by Mindy Klasky
But in one short month, she’d discovered a new way of living. A way that included Magic Zoo and ice cream and late-night bacon blue cheeseburgers and glasses of beer swilled at an actual roadside bar. What had Susan said? That she wanted to see Kat embrace her impulsive side. Well, here was impulse, all right. Let Susan and Mike and Rye and Rachel settle everything, after Kat was back in New York. They’d work it out between them.
Kat shifted the truck into Park and dropped the keys on the floor mat. Entering the tiny station building, she immediately realized she was alone—no one to sell her a ticket. That was fine. She could buy one on the train.
Kat patted the tiny purse that swung from her shoulder. She had bought it when she splurged on her green blouse—was it only the day before? She’d somehow thought she’d been changing herself, remaking herself so that she could live in Eden Falls for the rest of her life.
Ironic, wasn’t it? Kat had finally realized she could stay in Eden Falls, work beside her mother at the Morehouse Dance Academy, teach the Advanced Showcase class, and be happy, maybe for the first time in years.
But that was before the Family Day picnic. That was before she’d learned the truth about her family. About her sister and the man that Kat had come to love.
No. She couldn’t say that. Couldn’t believe it. She could not love Rye. Not after what he’d done. Not after the secret he had kept from her. Sure, he might only have known that he was Niffer’s father for a week. But he had known that he’d slept with Rachel long before that. Slept with her, and kept the truth from Kat. Slept with her, and minimized the connection, made it sound casual, like nothing more than a meaningless fling.
No. She could not love Rye.
She had only thought she loved him. She’d been deceived. Rye had presented himself under false pretenses. Whatever emotions Kat thought she had felt were lies. Lies, like his silence had been.
She couldn’t sit still on the station’s hard wooden bench. She needed to pace, needed to shed some of the physical energy that still sparked through her. She wrapped her arms around her belly and measured out her steps, planting her heels as firmly as if she’d never been hampered by a walking boot.
She should call Haley. Let her roommate know she was coming back to their apartment. Kat was going to make the midnight deadline for the Coppelia sign-up after all. She was returning to her life as a dancer.
Forget about fun. Dance was her career.
And all that justifying she had done before, all the ways she had convinced herself that Eden Falls was right for her? That was just Kat’s tactic for grappling with fear, just like she’d suffered from homesickness, years before, when she’d first moved to New York. She had been afraid to reach out for the role she really wanted. She had abandoned her goals, slashed through her strategies, trampled every one of her rules. All because she was afraid she might not have what it took to dance Swanilda.
What had Rye said to her, the day she ran his truck into the ditch? She had to get back on the horse that had thrown her? She had refused then, but she was never going to back down again. Ballet had thrown her, when she developed her stress fracture. Well, it was high time for her to head back to New York. To get back to her real life.
Of course, she didn’t have a way to reach Haley. Her cell phone was useless here. And she didn’t have any change with her; she couldn’t place a call from the ancient pay phone in the corner.
What did it matter, though? She had a credit card; she could buy her train ticket north. And once she got back to the city, she had an apartment full of belongings.
Kat paced some more. This was what Susan had hoped for, wasn’t it? That Kat would cast off all bonds, all limits. Susan just hadn’t realized that her daughter would use her hard-won freedom to return to New York, without planning, without luggage, without restraint.
She crossed to the wall of windows and pushed her cheek against the glass to peer down the long line of tracks. No train in sight yet. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes.
A strong breeze gusted through the station as the far door opened and someone stepped inside.
When had she learned to recognize the sound of Rye’s footsteps? She knew he was standing behind her. She could hear him breathing. She knew that he swallowed hard. She could imagine him reaching toward her, flexing his hands, letting his empty fists fall to his sides.
“Kat,” he said. “Please.”
She breathed in deeply, as if the gesture could pour steel down her spine, could give her the strength to withstand the next five minutes, until the Clipper chugged into the station. Setting her jaw so that she couldn’t possibly say the wrong thing, she turned to face him.
Rye marveled at the change that had come over Kat in the four weeks since they had last been at the train station. Then, she had been a frigid woman, desperate to control the world around her, iced over with frozen fury at the dancer’s body that had failed her. Now, he saw a passionate creature, someone who embraced challenge and battled it on her own ground. He had seen her consumed by passion, not just beneath his fingers, not just in response to his lips, but in the very way she tackled living every day.
He had tested a hundred conversational openings on the way from the park, so intent on finding the words to keep Kat in Eden Falls that he nearly crashed his brother Noah’s sports car a dozen times. He thought he had worked out the perfect plea, but now all those eloquent words fled him. He was reduced to repeating the only thing that mattered: “Kat, please. Don’t leave me.”
She glanced at her watch.
