I just wanted to feel wanted.
Water sloshed over the side of the tub as I stood up, reaching through the fog for a towel. I wrapped it around my body and, not bothering to dry off, I stepped out of the bathroom and into the chilly bedroom area. Ryan had finished on the phone and was stretched out on his back on the bed, hands resting on his stomach. When he saw me, he half sat up, his gaze resting on my destroyed knees.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Instead of answering, I walked over and climbed onto the bed with him, ignoring the searing pain as my knees pressed into the mattress. Frozen in shock, Ryan didn’t protest as I straddled his hips and unfastened my towel, tossing it to the floor. It was only when I leaned over to kiss him, my still-wet skin dripping onto his shirt, that he came to his senses and pulled away.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said.
The roughness in his voice deterred me, but only for a second. “What does it feel like I’m doing?” I murmured in his ear as I pressed against him. His body responded immediately, which only encouraged me more.
“I know what it feels like, but it’s not happening.” He grabbed my hips with both hands and flipped me over until I was lying flat on the bedspread. He scrambled off the bed and then stood beside it, making a pointed effort to not look at my naked body.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, gaping up at him in confusion.
“What’s wrong is that you just spent the last two hours either unresponsive or bawling your head off,” he snapped at me. “You really think I’m going to have sex with you right now?”
I rolled over on my side, reaching for him. “Ryan, please. I miss you so much. I need—”
“No.” He moved to the foot of the bed, out of my grasp. “Not when you’re like this.”
Feeling suddenly exposed, I dragged the bedspread over my body. “You don’t want me,” I said dully. Of course he didn’t. Why would he, after all this? I was surprised he hadn’t left me here and run away screaming.
“It’s not a matter of—” He sighed and shook his head, turning toward me again. Seeing that I was fully covered, he inched closer and perched on the edge of the bed. “I need to ask you something,” he said, gazing down at his hands. “What were you planning on doing earlier?”
I swallowed and secured the bedspread tighter around me. “What do you mean?”
He met my eyes, his expression darkening. “Were you going to take them? Is that why we went in your car instead of mine? Because of the two car seats in back?” When I didn’t answer, he stood up quickly, jostling the mattress. “That’s kidnapping. You realize that, right?”
“It’s not kidnapping. They’re my brother and sister.”
“Who you don’t have legal custody of. Who you could get arrested for taking without permission.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “And what about me? I was the one driving. Did that cross your mind at all? Jesus, Robin.”
“I didn’t force you to come,” I said, my volume rising to meet his. “I didn’t even ask you to. You insisted, remember?”
“That’s not the point. Do you even think before you do these things?”
I sat up, yanking the bedspread with me. “Well, I’m sorry,” I said, loud and sarcastic. “I’m not used to being held accountable for every fucking move I make, okay? I didn’t grow up that way.”
He looked at me, eyes blazing. “You didn’t grow up, period,” he said, then stalked out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
Rage mixed with shame thundered through me and I picked up a pillow, flinging it at the closed door as hard as I could.
* * *
Ryan returned at some point during the night, because when I woke up at dawn, he was asleep in the other bed and there was an extra blanket draped over my still-naked body. I leaned up on one elbow, my head pounding from dehydration and hunger and crying, and checked my phone. 5:13. We’d have to leave soon if he was going to make it to work on time. Luckily, Wade had scheduled me for the weekend off.
I wrapped the blanket around myself and shuffled to the bathroom, where I drank tepid water out of the tap and took a quick, hot shower. Afterward, I pulled on my wrinkled sundress and finger-combed my hair. I looked about as bad as I felt.
Ryan was up and awake when I emerged again. Silently, he brushed past me to take his turn in the bathroom, not meeting my eyes even once. I sat on the bed to wait for him, methodically chewing through a roll of mints I’d found in my purse. Not exactly a toothbrush, but it would have to do.
Neither of us said a word to each other as we checked out and crossed the parking lot to my car. The sun was just beginning to clear the horizon. Another beautiful day ahead.
“I can drive,” I said, my voice rusty with sleep and disuse.
He glanced at me, finally, taking in my puffy eyes and gnarled hair. “It’s okay,” he said, unlocking the car. “I don’t mind.”
I let it go and climbed into the passenger seat, shivering in the morning chill. We stopped at a gas station to fill up, then hit a drive-thru for some much-needed coffee and food. By six a.m., we were leaving Lowry behind and heading for home.
The first two hours of the drive went by in silence, save for the radio and the hum of the tires on the road. Even as I dozed against the window, I was acutely aware of Ryan next to me, the tense lines of his body as he drove. His words from last night ran through my mind on an endless loop. Kidnapping…not happening…you didn’t grow up, period. Now, in the light of day, with caffeine and nutrients zipping through my veins, I realized how right he was, and how ridiculous I’d been. I couldn’t believe I’d ever had the nerve to criticize my mother for being immature and crazy. The apple didn’t fall far.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. At first, I wasn’t sure he’d heard me over the roar of the wind pushing through the cracked open windows, but then he nodded ever so slightly. “What I did was messed up. I’m messed up. I’m sorry for dragging you into it.”
