by Joanne Rock
“Wait.” Mack didn’t move at first, then he executed a sprint that put him between her and the bathroom door just before she reached it. “I’m sorry.”
She shook from the force of all she’d been feeling—the guilt, the anger and, yes, the heartbreak. Because she understood that this fight wasn’t just about the past. It was about their inability to find their way toward a future.
“Me, too.” Her voice cracked. “I was hopeful today, Mack. I almost believed we could turn things around and...I don’t know. Figure out a way to build something together.”
Even now, every cell inside her seemed to strain toward him, craving his touch. Maybe even his love. But she smothered that thought as soon as it flickered in her consciousness. It wasn’t too late to salvage some pride and sense of self.
“That’s what I wanted, too, Nina.” His hands reached toward her and then stopped in midair. They stayed there for a second before falling uselessly at his sides. “But I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle to make that call. I didn’t know—”
“What?” she prodded when he didn’t seem inclined to finish the sentence. “That you weren’t the only one with secrets from that summer? That I hid things from you, too?”
His jaw flexed. “I didn’t know that I’d failed to keep you safe from the family drama. All these years, I thought I’d at least done that much right.”
She instantly regretted needling him. He’d been thinking of her and she’d been too busy being defensive to realize it. Nina was still struggling with how to respond when he turned on his heel.
“No need to call a cab. I’ll bring you home when you’re ready.” He was almost out of the bedroom when his cell phone rang.
It vibrated on a table near where Nina stood, so she picked it up and brought it to him, her heart an absolute mess. She wanted to fix something, anything. Smooth over the rough edges all around them. But Mack seemed so distant now.
Flipping over the device, he looked at the screen as the phone chimed again. They could both read the name of the caller.
Mom.
“I’ll call her when I get back.” Mack jammed the phone in his pocket. “I’ll be in here when you’re ready to go.”
He disappeared into the other room, leaving Nina to dress in privacy. She moved slowly, though, knowing when she left here today, she wouldn’t ever be coming back. Mack didn’t trust her anymore, for one thing. She’d kept one too many secrets and crossed a boundary with his mom.
Never mind that he’d said damn hurtful things, too. Sometimes romance couldn’t be repaired. Her mother had told her as much during her parents’ divorce, but she’d refused to believe it. She’d even opened Cupcake Romance thinking she could help others toward the happy-ever-afters she wanted desperately to believe in. Too bad she had no clue how to forge one of her own.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN A NEW record for incredible highs and plummeting lows, Mack had recaptured a dream for exactly one afternoon.
Got it. Lost it.
He took the long way home from Spencer Farm, figuring he’d better avoid the entrance ramp to the interstate or he’d find himself racing back to Nashville where his world made sense. Work always made sense. Family, relationships and this town, on the other hand...
Taking a winding road past the local quarry, Mack drove the Eldorado with the top down despite the chill in the air, trying to get his head on straight. His time with Nina had been incredible. Amazing. Better than he remembered, imagined or hoped. They’d been so completely in synch.
Then came the revelation that she’d spoken to his mom the night of her breakdown and he’d been just about gutted. He’d been a jackass to accuse her of pushing his mother over the edge, obviously. But he’d been shocked—both that she’d faced his mother alone that night and that she’d kept it quiet for so long. That told him how much the confrontation must have hurt her. Nina never kept anything quiet. It was part of her charm. To a guy who thought through every move and always took the cautious path, Nina’s gutsy, bold way of speaking her mind was refreshing.
Pounding a fist on the steering wheel, he ground his teeth to avoid feeling the fresh ache in his chest.
He could just imagine the kinds of things his mother might have said. She’d always told him that Nina wasn’t right for him, but Mack had ignored her because he’d finally found some happiness outside his claustrophobic family. Still...Mack was used to the kind of hurtful things that could come out of his mom’s mouth when she was in a state. That night especially, after thinking Mack was dead, she’d been a wreck and climbing the walls.
Nina would have been utterly unprepared for that kind of firestorm. It explained a lot about her desperation to leave Heartache after that night. Sure, she’d escaped to deal with the grief of Vince’s death on her own. But his mother had played a role in chasing Nina away.
Nearing the top of the quarry hill, he noticed a sign was down. He remembered the sign because he’d driven the route plenty of times as a teen when he’d worked for the family’s construction business. He’d made trips up here for building materials and there was usually a sign for an S curve down a tricky bit of incline. He’d had to navigate it carefully when he was pulling a trailer full of gravel.
Maybe he’d inherited more of his old man’s civic-mindedness than he’d realized, because Mack found himself pulling over. He’d call the town garage tomorrow to ask them about the sign, but he was curious if it was in the weeds or if a kid had stolen it for his bedroom wall. Parking the Eldorado on the side of the road, he left the engine running as he stepped out of the vehicle. Traffic was almost nonexistent on this road at night, but he left his headlights on just in case.
A strange feeling crawled up his spine. Like someone was watching him. Or—
Someone was calling out?
Mack ran to the car and killed the engine. He was probably hearing things, but he couldn’t shake that humming of his sixth sense. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he listened to the wind blow through the trees near the quarry.
