Closing my eyes, I lifted my face to the sky. I could hear Lindsey playing and muttering to herself. But then came a crunch, the rustle of moving leaves, the snap of a twig. The air around me shifted, and I shivered for no reason at all. I wondered why. Though I should’ve known. Maybe I did because both my heart and my breath hitched, and then stopped altogether.
James was here.
I slowly opened my eyes, and yes, I was right. He was here. My eyes widened, even though the rest of me was strangely immobile.
I blinked. Yup, still here. I blinked again and then one more time. He never moved from where he stood by the tree, staring at me.
There was a muted pulse in my ear, and it was quickly flying into hyperdrive. My eyes flicked over his face, flicked and circled and took him in. His gray eyes were hidden behind his square rimless glasses, and his hair hung over his forehead in curled-up flicks. They were still messy but somehow unfamiliar. As was his face. It was gaunt but less so. The angles of his cheekbones weren’t so sharp anymore.
He seemed broader, more muscular; the contours of his chest and biceps showed through his white button-down shirt. And fucking God! I’d forgotten how tall he was. He held a coat in his arms. I’d never seen him with one before.
“Why do you have a coat in summer?” Yes, those were the first words that came out of my mouth. The very first words after I saw him for the first time in two years.
“I had a meeting,” he said, and just like that I remembered the day from so long ago. The first time I’d seen him in front of the ladies’ room and he’d thanked me. Fuck! I went crazy for him at that first look, though I’d denied it. His voice was still the same—rumbly, cobwebby, so fucking sexy.
He took a step toward me, his booted feet crumpling the dried leaves. I sprang up from the bench, but I stood rooted to my spot, unable to move closer. I didn’t know what I was waiting for.
“Madison.”
It was a struggle to keep my eyes open. My name in that voice made my entire body shiver.
“James.” I decided to follow his lead and say his name. Well, I didn’t know what else to do right then. I was still, but I was also freaking out.
Just then we both heard a squeal as Lindsey came barreling through the clearing, her hands holding something filthy. She came to a stop by my legs and stretched her hands up, grinning.
“What is that?” I stared suspiciously at the glob of mud.
“Mum-cake.”
“You mean mud-cake?”
She thrust it forward and lisped, “’Tis for you.”
“I’m not going to eat that.” I shook my head, my forehead scrunched up in a mock frown. “We don’t eat dirt, Lindsey. Okay? Throw it away.”
Her face fell, and her chin wobbled.
I slowly uncurled her fingers from around the sticky mud. “I’ll get you a real cake, I promise. And it’ll be our secret. Don’t tell your other mommy, okay? Or she’ll kill me.”
She nodded and grinned. Once the mud was gone from her hands, she whirled around and ran away, shrieking and laughing.
Smiling, I turned toward James. He was looking at Lindsey, frowning. Why was he frowning? Didn’t he find her cute?
He focused on me, and his eyes looked pained. The same sad and lonely eyes that had attracted me to him the first time. “She’s beautiful,” he choked out, shoving his fists into his pockets. The outline of his fists showed through, and I wondered if he still carried his blade inside his pocket.
Something was wrong here.
And then I knew why. Because, even after two years, I could read his mind.
He was the most beautiful, complicated man I’d ever seen, and he thought…Lindsey was my daughter.
Oh James.
“I know,” I said, dropping my gaze to the ground, trying to control my smile. He was too easy.
He cleared his throat. “How old is she?”
“A little over two.”
“How’s…” Clearing his throat, he continued, “Julia?”
“Good.” I hope.
“I’m glad.”
“Are you?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Why wouldn’t I be? You look…different. Happy. That’s all I ever wanted for you.”
A switch flipped on at his words. The thing that I’d always felt around him came back to life. The very thing that made me fall for him, or maybe it came after I fell for him. God knows, I was a goner the moment I’d seen him, though I hadn’t known at the time.
