That kiss… that first kiss. Nothing could have prepared me for it. It was as though all of the fears, all of the second guessing, all of the ways I’d tried to talk myself out of my feelings for him had just fallen away.
What remained was just our two bodies, communicating our hunger through the explosive contact of our lips and tongues.
When Trig pulled back and told me I was calling the shots — that he would only go as far as I told him to — I had been on the verge of throwing all caution to the wind and taking him upstairs to my bedroom.
Trig had me feeling things that I quite honestly could not remember ever feeling with a man before. Even lying on the couch like a couple of teenagers with him pressing his hard, hot need against me, I thought for one trembling moment that I was going to come just like that. And I probably would have, too. Except I wanted so much more.
And then, the past had come rushing back.
The stupid past, that I was stupid for even caring about. I was ten years older now. Supposedly, ten years wiser, and stronger. In that time, at least one man had hurt me far worse than Caleb/Trig Jackson’s cutting remarks ever had. It was silly that I still harbored the pain of being eighteen and rejected, I told myself.
Over these past weeks, being with him during our therapy appointments and watching the way he acted with Zoe, I had begun telling myself that Trig could have changed. Stupid adolescent boys were just that — stupid. The Eva and Caleb of the past were long gone. Wasn’t it all water under the proverbial bridge?
But that Trig would lie to me about it, even now after all these years…
That, I couldn’t accept.
Lord knows I had been lied to enough by men in my life. David was a master at it. In his case, the word was “gaslighting.” To try to control me, he would tell me my accusations were completely groundless, and then “apologize” while rolling his eyes to convey how ridiculous I was being. In the end, I would find myself frustrated, confused, and questioning my sanity over things I knew deep down I had seen with my own eyes.
Eventually, David began accusing me of cheating on him, and tried to impose control over when I went out and who I saw. When he told me that fateful night that if I wasn’t in the mood for sex with him, it had to be because I had fucked someone else earlier that day, I knew I couldn’t stay in the marriage any longer.
I knew there was no future for Trig and me. I could never be involved with a man whose basic honesty I questioned from the very beginning. And I had good reason to question it in his case.
Still, there had been something in his deep brown gaze that made me falter. When he looked me in the eyes and told me he didn’t know why I had been so angry with him all those years ago, I found myself almost believing him. From long years of being with my ex-husband, I had gotten pretty good at telling when someone was lying to me, and Trig’s face didn’t show any of the signs.
But there was no mistaking the fact that he had said those things to Debbie Turner. He had called me “princess” to mock me for being stuck up despite my sordid home life. The fact that he didn’t know why I was angry? If he was telling the truth — which I still couldn’t quite believe — that could only mean he had forgotten his words. That their cruelty meant so little to him at the time, he had just put them out of his mind.
Which in a way was worse.
Trig Jackson hadn’t hurt me more than my ex-husband had. But the feelings I had for him were already somehow stronger than any I had ever had for David. And that meant that if I got involved with Trig now, and he hurt me again, the pain would be worse than anything I had experienced with my ex-husband.
I couldn’t go through it again. I just couldn’t. I had to keep my distance from Trig. Not even because of the past, but because of the future. I couldn’t let myself get hurt, and I couldn’t put Zoe in the position of another man letting her down.
Vanessa had somehow managed to worm out of me that Trig had come over for dinner the night before, and predictably, she had leapt onto the information like a dog with a bone. She had more or less forced me to tell her all about it at lunch, and was working on me to tell her the reason why I was reluctant to continue what I had stupidly started.
“Good lord, girl, he is the hottest man I have seen in a loonnng time,” she said to me incredulously as we chatted that afternoon between clients. “The temperature in the clinic goes up every time he walks in. Why in God’s name would you turn down some of that action?”
“Van, I…” I began. But I couldn’t continue. Honestly, when I thought about telling her why I didn’t trust Trig, I was afraid it would sound idiotic. But it wasn’t idiotic to me.
