by Janice Lynn
“Why wouldn’t I care about you? You were my boyfriend, my best friend, my lover.” Her whiskey-colored eyes penetrated him. “Actually, I thought we were more than that.”
“I thought you’d met someone else.”
Her gaze searched his and she started to say one thing, visibly changed her mind, then said, “I love you, Adam. I have for months and imagine I still will until I draw my last breath.”
“Liz.” How could he convince her she was better off without him?
“You must have realized how I feel about you. Other than Gramps, you’re the only man I’ve ever loved.”
Why was she telling him this? He didn’t need to hear this, didn’t need to know what might have been.
“I’m sorry, Liz. What we had was fun, but I’m not in love with you, nor do I want to be.”
Her gaze lowered to her lap and her throat worked, as if she had a difficult time making his words go down. “You don’t love me? You’re sure?”
Liz deserved a wonderful life, to fall in love with someone who would cherish her, take care of her, give her the whole world. He couldn’t deprive her of that.
“No, Liz.” He met her eyes, forced himself to hold steady, to remember he was doing this for her. “I don’t. I never have, and I never will.”
She glared at him, suspicion in her eyes. “If you don’t love me and never have, tell me what’s changed? Why your attitude went from caring and wonderful to ignoring me almost overnight? If you didn’t love me all along, what was the difference? Why couldn’t we just keep going on as we were?”
It was a logical question and one he struggled to answer.
“After Gramps’s funeral seemed like the right time to make a break.”
Liz closed her eyes, inhaled a deep breath, visibly trembled. Better to hurt for a day or two now than to get stuck with him every day and night for the rest of her life.
“I’m sorry, Liz.” He was sorry he’d put her in this position. For that alone she should hate him.
“The past year has been an aberration, but it wasn’t real. Not for me. Your grandfather’s funeral made me realize you’re a free woman now, ready to move on with the rest of your life.” Lord, he sounded sincere. Like he believed what he said. She sat in silence staring at her hands, hands that trembled in her lap. “It wouldn’t be right for me to hold you back when I have no desire for our relationship to go further.”
“Hold me back?”
“You should move on with your life, date other men.”
A soft hiccup escaped from her lips and she attempted to hide the tell-tale motion by covering her mouth with her hand.
“Because you want to date other women?” Her voice sounded frail, lost.
No, he wanted to scream, he only wanted her. But prolonging the inevitable only made this all the harder. They needed a clean break. Liz needed to be free.
“Yes.”
Another hiccup.
More guilt hit him, but he pressed onward, knowing he had to end this tonight. “If I gave you reason to believe I cared more for you, it was unintentional.”
“Unintentional?” Her lost expression turned angry. “Making love to me was unintentional? What about the other night, Adam? Did our love-making mean nothing to you?”
The night in question blazed through his mind like a fiery brand. He’d forever imprinted his memory with her that night. Everything about her from her taste to her softness to her sweet responses to his body. Everything.
“That was just sex, Liz,” he lied.
“Just sex?” She scoffed. “You’re insane. That wasn’t just sex.”
“How would you know?” He hit her where he knew it would hurt. “I’m the only man you’ve been with. I’d say I’m a better judge of what’s between us physically, and it’s just sex.”
Unlike any sex he’d ever had, but somehow telling Liz she was phenomenal and made him feel like he could leap tall buildings and save the world didn’t seem appropriate, given current circumstances.
“You’re saying because I haven’t slept around I don’t know what I feel?”
“I understand you’re upset, but arguing about this isn’t going to change anything.”
She curled her fingers into fists. “Tell me the truth, Adam, what’s going on with you? Because I don’t buy this. None of this fits.”
“I’m sorry you can’t accept that we’re over, Liz.”
Her entire body trembled, but she held herself together. Just like she always did. Gramps’s death and funeral had been the only times he’d ever seen her so shaken. Liz would be OK, would get over him, and find the life she deserved.
“OK,” she agreed, lifting her shoulders in a brave gesture.
OK, she would be OK, get over him, and find the life she deserved.
“But you’ll have to explain how this works.”
“How what works?” She’d totally lost him.
“Us.”
“There is no us. Not any more.”
“So we pretend we don’t know each other? You’re going to keep ignoring me? Act like we never meant anything to each other?” Pink crept into her cheeks. “I mean, that you meant something to me,” she amended, with a slight sarcastic edge to her voice.
“We can still be friends.”
She picked up a burgundy-colored square cushion from the corner of the sofa and threw it at him. Hard.
He didn’t attempt to block the pillow from hitting him in the chest. He expected a tongue-lashing to accompany the blow.
But she didn’t. Instead, she stood, wiped her hands over her faded jeans, and took a deep breath. “If this is what you want, fine. But don’t ask me to be your friend, Adam. Hopefully I can be someday, but not now, because right now I think I hate you for dragging this out. For not telling me weeks ago that you didn’t want me in your life when you knew we were over. How dare you let me think you cared for me?”
He nodded his understanding, wondering why he didn’t feel better that his plan was working. Liz was starting to move away from him. He should pat himself on the back for a job well done. Instead, he felt like giving in to the gaping hole in his chest.