“Did you?” I challenged. “Because I remember it very differently.”
We stared at each other, remembering his fingers that traced my tears, eyes that reveled in watching me cry.
But then he looked away from me, shifting on his feet. “I, um, it was wrong of me to ever make you feel that way.”
That straightened my back up. Always taking the blame, always ready to be the martyr. What was with him?
“So you haven’t changed at all, have you? Still can’t admit that you actually enjoyed something without labeling it or making excuses for it.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he bored his gray eyes into mine. “I’m not making excuses, Madison.”
“So admit it,” I snapped, all the while wondering in the back of my mind how did we go from murmuring each other’s names to me shouting like a lunatic. “Admit that you liked watching me cry. You wanted it. Hell, it fucking turned you on.”
Heat flared in his eyes. “Yes, I liked it. Very much.”
His answer soothed me. “I thought so.”
“Do you still come here and…cry, every day?” His voice sounded neutral, as if he didn’t care for my answer one way or another. When I didn’t say anything, he cleared his throat. Again. “It’s okay. You don’t have to answer that.”
“If I told you yes, what would you do?” I asked with a steely voice.
His eyes turned intense, shining through his thick glasses, but then he averted his gaze again. The cuts on my skin, the shrine I’d made on my body, in his memory—roared and thrashed at losing his attention.
Then I realized something…awful. So fucking awful.
What if he’d moved on? What if in the last two years James had met someone and fallen in love? I lost all the fight in me in the matter of seconds. I wanted him to go away now so I could curl up and rot on the ground. “What’re you doing here, James?”
He shifted his jacket to his other arm. “I was wondering if…” A long sigh filled his pause. “If you’d have coffee with me.”
“You came all the way from New York to ask me out for coffee?”
He rolled on the balls of his feet, looking down. “It’s fine. I can see you’re busy.”
Right. He thought Lindsey was my daughter. Was that why he stood so far away from me when I wanted him here, over me, in my body. And I didn’t even care if he’d moved on or not. How pathetic was that?
“You mean Lindsey?” I waved my hand. “That’s no problem. I can drop her off at the salon.”
Finally, a hopeful light entered his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Then a smile broke out on his face, hitting me in the chest. His smile was still the same—hesitant and unpracticed. Did he not learn to smile in the past two years? For some reason, I liked that. It meant they were still precious.
I called out to Lindsey and told her it was time to go. She grumbled but shot her arms up, asking me to carry her with a pout. I heaved her in my arms and sauntered toward James.
I could smell him, now—musk and cut grass. There. I felt better, a lot better. The smell I’d been imagining in my head existed. James wasn’t a dream. He was real, and he was here, taking me out to coffee. Who would’ve thought?
“Isn’t she cute?” I asked him. “Look at her eyes, so big and blue. Just like Lily’s.”
He looked shocked, a crease appearing on his brows. I itched to play with the stray hair falling on his forehead and ease that frown.
And then something magic
al happened. His frown cleared, and instead of a polite, nervous man, came the man I saw in my sleep—sharp-edged jaw that pulsed and intense gray eyes that glinted with a spark. The skin over my right ribs tightened.
“You lied to me.” His voice changed, became rougher, and I loved it so much.
“You should’ve seen your face.”
He stared at me through his lashes, a lopsided smile gracing his lips. “You completely had me there.”
“Learned from the best,” I whispered.
The spark in his eyes leapt. He ran his tongue over his chapped lips, and my breasts felt heavy. I felt heavy, too heavy to stand upright. I was so damn horny, my body melting drop by drop, and I wanted him to hold me, keep me from flowing away. Dominate me so I could finally let go. It was easier that way.
His eyes still on me, James stepped back and played with Lindsey’s pumping fists. “Let’s go.”
****
James
Madison. She was still the same. Impish, irreverent, provocative, and fucking sexy with her messy brown hair and that damn web of freckles. That was the first time I had cursed in two years. Something about being near her made me want to curse, be the man I was always supposed to be.
