"Yes, it has. What brings you here?" After all this time, she wanted to add, but didn't.
If at all possible, the color of his eyes seemed to darken with some intensity of emotion she refused to name.
"May I come in, Jo?"
A spasm of pain clutched at her. If she let him in she would never get rid of his presence in this house. She would always feel him, and it scared her because she had thought, for just a moment, when she considered tearing down the tree house, that she might be free of his memory once and for all.
And then he showed up at her door, as though someone, somewhere didn't want her to forget. Why her? Didn't she have a right to find some peace in her life? Someone to share her life with? Who wanted her as he hadn't? Why dredge up the past? Now?
But something had her pushing the screen door open and moving back from the doorway as he stepped inside. She closed the door and led him down the hallway and into the front room.
"Please, sit down. Would you like some coffee?" Such a polite enquiry. It dropped into the uneasy years of silence between them. A dark chasm of time that had stretched year after year, always leaving her standing at the edge of an emptiness she couldn't run fast enough to escape.
He unzipped his jacket and sat down. The dark jeans molded tightly over his muscular thighs. "Coffee would be nice." She watched as he surveyed the room. "It's the way I remember it."
She nodded and swiftly left the room, hurrying into the kitchen. With one hand she clutched at her fluttery, spasming stomach as she gripped the edge of the Formica counter with the other.
His scent clung to her, the powerful male scent she remembered. It infused and permeated her skin, sinking deep inside her. The ache of longing reduced her to a mass of quivering nerves.
Taking long, deep breaths, she attempted to steady herself. She couldn't allow him to see what his presence in this house was doing to her.
She reached under the cupboard and pulled out a tray. Luckily, she'd just made a pot of coffee. She grabbed the blue and white ceramic sugar bowl and cream pitcher setting next to the coffee pot, then pulled out a couple of spoons from a drawer. Opening the cupboard door next to the sink, she pulled down two matching cups and saucers and placed them on the tray. She had to use both hands to pour the coffee without splashing it all over the tray.
Another spasm of pain gripped her as she looked at the coffee cups. There had been a time when she'd known everything about his likes and dislikes. Tears rose to her eyes. When did he start drinking coffee? Did he use cream and sugar? Or did he drink it black? Did he have a wife or a lover who knew the mature man in the other room as she had once known the boy?
Her hands shook as she tried to pick up the tray and she had to set it back down. She looked out the window, and her focus caught the tree house in the distance.
She wanted to run as far and fast as she could. She didn't want to be faced with the polite conversation of two strangers who no longer knew each other.
More deep breaths.
"Can I take that for you?"
If she hadn't been leaning against the counter, she probably would have fallen to the blue tile floor when her knees gave out at the sound of the voice close behind her.
She released the tray and shifted to the side, but couldn't get the courage up to turn to face him. Not just yet.
"Yes, thank you. You can put in on the coffee table. I'll be right in." Her voice didn't hold the cool firmness she would have liked. It was husky and tight, quivering with suppressed tears. She didn't know if she could go through with this. She should just tell him to leave.
His arm brushed against hers as he reached for the tray. She couldn't help but glance at his hands as they gripped the curved edges. Bronzed with short dark hairs, long fingers curled to lift the tray.
Hands--she remembered his hands--remembered the taste of them. Heady need swirled inside her. The sunny late summer day they'd gone to pick wild blackberries. They'd brought the pail back to the tree house and shared the succulent berries, feeding each other as they talked about the future they planned to share.
As she straddled across his lap, she'd licked the sweet juice from each of his fingers, sucking them into her mouth, swiping her tongue across the palm. His groan of frustrated desire had filled the small room, and the heat had begun to rise as the late summer sun reached a zenith in the sky.
She'd seen the bulge in his pants, and been filled with such feminine power in the knowledge that he wanted her.
But he hadn't taken her. He'd pulled her closer and started suckling her fingers. He hadn't touched her pussy that day, yet she'd come hard from the erotic stroking of his tongue, from the press of his groin against hers, and her desire to consummate their love.
Their passion for each other had been so very strong back then. How had it all gone so wrong?
He walked into the living room, and she turned away from the sight of the tree house and the memories associated with it, to follow him.
She watched as he picked up one of the cups and sat back down in the chair. No cream or sugar. She tucked the memory away.
Walking around the coffee table, she sat on the edge of the couch and picked up the other cup, adding a hint of cream and a spoonful of sugar. She stirred the coffee and finally looked across at him.
"Why are you here, Reed? After all this time?"
* * * *
How did he begin to explain? She seemed so closed and far away from him.
It hadn't been impulse that brought him to her doorstep; he'd known it was coming for quite some time. He'd fought the desire for so long.
He looked beyond her, seeing into the past. What he wouldn't give to reach across the chasm between them and take her into his arms. His gaze shifted back to her as he took a sip from the cup.
"I was sorry to hear about your father. He was a good man."
She nodded politely. "Thank you." She raised the cup and sipped at her coffee, not meeting his gaze.