He was afraid to check his own, afraid to discover how little time was left for him to plead his case. Instead, he took advantage of her silence, spinning out all the things he’d meant to tell her, all the confessions he’d longed to make. “I know it seems like I deceived you. Hell, I did deceive you. And I can’t imagine how I’ve made you feel. But you have to understand—I didn’t know. Not until I saw Josh Barton in Richmond. I’ve spent the past week trying to find Rachel and ask her if it was true. Trying to figure out the right way to tell you. Trying to figure out all the right words.”
“But you didn’t tell me. Rachel did.”
She spoke so quietly that he almost missed her words. She directed her speech to the knot of her fingers, white-knuckled across her flat belly.
Nevertheless, he took heart that she had said something. If she was willing to spare him any words at all, that meant they were having a conversation. They were still communicating. The door between them was still open, even if he could barely make out a glimmer of light on her side.
Even though he knew he was fighting against time, even though he was certain the hourglass was draining away, he chose his words carefully. “I wish it hadn’t happened that way. I wish I had told you the second that Josh walked away, in Richmond. I wish I had taken out my phone, dialed your number and told you everything, all at once.”
She did not seem to hear him. Instead, she looked around the train station, like a woman in a trance. “Did you know it was me that first day? Did you think I was Rachel?”
This time, she met his eyes. Her silver gaze was cloudy, shrouded in misery. He heard the tremble behind her words, knew she was questioning the very foundation of everything they’d had together.
He held her gaze and answered slowly, setting every syllable between them like an offering on an altar. “I could never confuse the two of you. Ever. You are so much more than the color of your hair and eyes, the shape of your face. Kat, think back to that day. I was the one who called out to you, across the parking lot. I knew who you were, even when you pretended not to recognize me.”
She had done that, hadn’t she? She had played a child’s game, because she was afraid of getting caught in a woman’s world. And here she was, more tangled than she’d ever thought she could be.
She thought back to the day she had arrived in town, on that unseasonably warm afternoon, with the heat shimmering off the asphalt parking lot. Then, she had thought she would melt. Now, she feared she would never be warm again. She rubbed at her arms and said, “But after that. When you started seeing me with Niffer. There must have been some part of you that knew. You must have wanted me to be Rachel, to be the woman you’d already slept with. You must have wanted us to be the family that the three of you never were.”
The words ate through to the core of her heart. In all her life, she had never been jealous of Rachel. Frustrated, yes. Angry with her poor choices. Disappointed by all the times she had made promises, all the times she had lied.
But this was the first time that Kat had ever truly envied her sister. The first time she had ever wanted to change places, to be Rachel. Then she would have known what it was like to be the Morehouse sister Rye first made love to. To be the twin he had first chosen. To be the woman he had been drawn to from the start. If Kat had been Rachel, she never would have let Rye out of her sight.
“No,” he said, and it seemed like he was damning every one of her dreams. “Kat, I never wanted you to be anyone but who you are. Don’t you understand? I never loved Rachel. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I barely knew her. She came to me when I had just graduated from college. She’d been dating one of my fraternity brothers. She wanted to make him jealous. I was flattered and stupid and a little naive. I only knew her for a few weeks, but I think I believed that I could…save her. That I could…I don’t know…make her be happy and healthy and whole.”
Kat did know. She knew how many times she had hoped that she could reach out to her twin. How many times Rachel had manipulated Kat’s own emotions, making her believe that this time things were different, that this time Rachel had changed, that this time she would be able to hold it all together.
Still, there was more to Rye’s story than that.
“Even if I accept that,” she said. “Even if I believe every word you’ve said about what happened six years ago, that doesn’t explain now. It doesn’t justify your keeping things secret for the past week. You could have called me, any night. You could have told me everything.”
Rye heard the sob that cut short her anguish. And yet, that anguish gave him another faint glimmer of hope. If Kat truly hated him, if she were willing to walk away forever, she’d be speaking with more rage. With less conflict. With more of her famed commitment, holding true to the single path she had chosen.
But even as he told himself that all was not absolutely, irrevocably lost, he heard another sound—one that made his pulse quicken with fear. The train whistle keened as the Clipper neared the station. He was almost out of time.
“Kat,” he said, certain she heard it, too. “You have to believe me. I never thought of Rachel when I was with you. I kissed your lips, not hers. I touched your body, not hers. In my mind, you are completely separate people. Two women so different that I can only wonder at the coincidence that you’re sisters.”
She shook her head, using the motion to pull her around, to face the windows, the train tracks. The door that would carry her out of his life forever.
He knew that he could not touch her, that he could not rely on the incredible physical spark that had joined them, ever since she first returned to Eden Falls. But he could not let her walk away, either, not without making his last argument. Not without saying the words that had pounded through his head as he completed his breakneck drive from the park.
“Kat, I love you. Please. Don’t get on that train.”
Kat felt the change in air pressure as the locomotive blew past the station door. The train was braking; metal wheels squealed against the track as it came to a stop.
But those sounds meant nothing to her. Instead, she was trapped by the words Rye had spoken. “What did you say?” she asked, her own question almost lost in the station’s dead air.
