She leaned carefully forward, pressing her eye to the peep hole. There, on her stoop was Steve, stack of papers in hand, pacing back and forth. With a sigh, she opened the door as he jumped back, folded papers scattering at his feet. “Steve, what are you doing here?” For thirteen years, the guy was absent when she wanted him around. And now that she was trying to move on, he was turning up like a dirty penny every damn day.
“I just… I, um,” he stuttered, bending to scoop the papers. “I told you we would read these again,” he finally managed as he stood, holding out the papers to her. “I wanted to keep my promise.”
She flipped through the folded sheets. “The letters? From your bike?”
He nodded. “Maybe they’ll finally give us both the answers we need.”
She stepped to the side. “Come on in. You want any tea?”
He nodded, moving past her into the kitchen. Grabbing the tea kettle, he filled it with water. “I’ll make the tea. You just read.” He froze momentarily. “Unless you prefer to read alone. In which case, I can give you some privacy—”
“I wouldn’t have invited you in if I wanted to read them alone, Steve.” She curled onto the couch as the dogs rushed around jumping up and greeting him. Daisy hopped into her lap, curling into a ball as she unfolded the first letter—from Steve to her. The white paper was aged yellow and some of the writing had worn away from the folds, almost illegible. It was an apology, she realized while reading. A long apology right after the accident.
You’re still not allowed to have visitors, he wrote. I tried. Ronnie and I both tried to come by even though the nurses told me I wasn’t allowed out of bed. Ronnie stole a wheelchair from the supply room and wheeled me over to you while I carried my IV drip. I need to see you. I need to see for myself that you’re okay. I’ll sneak past the nurses every day if I have to, to see your beautiful face again. But you should be prepared for my face. I don’t look the same. I probably never will again. Your mom thought you should know that ahead of time. Hopefully you’ll get this letter and she’ll let me in to see you tomorrow.
The smell of peppermint pulled her out of the letter and she looked up to find Steve setting a piping hot cup of tea in front of her. “You came to see me?”
“Every goddamn day. The nurses hated me at first, but then soon after I think they started silently routing for me to get through.”
Yvonne shook her head, taking a sip of the tea. “My mom never told me. She—she never gave me any of these,” she said, flipping through the other ten letters.
“It’s not her fault. Every time I tried to leave a note, I got intercepted by nurses and brought back to my room.”
Well, that made her pay attention. “Why didn’t you say anything in the thirteen years?” her voice cracked as emotion flooded her—consumed her like a cancer, angry and just as deadly. “All this time, I thought you never came to see me.”
“I actually did make it in. Once. Your mom and dad were down at the cafeteria and there was a new nurse on staff. It was her first day. She didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be in there.”
“Why don’t I remember that?”
“You were asleep. And heavily drugged. It felt wrong to wake you. I sat with you, held your hand for ten minutes or so. And as I went to leave my notes beside your bed, I saw a letter sitting beside you. Your handwriting. With my name scribbled on the front.” He waited, staring at her almost as though he was waiting for a moment of recognition. And as hard as Yvonne wracked her brain, she came up blank. “I don’t remember writing you any letter.”
His face dropped. “But you apologized for it. Weeks ago.” He reached over, grabbing the bottom letter and pulling it to the top.
“I apologized for the accident. For distracting you. For practically being the one who caused us to go through the windshield.”
“So … you don’t remember this letter? At all?”
She shook her head as she unfolded the note, recognizing her own handwriting immediately. It was a messier cursive than she usually had because of the accident. “God, I was so mad that you didn’t come to visit me—”
That’s when it hit her. No, it more than hit her. The memory crashed down on her like a thirteen story stone wall collapsing. “Oh no,” she whispered. “No, this wasn’t for you. It was just an exercise that my therapist made me do.”
She skimmed her words… those horrible words she’d written. I wonder if my life would have been better without you. I wish I had just died there, wrapped around that tree. Not because I don’t think I deserve to live or can survive like this. But because I want you to hurt. Hurt like I hurt. I never want to see you again.
It went on like that for another two pages. Hot tears dripped onto the paper trembling in her hands. “No, Steve. You were never supposed to see this.”
Bending forward, Steve planted his elbows on his knees, his gaze branding her. “What do you mean?”
“I was so angry. Every therapy session started with me staring out her window with crossed arms, not talking, and ended with me shouting about my horrible life, my bad luck. I wasn’t mad at you… at least not at first. My anger, this anger, toward you only surfaced when I thought you were avoiding me after the accident. When I thought you blamed me for your injuries. Hell, I blamed myself for it.”
He eyed her carefully, those blue eyes simmering, hot like the center of a flame. “So your therapist gave you homework?”
She nodded. “To purge the anger by getting it out, writing it down in a letter to you. She also had me write them to my parents.” It was a tactic she still used to this day when she was mad. She would formulate an angry email, but never hit ‘send’. “I just always assumed I threw them out or that one of the nurses did when they cleaned my room.”
“I thought it was meant for me to read. I thought you wanted me to see it and had planned to give it to me. That’s why I read it. I sat there reading it while holding your hand. And then, I left and didn’t come back. It said in there you hated me. Never wanted to see me again. I thought I was respecting your wishes by leaving and avoiding you.”
