You're Still The One Page 8

  “I was just thinking that I wanted to backtrack.”

  “You never backtrack.”

  “I can think of a lot of backtracking I’d like to do.”

  “Then think of it while you’re pedaling north.”

  “Will you bike with me?”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Can I bike with you?”

  “No, same thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” I struggled to find the right words, finally settling on honesty. “I don’t want to get wrapped up in you again because then I can’t think like a normal person.” And yet . . . I so wanted to do that. I trusted Jace enough to lose my mind around him, I did.

  “I cannot understand why.”

  I did not miss the sharp edge in his tone. Jace was no sap.

  “If you’ll let this work between us, Allie, it could have a different ending than it did before.”

  “I’ll be leaving soon, so what’s the point? I’m going back to the city. I was invited for interviews in Boston, Seattle, and Houston.”

  He was quiet for a second. “And when you get a job, that’s it. You’ll be gone?”

  “Yes.” My voice was soft. I ignored the way that traitorous heart of mine screamed in protest.

  “Why? Why would you leave so soon?”

  “Why? Because I need a job. And why would I stay?”

  He shook his head a little and I knew I’d hurt him.

  “Stay for us. Or stay because we’re living in the country with a stream running through our properties and apple orchards. Stay because you have a home here and a bunch of animals who like you. Stay because you can find a job here.”

  “The jobs I applied for start immediately.” And if I stay here longer, it will kill me to leave you, Jace. You deserve more. More than me. I kept pedaling. “I am not used to not working. I need to work. It fills up the time.”

  “Other things can fill up time, too.”

  “Not in my life, Jace. Working is part of me. I’ve worked since I was sixteen, and from that moment on, the independence it brought me, the financial security . . . I can’t not work.”

  “I’ll pay you to stay here.”

  I laughed; he didn’t. He was serious, I knew that. Jace was the most generous, protective person I knew. Yellowstone showed me that. “No. I would never accept money from you.”

  His jaw tightened and I could tell my quick rejection hurt him.

  “You’re running from here as fast as you can. I can see that. You like to run, don’t you? When things get to a place that you don’t like, you shut down and you cut out.”

  “That’s not true.” I bit my lip to keep a flood of emotions under control. “Maybe I am running. Okay, I think you’re right. I am running.”

  “Why? Why are you running again?”

  “My dad’s house is a reminder of him. We didn’t get along, so I need to move. I hardly know anything about horses or how to take care of an apple orchard or all that property.” I stopped my bike because my eyes were filling up behind my sunglasses and I couldn’t see. We were up on a hill, the land stretching out in front of us like a quilt, sections here and there for fields, farms, orchards, vineyards. “You’re here and you’re kind and fun and interesting, like before, and I feel us falling into us again, and I can’t have that.”

  He stopped next to me. “For God’s sakes,” he swore, his voice raised. “Why do you keep pulling away? Why won’t you give us a chance?”

  I could only give him a partial truth. “I can’t do relationships, Jace. I can’t get that close to anyone. I don’t trust men; I hardly trust women. You were the first person, outside of my mother, that I trusted.”

  “Doesn’t that say something about us, then?” He pulled off his sunglasses with a little too much force. “About the quality of our relationship, our future?”

  “We don’t have a future. You are looking for a wife, we both know that. I don’t want to be a wife, and I’m not presuming that you would want me to be your wife, but I don’t want to . . . to . . .” I waved my hand in the air.

  “You don’t even want to try to be together? Get naked in my hot tub or wake up every Saturday morning and have French toast? Bike? Travel?” He moved his bike so our legs were touching. “Work on puzzles? Hike? Study the stars on our backs? Talk?”

  “Right. No. I don’t want to do that.” Oh yes, I do!

  “No commitment then?”

  “No.” Yes!

  “Why are you so averse to commitment?” He put his palms up, those muscles flexing in his arms. “What could possibly be wrong with being committed to someone you love for the rest of your life? What could be better than that?”

  Nothing. Nothing would be better. “I’m better on my own. I didn’t have a good example of a marriage growing up.” That was minimizing it. “You almost have it all, Jace. Everything you wanted. You have the house in the country, you’re a doctor—”

  “I don’t have it all. I have the job, I have the house in the country, but I don’t have a wife or kids.”

  “Then go find her, Jace. It’s not going to be me. And I don’t want children.” That wasn’t true. I choked back tears. I did want kids. I wanted kids so much I ached. But that wasn’t going to happen because of a tragedy on an inky-black night.

  His face registered shock. “Why? Why would you not want children? We talked about kids before. I thought you wanted four, at least. Remember we joked and said we were going to name our kids Grizzly Bear, Waterfall, Fishing Stream, and Geyser because of Yellowstone.” He shook his head. “What changed your mind?”

  “Life did.”

  “What do you mean by that? You would make a great mother, Allie. An outstanding mother.”