The café we ended up at was almost empty. The windows overlooking the street let the sunrays in, highlighting Madison’s brown hair. She still wore it loose, and it spilled over her shoulders and back like a waterfall. I could not take my eyes off her hair and her dress. It was simple, gray cotton with a square neckline that hit her thighs a few inches above her knees.
“I’ve never seen you in a dress before.”
“It’s all Lily’s doing. She believes I should behave more like a, you know, lady.”
“What does that include, exactly?”
She circled her finger over the rim of her coffee mug, chuckling. “Well, for starters, I’m not supposed to punch men.”
“Is that right?” I murmured, repeating her words from long ago.
“Mmmhmm. It’s very, very hard.”
“I can imagine. How will you ever survive?”
“Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll end up…dying.” She bit her lip, and I was thrown back in the past. Like the past two years never happened. Like I had not left her right after she finally opened up to me. Like she did not hate me now for leaving her.
Did she? I was afraid to ask, afraid to even look away from her.
Taking a sip of her coffee—she still took it black—she drummed her fingers on the scratched wooden table that separated us. “So how did you find me?”
My own coffee stayed untouched as I answered, “I went to the resort first. They told me that you worked at the salon now. So I went there and they told me that you must be at the park. I had a hunch you’d be at the old spot.”
“So basically, you’re still stalking me, huh?”
Now I sipped my coffee to hide my smile. How long had it been since anyone other than Katie had made me smile? Too long to remember. “It appears so, yes.” Then I frowned as I remembered something. “An extremely bizarre thing happened to me when I was at the salon. They knew who I was, but they kept calling me James Dean even after I corrected them.”
“Oh really?”
I narrowed my eyes at her slight smirk. “Do you know anything about that?”
She wrapped her small fingers around the white mug and leaned forward. Her breasts strained against her dress, and I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable. “First tell me, were they laughing a lot? You know, touching and getting close to you, like, at all?”
It took me a moment to look away from her breasts before I could answer. “Uh, now that I think about it, they did. One of them did. But only because she sort of stumbled on me and I helped her out. It was an accident.”
“Stumbled? By accident?” She leaned in farther as if telling me a secret. “I’m sorry to burst your bubble there, big guy, but they were flirting.” She leaned back and frowned. “How could you not know? Have I taught you nothing?”
“I think I’d know if someone were flirting with me, Madison.”
“I think you wouldn’t, even if it slapped you in the face or kicked you in the ass” She pointed her finger at me and smirked. “Yeah, you’re that clueless. You better believe it.”
I had a sudden urge to kiss that smirk off her face, but I took a sip of coffee instead. “You talk too much.”
“Oh yeah? You should shut me up then.”
The air turned heated around us. I wanted to do just that. Kiss her so she would shut up. Would she let me?
It was time for a subject change, or I might do something drastic. “So how’s the new job? I can’t imagine you being a hairdresser, styling people’s hair, having a conversation.”
“Are you saying I’m not a people-pleaser?”
“Yes.”
I had forgotten how alive I felt when I was with her. Alive and electric.
“Well, I’m not. You’re right.” She shrugged. “I usually nick their skin when they try to talk to me. I’m known as the snippy lady now. No one bothers me anymore.”
I swallowed as the night from long ago flashed in front of my eyes. The moonlight, the lake, the thin stream of blood on her ribs. I was pretty sure I would lose my mind before this day was over.
Pointing to my glasses, she said, “You changed them. Though I thought you only needed them for reading.”
I inched them up my nose with my index finger. “Hours of grading papers ruined my eyesight. I need to wear them all the time now. I’m a high school teacher.”
“What? You’re not one of those doctor thingies?”
I smiled. “You mean geneticist? No, not anymore. I quit two years ago.”
“What? Why? I thought…” She shook her head and drew the coffee mug closer to her chest. “I thought you loved that stuff.”
