by Julie
Her mouth pursed up tight. "Private?"
"Yeah."
Her narrowed eyes seemed to bore twin holes right through him. "All right. In private." She whirled and started walking again, out of the park, toward the street. Shaking his head, he followed after.
When she passed a trash bin, she tossed her still-full plate and her paper cup into it - hard. He did the same with his plate and the beer. She hit the street and walked even faster. He kept up, a step or two behind, trailing her down around the corner and up the block where she lived.
At the Grant house, Annie tore up the driveway and around to the stairway on the side of the garage. She pounded up those steps as if the devil was on her tail.
I guess that devil would be me, Greg thought bleakly.
She yanked back the screen - he caught it before it could slam in his face - and shoved through the door. Greg went in right after her, but a lot more quietly. Gently, he pushed the door shut.
They faced each other, both of them breathing hard - and really not from exertion.
"Rrrreow?" asked Muffy from her favorite spot on the sofa. The cat purred so loud, Greg could hear it where he stood by the door.
Annie stalked over there and picked Muffy up. She cuddled the cat close and scratched her under the chin. "Okay," she said tightly. "Go ahead. Speak."
Speak. It was something you'd say to your dog. Anger curled through him again, hot and dangerous. He quelled it, raking off his hat and hooking it on the coat-rack by the door. "Your mom tells me you're moving away."
Muffy squirmed. Annie let the cat down. Muffy strutted around the couch and back to the bedroom. Annie watched her go, looking up only when Muffy disappeared from sight. "Yeah." Her eyes gleamed, defiant. "I'm moving. So?"
"Well..."
She plopped down on the couch. "There you go with the 'wells' again. I don't think you've started a single sentence without that word at the beginning of it - not in the past week or so, anyway." She stared off toward the front window, refusing to look at him.
"I just want to know why you've suddenly decided to leave town."
That had her snapping her head around. She glared at him as if he didn't have a brain in his head. "Let me put it this way. I think it's time for a change."
He dared to approach her. She watched him coming, mouth set, eyes stormy. Once he got opposite her, he lowered himself into an armchair, braced his elbows on his spread knees and canted toward her.
He tried to speak quietly. Reasonably. "I'm just not getting it, that's all. You've always said how you love it here in Red Rock. How you'd never live anywhere else but your hometown."
With a hard huff of breath, she looked out the window again, her chin set and her mouth a thin line. She stared at the wide Texas sky and the crown of the front-yard oak as if they were a lot more interesting than he'd ever be. "I changed my mind. People do that sometimes."
"Annie," he said, carefully. "Please..."
She whipped her head around once more, skewered him with another angry look. "Please, what? There's nothing more to say."
"That's not true."
She seemed to think about that. And then her shoulders kind of drooped. "You know, you might be right. Maybe there's a lot more to say. Too bad it's nothing you're gonna sit still to hear."
"That's not true." He said those words and then almost wished he hadn't. Yeah, okay. There were a few subjects he'd prefer not to talk about. But, damn it. Whatever it took, he had to get her to see that she was making a huge mistake, to go running off, starting all over again in a strange city, when the life she'd always loved was right here.
Why would she do that? Only one reason. Because of him. "It's my fault, isn't it? My fault that you're leaving?"
Something happened in her sweet face - a softening. A gentling. When she spoke, her tone had mellowed. "You've got to stop blaming yourself for every darn thing that happens. Human beings have free will, you know? Unless you tie them up or put a gun to their head, they're generally going to do what they want to do. And whatever that may be, it won't be Greg Flynn's own personal fault." She wrapped her arms around herself, tipped her red head to the side. "Like what happened with Hank, like the accident - "
He sat back, abruptly cutting her off. "I'm not here to talk about that."