He reached over to turn down the radio. “I dragged myself in.”
“I’ll pay you back for the hotel room and gas and food.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
Another long silence passed. Up ahead, I spotted a destination sign for Weldon. Only an hour to go now.
“Even if I didn’t drag you into it,” I said, picking up our previous conversation, “I don’t blame you for pulling away. You and Mason don’t need all this drama in your lives. Not again.” I gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Turns out I’m just as bad as your ex-wife. Who knew, huh?”
His eyes were hidden by his sunglasses, but I could tell by the way his grip tightened on the wheel that he was restraining some kind of strong emotion. I picked at the edge of the gauze I’d taped to my knees earlier and waited for him to speak.
“You’re nothing like her,” he said. His tone was blunt and firm, making it impossible to argue. “She couldn’t even show up to see Mason when she was invited to come. She’d never have the courage to drive four hours to see him without knowing for sure if she was even welcome.”
Rattled, I opened my mouth and then shut it again. “I wouldn’t call it courage,” I said wryly. “More like stupidity.”
He tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Sometimes the two go hand in hand.”
New and different thoughts whirled through my mind now as we closed the rest of the gap toward home. It was true, what he’d implied. I’d walk through fire for Drake and Lila, no question. I may have inherited my mother’s lack of maternal instinct, but I knew what it meant to love and protect someone with everything I had. To keep them safe from danger. Maybe in that way, I was different from Chelsea. Better.
We arrived back in Weldon at quarter to ten, both of us yawning and road-weary. It felt like we’d been gone for days, enduring some huge catastrophic event together. I half-expected the Monahans’ house to look changed somehow when Ryan pulled up in front of it, parking my car alongside the curb behind his. But it was the same
—cozy and quiet and dappled in morning sunlight.
Ryan placed his hand on the door handle, preparing to get out and leave me to drive myself home, but I touched his arm, stopping him. “I was planning on taking them,” I told him. “Drake and Lila. I wanted to bring them home, but when I actually went inside and saw them, I realized I couldn’t. They’re happy there with them. Happier than they would’ve been with me. And that hurt.” I dropped my fingers from his arm. “It still does.”
He’d taken off his sunglasses, and his pale blue eyes were dim and bloodshot as they latched onto mine. “Don’t you want them to be happy?”
I closed my eyes against the intensity of his gaze. Of course I wanted them to be happy. Of course I wanted them have a better childhood than I’d had, in a stable home filled with family and love. But at the same time, I wanted them to still need me, to run to me with their banged elbows and bad dreams and crayoned masterpieces for me to admire. The fact that I couldn’t have both right now—the twins contented and thriving and living here with me—was what killed me the most.
With effort, I opened my eyes and looked into his. “I don’t know what I want,” I said. It was the truth. Mostly.
Ryan nodded like he’d known this about me right from the start. “Well,” he said, opening the door to get out. I didn’t stop him this time. “Let me know when you figure it out.”
Chapter 29
My deadline to leave the Brogans’ was looming, and there were still no prospects. By the time I arrived at work on Friday morning, exactly a week before I had to move out, I felt so desperate that I actually considered asking Abby if I could stay with her and Deena. But I decided against it just as quickly when I remembered what she’d said to me the day after the disastrous night at Fusion with Cody and his girlfriend, when I’d asked her if she’d known about Kiara’s existence this entire time.
“Well, yeah,” she’d said, unbothered. “I thought you knew, too.”
I couldn’t figure out which was worse—that she knew and didn’t mention it, or that she took me for the type of woman who would knowingly and happily hook up with someone else’s boyfriend. In any case, I hadn’t socialized with Abby outside of work since. She’d stopped hanging around my desk too, which really cut down on the lecturing from Wade.
But that didn’t mean he’d let his guard down all the way. A few minutes before my lunch break, he pulled me into his office for a chat. Terrified that he was about to fire me for something—I couldn’t lose my damn job on top of everything else—I held my breath as I sunk into the chair across from the desk he never sat at.
“You hear from that mother of yours yet?” he asked, pacing in the small space between the window and the shriveled plant in the corner that he always forgot to water.
I exhaled. He wasn’t going to holler at me or fire me. He just wanted an update. “No,” I said. “Well, she could’ve called my stepfather, but he and I aren’t in contact anymore.”
“And your brother and sister? What’s new with them?”
I lowered my gaze, a lump forming my throat at the thought of my little siblings. Over the past six days, I’d been trying to make peace with the current situation, even though I still didn’t like it. But seeing them again had loosened something in me that had been tangled for months. They were okay. They were safe.
But I still couldn’t talk about them. Not yet.
The war of emotions obviously showed in my face, because my boss sat down at his desk for the first time since I’d met him and leaned across the surface, his dark brown eyes steady on mine.
“If there’s ever anything I can do,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice, “you let me know. Got that, Ms. Calvert?”
His kindness expanded the lump even further, and it was all I could do not to break into sobs right there. “Thanks,” I managed to say.
“You’re welcome.” He stood up again and jutted his chin toward the half-open door behind me. “Now go eat some carbs. You’re due for a workout later.”
