Breakup in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

  He shrugged. “Maybe. I was actually thinking I’d like to be one of the first hires here, once everything is finalized with the distributorship, and the contractor in Joplin. If you think Adam would go for it.”

  “But what about what you just said? About us not needing you?”

  “I guess you could say I was testing the waters.”

  “So, you don’t want to leave?”

  Aiden shook his head.

  “But you build boats. We build cabinets.” He’d flip-flopped before her very eyes just moments ago, so she had to be certain he really wanted to stay.

  “And outdoor furnishings.”

  “Still, it can’t be much of a challenge.”

  “Maybe I’m not looking for a challenge.”

  She studied him for a moment. Was that sadness she saw in his clear gaze? The kind of sadness she’d been so focused on in Adam, but hadn’t been able to see in Aiden? “Is there a reason you don’t want to go back?”

  “I’m not on the run from the law or anything,” he said, and chuckled. “California has been good to me, but I’ve been missing home the past couple years.”

  If he’d missed Slippery Rock so much, why had it taken three months for him to get here after she’d called with the news of Adam’s accident? But Jenny didn’t want to fight with Aiden. He had come home when Adam needed him. That was enough.

  “If you’re sure this is what you want, I won’t even wait to finalize the contracts. You’re hired.”

  Aiden left the office and Jenny frowned. She and Adam made hiring decisions together, and she’d bypassed his opinion altogether. She sat back in her chair, considering what that meant.

  That she was confident enough to make her own decisions?

  Then the other shoe, a shoe she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding, dropped.

  She didn’t trust Adam. Not his renewed interest in the business. Not his willingness to walk the boys to school.

  She didn’t trust that he was interested in her, at all. Not the way she needed him to be interested.

  She’d been afraid the stress of running the business might set off the epilepsy, so she hadn’t asked him to take part in it at first. Then, when the stresses of the business and the house and his health and the boys and his parents got to be too much, it was easier to start blaming his inattentiveness instead of her own fear. She’d pulled her life together, set things up to be financially stable, given everything she had to the boys. If Adam disappeared on her again, if he returned to that dark place...she didn’t think she could pull all that together again.

  Jenny didn’t want to be angry at Adam. She didn’t want to be afraid that every little thing might set off the next seizure. She wanted to be like Aiden: realize something was off or missing in life, and do something to correct it. And in doing that, Aiden had returned to Slippery Rock.

  Maybe it was time for Jenny to put her trust in the work she and Adam had done. The honest feelings they’d shared over the past few weeks. Let go of the previous three months, and start living in the present.

  She picked up her phone and texted Adam.

  How about dinner tonight? Just the two of us?

  A few minutes later, her text alert sounded.

  Definitely, Adam responded.

  I’ll get a sitter.

  * * *

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU order the steak?”

  Adam sat across from Jenny in a corner booth at the Slippery Rock Grill. On a Wednesday evening, outside tourist season, the Grill wasn’t busy. Five or six other tables were filled with people he recognized—the minister from the Methodist church, the mayor and his wife.

  White cloths covered the tables, and faux suede covered the bench seats of the booths as well as the chairs. Low music played over the speakers. He recognized several country love songs, all in instrumental versions.

  “Felt like a burger,” he answered, and the lie slid off his tongue as if he lied every day. Hell, for the past few months, it seemed as if lying had been the only thing getting him through the day. Lying about how he felt, what he wanted to do, why he didn’t get out of the wheelchair.

  Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Not anymore. He realized that he hadn’t been telling as many lies, not since he and Jenny had shared their talks. So maybe it was time to stop lying entirely.

  “I didn’t want you to feel as if you had to cut my steak into tiny bites,” he confessed. “A burger makes it easier. No serrated knives involved, just in case, because you can’t cut a steak with a butter knife like you can a chicken breast.” Jenny didn’t say anything to that. Adam wasn’t sure what to say so he grabbed the first topic of conversation that came to him. “No seizures in more than a month... I thought Dr. Lambert seemed happy at the checkup last week.”

  “Me, too.” Jenny fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth. “Have I been treating you like a child that much?”

  “Only because you had to. I wasn’t much help to you in the beginning. We didn’t know what would set off the next seizure.” He still didn’t know what would set one off, but he didn’t want to fight about it. He just wanted to enjoy this night with his wife. Make her remember how good things had been not so long ago. Wanted to make things better now than they had ever been.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. For all of it, Jen, and I’m going to do my best to make these past three months up to you.”

  The waitress, a girl who’d graduated in Adam’s class, brought their salads, then disappeared into the kitchen. He thought her name might be Anna, but hadn’t been paying attention when she introduced herself, and now couldn’t quite place her. Just one more sign that he’d been oblivious to other people throughout his life.

  He would do better.

  “You don’t have to make anything up to me,” Jenny said, but Adam disagreed, and not just because of the things she’d said after the laundry incident. Jenny deserved so much better than he had given her.

  She cleared her throat. “The dog trainer called again.”