She shook her head. "No. I guess you're not. But maybe you should talk about it. You never do." She shifted on the sofa so she was leaning toward him. "Think about it. You two were racing. Maybe you shouldn't have been. Maybe he'd still be alive if you hadn't - or if that possum hadn't wandered out into the road, if Hank hadn't swerved to miss it." She threw up both hands. "If, if, if. The fact is, you both made a free choice to do what you did. There were consequences, terrible ones. But it's no more your fault than it was Hank's."
He didn't need to hear this - didn't want to hear it. "Annie.”
“What?”
“Don't..."
She looked at him for a long time, her eyes so sad and soft, her mouth kind of trembling. "Nobody blames you, Greg. Not my parents. Not me. And I know enough about my brother to know he never would blame you, either - if by some miracle, he were still here."
"Don't," he said again, the word betraying him, coming out raw and broken. She only shook her head again and slowly rose from the sofa. He sat back farther in the chair, his legs braced apart, his hands gripping the chair arms. "What are you doing?"
She didn't answer, only stepped around the low glass table and kept coming. One more step and she was right there in front of him. Yet another, and she stood between his spread thighs.
He looked up at her, his heart racing, his mouth dry. His palms were sweating. Damn. He sucked in a breath, got a whiff of her fresh, sweet scent. He gripped the chair arms harder and tried not to stare at her slim bare legs, not to follow them upward, to the outward curve of her hips beneath those white shorts, and higher to the way her bright pink T-shirt clung to her breasts....
She gave the command in a tender voice. "Say it. Right now. Tell me what Hank told you, there, on the side of the road, before he shut his eyes and never opened them again."
"Don't..."
She lifted her hands. He jerked back, but there was nowhere to go. She leaned forward a little farther and captured his face, cradling it between her soft palms. "Say it," she whispered.
"I've said it. I've told you. A hundred times."
"So tell me again." She held him prisoner with her cool, soft hands, with her unwavering gaze.
He opened his mouth and the words came out, the ones that were burned forever into his brain. '"Look after my folks. Take care of Annie.'"
A tender smile curved her lips. "Take care of Annie...' Did it ever occur to you that there's more than one way to take care of me?"
"Don't," he said again. He couldn't say it enough. "Damn you, Annie. Don't."
But she only went on as if she hadn't heard him, brown eyes velvet soft and shining. "Or maybe it's only, if you never really live your own life to the limit - if you never love me like the woman I am, if you never ride your Harley - well, that makes Hank a little less dead to you, that's a way to pay Hank back, because you're here. And he's not."
"No," he said, the word ragged, dredged up from someplace ugly and deep.
She wouldn't stop. "Or maybe, if somehow you could keep me from growing up, if I could always be seventeen, if things could always be the same between us, you my 'big brother,' me your 'little sis,' it would be like... holding time still, wouldn't it? The good times you and Hank had, the friendship you shared, it would seem like all that happened just yesterday. Maybe if you take Hank's place in my life, it makes him seem, I don't know, a little less gone to you, as if he's not really dead."
"No," he said again. But even he wasn't sure he believed his own denials anymore.
"Oh, Greg," she whispered. Her eyes brimmed. Two fat tears escaped and made a pair of gleaming trails down her satiny cheeks. "There are other, better ways
to keep Hank alive in our hearts. Can't you see that?"
"Annie. Don't cry."
She shook her head - and she lowered her mouth. Their lips met.
Heat and light exploded inside him. He wanted to grab her, haul her down across his lap. But somehow, he restrained himself. Somehow, he let it be just a soul-searing, mind-blowing kiss and nothing more. He reached up, cupped her face, as she cupped his. He felt the tear tracks, the warmth and the wet beneath his palms, and the feathery ends of her hair brushing the backs of his hands.
He kissed her, a kiss that was not the least bit brotherly, a kiss that was long and wet. And so very deep.
She moaned into his mouth and he speared his tongue in deeper, tasting her, sucking in the sweet scent of her, longing for nothing more than to stay right there, in that chair, Annie bending above him, their mouths pressed together, till the end of time.
She was the one who pulled away - slowly and reluctantly, with a small, sad sigh.
