by Lisa Jackson
Charlie stormed back into the house and Meg took a deep breath of the dry, frigid air, trying to get hold of her temper. She wasn’t second-guessing anything. If anything, she just saw it all more clearly.
She looked back through the window and saw Charlie, headed for Noah.
“Dammit, Charlie,” she said under her breath as she tore back into the house.
“This is how you expect me to find out that you’re fucking my girlfriend?” Charlie asked, loud enough for the entire room to hear.
And then he took a wild swing at Noah, who dodged it neatly. “Come on, Charlie,” Noah said. “You and I both know that I’ve been dodging hits like that from bigger men than you since I was a lot smaller than I am now.”
Charlie’s face turned red, and he took another swing at Noah, who moved to the side, sending Charlie and his very expensive wool coat straight into the punch bowl.
Noah’s hands were clenched into fists, and Meg knew that it was taking every ounce of his self-control not give Charlie the punch in the face he deserved.
Meg, for her part, felt only appalled. Because this was the man she had spent thirteen years pining after. And once she had dropped all of the excuses for him, once she had admitted to herself that she didn’t want that future she’d been planning for so long . . . well, she’d discovered it just wasn’t worth it. Not that Charlie wasn’t worth it as a human, just that he wasn’t worth her heartbreak.
“Boys, come on,” Nancy said, putting her hand on Noah’s shoulder and drawing him back slightly. Then she looked down at Charlie, who was still on the floor, covered in punch. “Charlie, I didn’t think I was going to have to break up a fight between the two of you. I didn’t even have to do it when you were teenagers.”
The entire party was staring at the spectacle they’d made, and if Meg could have sneaked out and burrowed into a snowbank for cover she would have.
“Sorry,” Charlie said, getting up, not able to look at Nancy.
And that just made Meg feel sad. Because all of their history, the history among the three of them, and Jim and Nancy, was definitely still there. And however Charlie was acting now, he did care. He did hold all those old feelings in. And it still mattered to him—millionaire or not—if he disappointed Nancy.
Those feelings that she was having now—that pity—still wasn’t love.
But what she felt for Noah, standing there strong, not moving in on his friend, even though said friend had just tried to attack him, that was.
“I think you should go,” Meg said to Charlie. “Maybe we’ll talk another time.”
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know about that.” Then he got up and walked out of the room, out of the house, and onto the street. She heard a car engine start, and it wasn’t until then that conversation started in the room again.
Meg looked helplessly at Nancy. “I’m so sorry.”
Jim came over and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “This is not the first fight our house has played host to.”
Nancy waved a hand. “We’ve seen it all.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have had to.”
Nancy reached over and pulled Megan in for a hug. “It was never a have to, Meg. We only ever wanted to.” She patted Meg’s cheek. “I’m happy for you. Charlie is a good boy underneath everything. But Noah is a good man.”
She released her hold on Meg, and Meg stood back, looking over at Noah, who was still standing there as if he were waiting for a blow.
“Come on,” Meg said, grabbing hold of his arm. “Let’s talk.”
They went down the hall, heading toward what was Noah’s old bedroom. Once they were inside, the door closed behind them, Noah pushed his hand through his dark hair. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him we’re together.”
“I see. And did his jealousy spur him to profess his undying love? Are you going back to him?”
Meg felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. “No. Why would you think that? I don’t . . . I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past couple of days, Noah. And the conclusion I’ve come to is probably the easiest one ever. I don’t love Charlie. Charlie was a habit. And Charlie was security. And you know how I feel about that. People like you and me . . . It’s so hard. Change. Because all through my childhood change wasn’t necessarily good. Change was hard, and sometimes change was bad. Jim and Nancy’s house, being with them, that was the happiest I ever was.”
