Her mind flashed back to Billy, persuading her to switch her art course to something safe. Solid. Secure.
Like him.
Naomi didn’t want to be like Billy.
So she took a deep breath, sent up a frantic prayer and took her first step. She wavered a moment, fear choking her, but then she saw Jess, heard his encouraging words and she took another step, then another, following the path he took. Then she looked down.
Dizziness and fear locked her steps. She was halfway across the creek and she couldn’t move. Couldn’t go ahead, couldn’t go back. She heard Jess over the roar of the water and the roar in her ears telling her to make one more step. Her heart fluttered wildly and she wanted to close her eyes, fear immobilizing her. Why did she listen to Jess?
Why did she always listen to Jess?
He’s been the cause of your greatest sorrow.
The old words rose up from her fear, but then she heard Jess calling her again and she looked across the water to him. He was holding out his hand, coming toward her.
She took a calming breath, took another step. But her foot slipped on the wet rock. She felt herself slipping.
She was falling.
Panic gripped her and then a strong, warm hand caught hers, pulled her up and she was standing upright, water splashing around her feet.
“I’ll help you,” he said. She nodded, then, secured by his strong grip, she stepped on the next rock and then the next, following his quiet commands.
Then, amazingly, she was on solid ground on the other side of the creek.
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as her heart rate slowed.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you do this,” he murmured.
Naomi let him hold her a moment, just because she enjoyed the feeling of his strong arms protecting her, but then she pulled away, looking back at the river she had just come over.
And then she laughed in pure joy. She had done it. Thanks to Jess, she had faced something she had been afraid of and overcame it. Her heart had been racing, her mind babbling warnings, but she had done it.
Her heart billowed and expanded and her blood sang through her veins. The air around her seemed charged with light and vitality.
She hadn’t felt like this in years. Not since the last time she had taken a risk with Jess.
“Are you okay?” Jess asked, tipping her chin up to look at him.
She turned back to him, her laughter turning into a smile of exhilaration. “Jess Schroder, you could always do that to me,” she said, catching his face between her hands. “Make me petrified and then make me do something I would never ever do for anyone else.”
She grinned, then pulled his head down to hers, planting a kiss on his mouth. “You rock my world,” she said.
Jess laughed uneasily, then shook his head. “Well, I could say the same. When I saw you slip and almost fall, I thought this was it. I was so scared.”
“I was scared, too. But then you helped me and I made it across.” She drew in a long breath, slowing her still-pounding heart. “I made it across and I’m okay.”
“The rest of the way is easygoing,” Jess said, stroking her now-damp hair away from her face. “No more scary creeks. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to be. I haven’t had that much excitement in a long time.”
Jess released a light laugh. “I don’t imagine Billy dragged you across creeks that could have killed you. He was always so responsible.”
Naomi caught a puzzling note in Jess’s voice and what he said seemed to resonate. He had talked like this before. Comparing himself to Billy.
Things were growing more serious between them and she knew that right now, being involved with Jess didn’t scare her anymore. But she also sensed that a few things needed to be dealt with before they moved on.
“Come with me,” she said quietly, taking his hand and leading him to an open spot in a small meadow beside the creek.
Then she sat down, patted the ground beside her. With a puzzled look, Jess joined her, resting his elbows on his raised knees but giving himself some distance, as if afraid of what she might have to say.
She drew in a slow breath, sent up a prayer for wisdom, then turned to him and said, “We need to talk.”
Chapter Eleven
Naomi’s words sent a flash of dread through Jess. She sounded so serious. What could she have to say that required that frown and that solemn voice?
In the silence following her announcement, he heard the distant screech of a hawk and looked up to see it soaring above them, as if warning him about what Naomi would say.
Was she now going to tell him that she was changing her mind about being with him? That after risking her life crossing some stupid stream she realized that Jess was not the man for her?
He wasn’t ready to go there yet. Not when he was falling for Naomi even harder than he had before.
“So tomorrow you’re taking Brittany to the doctor?” he asked, hoping to forestall anything she might have to say.
Naomi gave him a puzzled look but then nodded, thankfully willing to go along with his diversion for now. “I’m worried about her, but everything seems to be going well otherwise. It’s just a feeling I have.”
“I hope she has a normal delivery,” Jess said, tapping his thumbs together.
The following silence seemed heavy, then Naomi spoke up.
“I think it’s remarkable that you took her in,” she said quietly. “You didn’t have to. You could have told your mother to find someone else.”
“Couldn’t turn her out on the street,” he protested.
“As if you would,” Naomi said with a hint of irony.
“Probably not. Though I’m not sure how I’m going to handle things once she has the baby.” He blew out his breath. “I’m nervous about it. Like I said before, I’d make a lousy parent.”
“You know your words say one thing but your actions say another.” Naomi rested her hand on his arm. “You’re doing what your mother couldn’t and, I’m guessing, what your father wouldn’t.”
