Waiting For You, page 23
“Anyway, I think you’d be good for him. That you are good for him. You know, after…” Hannah waved her hand in a way Nora took to mean the thing that had happened that she didn’t want to talk about. “I was a real mess, and Nick thought it would be best for me to move. Honestly, Nick needed a change, too. But Zach moved with us.
“I didn’t think about it at the time, but I know he had friends, a life. He’d been a fireman for years, but he left it all behind and not for himself. I guess I’m just trying to say, he’s a good man. And he has more to offer than he thinks he does.”
Nora wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she only nodded. She did think he was a good man. And she did think he had a lot to offer. Whether he wanted to offer it was up to him.
In the days following taking Will to the ER, she’d told herself Zach had been there for Will. Because he was a trained medic and it was in his nature, or maybe because she and Zach were friends. Anything to stop herself from reading too much into things.
“You’d be lucky to have him—that’s all I’m saying.”
Nora stared straight ahead at the rack of satin and lace, breathing through the tightening in her chest, a squeeze on her heart. Because she was afraid, more and more every day, that she wanted him to offer it.
“Well, we…” She cleared her throat. “We don’t know each other that well, but I do know that. I know he’s a good man.”
Hannah didn’t laugh, but she saw the amusement in the other woman’s eyes. She also looked like she wanted to call a great big bullshit on the not knowing well.
“He knows you well enough to bring you to the McKinneys’.”
Nora swallowed. “He only brought me as a diversion.”
Now Hannah did laugh. “You two are perfect for each other.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
ZACH’S HEART RACED, HIS breath coming in pants along with Nora’s as he brushed his lips over the top lace edge of her bra—the only thing she was still wearing.
“I really like this,” he whispered, making her smile. “In case you didn’t notice.”
Nora lay breathless a moment before she could answer. “I noticed.” She’d gone with the red, but after seeing Zach’s reaction, she was seriously considering going back for the green as well. “Hannah helped me pick it out.”
Zach froze, lifted his head, and met her eyes. “Hannah, my sister?”
“Yes. Do you know another Hannah?”
He stared, wary. “No.”
“Well, Hannah and Abby and—”
“Stop.” Zach closed his eyes. “You’re ruining it, so please stop.”
She laughed. “Oh, come on. We were shopping together. Of course they helped me.”
“I’m serious.” He raised himself up to stare down at her.
“Would it make it worse if I told you in detail what your sister bought?”
He laced his fingers through hers and held them at either side of her head. “I’m warning you.”
“Okay, fine.”
He took her mouth in a long stomach-tumbling kiss before he rolled and pulled her over him. He drew the lightweight comforter up while the ceiling fan rotated on high above them.
“At the risk of sending you into a tailspin… I like your sister.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “She likes you, too.”
“She loves you a lot. And since you basically raised her, I’d say you did a great job.”
“It was all Nick.”
She lifted her head to look down at him. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“Well, I don’t believe it. We’re a product of all the people around us, don’t you think? Everyone in your life shapes you somehow when you’re young—leaves a mark, good or bad.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
“Hannah said something happened to her,” she said, treading carefully. She wouldn’t push him to talk about something he didn’t want to share. “She didn’t say what. I got the feeling it was bad.”
Zach was quiet so long she decided he was going to ignore it. That was fine. These were Hannah’s secrets, family secrets, and she wasn’t in the circle. But damn it, she wasn’t asking for secrets. She just wanted to know how it had affected him, like Hannah said. She wanted to know him.
She moved so she lay beside him, resting the side of her head in her palm. “You don’t have to tell me what happened—I’m not asking you to—but Hannah made it sound like it really impacted you.”
“She shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why? Because it didn’t? She said you moved here for her.”
He sighed. “I did, but…it wasn’t nearly enough.”
MOMENTS PASSED, AND NORA didn’t prod or push. As much as he didn’t want to tell her, she deserved to know. And he needed to tell her why she was wrong about him being a good father or at least try to explain—hell, maybe he needed to explain it to himself.
“I told you we lost our parents,” Zach said. “I didn’t say how angry I was, how cheated I felt. My dad had just started teaching me how to drive a stick shift in his jeep. Said he might even give it to Dallas and me to share—after we proved we wouldn’t strip the clutch.” He laughed softly at the memory. “After he died… I couldn’t even look at it.
“Luke was seventeen with one foot out the door. Nick took over being in charge of everything, which rubbed Luke the wrong way. Dallas had always been quiet, thoughtful, and content to sit still. He sat on the floor for damn near ten hours putting his Lego Death Star together—I didn’t last thirty minutes. Or he’d draw or read. So he was great with Hannah, happy to stay home on a Friday night. He’d sit beside her and her toys, a book in his lap, making her think he was playing house.
“Mostly, I tried not to think about it, tried not to feel it, and when I did, I made jokes to cover. I wanted to get my license, graduate, get out.”
“Kind of like me.”