  He heard the unspoken question in her voice. Adam still wasn’t sold on the idea of a service dog, but Dr. Lambert had suggested it again at his last checkup.

  “I like being back at work,” he said thoughtfully. “I wasn’t sure how it would go, not being able to use the equipment. I like it, though. Now that the physical therapy is going well, and being on the warehouse floor so much, I guess it makes more sense to have a service dog than when I was just at the house and in the wheelchair.”

  “If that’s what you want, you should do it.” He hated the stilted tone in her voice, and the words seemed to hang in the air between them. Jenny fiddled with her fork, then set it down next to her plate. “Why do you want the dog? Why now and not a month ago or six weeks ago?”

  Adam fiddled with his own fork, weighing his words carefully. If anything was going to make her walk away, it would be this. He didn’t want her to. “Because six weeks ago, hell, a month ago, I was considering walking away from all of you.”

  Jenny blinked. Her body went still and she seemed to struggle to breathe.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was me—it was all me.” He stabbed a piece of calamari off the appetizer tray but didn’t eat it. “I thought you and the boys would be better off without me. Without the uncertainty of the epilepsy, without my medical bills being a drain on our finances—”

  “Well, that is one of the most selfish things I’ve ever heard,” she said, indignation lacing her voice. “As if getting past your death would be easier on the boys, on me, than learning to live with the epilepsy. Adam, don’t you know how important you are? To all of us?”

  “I wasn’t going to kill myself.” He’d been in a dark place, but it hadn’t been completely black. “I was simply going to leave. I didn’t see walking away as bein
g selfish. You’ve told me how lost I was, how I left you alone.”

  Adam bit back his next words, but the accusation in her gaze was too much. He’d been an ass. He’d shut her out so that it wouldn’t hurt so much when he had to let her walk away. But—Lord, it hurt to think this, which was why he rarely had—she’d been just as gone as he. There was a part of Jenny that had been missing from the moment he’d woken up in the hospital, a piece of herself she’d held back from him. And it was killing him.

  “When I woke up in that hospital bed, all I wanted was to see your face. But you looked at me as if you were seeing a ghost. I was still there, and you looked at me like I’d betrayed you somehow. From that first moment in the hospital, the blame was there.” He shook his head. “I made things worse, so much worse, by not talking to you. By cutting myself off from you, from the boys, but I didn’t know any other way to...to make things all right for you. I didn’t want to hurt you again.”

  Jenny pushed her plate away and twisted the napkin in her lap around her hand. “I thought you were dead when they found you in the rubble. When you woke up I was so afraid. Afraid you would go back to sleep and never wake up again. Afraid of the seizures, afraid of what this all meant for us, for the boys.”

  “And I was afraid you wouldn’t want a man with a broken head.”

  Jenny was quiet for a long moment. “Adam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know where we go from here.”

  He was quiet for a long moment in turn. “Me, either.”

  “Do you still want me?”

  “Every single day.” He said the words without hesitation, as if he couldn’t speak them fast enough or with enough emphasis. “Do you still want me?”

  Jenny nodded. “I think it’s time for us to go home.”

  * * *

  THEY DROVE HOME, and Jenny went inside to check on the boys. She came out the back door a couple moments later.

  “Homework done, and they’re playing LEGO Dimensions with Sadie,” she reported. “She’s going to put them down in a couple minutes, and said she can stay until ten.”

  It was just after seven. Three more hours with Jenny sounded like heaven. “Let’s walk, then,” he said, pleased when she passed the wheelchair without even pausing. Adam grabbed the walking stick from inside the garage door. It wouldn’t do much if a seizure hit, but it made him feel steadier on his feet.

  “I never thought I’d be married to a man who uses a cane like those secret agents in the old black-and-white movies.”

  “Walking stick. Canes are curved and short. This is long and manly.”

  She shook her head and looked at him from under her lashes. “That sounds like a bit of compensation. If you ask me, anyway.”

  It was the first sarcastic comment he’d heard from her in too long, and the words made him smile. They used to tease one another mercilessly; even before the tornado, though, he couldn’t remember the last time they’d done it. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time they’d taken a walk on a random Tuesday evening.

  They followed the narrow road west toward downtown and the marina, and when the docks came into view, he led her along one of them. Probably not the safest route, but he wanted to walk with her in the darkness there. Enjoy the lapping of the water against the docks and pilings. Take in some of the stars. Not specifically for seduction purposes, but he wouldn’t turn down another kiss like the one they’d shared in the backyard.

  Her hand found his in the darkness, and Adam twined their fingers together. He pointed. “Hercules is bright tonight.”

  “And Orion’s Belt.” They came to a bench and sat together, watching the sky above them. “Adam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You asked me the other day what I wanted.”

  He didn’t say anything, just waited. Whatever Jenny had to say, he didn’t want to influence her.

  “I don’t want to watch the stars, and I don’t want to talk about the past, or worry about what might happen in the future.”

