Phoebe and the Rock of Ages

by Becky Doughty

  There was silence for several moments, but she was too afraid to open her peephole cover and look out. What if he was standing right on the other side of the door peering in? She fought down a giggle of hysteria.

  “You’re right, Trevor. This is not the way to go about doing this. Please go away. I’m not comfortable with you lurking outside my front door.”

  The silence thickened.

  “Trevor?” Had he gone after all?

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. It is kinda creepy.” She heard him chuckle, but it didn’t sound sinister or unsettling. “But I’m not leaving. Now that I’m here and I know you’re there, I don’t want to waste the opportunity to talk. You’re a hard person to get a hold of, Phoebe Gustafson.”

  He wasn’t going to leave? Should she call the police? Maybe she should spray him with pepper spray through the peephole. Maybe that was overkill.

  “Please listen. Just for a minute, okay?” He was speaking quietly now, almost as though he hoped she was just on the other side of the door listening. “I…uh, well….” He cleared his throat and tried again. She had to step closer to catch his next words. “I remember you.”

  Phoebe’s rambling thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

  “Please, Phoebe. We need to talk.”

  No, no, no, no. She didn’t want to talk to him right now. Not about that day in the church. And especially not about Lily. Lily. He knew about Lily. Or at least he’d known she was pregnant. He might be the only one other than those involved in the program.

  There was no way on earth, in heaven, or in hell that she was going to talk to him. She had no intention of acknowledging anything he could—and most likely would—use against her, even if only to her family. “You need to leave, Trevor. I’m not interested in talking to you.”

  “Phoebe, I need to apologize. I need to—”

  “I don’t care what you need, Trevor Zander,” she cried out, cutting him off. “What about what I needed all those years ago, huh? What about what I need today?” She yanked open the door and glared at him, no longer caring what kind of image she presented. “How dare you come to my home after all these years and tell me what you need? You have not changed one bit, have you? You’re still a pompous, arrogant—”

  This time he cut her off.

  Instead of being intimidated by her ferocity, instead of stepping back a pace, Trevor lurched forward so suddenly she could have sworn he caught himself by surprise, too. He cupped her face in both his hands and bent forward so he was only inches away. “Stop,” he ground out, his mouth so close she could feel his breath on her lips. “Please stop. I’m not that man anymore. I’m not. If you’ll just give me a few minutes. Hear me out, please.”

  So stunned by his unexpected actions, she went still for a few brief—and oh, so heavenly—moments, before reaching up between them and shoving him away. Her cheeks burned where his palms had been and she swore she could still feel the pressure of his fingertips behind her ears and around the base of her skull.

  “What are you doing?” she screeched. She sounded nothing like her usual calm, collected self. “You can’t just manhandle me like that!”

  Trevor raised both hands in surrender. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” he muttered, then laced his fingers together over the top of his head. “Phoebe, I’m sorry. I have been so desperate to talk to you all week. Since I remembered.” He shot her a wry, but remorseful lip curl. “And clearly, I’m not the only one who has remembered.”

  When Phoebe only continued glaring at him, he took a small step back. “Phoebe, I was wrong. I was wrong in every way that day. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d said the sky is blue and the grass is green; I still would have been wrong.”

  Phoebe bit her bottom lip so hard she tasted blood. He was too much, too intense, too assertive. She didn’t know how to keep a hold on the reins with him. He was still standing too close—she breathed in the delicious man smell he emitted, like her Italian Roast coffee layered with chocolate and something spicy—and his eyes were too blue, too bright, too much.

  She realized she was holding her breath and let it out slowly so he wouldn’t know. “Well, as you can see, this isn’t a good time for me.”

  “I can’t even imagine,” he murmured, and his words intoned that he was acknowledging far more than the fact that he’d interrupted her work.