He took a step closer to her. “Kat, I love you.” He glanced at the door, at the train that was almost completely stopped. “I love you, and I don’t want you to go. I can’t get enough of you. I want you to stay here. I need you to stay here. But if you can’t, if you won’t, then I’ll get on that train with you. I’ll travel to New York, or to anywhere else you go, until I know that you heard me, that you understand me, that you believe me. I love you, Kat Morehouse, and I don’t want to live another day without you.”
The train was ticking, temporarily settling its weight on the tracks. A conductor walked by on the short platform outside the station, calling out his bored afternoon chant: “Yankee Clipper, all aboard!”
“Kat,” Rye whispered, and now he took a step closer. He held out his hand to her, as if she were a forest animal, some shy creature that he had to charm to safety.
He had hurt her. He had kept a terrible secret for days, long past the time when he should speak.
But hadn’t she done the very same thing? Hadn’t she kept a secret from her mother, hiding the bad news about the studio’s bank account because she could not find the right words? Because it was never the right time to tell the truth?
Susan had forgiven her. Susan had told her that she understood—good motives sometimes led to bad actions. All unwitting, Susan had shown Kat the path to understanding. The way to move forward from a bad situation to one that was so much better.
The train seemed to sigh, grumbling as its engine shifted forward. The cars dragged on the track as if they were reluctant to leave Eden Falls. Kat could still run for the Clipper. With her dancer’s grace, she could grab hold of the steel grip beside the stairs. She could pull herself into the vestibule, make her way down the swaying, accelerating car to an overpadded seat that would carry her all the way to New York.
But Rye’s eyes were pleading with her. Those ebony eyes, darker than any she had ever seen before. No, that was a lie. Niffer’s eyes were just as dark.
The train picked up speed. Its whistle blew as the engine rounded the long curve that would bring it north, to Richmond, to Washington, to New York.
The Clipper was gone.
“Thank you,” Rye breathed. He was frozen, though, terrified of upsetting the balance he had somehow found, the miracle that had kept Kat in Eden Falls. His hand remained outstretched, his fingers crooked, as if they could remember the cashmere touch of her hair.
“Oh, Rye,” she sighed. “I love you, too.”
And then, impossibly, she was placing her hand in his. She was letting him pull her close, letting him fold his arms around her. She turned up her face, and he found the perfect offering of her lips.
He wanted to drink all that she had to give him, wanted to sweep her up in his arms and carry her over the threshold of the station, out to Noah’s car, and away, far away, into a perfect sunset. He wanted to stay absolutely still, to turn to stone with this incredible woman in his arms, to spin out this moment forever. He wanted to drag her to the hard wooden bench in the center of the waiting room, to pull her down on top of him, to rip open the buttons on her spring-green blouse and lave her perfect breasts with his ever-worshipful tongue.
He wanted to lead Kat, to follow her, to be with her forever.
“Rye.” She said his name again, when he finally pulled back from his chaste kiss of promise. There was so much she needed to say to him. So much she needed to hear him say. She twined her fingers in his and led him out of the waiting room, to the glinting form of his silver truck. He barely left her for long enough to walk around the cab to the driver’s seat.
As he closed the door behind himself, she felt an eagerness shoot through his body, the need to confirm that she was still beside him, that she had not left him, that she never would. His fingers splayed wide across the back of her head as he pulled her close; urgency sparked from his palm like an actual electric fire. Now his lips were harsh on hers, dema
nding, and she might have thought that he was angry, if not for the sob that she heard at the back of his throat.
She answered his desperation with need of her own. Her hands needed to feel the hard muscle of his back. Her arms needed to arch around his chest, to pull him close, closer than she had ever been in any pas de deux.
His clever lips found the fire banked at the base of her throat; his tongue flicked against that delicate hollow until she moaned. By then, his fingers had made their way beneath her blouse; he was doing devastating things to the single clasp of her bra.
Her own hands weren’t to be outdone. She flashed through the simple mechanics of releasing his belt, loosening the leather to reach the line of worn buttons beneath. She slid the fingers of her left hand inside the waistband of his jeans as she worked, and she laughed at the feel of his flesh leaping beneath her touch.
But then, three buttons away from freedom, she paused. She flattened her palm against the taut muscles of his belly, pushing away enough that she could see his eyes.
His heartbeat pounded beneath her touch like a wild animal’s, and she felt the whisper of his breath, panting as he restrained himself, as he held back for her. “What are we doing, Rye?”
“If you don’t know, then I haven’t been doing it right,” he growled.
She smiled, but she pulled even farther away. She took advantage of his frustrated whimper to tug her blouse back into place. She ran a hand through her hair, forcing it out of her eyes. “I’m serious,” she said, and she was pleased to see his hunger take a backseat to concern. “You’re living in Richmond now. You’ve started your own business and you don’t have time to do anything new. You don’t need the stress of a new relationship, just as you’re finally achieving all your dreams.”
He caught her hand and planted a kiss in her palm before lacing his fingers between hers. “You are all my dreams.”