“You okay?”
“Okay? Tell you what. After this, give me a flat place and a pillow. I’ll be asleep faster than you can say Grandma Moses, and then, hopefully, I’ll be just fine.”
The second test was far longer than the first one, and Liz really began to wish about thirty minutes into waiting that she had thought to bring something to do. Something like maybe a final to study for or something. After all, it wasn’t like they weren’t starting tomorrow or anything. She put her head back on the wall and wondered if this was all as surreal for him as it was for her. More so probably though she could hardly imagine how.
It was so strange looking into the future and being so unsure of anything. All she knew was they were here now, and at the moment, that was about all she could handle anyway.
“All done,” Jake said, striding through the doors into the lobby and right over to where she sat. It was only when she lifted her head from the wall that he realized she’d been sleeping. “Hey, no fair.” He slipped into the chair next to her, grabbed her hand, and kissed it soundly. “I’m the one who had to stay up all night. What’re you doing sleeping?”
“Hm.” She rubbed her eyes. “Moral support. So how’d it go?”
“Better. At least this one was quiet.” He gazed at her, loving her more every second that he sat there. “So, how does IHOP and a nap sound?”
She stretched and grinned. “Heavenly.”
After IHOP, they went back to her place, and Jake was asleep on the couch in no time. Liz wanted to join him in dreamland, but she didn’t have that luxury. Since she’d taken off the day at The Grind to study three months before, she had all the time between now and sunrise left to prepare, but it didn’t look like nearly enough.
Quietly she sat down at the table, pulled out her Statistics book and got to work.
He found himself on a beach somewhere. It was warm and quiet. Only the sun, the wind and the waves washing across his feet provided company. There was no panic, no worry. He picked up a small seashell and launched it far out into the surf, wondering how one could feel such peace. The breeze brushed past him like an immortal, eternal embrace. He stopped to gaze out at the world in all its perfection.
Then he felt her, right there at his side. No words were needed as she simply stepped into the circle of his arms and placed her hands onto his wrapping around her. Perfection was his in that moment, and he knew this was exactly where he’d always been meant to be.
Jake came awake, out of the dream slowly, not wanting to let it go as it slipped away from his conscious grasp. In fact, one part of him begged for it not to detach from his spirit. But it was going, and then it was gone. He let his eyes fall closed, holding it a second more. Yes, together with her, life finally made sense.
When he let go of the dream and rejoined reality, he realized he was not at home in bed but in her apartment. The light was still on, but the world beyond the windows was black. He yawned and stretched, wondering what time it was. Slowly, carefully so as not to scare her, he sat up and looked around.
At the table she sat encircled by the soft, dim light from above her. She was writing something, studying probably. He tried to remember something about her schedule, when her tests were, what papers she had coming up. He hadn’t thought to ask. Memories of the last three days slid through him, and gratefulness came with them. She had said she would be there, and she had been— every step, every moment. With a push from the cushions he stood, still watching her. She was absolutely the most beautiful woman on the planet.
Her gaze came up and touched his, and she smiled. “Well, hello, there, sleeping beauty.”
Jake laughed at that. He could hardly be called anything close. He ran his hand over the whiskers lining everything from his jaw down. “How long have I been out?”
She twisted her wrist to look at her watch. “About six hours.”
“Six hours? Oh, man! It must be all that sleep I missed last night.” Blinking the sleep away, he stood and came over to the table where she sat, feeling very much like the beach in his dream had. “What’re you working on?”
“Ugh. Finals start tomorrow. I’ve got Stats and History. Don’t ask.”
Swinging the chair around, he sat down on it backward and ran his hand over the back of his head. “You didn’t tell me you needed to be studying.”
“I was trying not to think about it.” She wrote something else down. “Besides, I was doing research, remember?” Her smile split through his heart. Why was it so easy to remember how that beach felt when he looked into her eyes?
“Well, what do you say I make something for us to eat?” He pushed up off the chair and headed into the kitchen.
“I’m not sure what I’ve got. Rice Krispies and stale milk probably.”
“Hey, I like Rice Krispies.” Opening one cabinet, he came upon a can of peas and three bags of Ramen noodles. “How does chicken noodle sound?”
“Wonderful.”
He smiled. A girl after his own heart.
An hour later, though he didn’t want to, Jake knew it was time to vacate the premises so she could get her studying done. Dishes done, he snapped off the kitchen light and went to join her in the dining room. Leaning against the door frame, he stuck his hand in the pocket of his jeans, and one touch on the little ring still there brought how much he loved her cascading over him.
Not once had she so much as asked about a ring. They hadn’t, in fact, talked much about any of it since he’d asked. Maybe there was a time he would have thought that meant she no longer cared or that she wanted out, but after today, he knew that was not the case. His heart felt open enough to embrace the whole world, and she was the direct reason for that.
With no effort he pushed off the frame and stood. “Well...”
She looked up, and just how tired she looked drifted through him. She’d put herself and all of her priorities behind his, and he felt now how much she had given and given up for him. “Sorry I didn’t help with the dishes.”
