by Dee Tenorio
She gasped, the ache in her chest flashing with breath-stealing pain, her eyes opening wide while she dropped the cufflink with a clatter to the surface of her desk. She stared at it, wanting to be angry at the piece of metal too. But all it did was reflect her face back at her.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, running her mind in circles before she gave up. The only one thing to do with it was get it out of her sight as quickly as possible. She didn’t need any reminders of Kyle and she didn’t want any excuses to see him again later.
Just before she threw it out her window, she realized it was gold, which meant it was valuable. Throwing it away would be like stealing. Plus, he’d come looking for it.
Well, she wasn’t calling him, that was for sure. She didn’t know where he lived—another reason why this was not a relationship—which meant she’d have to go to the only physical link she had with him: Lucas.
* * * * *
“You look horrible,” Jessica said in shock when Lucas finally opened his front door.
He only blinked at her. Impeccable, permanently-pressed Lucas Lonnigan stood before her a changed man, and not for the better. His hair spiked in every direction, not with style but because it looked like he’d been pulling it that way. His jaw was darkly shadowed with a couple of days’ stubble, at least. Judging from the bloodshot eyes, an unbuttoned, barely-hanging-from-his-shoulders shirt and the slightly swollen look to his cheeks, he was fresh from his bed. She fought the urge to check the time on her watch. It couldn’t be any later than six, too early for even Lucas to be in bed.
“Did you want something?”
It took effort, but she managed to pull her jaw up and grappled around for her bearings. “No, actually, I have something for you.”
“Now isn’t a good time for any new contracts—”
“No, not that.” Her impossible-to-bury maternal instincts kicked in, reminding her stingingly of her childhood—and Kyle—but she couldn’t help it. The man was in a bad way. “Are you sick?”
He snorted, shifting his weight impatiently to his back leg. “You have no idea.”
She frowned at him.
He frowned back.
“You’re not going to tell me what’s wrong, are you?” she finally asked, guessing after his glare turned glacial that his patience was running thin.
“You had something for me?”
Fine. He wanted to look like his best friend had died and didn’t want to talk about it. No problem. She dug into the side pocket of her purse for the cufflink.
The small piece of metal kept evading her grasp, adding to her irritation. “If you didn’t want to be bothered, you shouldn’t have opened the door.”
“You’ve been knocking for eight minutes,” he said pointedly. “It was either open the door or call someone to come shoot you.”
She finally got her fingers around the damn thing, pulled it free and all but threw it at him. “Here. Give it to your brother.”
The annoying schmuck managed to catch it, bobbling it against his bare chest for a few seconds. He pinched the cufflink between thumb and forefinger, staring at it before raising enraged eyes to hers. “I haven’t slept in two days and you got me out of bed for a damned piece of jewelry?”
For just a second, she considered that this was a bad idea.
Then she remembered the alternative: taking it to Kyle herself. Lucas could rant and rave for all she cared, he was still the better of two evils. So she raised her chin and stared him down.
It was a short battle.
While she was intent on standing her ground, he simply reached out, grabbed her hand and shoved the cufflink into it. “Deal with it yourself, Jessica. I’m not getting involved.”
Then he backed up and slammed the door in her face.
“Lucas!” She pounded on the door until her hand hurt, yelling his name in indignation. Not that he would be fazed in the slightest. The only ones affected by this point were his neighbors. “Lucas Lonnigan, so help me, if you don’t open this door I’ll… I’ll…”
She’d what? Stand here and yell at a door? Give up and go home where her conscience would berate her, using this tiny piece of gold as a megaphone to tell her that she’d made the biggest mistake of her life?
The pressure behind her temples throbbed painfully. She quit knocking and laid her forehead on the wood, her hand splayed flat alongside. Tears burned her closed eyes and she sighed, hoping not to sob.
“Please, Lucas… I can’t…I can’t do this.” She doubted her voice was getting through the door. The words weren’t easy to say, she wasn’t even sure exactly what she meant. Was this dealing with Kyle…or managing without him? She squeezed her eyes tighter against the question.
Without a reply from Lucas, there was just her and the silence, which enjoyed its advantage by continuing to whisper regrets. Distantly, a phone rang inside, but only for a second before it was picked up. He’d never listen to her now. At least it was likely he was yelling at someone else.
She finally lifted her head and peeled herself away from the door. It had been stupid to come here. She’d just package the cufflink and mail it. It was what she should have done to begin with.
She tried to put her composure back together, ignoring the shaking of her hands, and turned away. She was already halfway down the stairs when Lucas barked her name.
He stood at the top of the steps, a jacket over his arm while he attempted to button his shirt. To her surprise, he looked worse. What little color he’d had was gone. The one button he’d managed was in the wrong hole. He gave up on the buttons and began shuffling down at full speed. “Come with me.”
“What? Where?” Watching him tromp down the steps was like watching a locomotive bearing down and not being able to move. Something was wrong.