I cleared my throat and grabbed my mug with tight fingers. “I realized I loved teaching more than I loved chasing after something that I’d never have anyway. It was time to…let go.”
Brandon and Mase had been disappointed, but I promised I would keep working with them part-time. Teaching felt like a better job for me. For the first time ever, I had been confident about my abilities to do something right—guide students, educate them—and I had never been happier.
She studied me a beat, and then she smiled, a genuine, beautiful smile. “Well, I’m happy for you then.”
But there was more to my decision to teach, and I wanted Madison to know that. I would not hide anything anymore. I was not that person.
“Also, I…uh…wanted to be close to Katie. I don’t live with her anymore.”
There, I said it. Was it so hard, James? my therapist would ask me with a slight smile on her wrinkled face, a confidence in her eyes that I would be all right. Truth is hard but lies are harder. They do more damage, remember that. As if I would ever forget.
“What? What’re you talking about? Who does she live with?” She was frowning now, her lips pinched in distress.
“She, uh, lives with Nat’s mother now, Esther.” I shifted in my chair once again. “I asked her to adopt Katie. I gave up my guardianship.”
Esther had insisted I remain a part of Katie’s life even after I told her the truth, the whole truth, right from the beginning. She looked at me in that motherly way of hers and hugged me, commanding me that I stay close by. That I did, indeed, deserve redemption.
Ever since then, she had never treated me as anything less than her own son. On numerous occasions, we had talked about Nat, about our marriage, my guilt. Along with her and my therapist, I realized that, after Nat’s death, my sense of guilt was exaggerated with grief.
My own mother was still the same, cold and aloof. I had tried to make amends with her, but her hatred for me was much bigger than I had thought. I still took care of her things like I had always done, but we hardly talked or saw each other. It would be a lie to say that I did not regret the state of our relationship. But under that regret was a sense of relief
, too. In her absence, I was not reminded of my failures at every step.
“But I thought you…” Madison’s eyes flicked over my face before she finally understood what I was not telling her. “You knew you were going to do this when you left.”
“I did.” I swallowed. “I made the call the day before I left, before you…came.” Before she could say anything, I decided to lay it all out there, even if it meant that this one cup of coffee was the only thing we would ever share. “When I made the call that day, I really didn’t know if I’d ever go through with it. You gave me the strength, Madison, without even knowing about it.”
I sifted through my hair, tugging on the strands. “But the reality of it didn’t set in until I drove Katie back and she refused to even get close to me. Even after dropping her off at Esther’s, she couldn’t sleep for a long, long time. And every time I visited, she’d scream, cry. She’d say she was afraid to sleep, because she dreamt of blood, of me, bloody and dying, of Nat.” I stared at the bumpy wall behind her, gray and cracked just like me. Even the mention of those days made my skin stretch tight and the throb on my shoulders returned, growing unbearable. “Every kid’s afraid of monsters. Katie was afraid of me.”
“Why did you hide the decision from me?”
I looked at her, then. Her beautiful brown eyes were glassy, and she was trying very hard not to cry. Something jolted in my chest at the realization that her tears were for me, still. No one had ever cried for me except for her. Happiness and pain, the dichotomy that I had always felt around her rushed back. It felt like home. “Because I knew you would’ve tried to stop me and I would’ve listened to you. I was looking for any excuse to stay with her.”
“But you chose to run.”
Anger punched my gut at her words, her judgmental observation. But she was right. I did choose to run, not from Katie, but from the truth for so long. “Yes, I did. I chose to run when I could’ve stayed, even fixed things after Nat’s death. I chose to hide from everyone, and I almost destroyed my daughter in the process. And that’s why I had to leave in the end. So I could undo my damage,” I explained, pinning her with my gaze. “I never believed I was fit to be a father, anyway. Leaving her was the best thing I’ve done for her.”
A War Like Ours Page 28