“Without asking me directly about it?” Daisy flinched in her lap as her voice got shrill.
“I know. Stupid,” he said a little too casually for her liking. “But I was only eighteen, and I was hurt, too. The last thing I wanted was to have to hear these exact words come from the girl I loved.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean them. This letter—these words—I didn’t mean any of it. I was just an idiot teenager who was angry. I completely forgot about this letter.”
There was a long, tense silence as they sat there in thought, until Steve broke it. “I want to be honest with you,” Steve said. “My panic attacks? They seem to be triggered by you.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out the other night.”
“And I have a problem with my prescription drugs. They’re really addictive, and in my first year of college, I was intensely hooked on them. I couldn’t function without my pills. That’s why I started running. I had to learn to self-medicate. It’s also when I got Molly as my service animal.”
“I didn’t know she was a service dog.”
“Yeah. I try not to make it too obvious. I mean, when I first got her, I had to take her everywhere. To classes, to the library, to football games. But it got better… I got better.”
“…until I entered the picture again?”
His hand fell to her knee, brushing against her bare skin in soft, reassuring strokes. “You’re not the only trigger.” But even he didn’t seem to believe his own words.
“Is this why you don’t ride your motorcycle anymore?” she asked.
He nodded.
What the hell was she supposed to do with all this information? It was late and a lot to process. “I wish I’d never written this stupid note. I’m so sorry it fell into your hands, Steve. I didn’t mean any of it.”
He dropped his forehead to hers and was that…? Did she hear him sniffle? “A
nd I’m sorry that it took me thirteen years to gain the courage to come ask you about it. I just—I figured it had my name on it, it was in your handwriting, and that you clearly meant it for me to see. I’m sorry that despite the second and third chances you’ve given me, I’ve failed you every time. I shouldn’t have run away from you when my panic attack started last weekend. I shouldn’t have walked out on you the next morning. And I promise that I won’t ever again. I’ll spend the rest of our lives proving that to you.”
She sat there numb, his explanation rolling over her. Those were just words. She needed action. She needed to see the change. Not only in Steve, but herself as well. She’d carried that guilt for thirteen years. It was going to take more than an evening to let it go. “All these years, I thought you blamed me. I thought you and Ronnie and Cam and your mom all hated me because I caused our wreck. You were behind the wheel. But I was the reason you were distracted. I thought every time you saw your scar, you blamed me for it.”
He shook his head, sadness creasing his eyes. “I think I did a little, at first after reading your letter. But that didn’t last long. Hell, it would have been easier to blame you, but I didn’t.”
What the hell was left to say? “I don’t really know where we go from here. I’m still problematic to your anxiety. And you still see me as some sort of porcelain doll. I can’t live a bubble-wrapped life like I did with my parents. Like I did with Jonah. I’ll go nuts.”
He pulled back, wiping a fallen tear from his cheek. His palm scraped across the day-old stubble growing in, blondish red in color. “And you shouldn’t have to. I don’t know what the answer is… all I know is that living without you isn’t it.”
It was too much. She finally had the explanation she had yearned for all these years. Finally had Steve here in front of her, offering to work on all those problems. But she felt like she was drowning, just barely able to keep herself above water. And if he walked out on her again, she didn’t know that she had the fight in her to come back up for air one more time. She jumped to her feet, her heart like a jackrabbit against her chest. “We have a big day tomorrow. We should both get some rest.”
“Yeah, I guess we should.” He stood up, his expression calm, lips tilted in a serene smile. The scar twitched along with his muscled jaw. “Besides, you still have nine more letters of mine to read.”
She watched him walk to the door, her eyes filling, but no tears fell as his figure became more blurry, shutting the door behind him. She didn’t want it to be too late. She wanted it to work, to prove to him how unbreakable she was. But she wasn’t sure that she could open her heart to him again. She didn’t know if she could handle another panic attack that sent him running far away from her. How many times could she take that before it left her a shell of a person? How many times could you let one person walk out of your life before you shut the door on them forever? No, it wasn’t the semantics of their relationship that hurt. It was knowing that sometimes two people just weren’t ever going to fit together. No matter how hard they tried.
‡
Chapter Thirty-Two
The sun rose way too goddamn early the next day, Steve thought as he delivered a jaw cracking yawn against the back of his hand. It was five a.m. and he’d already been up for an hour, helping Yvonne and the other volunteers set up. Registration for the race was to begin at six-thirty.
Eight volunteers buzzed around, opening tables, hanging signs, setting up water stands and mile markers… and by “volunteers”, he really meant friends. These people weren’t just colleagues or volunteers—they were family. They had six giant fenced in playpens donated by the local pet store for the adoptable dogs and another six crates for the cats they had up for adoption.
Ronnie was at his side, gripping the edge of a six-foot long table as they moved it to the edge of the park. “You’re telling me Yvonne organized this whole thing?”
“How is it possible that you’ve lived here for so long and haven’t been to a single one of Yvonne’s rescue events?”
