by CJ Snyder
A ripple ran through the tiered classroom suddenly, like a collective sigh. Kat fixed her attention forward and her breath caught in her throat. A sound like a wildcat’s mating call sailed to the front from behind her. Her heart lurched in agreement. Professor Evans was on leave. His replacement would guarantee that not one female student would miss a single Behavioral Psychology class for the next month.
The professor’s replacement had blue eyes. Deep, rich, tell-me-all-your-secrets blue eyes that sparkled with amusement as he surveyed the class. He was tall, definitely over six feet, with a face that looked...well, comfortable. Young, his sandy blond hair touched the back collar of his sports jacket—a jacket that stretched enticingly over broad shoulders when he turned to the chalkboard and wrote two words.
Maxwell Crayton.
“Our assignment?” A female voice behind her issued the hopeful, blatant invitation. Maxwell Crayton turned with a smile and Kat’s stomach flipped.
“My name,” he replied simply. There was nothing simple about the thrills that ran over Kat at the sound of his voice. It was chocolate. Warm, liquid chocolate running over her skin, through her pores to her very heart. “I believe you’re in the middle of a discussion on genetics.” His voice rumbled inside her again, drawing her gaze to his mouth. Little laugh lines radiated out from his firm, sensual lips. Lips like those. . .. Kat licked her own and yanked her attention back to his words.
“The debate rages to this day. Genes or environment? Pre-disposition or learned behavior?”
Kat sucked in a sharp breath, feeling as though he’d punched her. This topic she’d covered. Lived actually. It was a debate indeed. And the reason she’d never have children, never dare to be a mother. She wouldn’t listen to his lecture–already knew he had no answers for her.
Hope had died the day she’d discovered that truth.
She’d failed her mother, failed herself. There was no longer any reason to go on with her plans. Doomed, she’d nearly dropped out of school, but she wasn’t a quitter. And she didn’t know what else to do with herself. For an entire week, she wandered the campus, terrified to leave, too distraught to go to class. Would she inevitably become her mother?
Finally, Mrs. Perrelli, the librarian she worked for and the closest thing she had to a friend, intervened.
“See a counselor, dear. That’s what they’re there for.”
Not a therapist. Therapists, she knew. Therapists didn’t have any answers. But a Counselor. Yes, she liked the sound of that.
UNC Staff Counselor Edward Greeves had given her words to live by. “You’re too focused on yourself. Start thinking about others. Ask yourself what you can do to help. When you find the answer to that, you’ll stop being the problem and be part of the solution.”
So abrupt. So trite. And so very much exactly what she needed to hear. So she wouldn’t have children. So there were no guarantees she wouldn’t fulfill all of Aunt Nell’s prophecies and become her mother. Instead, she could help others struggling with the same sorts of questions. She was a good listener. She was logical. So what if there weren’t answers for her? There were answers for others, and she could help to discover them. Kat Jannsen could change the world.
And, starting in three months, she would. For now, she struggled to cope all over again with the bittersweet knowledge that someone like Mr. Perfect Maxwell Crayton could never be hers. She blocked out the words that spelled despair and vanquished all hope. She smiled. Maybe she couldn’t have him, but she could dream, couldn’t she? Dreams were cheap. Dreams cost nothing.
“Did you have a question?”
Kat focused slowly on the eyes she’d been staring at, daydreaming about. . .now just inches from her own. Max Crayton knelt before her on the chair in the tier below. Heat erupted over her. Embarrassment had her mouth flopping open and then closed. Her daydream. “No, I—” Startled, she looked around for help. . .to an empty classroom. Dear Lord, she and Maxwell Crayton actually daydreamed the whole class away. She clamped her eyes shut, desperately wishing him away.
“Something else on your mind?”
Why didn’t he leave her alone? She lifted her eyelids slowly and found. . .that smile. Just like the first one. Once again her stomach flopped and her knees actually went weak. “Something else,” she parroted, her brain too frozen for anything original.