He looked up at her and she gazed down at him.
She said, "When Dirk Jenkins first pointed that squirt gun in my face the other day, when I thought that maybe I was going to die, I wished I'd done two things differently. I wished I'd never had that talk with Dirk the day before. And I wished that I'd told you straight out, at least one time, that I love you."
"Annie - "
She stopped him by sliding a hand against his mouth. "Shh. Let me say this." She held his eyes. "Will you? Will you let me finish?"
He gulped, gave a quick, hard nod.
She took her hand off his mouth, held his face again between her palms. "I love you, Greg Flynn. I've loved you - been in love with you since I was maybe, oh, ten years old. I've waited and I've wished - I've prayed even - for the day when you would finally see me as a woman." She sighed. "And you know, for a while there, when I was fifteen, I really thought it was happening, that you were looking at me and seeing more than only Hank's little sister."
When she was fifteen...
Greg shut his eyes against the memory of that.
"Come on," she whispered. "Come on. Look at me." So he did. He opened his eyes and she said, "But something went wrong. I never understood it. For a while, you were coming over all the time, even when Hank wasn't there. I was so happy. And then you just stopped. You avoided me. That hurt so bad..." Her voice trailed off.
After a moment, she continued, "And then, after Hank died, we kind of slipped into friendship. Didn't we?" He only stared up at her. She asked again, "Didn't we?"
"Yeah," he admitted at last.
"And since then, since Hank died, I've been your good buddy, your 'little sister,' your substitute-for-Hank best friend. But always, forever, I've believed that someday - if I was only patient enough, if I wished and hoped and dreamed hard enough - you would come to me. You'd make love to me. You'd see that it was you and me, together, that mattered, that we were always meant to be."
With tender fingers, she brushed at his hair, a touch that burned and soothed at the same time. "It hurt me. It hurt me so deep, when you started in with Heather, when you two got engaged. And then, well, she broke it off with you. You never said why, what had gone wrong between you. But I didn't care why. I dared to hope again. And then, a week ago yesterday, it finally happened. All my dreams came true."
"Annie - "
"Shh. All my dreams came true...for a night. And then it was Saturday, when you told me my dream coming true had been nothing but an awful mistake. And after that, well..." She let her cradling hands drop away and straightened up tall. "After that, I've had to realize that there are just some dreams that are never going to come true. I've had to start making myself a new way of looking at my life. I'm not going to be just another not-quite-so-crazy version of poor Dirk, creating fantasies in my head about someone and telling myself I can make those fantasies come true. Because I do know that it takes two to make love work, it takes two to make it real. And I've begun to understand that since it's not going to be you and me, together, as a man and a woman, I want to try something completely different. I want to get a new start in a new town."
She backed away, out from between his legs. Turning, she went to the window and stared out at the bright afternoon, at the deep green oak branches blowing lazily in the wind. "They have banks and florist shops other towns, too, Greg." She faced him and gave him her sweetest smile. "Believe me. A new start is what want now. I'm going to make that new start and I'm going to be fine."
Chapter 6
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday...
For Greg, the days melted by in a fog. Annie was leaving. She wanted to go.
He slept the night through undisturbed now. He had no more dreams - of him and Annie, or of the accident. The dreams seemed to have faded away, been banished somehow by the things she had said to him Saturday - and by the stark reality of her going.
Strangely, now the dreams had left him alone, he missed them. Missed the pain and the passion in them. Even missed the way they woke him, shaking and sweating. Now his sleep was deep and dreamless, without meaning, cool and empty as the darkness at the bottom of a well.
He went to work, joked around with the guys at the station, drove his Red Rock PD Blazer up and down the streets of his hometown, responding to the calls when they came, intervening in more than one domestic dispute, handling the occasional drunk-and-disorderly, stopping a convenience-store holdup in progress - and feeling zero satisfaction as he hauled the perp off to the cage at the station.