She offered him no opening, as though a solid brick wall stood between them. There'd been a time when she'd been as open as the blue sky above, her love welcoming him, no matter what. He sighed, watching her for any sign she might be willing to listen to what he had to say.
"I've thought about you a lot over the years. Wondered how you were doing."
The look she turned on him would have frozen a raging fire into pure ice crystals.
"Have you?" was all she said.
He meant to chip away all that ice. "Have you thought about us over the years?"
She slammed the coffee cup onto the table, splashing coffee onto the surface, and abruptly rose from her chair to stalk toward the other side of the room. Arms crossed protectively across her breast. She then reached forward and pulled back a section of the drapes to stare out the window to the avenue beyond.
"What do you want me to say, Reed? Do you want me to say I've pined away for you all these years?" She whirled around to face him, her eyes blazing blue fire. "What is it you want from me?"
He stood. "I came because I couldn't stay away from you any longer. I gave you up a long time ago and I know I don't have a right to come back here now, to dredge everything up that you probably don't want to hear. But I have to try."
"It was over a long time ago. You walked away. Remember? You left without a word, without even a wave good-bye. What do you want from me now?"
He heard the pain in her voice, threaded through the anger of abandonment. How the hell did he begin?
"If I'd told you why I had to leave, you might have done something that got you hurt. I couldn't let that happen." He ran his fingers through his hair. "And if I'd told you I had to go, I might not have been able to leave you behind."
"Maybe I wouldn't have wanted to be left behind, did that ever occur to you? Maybe I didn't want to be protected. I shared everything with you. I kept no secrets from you. You didn't do the same, did you? There was something else going on that you never shared with me. You disappeared, then your mothe
r and little sister were suddenly gone. And then finally your father left."
"I'm sorry, Josie." How could she possibly understand the rage in the house he'd grown up in?
There was a long silence.
"After you left, I went to try to talk to your father."
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. What could he have done if he'd known at the time she'd actually confronted the old man.
"What did he say?"
She shook her head. "He wouldn't tell me anything. He seemed very angry. He just said you were gone and good riddance--that you were nothing but a pain in the ass since the day you were born. As far as he was concerned you were dead." She paused for a moment and looked at him and he saw something, some spark of understanding. "Was he the reason you left?"
Reed almost smiled at that remark. He'd almost died in that house. That last night it had been close, but when his father had closed his meaty fist and turned toward his little sister...that had been the last straw.
* * * *
That night was still a blur. His father had hit him with an iron frying pan that was setting on the stove and knocked him unconscious. He'd awakened lying on the kitchen floor, his mother bent over him, looking down at him with frightened eyes. He felt the blood seeping down the side of his face and had reached up to wipe it away.
"You have to leave, Reed. Now." As he sat up, she'd thrust a bundle into his arms. He'd scrambled to rise unsteadily to his feet.
"I can't leave you and Jess here."
She frantically glanced toward the living room. "I can't leave, you know that. But you must. He's got the gun out, Reed, you have to get out. I've never seen him this angry before."
"Mom, you have to leave. He's going to kill you eventually if you don't. I won't be here to help you. Promise me. I'll leave now, but I'll wait for you and Jess. We'll get out of here together."
She shook her head. "He'd find us."
He grasped her arm. "No, he won't. We'll hide. He'll never get a chance to hurt you or Jess again. You have to do it--if not for yourself, do it for Jess. You know what he meant to do tonight."
"You'll do better without us," she'd muttered.
"I won't leave unless you promise me you'll get out."
"If you stay, he'll kill you, Reed."
"If I go, he'll kill you, and maybe Jess as well."
Finally, he'd gotten her to agree. She'd handed him a wad of money, and he'd waited at a motel on the outskirts of town. It had taken her another four weeks to be able to slip out of the house with Jess and one small bag between them. He'd been waiting a block away in the old rattletrap of a car he'd pieced together. And then, with a little help from a local organization that helped women like his mother, they'd disappeared.
* * * *
"You don't know what it was like, Jo. And I'm not sure how to explain it."
She looked at him. "It's done and over with. That was a long time ago. There's no need to explain anything. Not now."
He strode across the room and reached out for her. He felt her stiffen beneath his grasp.
"He hit her, Jo. He beat all of us. I had to help her get away. He would have killed all of us eventually. He had a gun. And if I'd told you why I had to leave, you might have confronted him differently. And, God help me, if he'd ever laid a hand on you, I would have killed him."
Chapter 3
* * *
She turned an unbelieving gaze on him. "What are you saying?" she gasped.
Suddenly, he let her go and spun away. He walked back across the room and stood before the fireplace.
"He was a wife beater, Jo." She heard him sigh as he raised his head. "That last night he meant to go after Jess. Usually it was Mom or me, but not that night. It was the last straw and I tried to stop him."
He turned to look at her and she saw the darkness in his eyes. "I had to make a choice. Well, actually I didn't have a choice to make, but I've had to learn to live with what I decided for a lot of years."
"Why didn't you tell me? I loved you, Reed. You could have told me anything, you know that."