There! A high-pitched cry. It could have been animal or human, but his instincts told him someone was in trouble.
“I hear you!” he shouted. Popping the trunk, he found flares and a flashlight. Ah, screw the flares. No time.
He left his lights on, took his phone and flashlight and headed into the woods.
“If you can hear me, I need you to make noise!” He bellowed the words. There were no houses near the quarry, just a few buildings owned by Rowen Gravel. There was a moon out, but there was zero ambient light out here on the far edge of town.
Was someone lost? Had a kid fallen down one of the cliffs? There was a lot of cool equipment down in the quarry to attract troublemakers—dump trucks and bulldozers sat there all the time.
When no sound answered his call, he ran faster through the trees, twigs snapping in his face since the brush was thick around the edges of the property. He swung the flashlight in an arc in front of him, sweeping the ground with the beam until he hit a patch that reflected back at him. Pausing, he turned the beam hard to the east where he’d thought he’d seen something. And that’s when he spotted shiny metallic paint in robin’s-egg-blue.
A sports car rested nose-down among the trees, crumpled into half its regular size.
His knees buckled for all of a second as old memories of another crash robbed his focus. But there was a survivor this time, damn it. He’d failed his friend by letting Vince take off in his car when he’d been upset. He wasn’t failing someone again.
Shoving aside everything else, he sprinted toward the vehicle. Twice he lost his footing on the side of the steep hill and he skidded lower down the cliff beyond the wreck. When he climbed back up, keeping his boots lodged in the base of one tree after another, he shouted again.
“You okay?” His heart
beat so fast he figured there was a real chance he’d have a coronary in the dark before he even got to the driver. What the hell was it about this day that he had one foot in the past and one in the present? His throat was raw when he called out the next time. “I’m here and I’m calling for help now.”
He forced himself to stop long enough to focus on his phone. He called 911 and then launched himself toward the driver’s-side door.
“911. What’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice said through the device.
Thank you, God.
He tugged on the car’s dented panel, but it was wedged. He could see someone inside.
“I’m at the scene of an accident on the Quarry Road in Heartache. Tell the emergency responders to look for the Eldorado at the top of the hill and walk straight down the bank on the east side of the road from there.” He pulled the door harder. “I only see one victim. Female. I’m putting the phone down to try and open the door.”
Settling the phone on a crook of a nearby tree, he hit the speaker button and accidentally disconnected the call. Screw it. He grabbed the door handle and yanked. Once. Twice.
The third time, he may have dislocated his shoulder, but at least he dislodged the rumpled metal.
“Are you okay?” He sank to the running board area near the driver’s seat. The girl was slumped half into the passenger seat, her left leg twisted at a wrong angle as blood spilled down her thigh. Not a lot, though.
Mack leaned into the dark to listen for her breathing. Checked her heart. Both were strong.
Thank you, God.
Not until that moment had he realized how scared he’d been. How much he’d seen his eighteen-year-old best friend inside this dented-to-shit hunk of metal. Vaguely, he realized his phone was ringing.
Crap. Pulling himself together, he leaned back out into the night and retrieved the phone. The screen lit up with a return call from the dispatcher.
He thumbed it to speakerphone. “I’m here,” he said, still half out of breath. “She’s alive but unconscious. Her leg appears to be broken, but no protruding bones.”
“Help is on the way,” the 911 attendant assured him.
“No,” the teenage blonde moaned, stirring.
He glanced back down at her. “Careful. Don’t make any sudden movements. You could have a head injury.”
“I do,” she murmured. “My head hurts.” Her lip was cut, too, he realized.
And, as he studied her face, looking beyond the injuries, he realized he recognized this girl.
“You’re Ally’s friend.” He’d just met her earlier that day. “I’m Ally’s uncle from the straw maze. Mack.” He kept the phone on speaker for the 911 worker in case she had questions.
In the distance, he heard a siren.
“Rachel Wagoner. Please don’t tell my mother about this.” Her words were whispered but clear.
“Don’t talk if it hurts, Rachel. You’ve got a bad cut on your lip.” And he didn’t bother mentioning the totaled car would be tough to hide from the teen’s mother.
“I mean it. Don’t tell my mom. She’ll kill me.” She turned frightened eyes his way.
Determined to keep her calm, he said, “All teens feel that way. I’m sure your mom will just be relieved you’re alive.”
“You don’t know my mom.” She shook her head, then groaned, squeezing her eyes closed. “So glad I’m eighteen...almost free...” Her voice became wobbly.
“Calm down. It’s going to be okay.” Clearly, he needed to steer the conversation away from talk of her mother. “We’ll figure something out. I hear an ambulance now, okay? You’re almost out of here.”
The sirens grew louder and he knew from long experience in Heartache that the full contingent of rescue vehicles would have been dispatched. For once, he was glad as hell this was a small town, because there wouldn’t be any traffic to get in their way. They were going to take care of this girl.
“Please, call Ally instead,” the girl mumbled, her eyes sliding closed again. “I need to talk to her about something.”