“Lunch with me?”
Her stomach clenched in a sudden, painful knot. “No, I—”
“You don’t need to be embarrassed, Ms. Jannsen.” At her look of astonishment, his smile widened to a grin. “I, uh, cheated.” He nodded to her backpack, where a notebook proclaimed Kat Jannsen for all the entire world below her knees to see. “And as your temporary professor, you know we can’t date. But lunch. . ..”
“Thanks anyway, but I—”
“I could fill you in on what you missed, while you were out.”
Handsome, but rude. She couldn’t believe he’d actually called her on her lapse.
“Yeah, I know,” he continued without missing a beat. “Completely obnoxious. I can’t help it. I’m brutally honest.”
That did it. That fast, she was gone, head-over-heels, every cliché she’d ever heard of, completely in love. Funny how she’d skipped right over the brutally and jumped on honest. That mistake had haunted her for four years. Until she’d found out she should have skipped the “honest” and stuck only on brutal. Brutal. Too kind a description, really. But that’s what she got for dreaming. Max Crayton taught her the cost of dreaming: years of nightmares. They weren’t over yet.
Kat groaned, forcibly evicting the past from her mind as she turned off the rural highway. No, that was a lie. Max never really left her thoughts. The best she could hope for was that his ghost would be content to lounge in the background of her mind, just observing.
Miriam! Concentrate on Miriam. Kat turned down the alley a block from her destination and crept forward. Quiet. The large front yard revealed no cars in front. Kat parked next to a car in the carport behind the house. No sense broadcasting her illegal presence to the neighbors. Where was Miriam? This is a mistake! “Tell me something I don’t know,” Kat muttered, reaching for the door handle.
Noted Denver Psychiatrist Arrested For Burglary.
Secrets Revealed. Lives Destroyed.
“Film at ten,” Kat hissed back. “I don’t know what else to do!” With that, she shoved the door open. Seconds later, she was across the back yard and letting herself into the nearly silent house. Despite an expensive looking security system, the door was unlocked. Another indication something was wrong. Music was playing somewhere–country music.
You shouldn’t be here! She knew it. But she couldn’t shut out the little nagging voice–which was now screaming at her–that something was terribly, horribly wrong. She frowned at the dishes in the rack beside the sink and went in search of the music. From the alarm beside the bed in the master bedroom, a woman crooned. “This close to crazy. . .”
“Shut up, Reba,” she muttered, snapping off the alarm and suppressing a shudder as the sudden silence became almost tangible.
She smelled him, that tangy, spicy scent. Kat’s eyes closed and she fought the old bitter longing to see him. To lay her head on his strong shoulder, feel his arms warm around her. Not possible but there it was. . ..
The days when thoughts of him made her angry were the best days. If she couldn’t have him, at least she could turn her feelings for him into productive activity. The anger made her stronger. Made her fight. Made her one of the most sought-after psychiatrists in the west.
It also made her the biggest fraud on the Front Range.
The hours of intense yearning, of missing him, still brought tears to her eyes, still had the ability to buckle her knees when they swept over her. Mostly she simply missed him, all day, everyday. But the nights. . .the nights were torture. At night she was defenseless and her traitorous heart behaved as though she’d never heard his last words to her.
In the beginning,
she spent an hour, or even two, every morning, returning to reality, dealing with the pain all over again before she could go on with her day. The hours necessary just to cope ate into her sleep. After years of practice, she’d learned to forge the iron wall between her emotions and reality much more quickly.
It didn’t mean she slept more.
She used aids. Not as frequently nowadays, but some mornings. . .. The bitterness of her black coffee, brewed twice as strong as she used to drink it, was a reminder of the pain he’d caused her with his lies. The harsh texture of her dry toast, each swallow scratching her throat, renewed the memory of how callously he’d used her.