  I didn’t know about that. “I have no desire to get involved with you, to get close to you, only to walk away. What’s the point? We’d both get hurt.”

  “Maybe you won’t walk away.”

  “I will walk away, Jace. I can assure you of that.” I would walk. I would save him from me, as utterly and ridiculously melodramatic as that sounded. I didn’t want to hurt him by telling him the truth and I didn’t want him to feel obligated toward me in any way. But he would not want a life with me once he knew. I knew him, and I knew what he most wanted.

  He studied me for a minute and I could tell that his fast, capable brain was working at a zillion miles an hour. Jace was a keenly intelligent, perceptive man, who listened carefully. I tried not to think about how much I loved that brain.

  All around us the country danced, birds chirped, a cow mooed, wind puffed up the tree leaves, and the country quilt in front of us shifted square to square in a plethora of colors.

  “Around the corner is the most amazing view of Mt. Hood,” Jace said finally, his voice kind. “Let’s go look at it. Then we can bike back and I’ll take you to lunch at Abigail’s Café. It used to be a house of ill repute, then a saloon, then a gas station. Now it’s a café, and they serve soup and sandwiches. I know you love soup.”

  “Did you not hear me, Jace?”

  He leaned in close, inches from my face. I wanted to cup his head with my hands and kiss him until we both dropped into that familiar, out-of-control passion. He smelled like pine and the woods and man and musk. I liked his razor stubble and knew how it would feel. My gaze dropped to those lips that were truly creative in terms of turning me to mush, to say nothing of what those talented hands had done to me each and every time we’d gotten naked.

  “I heard every word. So, here are my words to you. I don’t want you to go to Boston. I don’t want you to go to Houston or to Seattle. I want you to stay here. I want you to reach up and kiss me.”

  “I’m not going to reach up and kiss you.” Oh, but I wanted to.

  He studied me, and I raised my eyebrows in challenge. He was a strong-willed man, and I was a strong-willed woman. Those characteristics sometimes clashed.

  “Okay, Allie. We have no choice but to base our relationship on our m
utual lust and attraction and go from there.”

  “You don’t get it. There’s no going from there.” But that sounded delicious.

  He grinned. “Then I’ll take the mutual lust and attraction part.”

  He leaned in, looped an arm around my waist, tilted his head so our bike helmets didn’t smack together, and kissed me. I automatically closed my eyes and savored that kiss. He pulled away after long, yummy seconds, but only by an inch.

  “Kiss me, Allie,” he murmured. “One kiss.”

  I tingled up one side and down the other. My body heat notched up a hundred degrees. I could not resist. I put my hand on his shoulder, drawing him closer, and he kissed me again, and again, and again, both arms around me, holding me as close as he could with our bikes between us.

  When I was good and steamed up, almost panting, totally not thinking anymore, and sunk way down deep in that erotic passion he engendered in me, he pulled away, smiled at me in a friendly and sexy way, and climbed on his bike.

  He put out his hand to pull me along.

  I swore again that he was trouble in the first degree and that this would lead to nothing but searing heartache for me, and him, but I put out my hand, he grabbed it, I climbed on my bike, and we pedaled up the hill to see a stunning view of Mt. Hood. We held hands halfway up.

  At the top, we stood and stared at each other. He smiled at me again, our legs touching, and I could feel his happiness: his happiness that we were together, that I’d kissed him, that I’d agreed to bike with him.

  I felt him, as I always had. I felt his friendship and kindness, his deep attraction to me, his sadness that I kept scrambling away from him.

  In my head—not out loud—at the top of that hill, the serenity of the sweet countryside all around, I heard the words I’d said thousands of times before. I love you, Jace. I love you, I love you. I will always love you.

  He kissed me again, hugging me close, and I kissed him back, sinking right on in.

  Chapter Ten

  I had an interview in Boston. I went from there to an interview in Houston, then up to Seattle.

  I practiced my confident act. Breezy and smart, ultrastylish and competent. I could manage people, keep up with fashion trends, work with designers and other creative types, improve sales. My feet hurt in their four-inch heels.

  Each interview made me feel sicker, as if I were wandering around lost, entering enemy territory where everyone was living a life that I didn’t want to live anymore, complete with spears, dead animals around their necks, and warring factions. I watched people scurrying about, stressed to the ceiling, faces tight. I saw the piled-up folders, the fashion photos, the couture clothes, the intense conversations among Type A people who thought a lot of themselves. I could feel the competition there. I didn’t think I could do it anymore.

  The whole time, I imagined Jace beside me, smiling gently, in every interview. I saw him on his bike. I saw him relaxed at his home, on the deck. I saw him bandaging my ankle and my leg. I felt him kissing me, holding me.

  I asked for an outlandish sum of money for my salary, to which the executives I was talking with nodded their acquiescence and told me about the other benefits I would receive.