* * *
When I got back to the Brogans’ house at four-thirty, the place was deserted. I headed straight for the kitchen to get a pre-dinner snack. The intense strength-training session Wade had just put me through left me sore, starving, and about a thousand times less stressed. This endorphin rush was likely the reason why I barely batted an eye when the deck door opened and Leo the dog sauntered in, followed by Taylor. She paused when she saw me there, standing at the counter with a container of raspberry yogurt in my hand.
“Hey,” I said, spoon hovering inches from my lips.
She nodded to me and bent down to unhook the dog’s leash. “I just came over to walk Leo,” she said, like I’d accused her of coming over to see me.
I nodded back at her and shoved a spoonful of yogurt in my mouth, even though I still hadn’t swallowed my last bite. It wasn’t often that I felt awkward around my best friend, and I didn’t seem to know what to do with my hands.
Taylor grabbed Leo’s water bowl from the floor and approached the counter, sidling in next to me at the sink. I scooted over to give her more room. Silently, she filled the bowl with water and then placed it back on the floor. Leo immediately began lapping, his tongue splashing fat droplets all over the tile.
“Did you find a place yet?” Taylor asked, wiping her hands off on her shorts. She looked extra pretty today with her cheeks pink from exertion and her wavy chestnut hair spilling over her bare, tanned shoulders.
“No. Not yet.” I dipped my spoon in the container for more yogurt, but instead of scooping up another mouthful, I tossed both items into the sink beside me. My appetite had disappeared. “Tay,” I said, leaning back against the counter and gripping the edge with my fingers. “When are you going to let me apologize?”
She bit her bottom lip, her anxious-thinking pose. Beside us, Leo continued to slurp loudly.
“I did what you asked,” I pressed on when she failed to answer. “I gave you time. Lots of time. I just want us to get back to normal.”
She stared at me, her green eyes bright and unyielding. After a moment, she folded her arms over her chest and looked down, focusing on some arbitrary point on the floor. “Remember senior year,” she said, “when you started hanging around with that new crowd at school and spent every weekend drinking and getting high? Remember how you treated me back then? Like I was someone you only hung around with when you needed something or you had nothing better to do?”
“I remember,” I said softly. Three years had passed since then, but I still felt guilty whenever I thought about it. And scared. I could’ve lost her.
“Well,” she continued, her face still tilted away from me. “I stood by you through that, and forgave you for it, because I was so sure it would never happen again. That once you sobered up and took a good look at yourself, you’d see all the amazing things you had going for you and how much you stood to lose.” She looked at me again, her mouth a hard line. “And it’s so goddamn frustrating, watching you slide back there again. You just don’t get it, Robin. You don’t see in yourself what everyone else sees when they look at you. I thought you were starting to, I really did. You were doing so well. You turned your whole life around when the twins were born, and then—”
“And then they were gone,” I finished for her. “And I stopped trying to be a good person, because there was no point anymore. The only reason I changed at all was because of them.”
“You’ve always been a good person,” she said. “But if you see the twins as your sole source of happiness, then it’s no wonder you fell apart when they left.”
Exactly. They’d been such a huge part of my life, my biggest source of joy, and once they were gone, I’d become unmoored. Then I’d spent the next few months trying to recreate that joy in different things—all the wrong things. Well, I thought, my mind flashing on that morning in Ryan’s bed, his arm heavy across my waist as Mason’s soft curls brushed against my chin. Not everything I did was wrong.
Well-attuned
to my various facial expressions after eight years of friendship, Taylor knew exactly what I was thinking about. “What’s happening with Ryan?” she said, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down on it. She seemed less pissed at me now, so I did the same.
“Nothing,” I said, tracing a scratch in the table with my thumb. “Not anymore, anyway. I screwed that up too. Big time.”
She quirked a dark eyebrow, urging me to go on, so I did. I told her everything I’d been keeping from her for the past several months—vodka, Abby, Fusion, Cody, Nicole, Ryan catching me with Cody, our fight, my jealously over Chelsea, the anniversary party…and lastly, what had happened last weekend, Ryan and I driving to Lowry to see the twins. I told her about that, too…going all that way to get them, only to leave them where they belonged. Until this point in my story, I’d been relatively dry-eyed. But talking about that moment, when I realized they were better off without me, wrecked me all over again.
“They were wrong about one thing, you know,” Taylor said, handing me a napkin from the wooden holder on the table. “The twins’ grandparents, I mean. They shouldn’t have asked you not to contact them at first. They’re obviously set in their ways and have their own opinions on what’s best for Drake and Lila, but I don’t think that was fair. You’re their big sister. They belong in your life, and you belong in theirs.”
I mopped my eyes with the napkin and gave her a grateful look. God, how did she always know just the right thing to say? Because she was Taylor, I guess, and my best friend for a reason.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her, balling up one napkin and reaching for another. “For not being honest with you and for acting like a total bitch that night at Milo’s, when you and Michael talked about getting married. I don’t know why I reacted that way.”
“Because we’re so young? Because we sprung it on you without warning? Because your mom’s marriage made you all cynical and jaded?”
Until Now Page 24