“What?”
“Knowing she was going to die and not being able to do anything but watch that fucking disease steal her life for eight months. Let’s just say I’m a little too good at tapping veins,” he says, his breath warm next to my cheek.
“You took care of her?”
“Yeah. At the end, she gave up on the chemo and refused to go back to the hospital. Nurses came during the day, and I helped at night if she needed me. The last month was the worst. She needed a lot of morphine.”
My heart aches for Raine. “I’m sorry.” Kitty, Vera, and Dad shielded me from that with my mom. I probe tentatively. “Is this when things became difficult with your father?”
His chest expands behind me and he releases a deep sigh. “They were always difficult, but after she died everything went to shit and a whole new level of difficult.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“How’s this? I’ll tell you my story if you tell me about Drew . . . the real Drew.”
The salt air breeze makes my hair clump and stick to my cheek.
“Only if you go first,” I say, sweeping back the piece closest to my mouth.
“You drive a hard bargain, lady.” He kisses the top of my head and snuggles me even closer into him. “My dad worked in banking. We lived in a big house in a good neighborhood. You know the ones? Enough rooms to get lost in, but close enough to your neighbor’s to spit and hit it?” His voice fills with resentment, and I already know this story doesn’t have a happy ending.
“You grew up with money?”
“Pretty much.”
“What happened?”
He inhales deeply and his body clenches around me. “Like I said, things between me and my dad went off the rails long before my mom died. Ever since I turned twelve, he’s looked for reasons to punish me. But never in front of my mother. She wouldn’t have stood for it. Clever bastard. He was opportunistic. He’d wait for me to fuck up somehow—like the time he caught me skateboarding on the new wood floors in the upstairs hallway—and then use it as a chance to teach me a lesson, knowing I’d lie about the bruises to cover my ass and not upset my mom. Lucky for me he traveled a lot, so it wasn’t something I had to deal with every day.
“He didn’t use a closed fist until I was fifteen. The day he caught me in bed with my high school girlfriend he punched me for the first time. Really punched me. There was hate behind that punch. That was the day I vowed I’d never let him beat me again. I talked my friend, Mikey Petrillo, into teaching me how to box, and I started weight training like a madman. Once my father realized I could defend myself, things settled down, for the most part. He didn’t stop criticizing me, but he thought twice before raising his hand to me.”
“Did he ever . . . touch your mom?” I ask, trying to delicately piece together the extent of his father’s domestic violence while sidestepping any judgments about his sexual history and the humiliation he must’ve felt.
He shakes his head violently. “No way. He loved my mom. She walked on water as far as he was concerned. That’s the only saving grace in this whole shit show. He would’ve cut off his own arm before he touched her. He saved all of his frustration for me.”
“I’m sorry, Raine. No one should have to endure that kind of behavior,” I say, despising his father even more. I can only imagine the depth of the damage a relationship like that could have on Raine.
“Thanks.” He kisses the side of my head. “Things snapped again right after Mom died. I was a mess for most of the summer. But my dad was worse. He hated the fact that he wasn’t there when she died, and he resented the hell out of me for being there.”
“Where was he?” I ask, finding it odd he wasn’t by his wife’s deathbed.
“Atlantic City, maybe? I don’t know for sure. A couple of months before she passed away, we figured out my dad had a gambling problem. He’d lost his job six months earlier. But that was only part of it. He was a recovered alcoholic for over twenty years, and he never picked up a drink while she was alive. His sobriety ended with a scotch after the funeral. Drinking transformed him into a violent drunk—like he needed more of a reason.” He snorts. “By then, I just wanted out. I was on my college countdown, waiting to leave that August.”
Raine’s story sounds like he’s describing someone else’s life. I suddenly see the train coming and prepare for the wreck. I clasp his hand tighter. “Where were you supposed to go to school?”
Pain fills his voice. “Princeton. For architecture.” Then it clicks. His reaction when I showed him Robert’s office. An ache hits my heart.
“Tell me the rest,” I whisper and squeeze his thigh.
