by Karen Rose
She didn’t need to ask him twice. He crawled between her thighs, sliding his hands under her butt to lift her hips and—
“God.” The gasp was shoved out of her lungs as he entered her in one hard thrust.
Holding himself above her, he dropped his head with a moan she was sure could be heard down in the parking garage. “I can’t go slow this time. Maybe round two.”
Round two? Yes, please. “Then go fast,” she whispered. “I’ll keep up.”
His grin was downright filthy. “You do that, Dr. Fallon.” He began to move in short, hard thrusts, his eyes on hers. “Show me how you’ll keep up.”
She slid one hand between them, mesmerized by him, completely unable to look away. But she didn’t need to look. She found her clit and rubbed in time to his thrusts, feeling the tension growing tighter and tighter. But it wasn’t until he dropped his gaze to her busy fingers that she couldn’t hold back any longer. Head back, she let herself go, let herself fall, conscious that he was right behind her.
He dropped to his elbows, still careful not to put any weight on her ribs and hips. For which—now that they’d burned off some of the need—she was grateful. She hadn’t cared about her bruises while they were at it, but once the adrenaline began to fade?
Yeah, she’d feel it then.
He tensed then, surging up into her once more as an aftershock shuddered through him, his gasp followed by another low groan. “God.” Finally spent, he kissed her shoulder, the side of her neck, the cheek that wasn’t scraped up.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I needed that. I’ll go slower next time.”
“I kind of liked it just like that,” she confessed. “But I’d be willing to check out the benefits of slow in a little while.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Cincinnati, Ohio
Monday, December 21, 1:35 a.m.
Adam broke the silence, his voice low in the darkness. “Meredith?”
He’d turned out the bedroom light and they lay together, legs intertwined. She nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder, her fingers petting the hair on his chest. “Yeah?” she asked lazily. She sounded relaxed. Replete. Completely sated.
So of course I’m going to dash all that to hell. But he needed answers.
“What happened to you around the holidays?”
Her fingers stilled and he immediately missed the petting. But it was a small price to pay for the truth. As long as she started petting him again. Eventually.
“How much did you overhear yesterday, when Papa and I were talking?”
“I came in when you were telling him that you were okay with how I’ve dealt with things, so he needed to be, too. I heard you ask him to watch videos with you, of your parents. ‘On the day.’ And he said that he’d need me not to be there since he’d need to drink to watch. Which I appreciated, by the way.”
“He’s thoughtful that way.”
“Will you tell me what happened?” he asked, and she sighed heavily.
“My parents died in a plane crash three days after Christmas, seven years ago.”
His chest tightened. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“So am I,” she murmured. “My parents were . . . simply the best. I see you and Diesel and Kate and Decker and all the other folks in our group that didn’t have good childhoods and my heart breaks for you. I miss my mom and dad every day. And that’s part of the problem. I miss them and there’s still a piece of me that feels like I don’t have the right.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the reason they were on that plane,” she said, with perfect calm. “I’m the reason they died.”
Stunned, he pressed back into the pillow, angling to better see her face. She appeared serene, her eyes closed, lashes lying thick and dark against her skin. He wanted to shake that serenity off and see her real face, but he didn’t. He figured that she needed the zen mask right now and he wasn’t going to take that away from her.
He wanted to tell her no, that she wasn’t responsible for a plane crash, but she’d uttered the words with such quiet finality that he knew she believed it.
“Why?” he finally asked.
“I was the perfect child,” she said. “I never rebelled, I got good grades, I was on the track team, I volunteered at the hospital. My parents believed I had my act together.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I’m good at letting people see what they want to see.” Her petting of his chest resumed and he let out a relieved breath. She was there with him, even if she still hid behind her unyielding composure. “I was driven. Partly because it’s who I was—am. And partly because I hated who I was. Never good enough. Most of my clients have been the victims of some trauma, but not all. Some just don’t like who they are. My job with them is to help them see themselves clearly and then to decide—if they still don’t like what they see—what they will change and how they will change it.”
“Did anyone do that with you?”
“Yes, but not until it got so bad that I couldn’t hide it anymore. My cousin Alex came to live with us when she was fifteen. I was seventeen. I’d been a cutter for years by then. Alex’s mom and my mom were twins. We’d always been close, but then Alex’s mother was murdered and when we got to Georgia, where they lived, Alex was in the psych ward. They thought she’d tried to kill herself because she’d discovered her mother’s body.”
“But she hadn’t?”
“Not then. But later? Yeah, she tried. We got her from Georgia to our house here, got her settled in her room, then I set myself up as sentry. Because I’d seen her palm a sleeping pill. I took it away from her and watched her until I was sure she wasn’t going to hurt herself.”
“For how long?”
“A few months. Alex went into therapy and got . . . better. I kept the pill.”
Adam sucked in a breath. “Did you, now?” he said with a calm that was pure BS.
The little huff of breath against his chest told him that she knew his BS for what it was. “I did. And I’d look at it sometimes and think, I could get more and swallow them all and then I’d be done. But I never did. Told myself it was because I was in control.”
