Can't Hold Back

by Serena Bell

  Chapter 18

  She could feel herself slowing down as she approached the office, her dread manifesting itself.

  She knew this was the right thing to do. She and Nate had talked about it.

  Her body felt loose and free. Her mind felt—empty. And even though he’d made her come six times, every time she let her mind wander back, she felt cavernous with longing for more.

  She could lie to herself, but she’d know. What had happened between her and Nate was going to happen until something stopped them—the most likely thing being getting caught. And she didn’t want Jake to hear about it from someone else.

  Sometime last night, sometime between the first time she came and the sixth, she’d realized that she didn’t care anymore about the job. Or, correction: She still cared, but she recognized that it had been sacrificed on the altar of her attraction to Nate. And she was okay with that.

  But she wasn’t okay with losing Jake’s friendship, so this was what had to be done.

  In the meantime, Nate had gone down to southern Oregon for a couple days to gear up for the upcoming weekend with Braden, now only a couple weeks off. They were going to inventory all their combined camping equipment and go shopping for anything else they needed.

  I’ll be back late Wednesday, he’d said.

  She wondered if he’d been thinking what she was doing. About whether they’d be able to steal more time together or whether it was already over.

  Neither of them had asked the question aloud.

  “Is Jake in?”

  Sibby looked up from the computer.

  “No, hon. Didn’t you get his message?”

  She shook her head.

  “He said he left you a couple voicemails. His mom was in a car accident last night.”

  Alia’s heart contracted, and her face must have blanched, because Sibby said, “She’s okay. She’s okay. But he won’t be in for a couple days.”

  “Do you think—can I call him? Or should I not bother him?”

  “Why don’t you see what his messages say?”

  “Can we get her some flowers? Or a basket? Something?”

  “On it,” said Sibby with a smile.

  “Can I—” She reached into her purse, snagged two twenties, and handed them to Sibby. Things were hard for Sibby, Alia knew—one son, a bit of a deadbeat, still living at home, and this income hardly enough for one, let alone two.

  “No, hon.” Sibby tried to hand them back.

  “Please. If you get other donations and it’s too much, you can give me some back.”

  Sibby hesitated again, but then her face softened into gratitude and she slipped the money into her pocket. “Thank you, hon.”

  “Let me know. If there’s anything I can do. If you want me to place the order—”

  “I got it, love.”

  Her phone began buzzing persistently. A call.

  She pulled it out. It was Jake.

  “Oh, Jake.”

  “Hi, Li.” His voice was strained.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t call back—Sibby told me—I didn’t get the messages—”

  They’d probably gotten tangled up in all the texting, flown right by her attention during a moment of bunched-up phone buzzing. Her guilt spiked.

  “No worries. I just wanted to make sure you knew I hadn’t abandoned you. They think she’s going to be fine, but she has whiplash and a fractured rib and they’re still keeping a close eye for internal injuries and concussion. She can’t remember much, and she’s really shaken up. I need to stay. I’m going to stay a couple days, probably. Can you hold down the fort?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have Sibby transfer whichever of my appointments to you she can. Have her postpone the others for a few days. I’m hoping to be away less than a week.”

  “Don’t worry about anything. Just take care of your mom. And take care of yourself.”

  “You’re my hero.”

  Oh, but I’m so not, she thought. “Jake?”

  She was torn. Not wanting to make his life more complicated, not wanting to be selfish, but also not wanting to use his mom’s situation as an excuse for dishonesty.

  “Wait, hang on—”

  Someone was talking to him, a doctor or a nurse, and held the phone a polite distance from her own ear so it didn’t feel like she was eavesdropping on him, and—God, he didn’t need her little piece of drama right now. His mom.

  He came back to the phone. “What were you going to say?”

  “I—” I can’t tell him right now. The last thing he needs is to be worrying about that while he’s trying to help his mom.

  “And don’t worry about Nate,” Jake said. “He’s not on my schedule, but if he needs something in a pinch, text me and I’ll come back—I’m only forty-five minutes away.”

  “He’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Don’t give us another thought.”

  “I’m so grateful you’re there.”

  She felt another sharp pang of guilt. And loss. Because he would have been such a good boss. It would have been such a good job.

  She hung up the phone and sat on the steps outside the office. Until she realized her dominant feeling was no longer guilt, but relief. As much as she hadn’t told Jake the truth for his own sake, she hadn’t told him for her sake. Because his absence offered her a few more days, a few more days before the moment of reckoning.

  A few more days with Nate.

  She wanted them, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

  —

  Alia: Jake’s not here. His mom was in a car accident; he’ll be out a few days.

  Nate: Oh, no! She okay?

  Alia: I think she’s fine, just shaken up.

  Nate: Glad to hear it. Geez. Makes you think, right?

  Alia: I know.

  She set the phone down and logged in to the patient-records app. Griff was up next. He’d seemed to make a cosmic leap forward in progress since Nate’s arrival, further convincing her that one of the foremost healing properties of this place was the way it let veterans be around other guys who’d seen the worst and lived to tell.