Lucas took her arm when he hit the landing, pulling her along with him. He didn’t so much as miss a step. He wrenched open the building door and swept them both through it.
“Lucas! What’s going on?” She was fine demanding things, but she couldn’t quite make herself wrench away. “Who was on the phone?”
He finally let her go once they were next to a dark old-model SUV, then crossed around the front, unlocking the power locks as he did. She opened the passenger-side door with fingers that felt frozen. He’d already turned over the engine by the time she got the door closed behind herself.
“Talk to me, damn it. You’re scaring me.”
“It’s Kyle.” Two words and she didn’t want to hear any more. Not because she didn’t want to talk about him or think about him. Because she was terrified.
“Is he hurt?” she whispered, her throat tight.
“I don’t know.” He pulled into traffic, the truck hitting bumps as he recklessly off-roaded the potholes.
“So where is he?”
“Death Valley.”
She grabbed the sissy bar over the side window when he veered through a lane to get to the freeway entrance. Once her heart dropped back into her chest, she gasped a few times and asked, “What’s he doing in Death Valley?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that a police officer called to inform me that he was in a hospital up near there. He gave me directions and said it was important that I get up there immediately.”
“Which means he’s hurt.” That’s what it had to mean. Wasn’t it? They wouldn’t want to give very much information over the phone, since it would be a long trip. But would they have said something different if he were— She couldn’t finish the thought.
His jaw was so tense his teeth were probably cracking from the pressure and his knuckles were white where he gripped the steering wheel. She turned away, staring forward through the windshield, still holding on to the bar with her right hand, her left clutching the side of her seat. Now that they were on the freeway, he was driving smoothly, but it seemed so slow. How far did they have to go? How long would it take until they knew how bad it was? What if he was gone before they got there?
/> Trembling started deep inside her, old fears welling from parts of her heart that she’d imagined closed off. She closed her eyes, willing those terrors back into their box, but they wouldn’t. Emotions suffused her. Terror, abandonment, loss, loneliness, regret. She let go of her moorings to cross her arms across her belly and hold it in. It didn’t help.
She never meant to care about him. He wasn’t supposed to matter. If people didn’t matter, you wouldn’t miss them when they left, and everyone always left. Behind her closed lids, she could feel the traces of her earliest memory. The dampness of her sweater, the queasiness of hunger, the faint traces of a face she could never pull into focus, saying something she could never quite hear. Then the silence of the church, where she sat on the pew, holding a bear and waiting to be found. It might not even be a real memory, but it haunted all the same. Just like all the other thoughts she stifled as hard as she could.
The faces of all the kids she’d taken to heart, but who had all eventually left the foster home, never once looking back for her. How many of them remembered the girl who tried so hard to be needed, to be loved? She’d never know. She’d given up counting. And the couple who’d almost chosen her. She never thought about them, not even in the darkest hours. They’d seen something in her that had made them change their minds. Something everyone else seemed to know about. It was when her then foster-mother, Helen, had told her they weren’t coming back that she gave up caring. She’d boxed up her heart and buried it, never once missing it or all the hurt it held.
Until Kyle.
And now he might be gone. Not because he wanted to leave, but because she made him go. He was right, what he’d said. She might never see him again, but she hadn’t set herself free by pushing him away. She’d tied herself to regret, to memory.
“Talk to me,” she ordered through her teeth, probably startling Lucas, but she didn’t care. The pain was growing. She couldn’t deal with it. She needed a reminder that she wasn’t alone. Not in the car, not in her fears for Kyle.
“What?”
“I need a distraction. Please, just…talk.”
Lucas turned his head briefly, staring at her with narrowed eyes before returning his attention back to traffic. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, relief nearly choking her. If he talked to her, she wouldn’t have to feel all those things battling to get out. She squeezed herself tighter. “Maybe.”
Lucas scrubbed his face wearily with his palm, but acquiesced. “So what do you want me to say?”
If only she knew for sure. “I don’t know, anything.”
“Why couldn’t you give Kyle his cufflink back?”
“Not that.”
“Not what?” He speared her with a sharp look. “Not talk about Kyle? Are you insane? What else do we have to discuss?”
Her lips trembled no matter how firmly she held them together. “I’m afraid.”
“So am I, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore the fact that he’s on my mind.”
Jessica dipped her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t—I don’t know how to handle this.”
“Being afraid for him or being in love with him?”
“I’m not.” The denial was instant but ineffective. Her eyes stung and her insides clenched tighter. His words burned like truth. “I don’t know. I don’t understand what happened between us. None of it makes any sense.”
“Start at the beginning.” He shifted the car, slipping into the carpool lane and setting the cruise control. “Just tell me what’s so confusing.”
“I like my life,” she finally said, the tears she meant to keep inside all but bursting from her in a deep gasp. “I like it, damn it. I like knowing each day is going to be as boring as the one before. I like knowing where my remote control is. I like knowing that bad things aren’t going to happen and even if they did, they wouldn’t hurt me.”
