Breakup in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

  “I’ve missed you.” The words slipped from his mouth, and for a split second Adam wanted to recall them. To unsay the words that might send Jenny running straight into the house, up to their bedroom. Out of his life, or worse, back to being a virtual stranger to him. “I didn’t know it until I saw you at that meeting.”

  She didn’t run.

  Jenny opened her eyes, watching him for a long moment. She buried her hands in his hair, as if studying him. Slowly, she slid to the side and insinuated her leg between his. The pressure against his length was almost unbearable, but he waited. Jenny leaned forward, taking his bottom lip between her teeth and gently nipping.

  “Me, too.” She licked her lips as she drew back from him. “I’ve missed you, too. I don’t know what that means. There are still things we need to work out. Work on,” she said. “But I want to be here. With you.”

  “And I want to be here. With you.” He nibbled her lower lip as she had nipped at his. “I want to be anywhere with you.”

  She nipped his lip. “Then don’t make us miss one another any longer.”

  The words pushed his control to the edge. He’d been without Jenny for too long. Three months, five days. He didn’t care that several of those weeks he’d been either comatose, in a hospital, basically bedridden or so pissed off at life that he couldn’t see straight. With the amount of medication he’d been on in the beginning, he didn’t think he’d have done either of them any favors in the sex department. Even after he’d come home, he’d kept his distance. Afraid he couldn’t be what she needed. Afraid his body would betray him.

  He was still afraid of those things, but he was more afraid of being without her.

  Adam undid the snap of her jeans and more pink lace peeked out from under the blue denim. He pulled the jeans from her long, shapely legs. He unsnapped the front closure of her bra, and pink lace made way for pale breasts and dusky aureoles.

  Jenny unsnapped his jeans, reaching past the cotton of his boxer briefs to his hard length. Her touch was gentle, her hands feeling like silk sliding against him. Squeezing gently. Making him forget what he’d been doing. Adam focused on the feel of her hand surrounding him, imagining how much better it would feel to be inside her. Then he snapped back to the bed, because this wasn’t only about how she could make him feel, it was about how he could make her feel.

  He captured her nipple with his mouth, flicking his tongue against her pebbled skin, nipping with his teeth until she sighed with pleasure. Jenny nipped his shoulder, and kept working her hand over his hard length.

  “Jenny.” Her name felt right on his lips. Adam knew, in the back of his mind, that the timing was all wrong for them. He knew there were things to work out between them that were more important than sex. He didn’t care. Maybe sex would help heal some of those scars left by the tornado, and if it didn’t, he would figure out another way to show her that he could still be the man she’d loved before the tornado changed him.

  Adam slipped his jeans and boxers over his hips, drew a condom from his wallet and sheathed himself quickly. Then he pulled her panties from her body and just looked at her for a long moment. Jenny’s breasts heaved as she tried to catch her breath. Her eyes, nearly emerald in the dim light of the RV, drew him in to her magic. She reached out to him, her fingers lightly tracing the taut skin of his ribs, playing along the ridges of muscle there. He pressed her onto her back and smoothed his hand over the crazy curls he’d been obsessed with for as long as he could remember.

  With one smooth stroke he was inside her warmth, and everything else faded into the background. There was only Jenny. Only him. Only this bed that was a little too short and a little too narrow, but that seemed to fit them perfectly for tonight. She smiled, a soft turning of her lips, and closed her eyes as he began to move.

  Adam caught her mouth with his, their tongues mimicking the moves he made inside her. Fast, furious. Wanting more, more. He always wanted more with her. She mewled beneath him, her hips pumping as their rhythm increased.

  “Adam!” she cried. And then, softer, “Adam.”

  He reached between them, pressing his finger against the bundle of nerves, and watched as Jenny flew over the edge, felt her body spasming against his from her shoulders to her toes.

  Then he followed her into the darkness.

  A long time later, Jenny whispered, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For not leaving. For coming to dinner. For walking the boys to school.”

  They were such ordinary things, but before she’d demanded that he take stock of their lives, they had seemed impossible to tackle. Now that he had, Adam couldn’t imagine not taking part in their lives. Couldn’t imagine ever walking away from Jenny, their boys or this life. He’d nearly thrown all this away. He’d been a fool.

  “Thank you for asking me to move out.”

  Jenny chuckled. “That’s seems like a funny thing to be thankful for.”

  “It made me wake up. Made me realize that I was hurting more than myself by refusing to accept the things that have changed in my life.”

  “And have you accepted them now?”

  Acceptance. It was a hard word. “I’m not sure. I know that my life will never be what it was before the tornado, but I’m not sure I would want it to be. I know I want it to be different than it is now.” He felt her stiffen beside him. “Not that I want to leave, and not that I’m asking you to let me move back in. I just want to know that, at some point, moving back into the house is a possibility.”

  “All I really know right now is that I’m here and you’re here. Can we leave it at that?”

  Adam kissed Jenny’s head in the darkness. It wasn’t quite the answer he wanted, but it was more than he had been hoping for, despite their having made love tonight. Besides, it was definitely a step forward. He’d take it.