“I just think he’s a player,” I shrugged. “I don’t trust him.”
“Have you seen the way that man looks at you?” she asked, a hand on her hip. “He is smitten. You have a duty to the rest of womankind to take one for the team and have sex with that gorgeous hunk of man flesh. And, while you’re at it, you can do some research into just how far down those tattoos go.”
“Vanessa!” I cried, blushing.
“Come on, you can’t tell me you haven’t wondered,” she countered. “Or… do you know already?” She gave me a wicked grin.
I laughed in spite of myself. “No, I do not know already. Trig and I haven’t done anything yet.” Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth, but we certainly hadn’t gotten to the point of me knowing what he looked like naked.
Vanessa opened her mouth to reply, but her gaze shifted to a point behind me. “Shit,” she hissed. “Don’t look now, but Larkin just walked around the corner, and he’s making a beeline for you.”
“Oh, no!” I whispered back. I had been successfully avoiding Kevin Larkin for a few weeks now, and I thought he had finally taken the hint.
I closed my eyes in frustration, and when I opened them, he was standing right in front of me, partially blocking Vanessa.
“Well, hello there, stranger!” he crowed. Behind me, Vanessa raised her eyebrows in a silent question.
I shrugged my shoulders as discreetly as I could. There was nothing to be done. “Hello, Kevin. How are you?” I watched Vanessa tiptoe away backwards, toward the appointment desk.
“Doing great, doing great,” he said, smiling expansively. “You’ve certainly been making yourself scarce lately.” He raised his eyebrows, still smiling. “You haven’t been avoiding me, have you?”
I cringed. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
“Kevin, it’s not that,” I said in a voice that I hoped was kind without being overly friendly. “I just think… well, I realized I’m not ready to date anyone. You see, my daughter takes up so much of my time. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable going on dates without her.” Time to lay it on thick. “Anyone who wanted to date me would have to be willing to see themselves as Zoe’s new daddy.”
“Her daddy?” Kevin visibly blanched. “Now, that seems a little extreme, doesn’t it? I mean, there are babysitters, after all. There’s no reason we can’t just have a little fun, is there?”
“I’m sorry, Kevin, I really can’t.” I glanced around nervously. I really wanted to finish this conversation before any patients heard us.
For the briefest moment, his smile faltered, but then came roaring back. I noticed that it no longer reached his eyes. “Eva. I know you’re embarrassed about being a mother. But I assure you, there’s no reason it has to change anything between us. I’ll admit, I’m not normally interested in women like you, but I’m willing to make an exception.”
“Women like me?” I asked in disbelief.
“Well, yes.” He frowned slightly. “Women with ‘baggage’.” He raised his fingers in air quotes.
“My daughter is not ‘baggage’,” I replied icily. “She’s beautiful.”
“How about you leave the lady alone?” A familiar voice said behind me. I turned to see Trig fixing Kevin with a cold stare. A muscle in his jaw pulsed.
“Excuse me?” Kevin said haughtily. His chin rose a notch.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.”
A bark of laughter came from Trig. “Yeah. I suppose you don’t have a great track record of remembering people you operate on.”
“Come again?” Kevin asked.
“Never mind,” Trig snorted in disgust. “The point is, you seem to have a hearing problem as well as a seeing problem. So let me put this to you as politely as possible. Ms. Van Buren has explained to you that she is not interested in pursuing a relationship with you.” His lip curled into a sneer.
“I believe,” Kevin retorted, “that the lady can speak for herself.”
“But that’s just it, doc.” Trig nodded slightly toward me. “She has been. But you don’t seem to be able to take no for an answer.”
Kevin seemed to be on the verge of saying something else, but as he looked down at the tattoos that flexed and strained under the mass of Trigs muscled arms, he must have thought better of it. Glancing at me dismissively, he took a parting shot.