“Yeah, but you had a good reason to leave. I had every reason to stay. They needed me, my brothers and Hannah, but God… I always felt so inept with Hannah. She was just this tiny little girl, and—”
“You were just a kid.”
“Yeah. Didn’t change how I felt,” he said, the guilt still fresh even after all these years. “Nick was only a few years older, and he took it on. But I didn’t want to play house and babysit and do laundry. I did it, I had to do it, but I didn’t want that responsibility, that—”
“Commitment?” she offered, raising an eyebrow.
“No. I didn’t.” He met her eyes when he said it but didn’t see any judgement or recrimination.
“I don’t think anyone would blame you for that, Zach. You were fifteen years old.”
Yeah. But he hadn’t been fifteen for a long time now. And still, he hadn’t wanted it. Until Nora touched his hand or smiled at him. Until he looked at Will and felt a longing, felt something was missing. But it was more than the guilt of a boy at fifteen. It was the oppressive weight he carried as a man. He needed to tell her that, too.
His hand drew into a fist at his thigh. He took a breath and let it out then told her what had happened to Hannah. The man who’d taken her, what was done to her. He left out the worst of it. No one needed to hear that. And he didn’t want to think it, let alone say it out loud.
“First she was taken, and we didn’t know where she was. Missing. People say that, you know? That someone is missing, but you can’t actually know the cruel and cutting reality of it until it happens. You look everywhere, and everywhere you look you don’t see them. And the not knowing. Then she was found, and for months we didn’t know if she’d ever recover.”
By the time he finished, he was sitting on the side of the bed, his back to Nora. But she was still there, her arms wrapped around him, her cheek against his bare back. “I still think, what could I have done? Why wasn’t I picking her up that day instead of Mia? Why did I always leave everything to Nick? Maybe if I’d stepped up, done the pickup, I would have been there five minutes early. Five minutes might have made all the difference.
“It was a nightmare when she was gone. It was a different kind of nightmare when she was back. I still worked, but I wasn’t at the station every night. And on the nights I wasn’t… I wished I was.” His voice dropped even lower with that admission. “I hated myself for it—still hate that about myself—but it’s the truth. There was nothing to do to lighten things, and that was my part, you know?”
“Yeah.” Nora kissed his back, and when he wouldn’t let her pull him back to the bed, she came around and sat in his lap. And when she slid her fingers through his hair, guided his head into her breast, he let her.
“She loves you. She came through it, and you were there. Whether you wanted to be or not, you were there. You didn’t have to move here when Nick and Hannah did, probably would have been easier not to. But you didn’t choose the easy. Even if you didn’t want to do it, you did what was hard.”
He breathed her in, took the comfort she offered with her touch and her words. And for the first time he felt the pressure ease.
And when she pulled him down beside her, he let her.
“I couldn’t prevent it,” he said after a moment. “I couldn’t fix it.”
“Do you think you should have been able to?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe it does,” Nora said. She reached her arm across his chest, laid her cheek right over his heart. “You can’t always fix things, but you can try. You can be there. I know how it feels when someone isn’t, but you were. For your sister and you were there for me when Will was sick.”
“You didn’t need—”
“You were there,” she said again and this time he didn’t argue.
* * *
TWO NIGHTS LATER ZACH lay on his bunk in the station house. He didn’t ever remember being lonely here, not in all his years as a fire fighter. Not in the house, with the guys, doing what he knew how to do. He felt different tonight. Maybe just remembering his last night with Nora and peeling that silk and lace from her body. Not something he’d soon forget. And what he’d told her. It hadn’t been easy, but he was pretty sure he felt lighter for it.
He looked over at his locker, not completely blank now as Will had given him a painting. A green painted handprint turned into a tree with a little smear at the pinkie. Will had actually handed it to him himself. He’d tried to decline, thinking Nora might want to keep it, but for such little guy, Will had a stubborn streak. Nora had agreed he should have it. Looking at it pulled at his heart and pulled hard.
He grabbed his phone beside him and dialed her up. Habit, he thought. And not necessarily a bad one.
“Hey,” she said, answering.
“Hey. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No. I’m just reading.”
Zach settled back against his pillow. “In bed?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm. I wonder, what do you wear when you’re reading in bed?”
She laughed, soft and sexy. “I’m not telling you that.”
He sighed, expecting no different. “That’s disappointing.”
“You’ll just have to wait until you’re off and you can see for yourself.”
“Sounds like a plan.” A good plan, lying in bed with her, both of them reading before turning out the light and not reading.
“How was your day?”
“Good. Pretty quiet. Yours?”
“Good,” she said. “But, oh! Not quiet. You won’t believe what I saw today.”
“I probably will, but tell me anyway.” It’d become one of their favorite things, trying to one up each other in their fields.
“Okay, saw and learned. Did you know a penis could get broken?”
“Umm…” He instinctively covered his own with his hand. “I guess I did, in theory. That’s why men are so protective.”
“Well, did you know it could get broken having sex? Yes! This man came in screaming, ‘she broke it, she broke it.’ And the woman is running beside the gurney with the EMTs because evidently a man can’t walk with a broken one and they’d called 911.”