Jess shrugged off her comments. “Doesn’t matter. When it comes time for that baby to find a place, I wish it didn’t have to be mine.”
“Even though you feel this way, you’re still thinking of letting Brittany come back to your place with that baby.”
Jess sighed. “Yeah, but I’m still scared.”
“Why?”
Her single word hung between them and Jess eased out a heavy sigh. “We covered this already.”
“I think you need to talk more about this.”
Jess caught the back of his neck with his hand. He didn’t want to go back to a past he’d spent so much time trying to eradicate from his memory.
“Why are you scared?” she urged.
Jess sighed. Here we go again, but this time, to his surprise, he felt a little less leery about giving Naomi a glimpse into his life. He’d spent so much time hiding what his father did and hating him for what had happened that it was starting to define him. Maybe it was time to let everything out into the open. Into the light.
“Those scars on my back you saw weren’t the only ones he gave me,” Jess said quietly. “All my life I’ve had to hear how stupid I was. How useless. He’d get mad, slap me around, and that hurt. But the worst were the times he’d yell at me that he wished I was never born. I always wondered why he hated me so much. Why he talked like that. Turns out his dad did the same thing to him. And so did his grandfather to his father. The Schroder men are mean, selfish and nasty with bad tempers.” Jess clenched his fists, looking down at them as if wondering if they would betray him, too. “It gets passed down, you know? I’ve read about that. Children of abusers become abusers themselves. I don’t want to put any kid of mine through that. I don’t
want to make any kid in my life go through the humiliation and pain I did. I don’t want to subject any child to what I’ve had to deal with.” He released a short laugh. “You know that for yourself. You saw me in action.”
“What are you talking about?”
The puzzlement on her face surprised and confused him. How could she not remember?
“That fight we had. When we both decided we wouldn’t let ourselves fall into the trap of letting our relationship just be physical. Then you started talking marriage, which was okay with me, but then you brought up kids.”
She lifted her knees and wrapped her hands around them, nodding as if she remembered now. “I remember getting angry with you because I thought you were looking for a reason to push me away.”
“Why would I do that?”
Naomi’s cheeks turned pink and she looked away, her hair, now loose, flowing over her cheeks, hiding her expression. “Because I thought you saw me as cheap after what happened. I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And I was... I was afraid because—”
“You were afraid of me,” was all he said with a bitter laugh. “The look on your face when I got angry will stay forever branded into my memory. I wanted to stop yelling at you but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I was scared.” His words came out on a rush of guilt he had carried with him ever since she had taken those scrambling steps away from him. He rested his head in the palms of his hands as if the story weighed so heavily on his mind, he needed help to hold it up. “When I saw you, with your hands up in the air as if trying to protect yourself from me, I realized at that moment I had turned into my father. And I realized I was nothing like Billy. So I pushed you away the only way I could. With my anger. When I found out that you were back with Billy, I knew I had done the right thing. You belonged with him. He was the person I could never be.”
A soft wind moaned through the trees above and the water beside them kept flowing and rushing down the hill, relentless, ever-moving.
“Billy was a good man and he was good to me.” Naomi pulled her knees close to her chest again, as if protecting herself. “When I went back to Billy I thought I was doing the right thing. After all, Billy and I had dated all through junior high and high school before I met you.” She leaned forward, resting her chin on her knees. “When I was with him, I thought I knew what love was. Then I met you.” She paused, then gave him a quick sidelong glance. “I always thought you were good-looking, but then, so did most of the girls in Hartley Creek High. I never, ever thought you would be interested in someone like me.”
“What? How could you say that?”
She tilted her head, giving him an “are you kidding” look. “I grew up in the shadow of Hailey, my younger, but way more vivacious, sister, and Shannon, who was the most organized and capable person you’d ever meet. My fellow classmates were girls ten times more beautiful and confident than me. I was just Naomi. So when Billy wanted me to date him, I felt wanted. I felt needed. And we were happy together. Billy was a good Christian man who was good to me.”
Jess kept his comments to himself. He didn’t want to find out this much about Billy, but he sensed Naomi had to get this out.
He thought back to what Hailey had told him this morning in church—warning him about Naomi’s loss. As if he needed to be reminded.
“When we, you and I, were together, I felt like I was caught in a whirlwind of emotions and feelings,” Naomi continued. “I felt like I was trying to keep up to you.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish I could tell you how sorry I was that I pushed you that night. That I... That we...” He sighed, shoving his hand through his hair.
She looked at him again, a frown furrowing her brow, and was that a glint of tears in her eyes?
Her lips trembled a moment and then she put her hand on Jess’s arm and to his shock and amazement, she leaned close and laid a gentle, heart-searing kiss on his lips.
“What happened, happened to both of us,” she whispered, pulling back enough to look into his eyes. She blinked and a tear slid down her cheek. “It was both of us who were involved, both of us who got carried away.” She kissed him again and then moved closer, leaning against him.