  “You’d better go relieve Sadie,” he said, pulling her body closer to him in the narrow bed. “I’ll see you for kitchen duty in the morning.”

  * * *

  JENNY PUSHED SCRAMBLED eggs around in the hot pan, watching them change from unstructured goo to more-or-less structured chunks of food. Food the boys loved. Estimating she had about two minutes of cook time left, she walked to the base of the stairs and called up, “Boys, breakfast in one minute. Get moving.”

  She’d heard them rustling around earlier this morning, had poked her head inside their room to make sure Garrett was dressing in the lightweight hoodie and jeans she’d laid out the night before, and that Frankie’s clothes weren’t stained beyond recognition. Where Garrett was steadfast that his clothes should be immaculate—which she found odd for a little boy as active and messy as her youngest—Frankie would wear the same clothes for a week if she let him.

  “Coming, Mom,” they called in unison, and a moment later she heard them jostling in the hallway. Jenny returned to the kitchen and absently stirred the eggs while her mind returned to last night in the RV with Adam.

  It really shouldn’t be this hard to not think about having sex with a man she’d been with a thousand times over the past nine years. She’d never had this much trouble focusing on the task at hand, at least, not since that first time they’d had sex in the cramped back seat of the Mustang.

  It had still been up on blocks, the top still unattached, and there had been rips in the old vinyl seats. She’d cut her knees as she sat atop Adam, learning his body.

  Last night, it had been as if that night in the Mustang and all the nights since had never happened. When he’d looked at her in that cramped bedroom inside the camper, her knees had turned to jelly and the fire inside her had made it seem as if the outside temperature was over the ninety-degree mark.

  Which was ridiculous. For the first time this fall, the temperatures were acting somewhat normally, topping out in the midsixties instead of the late summer lower
eighties they’d been having.

  And now, instead of figuring out what had changed between her and Adam, she was getting distracted by the weather. That wouldn’t help anything. She had to make a decision about how to move forward with him. Good sex with Adam didn’t mean the problems between them were magically solved, it only meant they still had physical chemistry.

  The boys pounded down the stairs, talking about the upcoming homecoming week in Slippery Rock. The local team was doing well this season, and the week before the big game would be filled with lots of school activities. Dress-up days, bonfires, even a pancake breakfast one morning.

  “I’m going to be a firefighter,” Garrett said. “Firefighters rescue hurt people, like the Avengers, so that makes them heroes.”

  Jenny dished up their breakfasts, then joined the boys at the table. “I think that’s a good choice, G. What about you, Frankie? How do you want to dress up for Hero Day?”

  Frankie shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, shoving in a mouthful of egg. “Probably Iron Man or something.” His gaze didn’t meet hers and that made Jenny uneasy. Since the day of the barbecue, when she and Adam finally came together to talk to the boys, things in their little lives seemed better. On a more even keel. Frankie not meeting her gaze was too reminiscent of those first few days after the tornado.

  “I think Iron Man is a good choice, too. I’ll get your costume from last Halloween out of the garage, see if it still fits.” She turned to Garrett. “And I’ll bet we can find a firefighter hat or something at the general store this weekend.”

  Frankie scuffed his foot against the floor, making it squeak in protest. Jenny hated that sound, not just because it meant extra time on floor duty to fix the mark left behind.

  “I want a hat and the boots and a badge,” Garrett said, forking up the last of his eggs. He slurped some milk after swallowing the food nearly whole.

  “Firefighters don’t have badges, dummy,” Frankie said.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice sharp. “What did we say about those words?”

  Frankie hung his head. “Sorry, Garrett. I meant, firefighters don’t have badges, dude.”

  Jenny gave Frankie a stern look.

  Garrett stuck his tongue out at his brother. “They do if they’re the firefighters in charge. I saw it on TV.”

  “You can’t be a firefighter in charge, you’re only in kindergarten.”

  “Can, too.”

  “Can not.”

  Garrett squinted at Frankie. “Can. Too.”

  “Not,” Frankie said, and he seemed to be enjoying the banter. Still, Garrett looked like he was about to blow, so Jenny stepped in. The last thing she needed this morning was to clean egg off her kitchen ceiling.

  “How about we look up the proper uniform after school today?” she suggested.

  Frankie’s head swiveled to her. “You’re picking us up?”

  “Sure. Dad will take you, and that way I can leave Buchanan’s a little early to pick you up and help with your homework.” She gathered the plates. “Now get upstairs and brush your teeth or you’re going to be late.”

  When their footsteps had receded, she turned on the water to rinse the plates, and began stacking them in the dishwasher. The back door opened and Adam walked in, that cane-slash-walking-stick at his side. He looked way too sexy carrying that thing around. Which was weird, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t it just make him look old or something?

  Her stomach did a flip as he leaned a shoulder against the door jamb. “Good morning.”

  His blue eyes glittered in the early morning light.

  “Hey,” she said. And couldn’t think of anything else to say. She stared at him for a long moment, taking in the form-fitting jeans, the faded Buchanan’s T-shirt stretched taut over his shoulders. And that sexy cane. What was with her? She needed to get a grip on herself.