“Like an alcoholic who goes to a bar to prove they can say no to booze.”
“Exactly. And down deep, I didn’t want to hurt myself. Not then.”
He thought of the scars on her arms. Those from the cutting had nearly faded. The longer, deeper scars just above her wrists signified an act far more drastic. “When?”
“When I was twenty. There was no single event. No primary trigger. I just woke up one day and knew that I didn’t have the energy to do it anymore.”
“Clinical depression,” he murmured.
“Yes. But like I said, I was good at letting people only see what they wanted to see.”
“Who found you?” he asked, because the scars were remnants of an injury so serious that he doubted she could have dealt with it on her own.
“My gran. My parents were traveling. Alex was making friends at university and she . . . didn’t really need me anymore. Which makes it sound like I blame her, but I never did. I knew she was doing the healthy thing, experiencing life, while I, Miss Perfect Child, was not. I don’t know why I did it that day or why I did it at Gran’s, other than I knew she’d check on me. I think she always knew what was wrong. Turns out she’d dealt with depression, too, but she didn’t tell me until afterward, because people didn’t talk about things like that.”
“Still don’t.”
“True, but it is getting better. Anyway, my parents found out because I was hospitalized, but I was able to keep it from Alex for years. Partly because as long as it was my secret, I could still be the strong one and she’d be the one who’d palmed a pill.”
“What did she say when you tol
d her?”
“She cried. I cried. We became even closer.”
“When did you tell her?”
“Two years after she met Daniel and decided to stay in Atlanta. They wanted a Christmas wedding and she wanted me to be her maid of honor and I . . . couldn’t. It had only been three years since the plane crash. She thought that was the reason and tried to get me to see that it was a tribute to my folks. She’d loved them, too, you see, and she really meant that. I told her that I couldn’t be in the wedding if it was at Christmas and she knew something had happened. I had to tell her everything. She’s, um, kind of persuasive.”
“I can’t wait to meet her.”
“You’ll love her. Everyone does.” She drew a breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out. Adam had learned this meant that he probably wouldn’t like what came next “She doesn’t have to wear a mask for people to love her. She’s just herself.”
He’d been right. He didn’t like that statement at all. “Maybe the mask is just an assistive device for you. Like a hearing aid. I learned years ago that Greg uses his hearing aids to control how much of the world he lets in, and that’s his choice. The mask is your way of controlling the situation around you, of maintaining calm. You aren’t a different person underneath. It’s just how much of yourself you allow out on any given day.”
Her fingers faltered for a few seconds before resuming the petting of his chest. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe you’re right. I hope you are.”
“So what happened the Christmas that your parents died?”
“You can’t help asking the questions, can you?” she asked dryly.
“Would you want me to?”
“No. I like the man you are. I always knew he was in there.” She kissed his collarbone. “So. Christmas.” She was quiet for another moment. “I was married.”
He froze where he lay as the fallout from that little bombshell filtered into his brain. Okay. “Married,” he repeated, just to be sure he’d heard correctly.
“Yes, but not for long.”
Adam felt like he’d been poleaxed, which he did not like. But she’d gone still in his arms and he liked that even less. “What happened?”
A sigh. “I had this boyfriend. Chris. He worked in my dad’s company. My parents and grandparents weren’t crazy about him, and I think I always knew that there was no future for us, but he made me feel not so lonely. One night I drank too much and we forgot protection and I got pregnant. Chris wasn’t entirely horrible, and he was raised by a single mom. He said we should get married because he didn’t want his kid growing up the same way. So we did. We had a simple service at the end of October and I bought a dress that would camouflage the baby belly. Nobody knew except my parents and grandparents.”
He did not want to think about her with another man. Ever. But she didn’t have a child now, so he knew this was important. “Did Alex know?”
“Not at the time. I was just . . . I didn’t want her to know how stupid I’d been.”
End of October. He swallowed a groan, because this was not about him. “When I came to you that first time and we ended up in bed. That was the end of October.”
“Yeah. I was feeling a little raw myself when you showed up. Don’t think you took advantage or anything. I was lonely and needy, too. I slept with you because I wanted you and I wanted what we did. I didn’t want to be alone and neither did you. So it worked.”
He wanted to argue, but to do so was to imply she hadn’t known her own mind, and she definitely did. “Did he know about the cutting and the suicide attempt?”
“Yes. I mean, he figured it out. The scars were more noticeable then. Anyway, we had Christmas that year and my parents left a few days later to go skiing. Dad had his pilot’s license and he’d bought a small plane.”
Oh no. He tipped her chin up so that he could kiss her forehead and then he gently cuddled her close again, ever conscious of the scrape on her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
He felt her throat work as she swallowed hard. “I had my practice by then. Working with children who were depressed like I’d been or, like my cousin Alex, had been traumatized by something horrific. Chris didn’t approve. He didn’t want me bringing ‘all that sadness’ home. Told me to get a job doing something else, and that after the baby was born, I should quit because I was too fragile to handle the stress of being a working mother and that I didn’t need the money anyway because my parents were loaded.”