“I don’t want to make the same mistake again,” he said.
“We won’t,” she said quietly.
He wrapped his arms around her, as if afraid she would disappear on him as she had so often in the dreams that tormented him after she left with Billy.
“I should have—”
“We should have,” she corrected. “Please, let’s not talk about that anymore.” She eased out a sigh. “I want you to know that when I went back to Billy, I felt lost. Lonely and afraid.” She stopped there, pressing her fingertips to her lips, as if holding something back. “Anyway, we dated and did all the things that we should. We had devotions together and we studied together and then, when he proposed to me I thought this was a natural progression. He wanted to wait until we paid our debts off and I was fine with that. We were engaged for over four years and I was okay with it.” She nestled closer to him. “But the whole time I was with him, I felt as if something vital was missing. I told myself the feelings I experienced around you were the feelings of an adolescent girl caught up in the magic that was you. But I never forgot you. I never forgot how alive I felt around you. And I knew what I felt for Billy wasn’t anything close...” She drew in a long, slow breath. “I finally decided that I had to break off the engagement. Billy hadn’t been feeling well, so I thought I would wait until he felt better. Then, just when I figured I had found the right time, he came back from a doctor’s appointment to tell me he was diagnosed with malignant bone cancer. Inoperable. He probably had only a year to live. I knew I couldn’t break up with him then. So I stayed with him and I took care of him. I quit my job the last six months so I could be with him all the time.” Her hands tightened on Jess’s arm. “But I never forgot about you. Never.”
Jess let the words settle into the empty, dry spots of his soul as he gently turned her face toward him. His eyes traveled her features, a face that had haunted him for years. She remembered him. She thought about him.
“So you didn’t walk away as freely as I thought?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I felt like I had no choice. Billy came back and he was asking me to come back and I was... I was—”
Jess was tired of talking about Billy and the past. He stopped her words with a kiss. Then another. He cupped her face and rained kisses over her cheeks, her eyes, her chin, then pressed one more to her lips.
She eased out a sigh and nestled into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m so sorry.”
He shushed her and wrapped his arms around her. “No more apologies. No more looking back. We’re together now. Right here, right now. Let’s not get bogged down anymore. I want to think about the future.”
“I’d like that,” Naomi said.
“You know that I’m falling for you.”
“I kind of guessed that,” she said, her voice holding a note of humor. “You know I’m feeling the same.”
Her words wrapped themselves around his lonely heart. “I know we’ve been here before, but I also know that it feels different this time. Richer. Deeper.” He stopped there, afraid he might run too far ahead of her.
“I care about you more than I’ve ever cared about anybody,” Naomi said quietly, her hand running up and down his arm. “I want to see where this will take us. I want to be together.”
He couldn’t say anything to that so he simply brushed a gentle kiss over her temple, then held her close.
They sat this way a moment longer, then a cloud drifted across the sun and the air cooled.
“We should probably get going,” Jess murmured, the first one to draw back. He got to his feet and reached out to pull Naomi up, but she
stayed where she was, not looking at him, her hand fiddling with the gold nugget hanging around her neck.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, concern niggling at him.
She pulled her hands over her mouth, then looked up at him her face holding a mixture of fear and sadness that made his heart stutter. “Before we go, there’s something else I need to tell you.”
Naomi’s voice was a tiny, quiet sound and Jess felt like he would have to brace himself. What else could she possibly have to say?
Then his phone rang, the silly song he had chosen almost mocking the moment. He wanted to ignore it, but with his mother watching Brittany, he didn’t dare.
So in spite of the feeling that he had dodged something important, he glanced at the phone. It was his mother.
“Hello,” he said, his eyes on Naomi, who was now looking down, her hand on her heart.
“It’s Brittany,” his mother said, her voice breathless with fear. “...coming...” The call cut out and Jess wanted to shake the phone.
“Is the baby coming? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“...called ambulance...” was all Jess heard. Then the phone went dead. He glanced at the handset only to be informed that the call was dropped.
He glanced at Naomi. “It’s Brittany. My mom called the ambulance.”
* * *
Naomi’s heart was pounding faster than the rhythm of her feet as she and Jess jogged down the mountain, tree branches slapping her face. Jess was constantly checking his cell phone, hoping for reception, but Naomi was sure they wouldn’t get anything until they got to the bottom of the hill. She prayed as she ran.
Please, Lord, let everything be okay. Please let Brittany and the baby be okay.
She couldn’t let her mind go any further than that.
Every curve in the trail, every rise, made her want to cry out in frustration. It took forever to get to the bottom.
She ducked to avoid a branch, then jumped across a spring of water. Slowly, the trees grew more spaced out, the incline decreased and finally, they broke out into the open. To their far right she could make out the buildings of the ski lodge situated at the bottom of the hill.
Catching Her Heart Page 14