”
She didn’t care much about Christmas this year, simply hadn’t caught the spirit. But when she thought of what the rest of her night would be like if she didn’t go with him, she stood up and started putting away the food. “Why not?”
6
It’d been a long time since Tobias had felt the “magic” of Christmas. His mother had never had a lot of money, but when she wasn’t spending everything she did have on drugs or alcohol, she’d tried to make the holidays special. As a kid, he’d loved December. Some years, it was the only time he got new clothes, which he always needed because he grew so fast.
Once he went to prison, however, December became the hardest month of the year. The days were shorter and the nights longer, the weather was cold and dreary, and not being able to spend Christmas with Maddox and his mother had made him feel as though his sentence would last forever. Inmates were served a better meal on the twenty-fifth—ham, corn, a Jell-O salad, a dinner roll and scalloped potatoes, with a piece of pie for dessert—but it was still cafeteria food, which was never good to begin with. And there were no gifts, nothing like that.
Actually, there were gifts—just not the kind he cared to remember. His first year behind bars, he’d come back from the mess hall to find a bag of candy on his bed. As inconsequential as that might sound to someone on the outside, he’d been barely more than a kid at the time and in prison everything was bartered like money, even candy. Problem was, he couldn’t accept it. His cellmate warned him that doing so would commit him to the guy who’d left it. He’d returned it right away and, about a week later, he’d been cornered and severely beaten.
He
’d had to fight a lot until he established himself as someone who wouldn’t tolerate being victimized. He was never sexually assaulted, as he’d feared he would be for the first few years, but rebuffing the men who made advances had nearly cost him a kidney once.
He tried not to dwell on those times. If he did think of the Christmases he’d spent in the belly of the beast, he focused on the extra money his brother always put on his books. That made January more tolerable since he could buy a few extras from the commissary.
Still, for thirteen years, he’d dreaded Christmas. So ice-skating with Harper while Pentatonix sang “Mary, Did You Know?” on the sound system was like something out of a movie for him. He doubted she’d be here with him if she knew what he’d done and that he’d only gotten out of prison five months ago, but he pushed that out of his mind. He wasn’t going to ruin this one night. He was going to forget that terrible incident at the party and what had happened to him and Atticus as a result and pretend to be what she thought he was—just a normal guy teaching her how to ice-skate.
“You’re doing great,” he said as he bent to retie the laces that had come loose on her right skate.
“What are you talking about?” She rested her hands on his shoulders so she wouldn’t fall. “You’ve literally been holding me up. I never realized ice-skating was so hard. Hockey players and figure skaters make it look almost effortless.”
“It takes some getting used to, that’s all.”
“If I fall, I’m afraid I’m going to pull you down with me.”
“I won’t let you fall.” Harper’s cheeks were rosy and her breath misted slightly in the air as he stood and took her hands again. “Are you warm enough to keep going?” he asked.
Her gaze flew to his face. “Don’t tell me you’re tired already.”
“Just making sure you aren’t freezing to death.”
“No, I’m enjoying this. I feel—I feel happy, almost like a kid again.”
“Then we’ll keep going.” He smiled and felt his chest tighten a little when she smiled back at him. How had Axel Devlin ever let her go? Tobias couldn’t imagine any man doing that, but he was glad he’d brought her to the rink. They’d been laughing and talking since they’d gotten here. She couldn’t have had much time to worry about her divorce.