She took a deep breath. “And I made a decision about you and Charlie, found a way to keep you both in my life. And I didn’t want to change it. Not for anything. Because I couldn’t bear the idea of changing our dynamic. I wanted Charlie when I was fifteen. And I didn’t understand what the hell it meant. To love someone. I didn’t understand anything. Not then. How could I? He was handsome, and he smiled easily, and back then that felt a lot like love.”
She looked down at her hands. “But you know what? Fifteen-year-old girls are stupid. They gravitate toward shiny, insubstantial things, and that’s exactly what I did with him. And I missed the real thing even when he handed me a package of cookies.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Noah, I love you. And I don’t even think that’s a brand-new revelation. I think it’s been inside of me for a long time. I just didn’t understand what it was. But dealing with all of this, all of this Charlie stuff, made me ask myself why I thought I loved him. And then it made me ask myself what I think love is. It’s you. It’s always been you.”
CHAPTER 9
Noah looked down at the woman standing in front of him, her eyes blazing with her earnestness. He knew that she meant it. At least, she thought she did. Because Meg would never lie to him, not about this. He trusted that. In many ways he trusted her more than he trusted anyone else. The problem was, he didn’t really trust anyone else. What he had said to Charlie was true. He had been dodging blows his whole damned life.
And somehow he hadn’t seen this one coming. He also hadn’t realized that it would strike him with more impact than any physical beating ever could have.
Meg. The woman he had always wanted, looking up at him and telling him that she loved him.
Love. He had never for one moment allowed himself to think the words. Not when it came to her. Not when it came to anybody. Because what good was it? What would it benefit either of them?
Love carried such a host of things, a wealth of deep meaning that he didn’t think he could live up to.
“What does that mean?”
“That’s what I’ve been working out,” she said. “I thought that it was butterflies and drama. But I think it’s a lot closer to cookies and dependability—”
“Okay. So I’m the stability you’re looking for. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No. That’s not what I said.”
“Yes, Meg, you just said it. Charlie is not giving you the security you want, and you want someone who will. Because you’re afraid of change. Hell, all of us are. Nobody gets it better than I do.”
“Noah,” she said, reaching out and grabbing hold of his arm. “That isn’t what I meant. And you know me better than that. I would never use you.”
“You would never use me on purpose. But you came back from New York with a broken heart and the first thing you did was come to me. You wanted to lose your virginity with Charlie, but it didn’t happen, so you used me instead. And now you’ve decided that he’s not a good prospect so you want me. Because you’re so damned desperate for stability.”
“That’s not fair,” she protested.
“Who gives a damn about fair, Meg? Have we ever had it fair? Was it fair that my mother dated a parade of increasingly abusive douchebags my entire life? I never expected life to be fair. The fact that you seem to think it should be after all this time is pretty surprising.”
“No,” she started again. “I’m sorry about all that happened to you. I am. I always have been. I’m sorry about what happened to me. I’m sorry that my parents loved drugs more than they l
oved me. I’m sorry that it contributed to me making poor decisions. I’m sorry that a lack of examples of love in my life made me accept bad things for a while. But I’m done with that. I know what I want now. I’ve gone through a whole lot of crap to get here, but now I’m here. And I get it. I understand who I’m supposed to be. And who I’m supposed to be with. I was blind. But I’m not now.”
“Great. Well, your come to Noah moment has been pretty great, but I think you have a lot of shit to work out, and you probably need to do it without me.”
Meg wobbled, then sat down on the bed. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I did, but it doesn’t make any sense. You’re the one who said you’ve always wanted me. You’re the one . . . and now you’re saying we have to wait?”
“Yes. You’re the one who made it clear you always wanted Charlie, and only when it became very obvious he wasn’t going to give you what you wanted did you decide that you wanted me.”
“That’s not fair,” she insisted. “I just didn’t understand. I do now. I do, because you showed me. I couldn’t have possibly understood it before this. But that’s like criticizing me for being blind and not realizing the sky was blue until I was able to see. This isn’t just me taking the easy way out. This is me realizing that I want more. That I deserve more.”