  Nate: So you didn’t tell him about us?

  She liked it. That us. Too much.

  Alia: No.

  Nate: Does that mean—a little bonus time?

  Bonus time, huh? Like the overtime in a video game when you were pretty much already dead. And even though she knew he’d used those words without thinking, hadn’t meant to turn what had passed between them into a transaction, to be enjoyed, prolonged, but ultimately finished, her stomach hurt anyway.

  Nate: Can I see you when I get back Wednesday night?

  Oh, foolish, hopeful heart. He just wants to get laid again.

  But what if he doesn’t want just that? What if he’s open to the possibility of more?

  She hated how it felt like birds taking off in her chest, thinking about it.

  She had missed so many opportunities last night to ask him. If the sex had changed things for him, too, if there could be more for them than “bonus time.” And she’d missed the biggest chance of all this morning, when he had stood inside her closed door and kissed her, so tenderly and lingeringly, goodbye. He’d withdrawn his hands from hers with as much reluctance as she’d felt, and he’d looked back at her once before he’d closed the door, and been gone.

  She was afraid if she brought the questions out into the open, he’d point out the obvious. That it was one night. That it was too soon, too fast, to draw conclusions or change plans.

  It wasn’t just that night, she argued with him, silently. I’ve known since way back.

  She known. But he hadn’t. He’d been in love with a person who looked like Becca and wrote like Alia, and—well, that wasn’t her.

  Nate: Can’t stop thinking about it. The look on your face when you come.

  Oh, God.

  Alia: I can’t, either.

  She needed to sort this all out. To make some sense out of it. And then maybe once s
he did that, she would know how to talk to him. What to ask him for.

  As if the depth of Alia’s confusion had conjured her, Becca’s photo flashed across Alia’s screen and the phone began to ring.

  She thought about not answering it, because her thoughts were such a jumble. Because if there was a person on earth to whom she might suddenly blurt out the mess of her thoughts and feelings, it was Becca—and Alia wasn’t ready for that.

  But she had never not taken a call of Becca’s when it had come in, and she wasn’t going to start now.

  Alia: Phone call. More in a bit.

  “Hey, big sister.” Becca’s voice was a balm.

  “Hey, little sister.”

  “I’m so glad you’re there.” Becca’s voice caught. Tears.

  Everything shifted suddenly, the way it always did when her baby sister was in trouble. “Are you okay?”

  “No. No.” Another catch, this one almost a sob. “I make a mess of everything.”

  “No! You don’t. Hon, absolutely not.”

  It felt good to comfort her sister. The one time things had been reversed, on that terrible night when Alia had sent Nate the instant messages, it had felt all wrong. She’d hated that night, the way she’d broken down, the tears and sobs, Becca patting her head and offering awkward comfort. It had made her understand why parents don’t cry, the wrongness of having your child offer you solace. It felt like weakness and, worse, she knew she didn’t deserve the sympathy, didn’t deserve the generosity of Becca’s total forgiveness. Becca kept saying all the right things, You knew I wasn’t into him anymore. I knew you liked him. It was bound to happen, the way you felt, keeping that inside all that time, all those letters that weren’t for you. And It’s going to be okay, I promise. And Please stop beating yourself up.

  That, of course, had been beyond impossible.

  Becca’s sob recalled her to the present.

  “Oh, hon. Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I—I freaked out is what happened. And now it’s been three days, nothing. That can’t be a good sign, can it?”

  “It was the third date?”

  “Fourth.”

  “Can you give me any details? Not the gory ones—” Alia amended quickly.

  She’d pulled a shaky laugh from Becca, and she felt the relief that accompanied having a concrete problem to solve. A sister to soothe, someone to heal, something easier to fix than her own romantic difficulties. All her irritation with her sister vanished, and she perched on the table so she could concentrate on her sister’s story.

  “He’s like—he’s this great guy. Supersmart, started his own computer company, now he’s like a bajillionaire with a staff and going to get bought out by Google or Amazon or whoever any minute. But totally down-to-earth. So nice. And so romantic with me—all the wining and dining, and telling me he really liked me, making me believe it, and telling me he was starting to care for me.”

  “And then?”

  “And then—we went back to his place, and oh, God, it was amazing—this guy can seriously—never mind, you said no gory details, but you know—and then I’m—we’re on the couch, after, and it’s getting late, the heat shut off, and he gets up to go get a blanket for us and I start wandering around, looking at his books, and I totally freak out. Looking at book after book after book I’ve never read and I’ll probably never read, and he comes back and I freeze up. Totally freeze. So I ran away.”

  “Because of his books?”

  “Because—because he said—being able to talk to someone smart and thoughtful and educated is really important to him—”

  Becca’s voice broke, a sob for real this time.

  “He said that when? Last night? When?”

  “As we were walking back to his place.”

  “Before he asked you up? Before he kissed you? Before whatever?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he meant you, Becca. He was telling you he thought you were smart and thoughtful and educated. Easy to talk to. Because you are.”