Everything just felt so...programmed to him now, his life a rote exercise. Get up, eat, work, sleep - and start the whole cycle all over again. All the joy and brightness had somehow kind of leached out of it. As if he was a pale copy of his real self, going through the motions, numb to it all.
It all centered down to Annie, to the damn scary fact that she had told him she loved him - loved him as a woman loves a man.
And now he found himself wondering...
Had he always known? All those years she said she'd been waiting and wishing and dreaming... of him? Had he known, deep down, how she really felt? Had he known and denied her for a decade and a half?
When he thought of that - that he might have done just that - he got an awful feeling deep in his belly. Even through the numbness, he could feel it, his gut twisting as if a pair of cold, hard hands were busy wringing the hell out of it.
And then he'd try to make excuses for himself.
After all, for about half the time she claimed she'd been loving him, she'd only been a kid. Then, it would have been wrong to get anything going with her. He'd learned his lesson the hard way on that one. But later, more recently, at least since she'd turned eighteen, well, from then on, if she'd felt that strongly, there should have been nothing to stop her from telling him, from getting it out there for both of them to deal with.
Nothing to stop her...
Except maybe her own bone-deep awareness that as soon as she told him, as soon as they stepped over the line from friendship to something more, he'd go seriously south on her.
Which was exactly what he'd done. Friday night - the Friday night, when popcorn and a movie at her place had turned into kisses and then passionate lovemaking... that night had been a damn miracle, as it was happening.
The most beautiful, perfect night of his life. It wasn't until the next morning, in the harsh light of day, that it had started to seem all wrong to him, had started to seem a betrayal, somehow. A betrayal of Hank and the promise Greg had made to him. "" Take care of Annie..."
“I will. You know I will..." His final vow to his dying friend.
Then again, if he wanted to get down to it, down to the things he hardly let himself think about, that vow went back farther than Hank's dying breath.
It went back, as Annie had reminded him Saturday, to the year she turned fifteen.
On Annie's fifteenth birthday, she'd had a party, with ten or twelve girlfriends, at her house. That was before Greg and Hank got t
heir bikes, but still the two of them had been out in the garage during most of the celebration. Hank had paid next to nothing for a junked-out Model A and they were working it over, putting in a new engine, replacing the clutch before they got around to the big challenge of handling the bodywork.
Naomi called them in when it was time for the cake. They washed up a little in the concrete sink outside and trooped on into the house, where the girls were gathered around the table, giggling and whispering to each other. Greg and Hank kind of hung back in their greasy overalls, the way men fresh out of the garage will do in a kitchen full of fluttery females.
Naomi lit the candles and they all sang the birthday song.
Naomi said, "Okay, Annie. Make that wish."
And Annie looked right over the bright heads of her girlfriends and straight at Greg. He'd met her eyes and...
Ka-bam.
Something inside him just broke wide open and he knew...
He wanted her. He wanted her bad. His best friend's fifteen-year-old sister. He was twenty and that made her jailbait, but at that moment, he couldn't have cared less.
"Okay," Annie said, still looking right at him. "I've got it. Got my wish." And she blew out every one of those fifteen candles in one big burst of breath.
After that, Greg started finding excuses to be around Annie. He'd come over to see Hank - when he knew Hank wasn't even there. Annie always seemed so excited, so glad, when he'd show up. They'd sit at the table and talk, or go out back and flop down on the lawn.
It was innocent. Nothing ever really happened. But in his mind and heart, he knew what he wanted. He was trying to get around the fact that she was only fifteen, trying to make it right with himself, to make a pass at her, to kiss her... or more.
Then, after weeks of that, Hank and Ted paid him a visit. Greg was living in a cheesy apartment out near the highway, his first place of his own. He answered the knock and there they were: father and son. And they were not happy. They had a long talk, the three of them. Hank was kind of simmering mad that his best friend would even consider putting the moves on his little sister. Ted was more even-handed. He reminded Greg that Annie was too young for him, that it just wasn't right for him to go chasing after her.