She shrugged, rolling her eyes. “Solidarity, brother. You were avoiding her, so I avoided her.”
“And now that I’m not avoiding her?” he asked.
Ronnie sighed, looking around at the various animals. “We’ll see,” she said eyeing the cage of kittens Yvonne had saved a few weeks earlier.
“Oh, come on,” Steve said. “You know as well as I do that anyone who can spend a full day coaxing six kittens and a mama cat out from beneath a shed is not worth the energy of hating.”
“Are we all just supposed to forgive and forget those horrible things she wrote about you?”
Steve sighed. “If I can, then you sure as hell should be able to. Besides,” he grabbed a tablecloth, flipping it open and let it parachute down over the table. “We were teenagers. It wasn’t a letter so much as a journal entry. She was angry and it wasn’t—”
“–meant for you to see. Yeah, yeah, so you told me.”
“If you really still hated her, you wouldn’t be here volunteering,” he said, shooting her a wink.
“I’m here for you, you idiot. Not her.” She rolled her eyes, glancing as Lex carried several large to-go thermoses of coffee over to one of the tables already set up.
Steve sent her a grin. “I could really use a coffee,” he said.
She swallowed nervously, looking away. “I’ll go get us a couple from Elsa’s.”
“Lex has free coffee right there—”
“I know.” Uh-oh. “I needed to ask Lila something anyway.” And before he could ask any more questions, she turned, running away from him. Away from Lex, in the direction of the diner.
From the other side of the park, Yvonne’s authoritative voice cut through the early morning quiet. “No, no. We don’t want the dogs crated. We want them in the pens, able to play and interact with potential adopters.” Steve watched her carefully, chuckling at that awesomely commanding tone. Appreciating the muscled lines of her strong legs peeking out of her running shorts and the way the race tank top she wore draped over her curvy breasts.
She looked up from behind a playpen she was setting up, Ruckus barking and doing figure eights around her feet. His leash, held loosely in her hand, wrapped around her ankles and she teetered before nearly going head over feet into the grass.
Steve ran to her, but by the time he reached her side, she’d already caught her balance and he ended up looking like an overzealous hero wannabe. Well, it was better to be an overzealous hero than an asshole wallflower who lets the girl face plant.
“You all right there?”
She gave an exasperated sigh, sending a chastising look to Ruckus. “Yeah,” she blew out the word on an exhale. “I love this dog, but he is a handful.”
Steve smiled at that. “So, adopting him myself as a way of showing my love would not be the ultimate gesture?” he asked playfully.
She dropped her cheek to her shoulder, giving him a humor-filled look. “If the ultimate gesture’s goal is to have me never move in with you, then yes.”
The silence grew tense around them and she glanced down at the schedule that was pulled up on her phone. Her finger drifted to her mouth and she nibbled on her nail. “Well, I should, uh—”
“Why don’t I take Ruckus for a little while?” he asked. “Give you a break and let you run the event. I’ll even keep him while you run.”
“You’re not running?” She looked surprised as her gaze darted back to his.
“Nah. After we—after last weekend, I gave my spot in the race to Dawn. I figured you could probably use someone here at the finish line with all the adoptable animals, anyway.”
“I have volunteers for that,” she said.
He pointed to the badge hanging around his neck that said VOLUNTEER. “I know. I could even keep Gatsby and Daisy for you, as well. We’ll want Ruckus to be out here to get adopted, but Daisy and Gatsby could either hang with me or in the air conditioned offices,” he said, pointing across the street to his clinic.
Yvonne shook her head. “I left Daisy at home. I didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea and thinking she was adoptable. And Gatsby’s going to run with me.”
Unease slid through Steve like a gardener snake through soil. Sure, Gatsby had been doing really well and running with Yvonne for the past month or so. But those were shorter runs. Three, four miles tops. Six miles was a lot to add to that on a hot day.
Her shoulders tensed. “That’s okay, right? You said before that he was okay to run with me.”
Steve could feel that anxiety gripping his chest like a bony hand squeezing his lungs, but he forced a smile instead. He had to let go. Let the people he loved live their lives and not believe that everyone and everything around him might crumble just because something was out of his control. “Yeah, yeah. He should be fine. Just take it slow. Make sure he has lots of water.”
It was still for a moment as she stared down at Gatsby, laying in the grass a few feet away. “Are you sure?”
Steve took Ruckus’ leash from her, flashing her a smile. “You guys are gonna knock ’em dead.” Bending down, he gave Gatsby a quick pat to the head, taking an extra second to feel the base of his jaw where the dog’s lymph nodes had previously protruded. Nothing. No swelling, and he seemed to be happy and in good spirits. “Have a good run, Gatsby,” he whispered, then guided Ruckus back over to where he was setting up the swag stand full of race day T-shirts to purchase along with the Maple Grove Animal Rescue bumper stickers and buttons. It was still a little dark out, but the sun was peeking over the horizon, edging its way up. Across the street in his clinic’s parking lot, he saw Dawn getting out of her car. She was decked out in running gear, fully equipped with her phone strapped to her arm as she jogged up to him, giving him a quick hug hello.
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