Zach laughed even as he cringed.
“So he’s yelling at her, and she’s yelling right back. We’re all running around, trying not to laugh and then, between vomiting, he’s telling her to get out, that it’s over.”
“Well, that’ll do it.”
“I was dying. I mean I was sympathetic, he was obviously in pain.”
“Obviously.”
“But, still. It was funny.”
He kept her on the phone a while longer with the excuse that he’d never be able to go to sleep with that image in his head. When they hung up nearly an hour later, he was still smiling.
He wondered what it was about her that made him not quite so afraid to take the giant leap into forever. Maybe it was the lack of pressure from her. The lack of any expectations at all. She’d come through a difficult childhood yet was a happy, independent person, an incredible mother. He admired all that, but that wasn’t it.
He might say it was her eyes, the way they just grabbed him by the throat. But even that wasn’t it.
He knew what it was. There was no doubt about falling. He was in love with her. With both of them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
NORA FLOATED IN THAT warm weightless space between sleep and wake. Zach lay beside her, her leg wedged between his, his heavy arm over her waist, holding her. When she felt him come awake, she stretched, put her lips to his throat. Inhaling his musky scent she sighed, stretched again, pressing herself into him. She could get used to this, and the thought was scary and exciting and amazing.
She groaned and half laughed at the sudden sounds of Will waking in his crib. They both lay still for several moments, listening to the baby on the monitor.
“He has a lot to say in the morning,” Zach said into her neck, his voice scratchy with sleep.
“He does.”
“I have a lot to say, too.” He rolled her under him, rocked his erection between her legs.
She sighed then laughed. “I don’t think that’s you talking. I think that’s something else.”
“You didn’t know that part could talk?” He nibbled his way behind her ear and down her throat. “That part in particular wants to talk to you.”
Will screeched, then there was a bump, and he began to cry. “I’ll get him,” she said, laughing as Zach groaned.
“No. I’ll get him. You get the coffee.”
“Deal.” Throwing on her favorite, saggy pajama shorts, Nora went out and hit the Keurig power button. She waited for it to heat up and punched in some toast.
The ready button flashed at the same time her cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen, noting that it wasn’t the hospital. And a split second before answering, it hit that it was an unknown number. “Hello,” she said, none too friendly, expecting some sort of solicitation.
“Hi. Is this Nora Sellers?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“My name’s Cathy. I’m a friend of your father.”
“Oh.” Friend could mean anything, and a million thoughts went through her mind. Her dad had stolen from her, and Cathy had tracked down the daughter to pay. Or her dad had shared her number, thinking she’d give them both money. Or maybe he was in jail.
“I know I should have called sooner, but things have been busy and…”
“What is it you want?” Nora asked sharply. She wouldn’t get sucked into whatever this was.
“He’s dying,” the voice on the other end said. “Liver failure and other things. But he wanted me to call. Like I said, I should have done it sooner.”
Nora went still. “Where?”
“He’s here. At my place. We got hospice coming in, but they don’t think it’ll be long.”
“I mean where exactly?” She pulled open a drawer for pen and paper.
“NORA? HEY. YOU GOTTA come see see this. You won’t believe what the little daredevil is up to. Nora?”
“What?” She didn’t turn from the window.
“What’s wrong? Who was on the phone?” Zach crossed the room until he stood behind her. “Was it work?”
“No.” Not work. It was my dad, she thought. But it wasn’t her dad. It was a stranger telling her about her dad.
“Who was it?”
“A woman,” she said, staring out the window. “Not one I’ve met or if I have, I don’t remember. Someone who knows my dad,” she said, suddenly a little girl with a dark, sticky feeling at a strange woman talking to her, talking about her dad. The same one she’d had every time he’d pulled up at a new house and introduced her with an overly bright smile that gave away his nerves and did nothing to calm hers.
Zach laid warm hands on her shoulders. “Nora?”
“He’s dying,” she said unable to look at Zach. How was she supposed to feel? How the hell was she supposed to feel knowing she was about to lose something she’d never had?
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“She—this woman, I guess someone he lives with—she thinks I should come. That it won’t be long.”
“Okay. Tell me what you need me to do. I can keep Will. I can drive you. Or do you need me to call the airline?”
She told him the name of the town and looked down at her phone still in her hand. “I can look it up. It’s not that far, is it?”
“No. About three-and-a-half hours, maybe four.” He took the phone from her cold hands and gently laid it on the counter in front of them. “I’ll look it up. When do you want to go?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling exposed.
“Nora.”
When he gently turned her, she stared at his chest, wanting and not wanting him to wrap his arms around her. Maybe she needed to be held, but she felt so raw, so stripped away, she knew it would hurt.
“Just tell me what you want me to do. I’ll drive you. I’ll stay with Will. Both. Whatever you want.”
“I think I should take Will. I want to take Will.” Because she wanted her father to meet her son? Or maybe she just didn’t want to be away from him.