Jake smiled and shook his head. “It was just dishes. I didn’t melt.”
Her smile was softer and far more tired. “That’s good.”
It was weird how perfectly settled everything felt. He wasn’t nervous or panicked about anything, and he couldn’t remember a time that had ever been the truth in his life. “I guess I should...” He hooked a thumb backward to the door.
“Yeah.” But she didn’t move. Instead, her eyes held him with a gentleness he couldn’t have described had he had ten thousand words. “You know, Jake, before you go, I wanted to tell you how impressed I am.”
That dragged incredulousness to the surface. “Impressed? With what?”
“You.” She stood and came around the table. “What you did today, what you’ve been through. I can’t imagine how hard it’s been.” And then she was right in front of him, so close he could have reached out and touched her. “You’re an amazing person, Jake McCoy. I want you to know that.”
Warmth mixed with disbelief spread through him as a smile he’d never felt came into his spirit. Gently, slowly, he stepped over to her and pulled her into his arms. The fit was perfect. He closed his eyes and felt the sea breeze brush his face. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” The breath relaxed every piece of him that wasn’t already at perfect peace. “Thank you.”
Her hand on his back slid up and down, and minus the coat, it felt closer than it ever had. “You’re welcome.”
His arms tightened around her, telling her what he couldn’t. When he half-released her, he bent his gaze to catch her upturned one. With half-a-smile, he let himself be dragged by the magnet of her lips. The first brush was soft, grateful. The second yanked him forward with a power he wasn’t prepared for.
Falling with her through space was the only sensation as everything else fell away from them. He kissed her again and again, each one deeper and yet not nearly enough. And she didn’t run, didn’t draw back. Her hands were now both gripping his back, pressing him closer to her and closer still.
At the very last second before he completely lost all sanity in the moment, Jake pulled back, gasping. Liz went the other way, gasping as well and looking almost as bewildered as he felt. His eyes captured hers and asked questions he could find no words for.
“I should go,” he finally managed to rasp out.
She nodded, gazing at him as if disoriented. “Yeah.” Her eyes fell closed, and then she shook her head.
Knowing that keeping her too close would be dangerous, Jake reached down and took her hand instead. He swallowed hard, hoping he could get out that door before he gave into every signal his body was sending to his brain. Somehow he had always thought all of this would be so very hard. It was how easy it was that scared him.
At the door, he put his hand on the frame and turned to her, clutching his one hand with both of hers. He should leave, but oh, he didn’t want to. Not one molecule of him did. He leaned against the door and pulled her into him again. His mind easily filled in all the images of what could happen if he let himself go even one more step in that direction. “Good luck on your tests.”
Tests. Yes, that seemed a safe subject.
Resting her head on his chest, she let her finger trace across the other side of his shirt. That really wasn’t fair— not when he was trying so hard to be strong and not let the fire in him ignite into an inferno he was pretty sure he would have no hope of controlling. Still, his eyes fell closed on the feeling because he simply couldn’t help it. Did she know what she was doing to him?
“I’m going to miss you,” she whispered.
“I’m... I...” He was losing control. He knew it. No one had ever been this close and stayed. No one had ever touched him like this. No one. “Liz...”
She pulled back then and looked up at him until he looked down at her. Their gazes locked and riveted together. “I love you, Jake. I do. I love you so much.”
The world collapsed through her words, and his face crumpled with it.
Gently she put her hands on either side of his face, brushing there, touching him, gazing at him like eternity was a real possibility. Then she leaned in and kissed him so softly it dispersed every bad thing that had ever happened to him. Taking her in his arms, he straightened from the door, angling her down, so that she came under his power. He felt the power, the power of his body over hers. He could easily take her, possess her, have her for his own, and yet, she was not a possession to be seized. She was a treasure to protect and cherish, to be willing to die for even. And in that moment, she was.
He pulled her back, breaking the connection, and then he wrapped his embrace around her. “You’re killing me. You know that?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just... I can’t help but think how close I came to missing you completely. What if you’d never walked in that door? What if I hadn’t bothered to say anything? Would we have completely missed this?”
Jake didn’t know. Honestly, not much of anything made sense other than that everything did.
“And I can’t help but think what if you walk out that door and never come back,” she whispered into his shirt.
That yanked him up short. “What? Why would I do that?”
She sniffed and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
But there was more in her voice than nothing. Jake managed to put enough distance between them so that he could look at her. “Liz? What is it? What’s going on?”
Her head was down now, her gaze on the darkness at their feet. “It’s nothing.”
“No. It’s not nothing.” Now she was scaring him. Carefully he took her hand and led her over to the little step where he sat down and pulled her down too. He put his arm around her and sat for a moment trying to figure out what to do or say next. He’d never been good in these kinds of situations— whether for lack of talent or practice, he didn’t know. But he had to say something. “Look, Liz, whatever it is...”
She sniffed loudly, and eyes closed, she picked her head up to face him. When she opened her eyes, he saw only anguish there. “I have to tell you something.”