  “No, you can’t,” she declared, not willing to give him any rope. Go hang yourself, she wanted to shout at him, but even as she thought the words, she could feel the angry air bubble in her chest deflating. And behind it, another one formed, this one filled with vulnerability and relief at the very thought of being able to talk to someone who already knew a big part of her darkest secret. Not all of it, but enough of it…could she trust him? Did she want to trust him? Did she dare?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  She stood there like some modern day Medusa, her gray eyes smoldering with anger and indignation. He could imagine the loose strands of hair that curled and swayed around her face coming to life and striking at him. But instead of turning him to stone, her snapping glare had sparked in him an insane urge to reach for her, to haul her up against him, to comfort her, to soothe her…and to kiss her until she had no words left to hurl at him.

  Kiss her until she had no breath in her lungs that wasn’t mingled with his.

  Kiss her until she forgot the pain he’d caused her, until she wanted nothing more than to be kissed some more.

  Why, oh why had he touched her? His palms tingled, his fingers twitched, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes focused on hers, because they kept wandering to her lips of their own accord. Like an addict, he’d gotten too close to what he was missing, and now he fixated on getting one more taste. One hundred more tastes. And a thousand more.

  She smelled like turpentine and oil-based paint with some kind of citrus over the top, a surprisingly enticing aroma emanating off a woman. It reminded him of his childhood when his mother handed him the aerosol can of lemon scented furniture cleaner and ordered him to dust and polish all the wood surfaces.

  Phoebe’s face without makeup was startlingly pale, her skin almost translucent. In the fading light of day, he thought he might be able to make out the lines and angles of the bones beneath her flesh. The baggy white painter’s coat she wore hid all her womanly curves—he didn’t have any trouble imagining them anyway—and he wanted to drink in her features until he could picture nothing else in his mind. Fragile, delicate, vulnerable, she reminded him of a wounded animal as she stared out at him from eyes haunted by their shared memories….

  A cooling flood of remorse washed through him, steadying him, reminding him. He needed to show himself a different man than she remembered, an honorable man. A man who wasn’t contemptuous of things he didn’t understand or relate to. A man who held out grace to others because he understood what it meant to need it so desperately.

  “Phoebe, will you go to dinner with me tonight?” he asked without any more preamble, partly because he didn’t know if he could pull off small talk at the moment, and partly because he didn’t want to miss his chance to ask her. Under the circumstances, she could very well duck back inside and lock her door against him. He hoped she wouldn’t even consider it, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  “No, Trevor.” She didn’t even hesitate. She waved a hand over her shoulder at the room behind her. “I’m not in any condition to go anywhere tonight. Besides, I’m in the middle of a major project.”

  Well, she hadn’t closed the door in his face, but her answer was nearly as effective. He needed to do something with his hands; they just hung awkwardly at his sides. He didn’t want to shove them in his pockets lest she think he was trying to play it cool. He wasn’t. He was dead serious and even more certain that he was exactly where he needed to be. He didn’t want to cross them over his chest. He knew the vibe that kind of body language put off: Keep your distance. Back off. I’m not letting you get to me. He wanted jus
t the opposite and she had definitely gotten to him.

  “Then may I bring dinner here? To you?” His rules were his personal guidelines. He had learned the hard way that life is not constructed of immovable lines and inflexible boundaries. He veered away from them when the need arose…like when he’d said yes to taking Juliette on a date never having met her. But tonight, spurred by desperation, he was veering away from his guidelines for questionable reasons—even he could see that—and veering into dangerous territory.

  Phoebe’s eyebrows—slim, dark, and sharply arched, even without makeup—rose in what he could only construe as disdain. “I thought God didn’t allow you to go inside women’s houses.”

  Ah. Twisting his words and using them against him. The oldest deflection in the book. He flexed his hands at his sides, resisting the urge to crack his knuckles. “I go inside women’s houses all the time,” he corrected her, making sure to keep his smile warm. “Are you referring to my own rule about not being alone with a woman inside her home—or my home, for that matter?”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes, but he saw the flush creep up her neck. So she’d done it intentionally; just as he’d thought.