“I opened a letter the first week of August. It said my tuition was overdue, and if it wasn’t paid on receipt, I’d lose my place in the freshman class. I was furious. I confronted my father . . .” Raine falters.
The breeze swirls and mingles our hair around us, brushing my cheek. I ask softly, “What happened?”
His lips rest near my ear. “I didn’t realize he’d just downed a fifth of scotch when I went storming in. I waved the letter at him demanding to know why he hadn’t paid the bill. I knew he had my full, four-year tuition in a trust account. Rather than give me an answer, he punched me in the face and almost broke my nose. At the same time, he told me he’d drained my college fund. The money was gone, and the house would be in foreclosure by the end of the month. We got into a full-blown fist fight. I thought I’d won but made the mistake of turning my back on him. When I went to leave, he hit me in the back of the head, and then proceeded to kick the crap out of me. I ended up in the hospital for a week.”
He tenses around me again while my heart squeezes over how he was treated.
“I hate him, Jillian. He stole my future,” he says through gritted teeth.
“What happened after that?” I ask gently, knowing there was more, but not better.
“After I left the hospital, Mikey let me move in with him in Morristown while I got my head straightened out. It was too late to get financial aid. I was screwed. So, I took a year off and worked for Mikey during the day and got loaded every night until I worked as much of the anger out of my system as I could.”
I think about what he just said and frown. “Wait. How did you have access to that much alcohol at eighteen?” The legal drinking age in New Jersey is twenty-one.
His shoulder grazes mine as he shrugs behind me. “Mikey was twenty-three and kept the fridge stocked. Then I got a really good fake ID.”
I stop myself from saying anything for fear of sounding judgmental. Instead, I ask, “How did you end up back with your father recently?”
He snorts. “It was out of necessity. My father isn’t always in a drunken state of rage. When he’s not drinking, he’s bearable—like he was before my mom died. After the confrontation about school, he begged my forgiveness and swore off drinking. Despite my hating his guts, we’ve been in touch on and off. I even helped him pack up and move after the foreclosure. He works in a local bank now and stays sober enough to keep the job. But put a drink in his hands, and he turns into Mr. Hyde.”
“Why did he hurt you, Raine?”
He hesitates. “I don’t really remember what happened before he nailed me on the back of the head. It could’ve been anything. He gets delusional when he drinks.”
“There was no place else for you to go?”
He shakes his head next to mine. “My ex-girlfriend Vanessa basically kicked me out of her townhouse the day I met you in the hospital parking lot. We’d lived together for two years.”
I draw in a sharp breath. I didn’t expect that. “You lived with Vanessa up until two weeks ago?” Based on the conversation I’d overhead, I would’ve never guessed the longevity or seriousness of their relationship. But what do I know?
“Technically, but the relationship had been tanking for months before that. We didn’t end on good terms.” He squeezes me. “Hey, you promised to tell me the Drew story.
”
I’m still stuck on the live-in girlfriend revelation, feeling a little jealous. Vanessa? I wonder what she looks like. I knew I disliked her from their conversation and now I dislike her even more.
I shiver against him. “Can we go back inside where it’s warmer first?”
“I’m not keeping you warm enough?” he asks, sounding offended.
“It’s not you. The breeze is blowing up underneath the blanket.”
Raine gathers me under his arm, and we head back to the house. I think of something and pinch his butt through his jeans.
“Hey!” he flinches.
“For someone smart enough to get accepted to Princeton, I can’t believe you tried to con me with the word Trix!”
He chuckles and pulls me closer. “It was worth a try.”
My heart swells with more than appreciation. I realize he’s given me solace and helped me to contain my sorrow. At least for tonight.
Not only that, he’s slipped further into my heart; and, for the first time, there’s no echo of Drew.
Chapter 23
Raine
“IT’S TIME FOR that drink,” I say, and open a bottle of Shiraz I found in the wine rack next to the refrigerator. I pour it into the two glasses on the coffee table while Jillian, still cold from the beach, huddles under a blanket. My ribs hurt like hell, but I’m out of meds. I’m hoping the wine takes the edge off the pain.