Serious had never felt like this. “Okay.”
Liz said the words in her brain again. They had been rolling around there for months now, over and over again as she fought to find a way to say them to him, to herself, to admit what she had done, what she had let herself become, what she had done to them before he had ever even walked into her life. It wouldn’t be easy, and once it was done, she knew he would surely walk out the door forever. But he deserved to know the truth. The whole, rotten, awful truth. He deserved that much even though she was pretty sure she already knew what came after it.
“You know that I love you,” she said, the words barely made it from her lips, and every one stabbed at her heart. “And I want you to know I never meant for it to go this far. I never meant... I wanted to tell you, but I just didn’t know how...”
“Liz.” Worry cascaded from his eyes. “What is it? Tell me.”
She took a small breath that dredged up some tears, but she stuffed them back down. Self-pity was stupid at this point. She’d done this, and it was time to own up to it. “You know about the whole church thing.”
He looked surprised but no less worried. “Yeah?”
“Well, um, I wasn’t always like that. I mean I was back home, before I left, but when I first came here...” This was harder than she had even thought and that was saying something. She’d never said any of this out loud before though her heart had said it a million times over the years. “Well, when I first got here, I didn’t want to be miss goody-goody anymore. So I let go of all of that. I let go of God, of trying to be good, of doing what was right. I started partying... a lot. I got drunk most Fridays and stayed that way until Sunday.” She swallowed the lump and tears down and kept going because it was far too late to turn back now. “Then I met this guy. Cole. We hung out at a couple parties together, and I thought he was really into me. I mean... I don’t know. I want to say he led me on, but it was pretty much mutual. We started sleeping together. He said he loved me. Maybe he did. I don’t know.
“I was so strung out, I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t.” She stopped for a breath but didn’t look at him. If she did, she’d never get through this. Gaze glued to the carpet, she exhaled and pushed the words from her soul. “Two years ago next Tuesday I found out I was pregnant.”
Jake’s reaction was muted but visible.
Liz shook her head to keep the tears back, but they beat their way forward just the same. “I didn’t want a baby. I was in school. I didn’t have time for that.” This breath was harder to take and raked up far more pain. She closed her eyes, willing more words to come even as she pounded the memories back. “Cole said he’d pay for the abortion. He said it was no big deal.” The unshed tears stung every part of her at once, and breathing them down was becoming more impossible by the second. “I knew it was wrong. I really did, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
When she glanced up at Jake, his eyes were hard, and she knew she’d just killed the second best thing to ever happen to her. That thought went through her, knifing into her heart like a dagger. But there was no need to sugar-coat any of the rest of it. Jake knew what she was now. All that was left was the final stab to finish it off. “I don’t remember much of it. They gave me these drugs… After it was all over, I went home. I’d always heard it was no big deal, you know? I mean, do it, get it over with, and go on with life. But it wasn’t like that. I started bleeding real bad. Mia knew... kind of... about Cole and stuff, but I hadn’t told her everything because I knew what she would say. But when it got really bad, I finally had to call her. I couldn’t think of what else to do— who else to call. I didn’t really even know anyone else. She came over and took me to the ER, and they finally got the bleeding to stop.”
Numbness took over then because the emotions that went with the rest of the story were still too difficult to feel. “They told me there was a lot of damage, that I was lucky to be alive...” The next words wer
e there, but she couldn’t say them out loud. Sobs choked her, ripping up from the deepest part of her soul. How could she have been so stupid? How could she ever have believed it was no big deal? How could she have trusted that snake in the grass? She hated him now almost as much as she hated herself. “And then they told me that...” The breaths were hard and raspy. The tears jerked and yanked at her, rocking her back and forth as she fought to say the words she’d never before said out loud. How could she say them? They confirmed she had no future, that her past had doomed anything good before it started.
“Shhh.” His arms were around her now. How they got there or when, she had no clue. But they were rubbing across her back as if he could somehow make it all go away. “Shhh. It’s okay.”
However, she knew better. It wasn’t okay, and it never would be. This was her reality now, and it was going nowhere. After several long moments, she collected her scattering self again and sat up and away from him, swiping at her eyes that continued to overflow despite her best efforts to stop them. She sniffed once hard and shook her head, vowing to say the words even if they killed her. “They told me that...” One more long slow breath. “Because of it, I can’t ever have children.”
“Oh, Liz.” His words were like a breath, and he shook his head. “Oh, sweetheart.”
She had tried to be strong, wanted to be, but the pain was too much. It bent her over and collapsed her into his arms as the sobs took over her sanity again.
“Shhhh. It’s okay,” he said softly.
But she shook her head. “No. It’s not. I was so stupid. They said it was no big deal, and I believed them. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was, and I did it anyway.”
“You were young, and you were scared.”
“It doesn’t matter. I messed up, and I can’t undo it now. I can’t take it back. There’s no do-overs in this.”
“Listen to me.” He took her shoulders and shook her gently. “You made a rotten decision, but nobody’s perfect.”
More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel Page 30