  “Yes, I do have a few rules about how I live and act. They are not hard lines drawn in the sand, but guidelines I’ve given myself to follow. This is one of them. And just so you know, it has a lot more to do with my own personal strengths and weaknesses than with any demands God might make of me.”

  “Oh,” she drawled, her voice cool and throaty. She sounded more like the Phoebe who talked to him in his head, but he didn’t like the sarcastic serration behind her voice. “You mean to tell me, Trevor Zander, Youth-Pastor-Turned-Christian-Rock-Star-Extraordinaire, that you have weaknesses? Do your groupies know this? Or is this maybe some ridiculous attempt to convince me that you and I can relate?” She leaned back against the door frame and crossed her arms, her body language sending him her message loud and clear: Keep your distance. Back off. I’m not letting you get to me.

  But she was still there. The electric blue door still stood open behind her, its vibrant tone contrasting with the starkness of her black hair, porcelain skin, and white smock. And the dreamy songbird still lilted French caresses in the air around them.

  But I am getting to you, he thought. How he wanted to reach for her hand, uncurl her long fingers from their grip around her upper arm, to lace his own through hers. To assure her that he meant her no harm, that he was there to defend her against the likes of the man he’d once been.

  “You’re asking me a lot of questions. Will you let me answer them over dinner?”

  She shook her head but didn’t say anything.

  “Anything you want. I’ll even cook for you, if you’d prefer. I make killer eggs Benedict; you need to taste my homemade hollandaise sauce.” He forgot to keep his hands in check and reached out to touch her shoulder. She flinched, but instead of responding immediately, he let his fingers drift slowly down the outside of her arm until he touched the back of her hand. Then he stepped back, far enough away that he couldn’t touch her even if he tried. He saw her grip tighten around her arm, as though she might be resisting the urge to reach for him, too. The notion made him smile. “Of course, I’m always good for a burger from Five Guys or In-N-Out.”

  “I’m in the middle of a project,” she repeated, but the corners of her mouth lifted and her gaze dropped even as she continued shaking her head.

  “I can wait.”

  “It could be hours. My schedule is dictated by my muse.”

  “I can wait.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “You don’t have to talk. I’ll talk.”

  “I don’t want to hear what you have to say,” she finally admitted, still not looking up at him.

  “Come on.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. He was notably touchy-feely, especially for a guy, but until this moment, he’d never realized how much he depended on physical contact to communicate. “Don’t you think there might be a reason you and I have re-connected after all these years?”

  “A reason? Like what?” She angled her face so she could look at him from the corner of her eyes, her eyebrows lifted again. “So you could make peace with yourself? See with your own eyes that you didn’t destroy me? That your verbal crucifixion—” the word came out almost like a snarl “—didn’t actually kill me?” She spread her arms wide and then turned to offer him her profile, smoothing the smock over her petite form, her flat abdomen. “Look. Problem solved. I figured it out on my own.”

  “Phoebe,” he whispered. Her words were intended to harm him, but he sensed they also harmed her. His own pain he could bear, but when she lifted her chin and met his gaze, he saw right through her defiance. “Phoebe, I’m sorry.” He took a step toward her, but when she backed up, he stopped. “Please forgive me. I was wrong, and I hurt you. I can’t take it back, no matter how badly I wish I could. I can’t change what that man did to you, though God knows I’d do just about anything if I could. And I can’t change the fact that I made you believe you had to figure things out on your own back then. No one should have to go through what you went through alone.” He paused and cleared his throat, pushing back the surge of anger that had risen when he thought about someone assaulting Phoebe. “But I can change things from here on out. You don’t have to carry this alone anymore. I’m here. And I’m sorry for—”

  “Please,” she interrupted him, holding up a paint-smeared hand. She closed her eyes and leaned her temple against the door frame, everything about her deflating right in front of him. “Stop apologizing, please. You didn’t mortally wound me, Trevor. I was a wreck long before I found my way into the back row of that little church.”