When her breakfast ritual ended, she opened the freezer and removed a single cigarette. She lit it and choked on the harsh fumes. But she smoked all of it, every morning. Only one, and only in the morning so her lungs would never be used to the near pain of inhaling poison. Only one, so that her body would never acclimate to the dizzy nausea that accompanied the ritual. Yes, she told herself, as her lungs ached and her body pulsed and swirled with sickening dizziness, loving Max was like that. Just like that. And with the brutal reminder leaving her feeling somewhat green, she went on with her day.
In comparison, the days were easy. At night, in her dreams, his hands were everywhere, soothing raging fires even as his touch sparked new embers elsewhere. At first she fought. Not physically—physically it was as if he restored life to her body. But mentally she battled him, her subconscious clinging to the memory of the hard-won victory of the previous day.
She never won that fight. He was always the victor, always the master seducer, wooing her foolish soul until she was weak with wanting, with needing, with yearning, and finally, when he filled her, she was . . . whole.
Why did he seem so close here at Miriam’s? Why could she smell him, picture him here in this house, just as clearly as if he were downstairs?
Kat paused in the hall, standing in the doorway of a room she’d never seen before but pictured millions of times in her mind. She hesitated. She’d come to find out why Miriam didn’t send her monthly letter. Why she didn’t answer the phone. The bedroom before her probably wouldn’t provide any answers to that question but Kat pushed the slightly ajar door all the way open anyway. She couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop herself. She simply had to know There might never be another chance.
“Lizzie,” Kat whispered reverently, stopping just inside the little girl’s bedroom. Kat inhaled deeply, closing her eyes to sort the smells she’d waited ten years to experience. Fabric softener and a sweet scented candle. Sunshine and a hint of youthful perfume. Tears stung her eyes so she opened them abruptly. Tears would blur the images and she needed them crystal clear in her mind so she could pull them out for later. For all the laters.
The room was wild with color, from the cherry red drapes to the lemon-lime bedspread to the deep blue of an ultra-modern desk. Wind chimes adorned each corner, trailing chrome fingers toward the floor. A massive pink dog flopped comfortably on the floor, offering a cushioned invitation to sprawl. A small television nestled on a purple shelf among a wild zoo of stuffed animals to her left. Straight ahead, the closet door was open, revealing another rainbow crammed inside. The wall on the far side of the bed held more shelves and dozens of baseball caps.
Kat let her fingers trail over the tail of a well-worn stuffed lizard, the lone occupant of the neatly made bed. Did Miriam make her bed every morning, or did Lizzie need a sense of order in her young life? Lizzie did it herself, she decided with another glance at the caps on the wall. They were meticulously grouped, she discovered on closer surveillance, alphabetically grouped. Kat smiled. Certainly that was one obsession she’d passed on to her daughter.
Kat completed the slow turn of her circle, facing the door now. She glanced at the only wall not initially visible. In the niche that held Lizzie’s bed, beyond the footboard, she could see posters, lost behind a display of photographs and snapshots. She smiled at the haphazard montage, then her eyes began to focus.
Max.
Alive.
Raw hot ecstasy boiled up out of her heart, puncturing her chest, overwhelming her entire body. Her skin crawled with clammy gooseflesh as her legs began to shake. The wall of pictures dipped and swirled.
Max.
Alive.
She sucked air into lungs that couldn’t get enough and shook her head to clear her vision, needing another glimpse, needing...more.
Max and Lizzie. The wall was a monument to their closeness. Kat’s hands curled around vacant air in a futile attempt to find a lifeline. Failing, her knees buckled and she slipped to the floor, clutching the soft bedspread tight to her aching chest. Her gaze ravenously devoured the feast in front of her while she tried to ignore the shock squeezing the very life out of her.
Lizzie and Max. A carnival, a lake, on a horse, at the circus, with a football player, enjoying a bonfire, a bicycle, at a headstone. Max. Laughing in a baseball jersey, mocking Lizzie, and aging ever so slightly right alongside his daughter. At twenty-seven, he’d been drop-dead gorgeous. At thirty-eight, he was devastating.