She turned away, but not before he saw the tears streaming down her cheeks.
He caught up with her as she reached the front door, placed his hand on her shoulders just as she grasped the knob. “Don’t go like this.”
“Like what?” she asked in mid-hiccup, not looking at him.
“Upset. Be reasonable. You don’t need to drive until you calm down.”
“Reasonable?” She spun and faced him. Her eyes narrowed to livid golden flames. “Don’t you tell me about reasonable, because I’ll tell you what I think is reasonable. Reasonable is spending a year of your life loving a man and having a wonderful, albeit limited relationship with that man. When life lifts those limits, thinking you have a future with that man, thinking you will someday marry, raise a family together. That’s reasonable. You playing games with my heart, that’s what’s not reasonable.”
His insides shook from the enormity of the emotions rushing through him. He could never have a family with Liz, never have a family period. What if he passed on this horrible disease to an innocent child?
“I never led you to believe we had a future together,” he reminded her. She loved him and that was yet another reason he had to let her go.
“Didn’t you?”
Her two words echoed around the room, around his heart.
“Liz,” he sighed, not able to stand her pain. “Don’t do this to us.”
“Have you forgotten? There is no us.” With that she raced out the door and into the foggy night.
* * *
Liz had never been much of a crier, but she’d cried until she hadn’t thought she’d had any tears left on the day Gramps had died and on the day that followed, but she’d been wrong. She’d had lots of tears left. Seas full. Adam had proved that to her time and again these past weeks. She could only assume hormones caused her weepiness.
Either
that or her broken heart.
She wiped at her eyes, cursing both her tear-blurred vision and the thick fog obscuring the road. She was sure the fog hadn’t been this heavy when she’d driven to Adam’s. Otherwise she’d never have come to his place tonight.
No, that wasn’t true. She’d been in a bad way, needing to tell him about their baby. She would have confronted him tonight regardless. She’d dealt with a mother who’d run out on her years ago and a father who’d never cared enough to be a part of her life.
Adam had rejected her, too. He didn’t love her. He’d said he didn’t, told her to her face. Why did his words feel so wrong? Surely she hadn’t thought he had to love her just because she loved him? Just because he’d made love to her so sweetly, so tenderly?
All those times he’d held her, kissed her, made her feel alive when she’d felt dead inside, it had all been in the name of sex.
One didn’t spend a year with someone because of sex. Did they? If not for sex, then why? Why had he been hers exclusively for so long if he wasn’t into commitment?
She blinked, clearing her eyes and wishing her windshield wipers could clear the fog shrouding her view.
God, she just wanted to get home, curl up in bed in the room she’d slept in since the age of four. The room she’d made love to Adam in just last week when she’d hoped things would go back to being wonderful between them.
She’d recognized the wild desperation in him.
He’d known that night would be their last.
What didn’t make sense was why he’d be so desperate when he was the one bringing the relationship to an end.
Tears blurred her eyes again. Even had they not, Liz wasn’t sure she could have missed the deer that leapt in front of her car and sent her careening off the highway.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN SLOW increments Liz became aware of her surroundings. Bright lights shone above her face, making opening her eyes difficult. Or maybe it was the pounding in her head that made the slightest movement seem impossible.
Although the light gave off heat, her insides felt cold. Too cold. Almost as if she were buried in snow.
The thought filled her with panic, panic she would have thought vivid enough to push her into motion, but nothing happened. No flailing arms. No kicking. No screaming. No anything.
Summoning all her strength, she forced one eye open, then the other, and flinched from the intensity of the light shining over her.
“Liz?” her friend Mona, an ER nurse, asked. “Can you hear me, Liz?”
Of course she could hear her. She would have told her but speaking required more energy than she could find. Odd, that.
“Liz?”
Liz looked beyond Mona’s worried face to where she focused on Dr Larry Graviss’s face. The emergency room doctor’s eyes narrowed.
“Liz?” Why was he looking so intently at her? “If you can hear me, blink your eyes.”
Blink her eyes?
Why Adam’s friend would ask her to do that she couldn’t comprehend, but she’d play along with whatever game her coworkers had going. She tried to blink, but her eyes didn’t co-operate.
“Liz,” Mona said softly. “Blink your eyes, honey.”
Honey? What was with that? Her friend since nursing school never called her honey. But Mona waited patiently for an eye blink. Focusing all her energy on her eyes, Liz blinked.
“Oh, Liz.” With an emotional gasp, Mona covered her mouth with her hand. She looked ready to cry. “Thank goodness. You can hear us.”
Did they think she couldn’t? Liz wanted to look away as Dr Graviss shone a light in her eyes…almost as if he was checking her pupil reflexes.
The deep cold inside her body began to thaw, leaving her brain fuzzy. Although she was sure she meant to confront her coworkers to find out what was going on, she closed her eyes and drifted into sweet nothingness.
A nothingness where Gramps was still alive, healthy. A nothingness where Adam loved her with all his heart, and they’d be a happy family.
Adam tore into the emergency room without bothering to stop to ask where Liz was. There were only six bays in the Robertsville emergency department. He’d find her quicker than someone could tell him.