  Someday she’d say it and Becca would believe her. She knew it. But in the meantime she’d tell her as many times as she needed to hear it.

  “And since then—nothing.” Becca’s voice was a whisper.

  “You’ve left messages, texts, all that?”

  “Yes. But—I ran out on him without an explanation. He has a right to be angry.”

  “Yeah, that’s not the perfect scenario, sure, but you can still talk about it. What did you say in your messages and texts? Did you apologize? Did you tell him why?”

  “I—I apologized, but I didn’t tell him why.”

  “You need to tell him why. You need to talk about it.”

  Becca was silent. She’d never liked to talk about it. Not about her learning disabilities or the self-esteem issues they’d caused.

  “If he’s a good guy, you can make yourself vulnerable to him. That’s really the only way things are going to work out anyway, right? He needs to know who you are, what you’re afraid of, and what you want.”

  Ah, she was such a hypocrite.

  It was time. Time for her to tell Nate how she felt, and then they could have The Talk. And she’d see. If maybe there was more wiggle room than she’d thought.

  She felt like laughing out loud. And bursting into tears.

  Griff poked his head into Alia’s office. “You ready for me?”

  She nodded, got up from the table, and indicated that he should lie down. “Hey—my patient just walked in.”

  “I’ll let you go. But do you really think it’ll work? Telling him?”

  Did she? She wasn’t sure. She wanted to spout all the right words—Honesty is the best policy and To thine own self and all that—but did she believe them? Did she believe that all it would take to heal a rift was a bridge of words?

  “I think it’s worth a try, baby. And let me know how it goes, okay?”

  Her sister drew a deep breath. “Okay. Love you. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  It wasn’t until Alia hung up the phone that she realized she’d never told Becca any of her own story.

  Her phone buzzed again.

  “Do you mind if I tie up this one loose end?” she asked Griff.

  “Take your time.” He had his hands behind his head and his legs crossed, the picture of relaxation, even though she knew inside he was as knotted up as any of them.

  Nate: You never answered me. Can I see you tomorrow night?

  Alia: My room.

  Then, feeling panicky, Be discreet. I don’t want Jake hearing from someone other than me.

  Nate: Will do.

  A brief silence.

  Nate: In the meantime, will you do something for me?

  She felt what was coming. In the fluttering in her belly and the anticipatory clenching between her legs.

  Nate: Every time you’re alone, touch yourself.

  Chapter 19

  They’d started Tuesday morning, gray and heavy with fog, in Braden’s granddad’s hardware store. The hardware store that had, once, been J.J.’s legacy. That was now his own, and Braden’s.

  Braden and Jim led him around the store to show him all the new merchandise that had come in since his last visit, and how it improved a hundredfold on what they’d had before. A waffle maker where you could swap out the grids to make panini. A step stool that was stronger than the old one but also folded smaller. A different brand of LED lightbulb that lasted longer.

  Nate had summoned up as much enthusiasm as he could, admiring and handling everything he was shown, but he knew he didn’t feel what they felt. He didn’t nourish the same love for the wall devoted to every head size and thread count of screw you could ever want.

  Every screw you could ever want…heh. Heh-heh.

  His mind went off on a little romp, remembering two nights ago in ridiculous detail, until he dragged it back to the present.

  He didn’t want to use too much energy wanting what he might be able t
o have at most a few more times.

  He felt like shit, not only because he was feigning enthusiasm for Jim and Braden’s beloved stuff, but also because being here, in the store, had made him start to ask the tougher questions.

  Is this really what I want to be doing?

  He reminded himself that this wasn’t about what he wanted to be doing. J.J. didn’t want to be six feet under, a flag and a bronze star and a purple heart sleeping on his bed instead of him. Braden didn’t want to be fatherless, more or less an orphan. Jim and Suzy didn’t want to have lost their only child, to be in possession of an heirless hardware store.

  Life was about doing what had to be done, not about kicking back and getting laid as often as you pleased.

  He pushed her, and the memories of the other night, from his mind.

  They headed to the camping store next. Braden went nuts in there, too. Funny, he was such an acquisitive little squirrel. That was another thing he’d gotten from his father. J.J.’s pack had been a magpie’s nest of pointless junk, weighing him down.

  Braden wanted it all. Waterproof notebook. Water purification system that let you suck the stuff straight out of the ground and through a filter. Pocket-sized solar spark lighter. Full-body bug gear.

  “You can write in the rain with this pen!” Braden, dark-haired, freckled, and unusually mature and serious for ten, jumped up and down with excitement.

  For a kid who had to be in a lot of psychic pain, Braden was in good shape. Nate attributed that to the strength of his bond with his grandparents, who had been his primary caretakers for the last four years. And really, since J.J. had been seventeen when Braden was born, and had spent most of the last ten years overseas, they’d always been his primary caretakers.

  “Okay. We’ll need that,” Nate said, straight-faced, and threw the waterproof notebook into the mesh shopping basket for good measure.

  “Do we need a kayak?”

  “I can borrow kayaks, life vests, paddles, floats, and pumps from R-and-R.”