  That didn’t leave a lot of options. “I’ll take you home.”

  “I don’t want to go home, not yet.”

  That left even fewer options. “We could wander over to the Slope.” She’d mentioned the other night that his not asking her to go with him was a bit of a sticking point.

  “I don’t want to drink, not without you.”

  “Then we could just walk.” He stood, held out his hand, and when she took it, a warm feeling spread from the point of contact through his body. He didn’t want to walk with Jenny, but he’d do whatever it was she wanted. Until she decided she wanted more. Or less. God, he hoped she didn’t want less.

  “Why don’t you walk me home, and we’ll see where things go from there.”

  Her words turned the warm comfort of her touch into something hotter. Still, Adam didn’t want to push, didn’t want to scare her away, or make her change her mind before he even knew what was on it.

  They walked in silence for the few blocks between the marina and their home. A few cars passed in the darkness, but Slippery Rock was a quiet town outside tourist season. As they turned onto their street, Jenny squeezed his hand.

  “I don’t want you to take me home just yet.”

  “We can keep walking.” Around the block as many times as she wanted. He just wanted to be with her.

  “Why don’t you show me around the RV?”

  Adam swallowed, hard. “You’re sure?”

  “Why waste a babysitter?” She said the words with a lighthearted lilt to her voice, but Adam didn’t want this to be a joke. He wanted to make love to his wife, and he wanted her to know why they were doing this.

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to sleep with you,” he began, but Jenny stopped his words with a kiss. She reached up, put her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his, taking his breath away for a moment. Adam’s arms stole around her waist as he deepened the kiss.

  “I want to sleep with you,” she said, between nips of her teeth against his mouth. “I want to touch you, and feel you against me.”

  “Jen...” The word was more groan than endearment, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  “I want you, Adam Buchanan.”

  He pressed his forehead against hers, trying to catch his breath. Trying to talk himself out of sleeping with his wife before either of them had decided how to move forward with their lives—either together or apart.

  “Please,” she said, and the single word overpowered him.

  Adam knew it was weak, that sleeping with Jenny when she couldn’t really know what she wanted was dishonest, but he didn’t care. He wanted his wife. He’d always wanted her, even when he thought it was better for her if he simply wasn’t there. So, for tonight, he was going to pretend the tornado and everything else hadn’t happened.

  In the RV, Adam walked her back to the sleeping area with the double bed. This wasn’t what he’d envisioned when he pictured making love with Jenny again, but it would have to do. This time.

  He slipped his tongue between her lips, tasting her. Her mouth was sweet, with a little sugar from the sweet tea she’d had with dinner. She was Jenny, and she was where she was supposed to be.

  With him.

  She tightened her arms around his neck, pressing up against him so that Adam could feel her breasts beneath the layers of fabric between them. The softness of her shirt teased at his hands; he knew her skin would be softer, but liked the slow build of what was happening between them. He slipped one hand beneath the fabric, running the back of his fingers against the sensitive skin of her belly. Her muscles trembled at the light touch.

  It wasn’t enough. Adam pushed both his hands beneath the handkerchief hem of her top, spanning her waist. She trembled again as one thumb dipped into her belly button. He let his fingers rea
cquaint themselves with the soft skin of her abdomen, her ribs, while his mouth took its fill of her sweet lips. God, he’d missed her. Missed touching her, missed feeling her heat through her clothes. Missed talking to her over dinner, taking a walk along a quiet street. The sun had already set by the time they got home from the Grill, but he wanted to walk with her as it set across the lake, to feel the heat of the sun kissing his skin as her mouth did the same.

  Adam’s fingers bumped up against the lace of her bra, and he knew even though he hadn’t seen the garment that it would be either stark white or a light pink. He groaned into her mouth. He knew what she felt like, but it had been so long that he could almost pretend this was the first time his palms had touched the soft mounds of her breasts. That he didn’t know she liked to be kissed in the valley between her breasts. Her hips were fuller now than when they’d been teenagers, but she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to him. The fuller hips didn’t make Jenny fat, they made her the mother of his children.

  How had he gotten so lucky?

  Adam lifted the green top from her body, enjoying the quick rise and fall of her breasts in the pink lace. Her gaze met his, and there was no question that this was affecting her just as it was him. Her pupils had darkened, her breathing was off balance and she clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides while he took in the body that was so familiar and yet so new to him.

  Jenny reached out, her finger tracing the lines of his abdomen through the cotton of his shirt. His muscles trembled, and his length hardened. She pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it somewhere over her shoulder.

  He wanted more than to look at her. He wanted her in his arms. In their big bed in the house, but he would settle for this one in the RV. Adam pulled her down on the mattress, rolling so that she lay atop him. Their mouths seemed almost fused together, and it was the best feeling he’d had in a long time. He pressed a kiss to her cheek, her jaw then found the pulse pounding in her neck and focused his attention there for a long moment, while his hands stroked her back then pushed into the rear pockets of her jeans to pull her hips more firmly against his.