Adam bristled. “Prince of a guy.”
“True enough. I didn’t quit, and Chris and I argued. And then one day, the father of one of my youngest clients got out of jail, immediately hunted down his wife and their child, and beat them senseless. The child died and I fell apart. My parents weren’t home and Alex was working—she was an ER nurse—and I needed a shoulder. So I told Chris. He wasn’t happy with me.”
Adam could feel a growl start at the base of his throat. “What did he do?”
“He said if I wouldn’t quit my job, he was walking. That I was being selfish to keep heaping sadness on his head. That his job was too stressful to be burdened with other people’s issues. He wasn’t that nice about it, actually. I refused and he slammed the door on the way out.”
“He was looking for a reason to leave.”
“I know that now, but then . . . I was so upset. I actually found a razor. I wasn’t going to attempt suicide again, but I was thinking about cutting. I sat there for hours, just looking at that razor. And then I started to bleed and it had nothing to do with the razor.”
“You miscarried.”
“I did.”
“Did you have anyone to call?”
“Wendi,” she said fondly. “We’d worked together on a few cases. She was a friend. She took me to an ER that wasn’t Alex’s and called Papa, because she’d met him. Papa called my father and he and Mom dropped everything to come home. Gran had found the razor when she went to get me fresh clothes and she’d told Papa and my parents. They were all worried that I’d try to harm myself again.”
“But the razor was like the pill,” he said, his voice raw because his chest hurt too much to breathe. “You just wanted to show yourself that you wouldn’t.”
She went very still again, then nodded, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “Nobody got that. Not then and not since. Not until you.”
Hearing that loosened the tightness in his chest enough to let him draw a harsh breath. “But you didn’t harm yourself.”
“No. Although I really wanted to later, because Mom and Dad should never have come when they did. There was a storm. But they were so worried about me. They felt so guilty about missing my depression for so long . . .”
He was unsurprised when his chest grew wet with her tears. “Their plane crashed,” he said, able to at least say the words so that she wouldn’t have to.
“Yes. It was not quick and they did suffer.”
His throat closed on a wave of grief. And anger. “Who told you that?”
“The state trooper who came by my house later that night to give me the news.”
“Sonofabitch,” he muttered, unable to stop the curse.
“Yeah. That’s why when you and Trip lied to Kyle about Tiffany not suffering? I was so on board with that. It wasn’t something that I needed to hear when I was in shock and grieving. So, that’s the story. Christmas is difficult.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” He kissed her hair. “What happened to the douchebag?”
Her chuckle was watery. “Oh, Chris scuttled to his attorney right away to file for divorce. I didn’t fight him. I didn’t want him by that point. Especially when he blamed me for the miscarriage. I’m not sure who was angrier about that, Papa, Gran, or Wendi. I think he was most afraid of Wendi, to tell you the truth.”
“I believe that. She is fierce when it comes to protecting you. But what she said ma
kes so much sense now. More sense, anyway. It made sense when she said it.”
Meredith lifted her head, her eyes wet, her brows scrunched in a frown. “What do you mean? She promised me she wouldn’t say anything to you.”
Adam opened his mouth, then closed it. “Not going there, Meredith. Wendi scares the bejesus out of me.”
Meredith’s lips twitched, which had been his intent. “That will make her so happy.”
He lifted his head from the pillow enough to kiss her lips chastely. “Tell me about the depression. What do I need to know?”
“Not much, really. I have a shrink.”
“I know. I heard you tell your grandfather that, too. Do you see Dr. Lane?”
“Oh, no. She specializes in PTSD and, at least up until yesterday, anyway, that wasn’t my issue. Dr. Lane and I met at a conference a few years ago. I liked her, and everyone I’ve sent her way likes her, too.”
“I’m going to have to check in with her in a few days,” Adam said grimly, because PTSD was his issue and this entire weekend had rattled him hard. Which reminded him that he’d promised his sponsor he’d make time for a meeting. He needed to keep that promise. For Meredith. But mostly for me. Putting on the oxygen mask first applied to him as well.
“No shame in that, Adam.”
“I know.” He did, but it still rankled from time to time, that he hadn’t been able to handle it alone. It rankled worse that he had just heard those words in his father’s voice. He shut down the old tapes and refocused on Meredith’s needs. “Meds?”
“Yes. They help. So does yoga and running and playdates with my friends. I nurture myself, too. I learned a long time ago to put on my oxygen mask first before helping others. I just needed a refresher tonight. Thank you, by the way. I forgot to say it earlier.”
“When? When I imparted flight attendant wisdom or when you were coming so hard you saw stars?”
Her snorted laugh was the most ladylike he’d ever heard. “Both.” She sighed. “I still have bad cycles,” she said, very serious now. “Sometimes I can preplan, like around the holidays. Sometimes they hit me out of the blue and those are the bad times.”