“Looks like I was wrong about you,” he sniffed. “You must be more damaged than I thought, if this is your idea of dating material.”
“What the —“ Trig started toward Kevin, his eyes growing dark with anger, but I restrained him. “Stop it, Trig. It’s not worth it.”
I watched Kevin’s retreating form as he walked stiffly away down the hall, then turned back to Trig accusingly. I was mostly relieved that he’d managed to get rid of him, true. But it still stuck in my craw that Trig thought it was his job to come to my rescue.
“What the hell was that?” I fumed. “I can take care of myself, you know. I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.”
Trig scoffed. “Apparently you do need someone to fight your battles. I heard you talking to him. Your body language was screaming loud and clear that you wanted him to leave you alone, and yet what do you say to him? ‘I’m just not ready to date anyone.’” He shook his head. “Why do you care about hurting that jagoff’s feelings? You sure as hell don’t have any problem telling me where to go.”
Before I could respond, he brushed past me. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “It’s time for my appointment. I don’t have all day.”
Trig disappeared down the hallway toward the back of the exercise area where we normally started our sessions. I noticed that he was using his cane again, and that his limp seemed to be more pronounced than usual.
“Trig, are you experiencing more pain than you usually do?”
He grunted. “Probably just shouldn’t have gone without the cane last night, is all.”
My face colored at his mention of the night before, making me struggle to focus on the matter at hand. “Tell me what you’re feeling,” I said, following him down the hall. “Is it muscle strain? Fatigue?”
“I don’t know,” he retorted. “Just feels like shit.”
“The numbness has been going away, though, recently, right? You told me last week that the numbness in your calf and foot was getting better.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he muttered. “But shit, now I walk on it without the cane for a couple of hours, and we’re back to square one.”
“This isn’t square one,” I argued. “You are making improvement, Trig. It just takes time. You have to be patient.”
“Yeah?” He challenged. “Well, you know what? Patience is not one my virtues.” He swore underneath his breath. “Maybe it’s time to just face the fact that this is how it’s gonna be. Maybe it’s time to admit I’m not gonna ride a motorcycle again. Maybe this is all I am from now on.”
“Trig, I know how frustrated you must feel…” I began.
“No!” he growled. “You don’t! You don’t have any fucking idea.”
I shrank back. “Okay, fine,” I retorted. “Maybe I don’t know exactly how you feel, but I can imagine —“
“No you can’t. So don’t try to pretend to.” Trig’s eyes locked on mine. “You’ve always been a success, Eva. You were always going to be something. You’ve accomplished your goals.”
He shook his head. “My goals have been pretty simple. Don’t take any shit from anybody, be loyal to my club, and spend as much time with a Harley engine between my legs as possible.” He scoffed and looked down at his leg. “Now? Christ, Eva. I’m not even thirty years old yet, and I feel like an old man. How the fuck am I supposed to spend my days? like this?” He spread his hands toward his leg. “Hobbling around like a goddamn invalid?”
“Trig, stop it!” I didn’t know whether to cry or to hit him.“You stop this right now! For one thing, you are getting better. I’m confident of that. You’ve made more progress than you know. And for another,” I continued, “even if that weren’t the case, how dare you imply that your life would be worth less if you couldn’t ride a motorcycle? I’ve seen so many people recover from horrible, horrible accidents, who go on to do great things, with disabilities far worse than your worst case scenario.” My eyes filled with tears of frustration. “You don’t get to say their lives are worth less because of their disabilities.”
“I’m not.” His voice was angry, but low. “I’m not saying that at all. But I am saying that mine will be.” He gave me a cold, hard look. “You don’t get to tell me what my own life is worth.”
He ran a hand roughly through his mass of black hair. His face was pinched, his jaw tense. “You know what?” he said after a moment. “I’m not up for this today. Go ahead and bill me for the time. It’s fine.”