“And Kyle ruined all of that for you,” he said evenly, almost as if he understood.
“Yes!” Wait, that sounded terrible.
“It’s all right, he loves destroying people’s hard-worked plans. You had a great, ordered, serene life. Everything was just the way you wanted it. You could get by and not have to feel everything the way everyone else did. Didn’t have to fall apart every time something went wrong or be nervous when it goes right. It was perfect.”
She smiled at him, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “How did you know?”
“Because I have that life and it sucks. It’s not you anymore. Never should have been, if you ask me. You’re not going over cases in your head or reading notes while we sit here. For the first time since we met, you’re not thinking about work. You’re thinking about your life and responding to it. The woman I knew pretended she didn’t feel anything and would never shed a tear for a man she barely knew. You’re different now. Meeting Kyle changed you and that’s why I slammed the door in your face earlier.” He tsked, giving his head a little nod she didn’t think was directed to her. “The lucky bastard found his one in a million on the first try.”
Lucky? Weren’t they speeding their way up the interstate because Kyle was hurt? She frowned at him, disapproval a little richer in her voice than she wanted. “Now you’re not making any sense.”
His sharp gaze fixed on her face again, for as long as was safe while driving. “I would be if you were being honest with yourself. You came all the way over to my place just to return something because you were avoiding him, right? That’s some strong emotion. Didn’t it occur to you that it might be more than just wanting to avoid him?”
She’d purposely not thought that.
“He doesn’t know anything about me,” she muttered, because his silence was taut enough to prove that he expected an answer of some sort. She just didn’t have any answers at all when it came to Kyle.
Lucas sighed. Why did she get the feeling he was reevaluating his opinion of her intelligence? “How good are you with math?”
“I really don’t think this is the time to start waxing poetic about negative integers and prime numbers—”
“Math.” Lucas cut off her diatribe with a briskly formed word. “Most people forget that it’s a beautiful art form. Perfect in its simplicity. People think it’s complicated, but math is the simplest, safest thing in the world. There’s always an absolute answer, even if we haven’t found it yet.”
“Lucas—”
“Take the number one, for example.” He unfolded his index finger from around the steering wheel, then added his other index finger next to it. “You add one to it and you get two.” He wiggled his fingers at her. “A completely separate number that means so much more than one by itself.” He lowered the second finger.
“But you take one away from one—” All fingers were firmly on the wheel again. “And you’ve got zero. Nothing. Just an empty space you can’t fill and you don’t know what belongs there. It’s just where one used to be.”
She stared at his hands, finally daring to look up at his face. His profile was sad, as if he knew what it was like to be a one without another one too. She didn’t want to relate, but her chest ached and that unbearable pressure formed behind her eyes again. He understood. He knew how she felt, even when she didn’t.
Or just didn’t want to.
Tears, ones that couldn’t be held back any longer, escaped. The box deep inside opened wide, making her feel as if something had caved in and broken open at the same time. She covered her mouth with her hand to hold in a cry, but the sound slipped through her fingers. She tried to breathe, but it felt like a sob instead. She didn’t realize she’d used her other hand to hug herself while she leaned forward until Lucas pushed a soft piece of fabric into her hand and spoke gently.
“He’s in love with you. I don’t know how it happened so fast, but I do know that it’s real. He’s just as changed by it as you are. Just as confused, just as lost, but I’m guessing from those tears, you’re in love with him anyway.”
In love with him. In love. She instinctively rejected that, tried to shove it away, but then she remembered where they were headed. Why. And the feeling refused to fade. Would she really have allowed Lucas to drag her into his car and ride off in desperate terror if she didn’t care?
“It’s all right to be in love with him, Jessica. It doesn’t mean your world is ending. It means your world is expanding.”
“Why can’t the two of you understand that I don’t want my life to expand?” she snapped angrily. The Lonnigans seemed to think they had the right to just decide the fate of whoever they met, did they? Was it a God-given gift that everyone else knew about? Had she missed the memo on that too? “I like it small and cramped and…and…” She ran out of steam. Choked on it, really. She didn’t like her life. She hated it. But it was safe. Her hands fisted as she lowered them to her lap.
“Lonely?” Lucas asked softly.
She didn’t answer him, instead turning her head to look out the window.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Lonely is best. It’s a hell of a lot better than losing everything over and over. Wanting to be happy so much it hurts, but how much would it hurt when it leaves again? It’s a lot to consider. I can see how lonely has a certain attractiveness.”
“What do you know about it?” She wished she could get out of the car and run into the night.
“You’re not the only lonely person in the world.”
She turned her head at the raw note in his voice, but he wasn’t looking at her. It was as if he’d never said a word in the first place. His eyes were fixed on the road, even with the thinning traffic. His jaw was tight again, but the haggard, sad expression was still there, etched on him.
“What’s going on with you Lucas? I’m not the only one who’s changed either. It doesn’t take a genius to know something serious has been happening to you.”