The moment he entered the emergency room, he caught sight of Mona Davenport. Mona and Liz had gone through nursing school together and the petite brunette was one of Liz’s friends. He could tell she’d been crying. The lost look on her face twisted his insides.
“Where is she?”
Mona glanced toward bay two. “You can’t go back there.”
“Why the hell not?”
Mona winced. “Dr Graviss wants to talk with you.”
All the horrible scenarios he’d envisioned during the hellish drive to the hospital washed over him anew.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Why else would Larry want to talk to him first? His knees wobbled beneath him, threatening to give way and dump him on the hospital floor. He’d lost Liz. For ever.
Mona’s eyes closed, her mouth compressing while she appeared to be trying to pull herself together.
His heart turned inside out. Fate couldn’t be that cruel, couldn’t snatch Liz away. Couldn’t have his last moments shared with her be of him hurting her, telling her he didn’t love her when she’d poured out her heart.
Liz couldn’t be gone when she had so much life to live. When the only reason he’d pushed her away was so she could live that life. Not die thinking he hadn’t cared.
He cared. God, how he cared. Enough that he’d let her go so she could have a life.
“She’s not dead, Adam,” the nurse said slowly, failing to hide her own pain. “She’s banged up really bad, going in and out of consciousness, but she’s alive.”
What Mona was saying registered. Liz was alive.
He made a beeline for bay two. He had to see for himself. Had to tell her…what? That he was a selfish fool and wanted her in his life always? That he couldn’t bear the thought of a world without her in it? That he’d thought he had to follow that old adage of “If you love someone you’ll set them free”?
Adam pushed the curtain back, but the hospital bed was empty. Mona stepped up behind him. “I told you that Dr Graviss wants to talk to you first,” she reminded him.
“Where is she?” He spun, facing the sniffling nurse who was dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
Mona sighed, gave him an empathetic look. “She’s having tests done to assess her head injuries.”
“She hit her head?”
The police officer who’d come to his house hadn’t been able—or willing—to share the details of Liz’s crash. Since she was going in and out of consciousness a head injury made sense.
“Against the steering-wheel,” Mona said. “I can’t figure out exactly what happened. Liz wouldn’t have been driving without her seatbelt on a night like tonight.”
He’d done this to her.
In trying to protect her, he’d hurt her emotionally and physically.
Adam walked over to the computer, punched in his access code and pulled up Liz’s chart to discover the extent of her injuries.
“Adam, you know you’re not supposed to look at Liz’s record. Close her chart for both our sakes,” Mona said from directly behind him.
“I want to know what’s going on. If Liz is in Radiology, I’m assuming she’s somewhat stable.”
“Her vitals were holding with no evidence of internal bleeding, if that’s what you’re asking.” Mona shook her head. “I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this. You’re not family, neither do you have a signed release that grants you knowledge about Liz.”
He gave the nurse a scalding look.
“You need to close her file. Now.” Mona stood her ground. “It’s against hospital policy for you to look at Liz’s chart.” Mona sighed, her momentary bravado wilting before his eyes. “I understand how you feel,” she said. “I felt so helpless when she just kept lying there unresponsive after the paramedics brought
her in.”
He winced at the vision her words elicited. The vision that matched his thoughts of losing Liz for ever.
When the knock on the door had come, he’d thought Liz had come back and he’d been filled with mixed emotions. Elation and dread. Elation that she cared enough to fight for him, that she wanted a future with him that much. Dread that he’d have to hurt her again because he had no future.
When the officer had identified himself, he’d been filled with total dread. Police officers didn’t make house calls during the night unless something bad had happened.
The officer explained there’d been an accident. Liz had lost control of her car and smashed into a tree. She’d been taken to Robertsville Hospital by ambulance and they were contacting him because he was listed as her emergency contact in her wallet. The policeman hadn’t been able to tell him more. Not even whether or not Liz was alive.
The hurt in Liz’s eyes when she’d last looked at him had haunted his entire drive to the hospital.
Mona was still talking, he realized. He’d caught the word “condition” a couple of times but not much more.
“Adam, close Liz’s chart, or I’m going to report you to the hospital administrator,” she threatened.
He glared. Not that he was afraid of being reported. He wasn’t. But he couldn’t blame Mona for doing her job. She was right. He had no right to access Liz’s chart.
“I can’t just stand here waiting for Liz to return to the emergency room,” he said out loud, having an entirely different perspective of how family members felt as they waited for news of their loved ones.
“Kelly’s here. I called her right after they brought Liz in. She’s gone for coffee. Maybe you could join her,” Mona suggested softly, placing her hand on his upper arm and giving a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll page you the moment Liz returns.”
Liz was pretty sure someone had mistaken her for an American football player. Because she’d been tackled by a three-hundred-pound lineman. Repeatedly.
Her head hurt, her chest hurt, and her leg hurt.
“Stay with me, Liz,” Dr Graviss ordered from somewhere to her right. His words didn’t make sense, which was strange as he was usually direct and to the point. She’d always admired that about the emergency medicine physician who was one of Adam’s closest friends.