Behind the shocked joy numbing her brain, questions started, soft at first, but gradually as sharp and staccato as rapid gunfire.
Did Max know about Lizzie?
Why didn’t you tell me, Miriam?
With a deep groan she shut the questions away and focused again on the pictures.
Max. Her fingers swept out, needing to touch, to reconnect with this man who’d been her world. She wasn’t close enough, but it didn’t matter. Her memories supplied the rough texture of his warm skin, the sheer exaltation of receiving his smile. In one picture, he stared straight at her. Love, quiet joy and something deeper radiated from his deep blue eyes. Her breath caught in her throat all over again and she could nearly hear him speak. “I love you, Kat.”
A long bitter decade of “if-onlys” was swept away in a single heartbeat. Her gaze pinpointed each photo again. The earliest seemed to be when Lizzie was nearly four. She sorted them in her mind, achieving a chronology that was infinitely satisfying, while the refrain continued to splash through her brain with each beat of her heart. He wasn’t dead. Wasn’t in the cold ground with his flesh rotting away while her heart, even though it continued to beat, did the same.
“Max,” she whispered, and allowed joy to permeate her soul. “You didn’t die. You’re alive.”
Peace soothed a heart ravaged with regret and throbbing with unfulfilled need. Joy filled the craters carved by years of mourning. She would bathe in his smile, know the utter contentment of his rough fingers gentle against her cheek, delight in the husky thrill of his murmur when he spoke her name.
All of it was possible.
Life was possible. Kat felt a giggle bubble from her dancing heart.
“Max. . .You came back.”
Not to you, he didn’t.
She flinched, eyes still seeking out his face, his eyes. . .his smile that was for her alone.
All those years, Kat. He didn’t call you.
Her elation burst like a child’s soap bubble. Kat’s fingers twisted in Lizzie’s 1970s lime green bedspread. Tears welled up in her eyes as she tried—desperately—to summon happiness back.
It wasn’t coming. Only more accusations and the harsh words rattling in her brain. Her gaze flew over the pictures pleading for some sort of rebuttal. He never called you–didn’t want you. Only Lizzie. All these years, he’s held his daughter and you’ve held nothing.
His daughter. . .her daughter! She wanted suddenly to scream the possessive words, jealousy simmering to raging boil-over. In his hands, all–her daughter’s love, her hugs–Kat stared fiercely at a snapshot of the two of them with their arms around each other. Her hands, eleven years, without a single stroke on the cheek, a bedtime snuggle, one kiss.
“She’s mine, too,” Kat whispered, but the words were an echo of the defeat that clouded her now. Helplessly, she let the tears come. Max had won, first in death and now aga
in that he lived, but Max always won–every time.
Kat had no idea how long she sobbed, only that it was too long. Too long and too painful in this too quiet house that wasn’t hers. “You made your decisions,” she reminded herself in a shaky whisper. “Max had nothing to do with them.” Regardless of the pain, she’d make the same choices again. Purposefully, she sought out a recent photo in which Lizzie stood alone. “I’m happy,” she whispered fiercely. “Happy you found each other—that you’re not alone.”
At least Max didn’t know. Her dreams were just that and she’d never have to face him knowing how very weak she was when it came to him. How just his picture could undo her. Her hands were shaking again, but there wasn’t an ounce of joy in her soul. She thought she’d understood the price eleven years ago. Kat smiled bitterly and scrubbed at her drying cheeks. “I didn’t know,” she whispered, daring one more glance at the happy, adoring picture of Max. She should have known. Aunt Nell always warned her not to get mixed up with a man. Heartbreaking and frustrating, that Nell was so right. It made fighting Nell’s other mean, harmful predictions about Kat a somehow hopeless and impossible task.