Her dark, windblown hair frames her pink cheeks, giving her a free and wild beauty. Other than the haunted look in her eyes, I’ve never seen her look sexier.
I move the Scrabble board and all of our letters to the dining room table, dim the lights, and then position myself on the couch behind her. I pull her back into my arms, and she lets me hold her again like I did on the beach.
Her aunt’s death stirred up my pain, and I couldn’t watch her suffer without releasing the pressure inside me. I thought telling my story would be difficult, but once I started talking, I didn’t want to stop. With each word, my burden grew lighter. I guess it makes sense. Every moment I spend with her, the less broken I feel. I’m making a leap of faith that she won’t use it against me, and hope that I’ve earned some trust in return.
Now if only the desire in her eyes weren’t mixed with doubt. It’s getting impossible to resist throwing her over my shoulder and carrying her off to the bedroom to wipe away her worries. She has no idea how close I came to that last night on the deck. But at least I still have enough sense in my head not to ruin this by doing something stupid and turning her off. I need her to know that my desire to take her on a date has nothing to do with a quick score or keeping a roof over my head.
For now, I’ll take that she’s returned every kiss I’ve ever given her.
I hand her a glass, enjoying the warmth of her body in front of me. “Tell me about Drew.”
She takes a sip and hands her glass back to me. I put it on the coffee table and she starts.
“After my mother, the second person who died on me was Drew. I was eighteen, the same age as you when you lost your mother.”
My arms tighten around her and air rushes from my lungs.
“He’s dead?” I feel sick. I hadn’t realized that when she said she loved him the other day. I thought he was a high school or college boyfriend who went on to have another life. I suddenly feel bad for some of the comments I made about him in her manuscript.
She nods. “We met the summer after my junior year at a sleepover camp up in Sussex. We were both counselors.” Jillian’s voice takes on a dreamy quality as she speaks, and her words give me chills. Her head rests on my collarbone, and I snuggle her under my chin. “Drew had just moved to New Jersey from Colorado. His parents had gotten divorced a few months earlier, and he came back east with his mom. We caught each other reading the same book one night, and I knew we had to be friends. When I found out he lived in my town and would be finishing high school with me, it sealed the deal. By the end of the summer, it had turned into more than friendship . . .”
She pauses and a hard knot sits in the middle of my stomach. “Did you have sex with him?” I ask, preparing myself for the answer even though it’s kind of dumb being jealous of a dead guy.
She pinches my leg. “Ow! What did I say?” I’m kind of at a loss.
“Only a guy would ask if we had sex instead of if we fell in love,” she says, clucking her tongue at me.
My face grows warm. “I can’t help it. It’s the DNA I’ve been dealt,” I reply, whining in defense of my gender.
“To answer your prying question, yes.” Her voice gets dreamy again. “Right before school started. He was my first . . . We fell in that crazy kind of love that only new hearts can have—when everything feels raw and immediate. When you have no idea what forever means, yet you believe in it with a strength and passion that’s tied to your ability to live and breathe. I think you lose that as you get older.”
I listen to her words and realize I’ve never had that before. The kind of love that makes me do crazy things or believe in the possibility of forever.
My heart sinks. If we get together, does that mean she can never have that with me?
“We were inseparable, even when it came to college. We applied to the same schools, hoping to go together. The day we both received our acceptances to Villanova was one of the happiest days of our lives. We dreamt of our future, of getting married when we graduated college, having kids, the whole fantasy.”
The hairs on my arms lift. I dread where this is going, because it can’t end any way other than him dead. “When?” and “How?” are the only questions left to answer. I’m almost sorry I asked because then I’ll know her pain, and I’d never wish that type of loss on her.