Holding the girl’s hand as the sirens grew closer, Mack hoped her worries were just teenager melodrama and she was just overly concerned about wrecking the car and that was why she didn’t want him to contact her mother. Even so, since she was eighteen, technically, it was the girl’s decision. Provided she wasn’t too out of it. All stuff for the police and hospital to sort out. For now, he could at least call his niece and let her know her friend needed her. No harm in that.
In spite of what he and Nina had been through today, he really, really wished he could pick up the phone and call her, too. Because no one else on the planet was going to understand what a unique hell this night had been for him. Although, now that he thought about it, maybe that wasn’t entirely true.
His mother would.
It’d been a long time since he’d had that particular thought. But since he already had a failed marriage and now that he’d sabotaged the fledgling bond he’d tried to rebuild with Nina, maybe the time had come to at least heal that relationship. Tomorrow, he’d work on repairing things with his mom. If he was lucky, Nina might forgive him one day, too. But for now, he knew he’d never make it through the night without at least hearing her voice.
* * *
NINA’S PHONE RANG in the middle of the night.
Sleepy and confused, she answered before she was fully awake. Cradling the cell to her ear, she hoped it wasn’t bad news.
“Hello?” She’d been too groggy to even look at the caller ID.
“Nina.” Mack’s voice came through the phone, so deep and warm that for a second, she forgot how chilly things had been between them when they’d parted earlier.
And then...she remembered. He wouldn’t be calling for phone sex after the words they’d had, that was for sure. Her heart hurt all over again as she stared at the exposed-beam ceiling in the upstairs bedroom where she’d spent her teen years.
“Is everything okay?” She shifted on the pillow, propping one eye open long enough to read the illuminated dial of the old-fashioned alarm clock on the painted white washstand. 3:00 a.m. He’d dropped her off over two hours ago.
She’d been scared he’d never speak to her again.
“I’m all right.” He sounded exhausted and wide-awake at the same time. Vaguely she wondered how she could tell. But she’d known Mack a long time and no matter how they’d hurt each other, she knew him well.
“What do you mean you’re all right? Why wouldn’t you be? What happened?” She flipped over on her stomach and propped her elbows on her pillow, all sleepiness vanished. Now, she was worried for him and whatever had happened that had made him phone her.
“After I dropped you off, I took the long way home. Up Quarry Road.”
He didn’t need to explain why. She’d been restless and edgy, too, only just falling asleep about half an hour before the phone rang. But the way he launched into the story—like there was a lot to tell—made her nervous. He wouldn’t have called unless it was serious.
“I noticed a sign was gone at the top of the hill, so I pulled over to see if it was in the grass.” In the background, the wind rose in a rushing sound, distorting his last few words. Mack must be somewhere outdoors.
“I would never have noticed something like that.” Who spotted missing signs in the dark? But then again, the Finleys had been raised to believe that they were caretakers of the town. That Heartache was their family. Sad that Mack needed to escape his family so badly that the town was off-limits for his future.
“Right, but I remembered this one. And when I stepped out of the car, I heard someone calling out.”
She gasped. “Calling out how?” She had visions of a robber or carjacker.
“It sounded like someone was hurt.” He huffed out a breath. “I tracked the noise down
the steep hill.”
Her stomach hurt as she wondered what he’d found. “And?”
His voice changed. Became darker. More remote. “There’d been a car accident.”
Instantly, she understood the late-night call. The tone in his words. A million memories from eight years ago surged. The first time she’d heard there’d been an accident. How many times she’d replayed it in her mind. The fear for Mack when she’d discovered it had been his best friend. And, of course, the crippling agony of guilt that she’d somehow caused Vince to be so upset and angry that he didn’t watch where he was driving....
A strangled sound emerged from her throat. Clearing it, she asked, “Was someone injured?”
The person had to be okay because they’d been calling to Mack, right? Unless, of course, there’d been more than one person on the car. Nina sat up in bed, shivering in the dark and clutching the phone in a death grip.
“She’s okay, Nina.” Mack’s voice softened. Like he knew how freaked-out she would be right now.
She got up and walked to the window overlooking the field and the orchards. Not that she could see anything in the dark, even though she hadn’t bothered to draw the blinds under the sheer curtains.
“Who?” She laid a hand on the cold window and kept it there, grounding herself in the moment and the present. “Who was it?”
“Remember Ally’s friend who was helping her with the maze?”
“The blonde.” Of course she remembered. The girl looked like she’d walked out of a high-end magazine, her hair the color of corn silk. “Rachel, I think.”
“Yeah. Rachel Wagoner. She was alone and she was okay, even though she was stuck inside the car.” He must have stepped under a shelter or back inside somewhere, because the wind that had been whistling in the background suddenly stopped. “She has a broken leg that will need some surgical repair, but nothing major. The EMTs said she was fine, and she was lucid when they put her in the ambulance. She was asking for Ally, actually.”
“They must be good friends.” Nina let go of the glass, relieved the girl was okay. Mack must have been living an old nightmare the whole time. She found the flannel robe Gram had bought her and slid her arms inside.