  “I hurt you,” he insisted.

  “Not intentionally,” she corrected, meeting his gaze, her eyes now bright with unshed tears. “Not like him.”

  “I still hurt you. And I still want your forgiveness.” He hated seeing her pain. He would give anything to take it from her and carry it for her like he’d done her gas can. She’d insisted she could carry it herself, and she could have. He knew that now better than ever. But she didn’t have to…because he’d been there to carry it for her, to walk the road beside her, to follow her home and see her safely into the care of those who loved her. He wanted to do that for her now. For days and weeks and years to come. “That’s all that really matters. It’s all I ask.”

  The muscles in her jaw tightened, her lips pressed together, and she visibly swallowed hard as she dropped her gaze again. “What about dinner?”

  Her question caught him by surprise. He wasn’t sure how to answer her. “Dinner?”

  “You said all you’re asking for is my forgiveness. But you’ve also asked me to have dinner with you.”

  He couldn’t help it. A laugh burst out of him. “You’re right, Phoebe Josephine Gustafson. Forgiveness and dinner. That’s all I ask.” He moved closer again and tugged on one of her curls. He needed that tactile connection to her. “Please.”

  She straightened her shoulders and nodded slowly. “If you want to go pick up burgers—I want a Double-Double, Animal-Style, with cheese, no onions, extra pickles, two orders of fries—yes, two for me since you’re buying—a strawberry shake, and a Dr. Pepper, easy ice. I’m not repeating that, so I hope you were listening. And don’t worry. I’ll be more—” she gestured at her outfit. “—presentable when you get back.”

  It was his turn to lift an eyebrow in challenge.

  “What?” An impish grin teased her lips. “You think I can’t make myself presentable in fifteen minutes?”

  “That’s not it at all,” he chuckled. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re perfectly presentable the way you are. Paint and all.” He took her hand and turned her arm so he could follow a smear of scarlet that swirled over the pale skin. His thumb rested against the underside of her wrist and he wondered if it was his pulse or hers he felt. “I’m just wondering where you’re goin
g to put all that food. Do you have a hollow leg or something?’

  “Actually, I haven’t eaten a real meal since pizza Wednesday night and I’m starving.” She reached for the handle of her door.

  “Wait,” he said, stopping her before she disappeared inside. “You’ll be here when I get back, right? You’re not just tricking me into leaving so you can escape out the back window?”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes. “It’s my house. If I don’t want to see you, I just won’t answer the door.”

  “You’ll answer the door, then, right?” His head told him he was being silly, but his heart begged for reassurance.

  “I answer the door to just about anyone who comes bearing food.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Phoebe leaned against the back of the door for just a moment, commanding her heart to stop its chaotic tap dance against her ribcage. What on earth had she just agreed to?

  “My stomach made me do it,” she murmured to herself as she gathered up her brushes and palettes and headed out to the sink in her garage where she cleaned all her brushes and other art tools. Back inside, she turned the easel so the painting faced the wall. She didn’t mind him seeing it, but she thought it might make him uncomfortable.

  Upstairs, she took a quick shower, tugged on a clean pair of black leggings and donned a short black baby-doll dress with cherry sprigs all over it. She rolled a red scarf into a two-inch wide band and tied it around her head, then she pulled her hair loose from its knot and let it cascade down over her shoulders and back. She fluffed it a few times with her fingers, but it just didn’t require a whole lot to look the way she liked it. Phoebe had her mother to thank for that—Simone had passed on her glorious hair to all her girls, even Gia, whose curls were copper instead of black.

  She kept her makeup minimal, too—he’d already seen her bare face. A sweep of eyeliner that extended just past the curve of her upper lid, a few layers of mascara to define her naturally long lashes, a little face powder and blush, and a touch of clear lipgloss. She still looked washed out to her mind’s eye, but she intended to be as comfortable as possible while still making an effort to look nice.