She saw a sad smile cross his face. "Don't you realize, people like us don't tell people like you that the world we live in isn't perfect? We pretend and we survive. As long as no one else knows, we do what we have to do to survive it. He told us for so many years we were worthless without him--we couldn't survive without him--that we believed it."
Instinctively, she took a step toward him, wanting to ease the pain she saw there. The walls around her heart began to crumble. "But you knew that wasn't the case, didn't you? How could I not have known?"
He shook his head. "You didn't know because I didn't want you to know. I didn't want you touched by the darkness. Don't you see? You were the only light in my world, the only thing that kept me sane."
Suddenly, so many things became clear. "You built the tree house to get away from him."
"It was the only safe place there was for me. And with you there, it seemed like the closest place to heaven I'd ever be."
He'd sported a black eye when he'd come to her with the idea about building the tree house, and there'd been a quiet look of desperation in his eyes she hadn't understood. It was as though something terrible would happen if he didn't build the tree house.
She remembered asking him about the black eye, and he'd said he'd gotten it during a football scrimmage in the park with some of his friends. She'd believed him, and they'd spent that summer working on the tree house together. Why hadn't she looked deeper into what was happening with him?
"It was heaven for me, too, Reed," she whispered, remembering. They'd been much younger, and it was more hero worship back in those days. She hadn't been a whole lot of help, but she'd become his tomboy assistant, helping him salvage wood and nails, holding things in place.
It hadn't been until she'd turned fifteen that she really noticed him in the way girls discovered boys. And once she did, there'd never been anyone else for her. She'd discovered her changed feelings shortly before their first midnight escape to the tree house, and their relationship had only grown closer after that.
Now she understood what those midnight visitations most likely had meant. He'd throw some pebbles at her window close to midnight, and they'd go to the tree house. He'd wrap the old quilt around them both and they'd just sit there for hours looking up at the stars in the midnight sky, holding each other. He never really wanted to talk, just seemed to want to hold her.
Anger and hurt at his abandonment began to dissipate as they were replaced by rage and horror at the treatment he'd been subjected to. And she'd never known. How could she not have known?
"Where did you go?"
"After I got my mother and Jess out, we drove, and just kept driving until we thought we could blend into an anonymous life. It took a long time for my mother to feel safe enough to go out and get a job. I worked and supported us with odd jobs for a while. It was a struggle, but it felt damn good not having to feel like a hammer hung over our heads waiting to strike."
"Where is your mother now? And Jess?"
"My mom finally got a divorce and she married a man who's real good to her. Jess graduated from college not too long ago and she's got a good job. We heard the old man died a few years back, and that seemed to be the last chain broken that set us all free once and for all."
She silently walked to him and placed a hand on his arm. "What about you, Reed?" she asked quietly.
He shrugged. "I did okay. I eventually went to college and got a degree in engineering and things settled down for me. I've got a good job doing something I enjoy." He turned toward her and grabbed her shoulders. "But it's not enough, Jo. I had to come back, don't you see? Something about the street--you--wouldn't allow me to let you go."
She felt him all the way to the marrow of her bones. The knowledge that he hadn't just abandoned their love because he didn't want to be with her flooded through her, and she looked up at him. She wanted to give him another chance, but what if he left he
r again, thinking it was for her own good?
"Why now? Fifteen years, Reed."
He dropped his hands and turned away. "What if I was like him, Jo? What if I hurt you when I got angry, or if I didn't like the way you did something or said something? The thought of causing you that kind of pain kept me from coming back. Do you have any idea what the chances are of that happening? I grew up in an abusive household and the chances of me becoming an abuser are very high."
She wanted to shake him for thinking that. He'd never been like that. He was nothing like his father. "You're a damn fool, Reed Barnett. How can you possibly think you're anything like him?"
"His teachings have been hard to overcome, and he beat those lessons into me every single day. I needed to be as certain as possible that I wouldn't do that to you. I hate to say it, but when I saw the announcement in the paper about your father's death, I knew you'd be here, and that I could have a chance to see you. I had to take it. Even knowing what I might still become, I had to see you. Even if it was for just one last time."
She turned him around to face her. "In all these years, have you ever raised a hand to anyone in anger? Have you lost control to that extent?"
He shook his head.
She reached up and grabbed his shoulders. "I don't believe you're like him. I'd trust you with my life, don't you know that?" She leaned up on tiptoes. "I loved you then, and I love you now. I've never been able to forget you. Even thinking you abandoned me and didn't love me the same way, you took my heart with you when you left."
They stood there staring at each other for long moments. Then his head slowly began to descend. "We're different people than we were back then," he murmured.
"I know," she responded, as she cupped his strong face with both her hands. "We're stronger. "Kiss me, please kiss me."
He lifted her from the floor, and she wound her arms around his neck as his lips slanted and claimed hers. This wasn't a boy's kiss, it was a mature man's demanding lips that sought hers. His tongue thrust into the moist recesses of her mouth, reclaiming what had always been his. Would always be his.
THE BOY NEXT DOOR Page 2