  “The boys just went up to brush their teeth. They’ll be down in a minute.”

  He crossed the room, and her chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. It really shouldn’t be hard to breathe, Jenny told herself. This was just Adam. The man she’d been certain couldn’t be part of her future just a couple weeks ago.

  The man she’d been in love with for as long as she could remember. She really shouldn’t have had sex with him last night. Not without knowing where this was going. Telling him she wanted to build a future was the truth, but it wasn’t as if they had a plan in place to actually build that future.

  He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, sending a shiver of awareness along her nerve endings.

  “Good morning,” he said again, and he was so close she could feel the heat emanating from his body. “You look great.”

  “Th-thank you,” she said, and tried to step back. But there was nowhere to go. The sink was at her back, the granite countertop already pressing hard against her spine. Jenny kept her hands firmly clenched around the edge of the smooth granite. She shouldn’t touch him. Couldn’t touch him. If she did, she would lose the tenuous hold she had on the reality of her life.

  She had two growing boys to care for, a business to run. Employees counting on her. She couldn’t afford to get lost in Adam Buchanan, not even if his name was right there beside hers on the business loan. On their marriage certificate.

  She couldn’t go back to that dark place where she desperately needed a man who didn’t take her wants and needs into consideration. She wouldn’t go back to merely going along with the plans that man had, instead of speaking up about what she wanted, too.

  Adam kissed her, his lips soft against her own. His hand cupped her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair, and Jenny nearly forgot all the plans she had begun making when the tornado changed the man she loved into a stranger. It was so easy to just be with him. To let his nearness push away all her doubts and misgivings, to make her forget that, at some point in the past three months, making Buchanan’s a success had become what she wanted for herself, and not just for Adam.

  She had never been a math whiz, never the star of any sports team. Her goal in life, all through school, had been to marry Adam Buchanan. To build a family with him. She still wanted those things, wanted to sit with him in their backyard and watch the sun set across the lake. But she also wanted to see the business his father had started as a small cabinet shop grow into more. She could help it grow. She’d become good at reading contracts, at figuring out profits and losses, and in determining how their small business could provide more. Giving that up, going back to the way things had been... She couldn’t do it.

  And it didn’t matter that Adam hadn’t technically asked her to go back to the way things had been. Jenny knew herself. She knew it would be so easy to focus all her energy and attention on her husband, on her sons.

  And when the bottom fell out again, she would once more be alone in the darkness.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ADAM SAT IN the backyard, watching the small construction crew use posthole diggers around the perimeter. It would take a couple more days, but the fence would be in. Just like Jenny had wanted. It was the first in the list of things he wanted to do for her—not to make her life easier so he could leave, but to show her that she mattered to him.

  He didn’t want to leave. The thought still hit him like one of the two-by-fours the construction crew was using. Maybe because he’d gotten himself so close to walking away. He didn’t want to live alone in a borrowed RV or a hotel. He didn’t want to be without Jenny in his life, period.

  He hated that she thought she didn’t matter or, maybe worse, that he’d taken her for granted. Even though he had. Adam could see that now. Hopefully, the fence would help to show her that he was making serious changes in his life. If it didn’t, he had a few more ideas that would.

  Aiden came around the corner of the house, sat beside him in one of the chairs Adam had ma
de last winter, but didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  “Looks good.”

  “It will when it’s done.”

  “You’re going to have to resod or replant around the postholes to get rid of all that dirt.” Aiden reached into the cooler sitting beside Adam’s chair and pulled out a bottle of water. He wrinkled his nose. “I remember when this cooler was always filled only with beer,” he said, then twisted off the cap and swallowed half the bottle in one gulp.

  So did Adam. He missed the taste of a cold beer on his lips. The smell of the hops and barley. Beer and the medications he was on, though, didn’t mix. He wasn’t going to take any chances in that area. Adam finished his own water.

  “What brings you over here today?”

  “Wanted to run something by you. About Buchanan’s.”

  Talking about work was a dicey subject, mostly because Adam still wasn’t sure where he fit at the company. Jenny had a handle on the distributorship, and she’d pushed through that new contract with the builder out of Joplin. All he’d done was put some random pieces of wood together in the general shape of a chair. Okay, that and come up with some new design ideas. But would it be enough?

  Figuring out his place at the company, now that he couldn’t build things, was harder than he’d expected.

  “What about Buchanan’s?”

  “I’d like to come back, on a permanent basis.”

  Adam blinked. He had to be hearing things. Aiden had left Slippery Rock after a bad breakup, but even before that, all he’d talked about was moving to California. Building boats. He’d hated those summers the two of them had spent building and installing cabinets for their father.

  “You hate cabinetry.” Adam was the Buchanan twin who liked making cabinets, tables. Aiden the one who wanted to build bigger objects, things that would take him away from Slippery Rock. Adam had enjoyed having him back in town, but for the first time ever, it felt like Aiden was taking something from him.

  Like, his life.

  Adam clenched his jaw. Twin or not, Aiden wasn’t going to get what was his. Buchanan’s was Adam’s, and he didn’t care if he sounded more like an eight-year-old than a twenty-eight-year-old.