Jillian sighs and reaches down to touch my leg. She rubs it unconsciously, like she’s soothing me. “Anyway, it was the summer after my senior year, and we were on the way to a party—just a bunch of us getting together for a barbeque before we all left for college. Drew’s mother’s car was in the shop, so I took my dad’s. We had the music turned up, and we were singing to the radio. I’ll never forget the song—Bon Jovi’s ‘Wanted Dead or Alive.’ We’d seen them in concert earlier that summer before school ended. Drew had an amazing voice. . . .” Jillian’s voice trails off.
I swallow and brace myself for what’s coming.
“The woman who hit us had a heart attack and ran the red light. Her foot hit the accelerator. She struck the passenger side in the middle of the intersection.” A sniffle escapes Jillian, and her shoulders shake next to me. “I walked away with only cuts and bruises, but Drew wasn’t so lucky. He was pronounced brain dead at the hospital. He died three days later.”
I rock her in my arms.
“It was my fault,” she whispers, and I stop rocking her.
“No, it wasn’t, Jillian.” I frown. “What you told me just now? That wasn’t your fault.”
“I should’ve paid more attention.” She whimpers.
Her guilt assaults me and triggers my anger. “Things happen, Jillian! Shit happens! You didn’t make the woman have a heart attack. You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s why they call it an ‘accident.’ ” Of all the screwed up shit that has happened to me, there’s one thing I know . . . it hasn’t been my fault. I very clearly know who’s to blame.
She’s crying now, and it shatters me. I hope it’s not because of what I said.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, and kiss her hair. The smell of the ocean clings to it. “I’m sorry about Drew. It’s a profound loss. All I can say is that I think I understand.” I squeeze my eyes shut and rock her again. For the first time, I realize that Jillian lost a piece of her future, just like me, at the same point in her life. Her loss draws me so close to her emotionally that I feel my soul sink inside her skin until we intersect in a way I find hard to describe. More than that, it gives me a sense of peace I never thought I’d find.
My mouth dries out when a thought strikes me with sudden clarity. Before I can stop mys
elf, I ask, “When you look at me, do you see only Drew?”
She turns in my arms. Her eyelids are red and puffy, and her eyes look like golden glass. She captures my gaze and holds it. I hold my breath. She touches my cheek. “Not anymore, Raine. I don’t. I see you. Just you.”
Her fingers tenderly pull my face toward hers and then her lips are on mine. Soft, full, and insistent. Like a dam breaking, the tension disappears inside me and I grip her arms and crush her into me. I ignore the pain in my ribs and explore every inch of her mouth, unable to get enough. My cock hardens so fast, I’m almost dizzy from the shift in blood flow.
Jillian’s eyes pop open and she stops kissing me. She backs away and glances down at the bulge in my pants.
I flush, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry. You have that effect on me.”
Her eyebrows lift. “I do? Really?”
I look at her through half-closed eyes. “Really.” I pull her back on top of me, wanting to keep her there.
Her eyes shift uncomfortably away, and she lays her head on my chest so I can’t see her face. “Raine?”
“Hmm?”
“How old are you?”
I tense underneath her. “This again? Why does it matter, Jillian? I’m old enough to legally vote, drink, and have sex in every state of the union.”
She turns to look at me. Her voice is weary. “Just answer the question. Please . . .”
I’m afraid if I do, we’ll lose this moment. Not that she doesn’t already suspect my age, but saying it out loud takes away any cloud of speculation.
I release an exasperated breath, and consider lying. Saying I’m older, but then what? Any trust I’ve earned by the time she finds out the truth would be at risk. Fuck it.
“I’ll be twenty-five in December.” That’s three and half months from now. It’s practically around the corner.
She averts her eyes, and then she moves to crawl off me. My fingers bite into her arms, and I narrow my eyes. “No, I’m not going to let you do that. I’m the same man I was five minutes ago. The same man you kissed.”
She stops trying to get up, and her eyes meet mine. They’re filled with a mixture of pain and longing. I’d give anything to get rid of the part that is pain. This shouldn’t be so complicated. Every minute it takes me to get her over this hurdle is agonizing. I want her so badly. I’m not sure I’ll make it until our date—three days from now. We agreed over dinner that it would be on Friday night, but with her aunt’s death it could easily be longer.
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