“I always wanted you,” he said, firming up his jaw. “I wanted to take you to bed, Meg, and that’s why I never did anything about it. Because I knew that you wanted marriage. I knew that you wanted a family. I’m not a coward. Nothing scares me. I held back because you deserved better. Then you came to me, and I figured Charlie had done enough damage that I might as well just go ahead and take what you were offering.”
“You’re a liar,” she said, standing up and flinging her petite frame at him. “You are afraid. You’re afraid to take this. And I get it. We’ve had these discussions over and over again. It doesn’t matter how much Jim and Nancy cared for us for those years we lived with them. It doesn’t matter that we have good friends, good jobs. In our hearts we still feel like foster kids. We still feel like kids who were given away. You don’t have to tell me about your past—I already know. You don’t have to tell me how it feels, because I know that, too. But we have to . . . Dammit, Noah, we have to move past this. We have to. We have to want what’s better for ourselves, because nobody’s going to hand it to us. At this point, we’re the ones who are choosing to let what our parents did to us decide who we are. We’re almost thirty. Everything that’s happening to us now, good and bad, is because of what we decided to do with our lives.”
“We can’t do this,” he said.
The words felt torn from him, cutting into him like jagged glass. He wanted . . . He wanted to reach out and take what she was offering. He wanted to pretend that what she wanted was actually possible. For just a moment. He wanted to imagine that future. Meg, in that little house with him. Meg forever. His wife. Maybe they would even have some kids.
But what would happen if it all broke? Where would that leave him? Where would it leave them?
By the time he was ten, he had watched love turn sour more times than most people saw in a lifetime.
He would be damned if he would be part of that with Meg.
All he knew now was that he had to leave. He had to stop this. Had to stop this impossible madness before he reached out and took hold of it. Before his weakness overcame him and he gave in and damn the consequences.
He had his life. And Meg had never figured into it as anything more than a friend. He had accepted that, even when it hurt. He had made his peace with it, and now she was acting like . . . like they could have something real.
He didn’t need that. He had his ranch. That piece of ground was all his. The evidence of how far he had come.
But he had gone as far as he could go. Anything more was just asking too much.
“No,” he said, his voice rough, the words fractured.
“Noah,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please.”
“I can’t.”
Then he turned and walked out of the room, leaving her sitting on the bed. He tried to ignore the sound of her tears. Tried to ignore the fact that everything in him wanted to turn back around and fix this.
Never once in his entire life had he wished that he could go back in time. He had never wanted to be that helpless, downtrodden kid he’d once been. But right now he’d go back in a heartbeat. At least then fixing things with Meg would be simpler. Feelings would be simpler. There was nothing simple about anything to do with this. Not now. It was all just broken and shattered and complicated as hell. Impossible to fix.
He walked out without saying good-bye to Jim and Nancy, because he certainly didn’t deserve any kindness from them. Not after what had happened. No, he didn’t deserve a damn thing.
And that was the problem. Meg was offering him everything. And he knew that he just wasn’t a man who could take it.
CHAPTER 10
Maybe it was a little bit of a cowardly thing to do, but Meg spent the rest of the night hiding in that old bedroom. One of the children Nancy and Jim had been caring for had left for college in September and it hadn’t been filled yet, which worked out nicely for Meg, since she needed a place to burrow.
She cried for a while, lying across the bed, and then she got up, rifling through the collection of books that were still in the bedroom, finding one of her old favorites and settling down with it. She read “The Lady of Shalott” about four times, but mostly, she just overrelated to the feeling of being “a pale, pale corpse” floating down the river.
And then the door to the bedroom opened and she sat up to see Nancy coming on through.
“Well, that was more excitement than we’ve had in a while,” she said, settling down on the edge of the bed next to Meg.
“I was so well behaved when I lived here, I thought maybe it was my time to make a splash?”