My chest grew tight as I watched him leave, struggling not to limp as he leaned on the cane. A painful lump rose in my throat as I tried to decide whether to stop him.
But deep down, I knew it was no use. Even if I could make him stay, he wouldn’t be able to work today. He needed time to work through the painful, raw emotions he had exposed to me just now.
Intuitively, I was sure he hadn’t said anything of his fears to anybody else before this. He was a proud man. That was part of the reason that the prospect of having to accept anything less than a full recovery was so hard for him to do. He could barely bring himself to imagine that a life different from the one he had chosen for himself could have any meaning. It must have taken a lot for him to admit any of this to me, I knew. In a way, I felt honored.
But I also knew he had every reason to expect a full recovery, or at least full enough that he would be able to get back on his bike. I hadn’t been lying about that. I just wished there was some way I could make him believe it.
I was still thinking about Trig as I walked down the block to pick up Zoe later that afternoon. Mrs. Hayes was feeling better, and she greeted me at her door saying that Zoe was playing on the back patio with a neighbor girl. “I’m still not quite one-hundred percent,” she said as she led me into her living room, “so I thought it might be better for Zoe to have Olivia over so she wasn’t bored.”
I peered out the window to see Zoe and her playmate drawing hopscotch boards and stick figures on the ground in sidewalk chalk. The melody of their childish laughter was just audible through the glass.
“You look a bit tired yourself, dear. Would you like to sit down and have a glass of water?” Mrs. Hayes offered.
It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse, but Zoe looked like she was enjoying herself so much I decided to let her play a little longer. “Yes, thank you, Wanda. I’d like that.”
She went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses, one of which she handed to me. We sat down in two swiveling easy chairs that turned toward the window to watch the girls play.
“How are you feeling, Wanda?” I asked her as I sipped.
“Oh, much better, thank you. I just need to make sure I get enough sleep for the next few days and I’ll be right as rain.” She cast a sideways glance at me. “How are you?”
I sighed. “You’re right, I am a bit tired. There’s just a lot going on right now.” I hesitated. “There’s a patient at work I’m a bit concerned about.”
“A patient,” she repeated.
“Yes. He’s coming back from an injury, and it’s g
oing more slowly than he’d like.” I closed my eyes briefly, remembering his look of pain. “I think he’s lost hope. And he doesn’t seem to believe me when I tell him there’s every chance he’ll make a full recovery.”
“I see.” She frowned. “And, is there any reason for him to believe that you’re lying to him?”
“No!” The word came out louder than I intended. “I mean, no, I’m definitely not lying to him. But for some reason, he doesn’t believe me.”
“Fear.” She nodded. “He’s letting his fear get the better of him. Fear makes people see and hear things that aren’t there.”
Her words hung in the silence that followed. What she said absolutely made sense in Trig’s case. He was afraid of the future, and in a way his fear might end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy unless he learned to conquer it.
But what Mrs. Hayes had said was ringing uncomfortably true for me, as well. Was fear making me see and hear things that weren’t there?
No. No. I knew what I had heard all those years ago. There was no other way to interpret it.
Was there?
“Would you like some more water?” Mrs. Hayes asked, interrupting my thoughts. I looked down to see I had drained my glass.
“No, that’s okay. Thank you, though.” I smiled over at her.
“Of course, dear.” She stared out the window at Zoe and Olivia playing hopscotch. “About your friend,” she began. “Perhaps there’s something you can do to make him trust you.”
“He’s my patient, not my friend,” I clarified.
“Well. From what I gather, patients don’t often make visits to therapists’ homes.”
Startled, I glanced over at her.
“That young man I saw limping away from your house toward his truck last night. That’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“How did you…” I gaped.
She laughed. “Dear, don’t you know the stereotype of the nosy old neighbor lady who spies on everyone through her picture window? It’s absolutely true.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “Every senior citizen on this block spends more time than you would believe peering out at the neighbors through their curtains. It’s our version of reality television.”
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