Nancy laughed softly. “Yes, you were always very well behaved, Meg. Sometimes a little bit too well behaved. It made me wonder if they had stolen the spark from you.”
Meg frowned. “I don’t think so. Or at least, not permanently.”
“It’s hard,” Nancy said, her brown eyes earnest. “It’s hard to move on from a childhood like that. I know it is. I’ve watched so many of you try. And a lot of you have succeeded. But not all. It’s just not simple. Whatever it is, it’s not simple or easy.”
“I wish it was,” Meg said. “I wish it was as easy as deciding not to feel something anymore. I don’t want to. I don’t want to have problems. I don’t want . . . I don’t want Noah to have them.”
“But it’s not that simple, is it?”
“He doesn’t believe that I want him. Or, that’s what he says. I think he’s actually just scared. But it didn’t go over well when I told him that.”
Nancy’s dark eyebrows shot up. “What? A man didn’t like being told that he was scared?”
Meg laughed reluctantly, her heart feeling a little bit tender. “I know, right?”
“Noah has always been special. Serious. Hardworking. I’ve never met a boy so bound and determined to do the right thing. He wanted to be responsible. With everything that he had. He took a job right when he started living with us, and he worked faithfully at that job. I’ve never seen someone work so hard. And now he owns the ranch. I don’t think there’s a thing in the world that he takes lightly, least of all your affection.”
Meg frowned. “You think he’s afraid of hurting me?”
“I think so. I also think he’s afraid of you hurting him, because he’s human. And because you can only hit someone so many times before they start believing that everything is an attack. Before they don’t trust a single thing.”
Meg leaned forward, a tear sliding miserably down her cheek. “He can trust me.”
“You ran after Charlie for all those years. In that whole time Noah looked at you as if the ground you walked on was pure gold. He’s loved you since the beg
inning. And I think that his rejecting you now has nothing to do with not trusting you. It has everything to do with the fact that he doesn’t know what to do with a good thing now that he has it.” Nancy took Meg’s hand. “How many good things has he had?”
“I want to be a good thing for him.” Meg shook her head. “I love him. I really do. And I think I have for a long time. I just . . .” She swallowed hard. “Do you think I was protecting myself? With Charlie?” She laughed. “I know that sounds ridiculous. I know it sounds really silly. But I was so upset when I came back from New York. When I caught Charlie . . . Well, he was with someone else. And I went straight to Noah. It didn’t take long for . . .” She looked up at Nancy meaningfully.
Nancy lifted a hand. “I don’t need details. I can figure it out.”
“Anyway. It’s just that I was hurt Charlie did that to me. But I wasn’t devastated. I thought maybe I was. And I actually think I worked really hard at convincing myself I was. But ending up in Noah’s arms was about the easiest thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t think it would have been if what I felt for Charlie was really love. I think I took the substitute because I knew it would be easier to lose. Noah and I have only been together for a night, and already losing him is worse than anything I ever went through with my parents. I feel like part of myself got ripped out. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that. What if . . . What if we can’t work it out? What if we can’t actually move past where we came from?”
“That’s possible, Meg. I can’t lie to you. Because the scars that both of you have go deep, and it’s not the simplest thing in the world to erase all of that, I know. But look at you. You own a business; you’re successful. You’re strong. And even though I think you might be right, and you might have been protecting yourself to a degree, you also gave your affection easily. That’s not a bad thing. For Noah, for Charlie . . . I always saw you as the glue that held all of you together. You were soft, and sweet, and you still smiled, and I think both of those boys were drawn to that. Noah . . . He’s hard. He’s a tough nut. But he comes here, every year. He’s the truest, most faithful person. And he has proven it time and again. I think when push comes to shove, in the end, he’ll be true to you. Like he always has been. He might have to go off and be scared for a while, and I can’t say as I blame him. But you know his heart, Meg. You’ve watched him for years. You know who he is. He’s not the kind of man who runs. At least, not forever.”