  I teetered out of each interview on my sweet designer heels, feeling skittish. Unhappy. Filled with dread.

  My fancy clothes were suddenly so uncomfortable.

  I had been living a whirling, hard-charging, fashion-centered life for years.

  I no longer wanted to do that. It was nothing to me.

  What did I want to do?

  What appealed?

  What did I like to do?

  I started doing math problems in my head. How cheap could I live until I could figure this out? The house was free, there were taxes, though . . .

  My time in poverty in the trailer park told me that I could not use much of my savings or I’d start to feel the three S’s: sick, scared, and sliding. As in sliding back into being poor.

  But it was abundantly apparent that I needed to do something different with my life, workwise.

  What could I do . . .

  I wondered what the letter I’d sent was doing in my former company.

  She would have hit the roof, stayed on the roof, and thrown her designer heels at everyone while cursing me.

  The farther I got away from her, the better I felt.

  I laughed.

  When I was in Seattle for my interview, Jace called me. I was strolling through Pike Place Market, which overlooks the waterfront in Seattle, surrounded by wildflower bouquets, spices, fresh vegetables of all colors, and fish being thrown by fish sellers. I had bought a six-foot-long woven tapestry of red poppies for the house; not that I was staying in Schollton.

  “Hey, Allie.”

  “Hi, Jace.” I ducked into a quieter corner.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “How were the interviews?”

  “My feet hurt.”

  He laughed. “If you were wearing boots and walking through your apple orchard, your feet wouldn’t hurt.”

  “That’s true.”

  “How about coming with me to the barn dance?”

  “I’m not going to the barn dance.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t dance.”

  “Yes, you do. We danced in Yellowstone all the time. By the lake, in that field, camping at night with friends . . . near the elk that one time, after we got past that black bear . . .”

  “That was different.”

  “How so?”

  “It just was. Let’s say there was magic in the lake or in the waterfalls or something.”

  “Huh. Well, there’s magic here in the apple orchards.”

  “Haven’t seen it.”

  “You will. We’ll dance at the barn dance and you’ll know those apples have something special in them.”

  “Apples are for apple pies, not dancing.”

  “Bake us an apple pie and then we’ll go dancing in a barn. If you moved away, you would miss next year’s barn dance and that would be bad. Plus, I would miss you.”

  “You would?” I loved Jace’s voice. The deepness of it, the totally masculine tone.

  “Yes. I’ve always missed you. Come home, Allie. Please?”

  “I can’t.” I watched another fish go flying through the air. “I can’t.”

  My heart was cracking like a melon split in two by a hatchet. Ten feet away from me a man with a violin started playing a poignant love song, and I teared up.

  “Well, if you can’t come home for me, come home for Margaret and Bob, Spot the Cat and Marvin, Spunky Joy and Leroy. They told me yesterday, when I was visiting and feeding them, that they missed you. What about Mr. Jezebel Rooster? What would he do without you? He so enjoys seeing you first thing in the morning. He’s lonely. He’s lost without you. He’ll never be happy without you.”

  I wiped my tears. “I don’t want Mr. Jezebel to be unhappy and lonely.”

  “Neither do I, Allie,” Jace said softly. “I don’t want that at all.”

  When I hung up the phone I realized that Jace was still pursuing me, even though I told him I didn’t want kids. I assumed he assumed I would change my mind. The tears kept falling.

  I left my dad’s dark, decrepit trailer when I was sixteen. Almost panting with fear, I hastily packed a bag of clothes and everything I had brought with me from Montana that had been my mother’s.

  I recognized, somewhere in that firestorm of turmoil, in the hail of verbal attacks and neglect from my dad, that if I didn’t leave, I would permanently succumb to my pervasive depression and probably self-destruct.

  I had almost no will to live. I missed my loving, kind mother, and my grief had only deepened for her until it was a rock in my soul. I missed the mountains of Montana, and Flathead Lake, and our blue house. I missed feeling safe, feeling loved. My dad told me I was no one—a poor and ugly kid with odd gold eyes—and I believed it.

  There was one tiny an
d shiny spark, however, down deep in my heart, that hoped things would be better, that believed things could be better, and it pushed me out the door. I am sure that spark was my mother’s love. I remembered how often she had told me that she loved me, that I was a lovely person and showed my “Montana style” with flair and fashion.

  My dad worked factory-type jobs until he was fired. Most nights he came home drunk, or he would come home and start slugging it down. Until I was old enough to get a job, I did anything I could to avoid going home after school. I joined sports and arts programs and helped teachers. One of my teachers actually had a sewing machine in her room, and I spent a lot of time making my used clothing look individualistic and modern, with lace, silk, beads, even leather, like my mother taught me. I was desperate for cool clothes so people wouldn’t know the truth. Kids actually called me “Model Allie,” and thought I was a trendsetter because of my outfits. They had no idea the dire straits I lived in—my clothes kept that hidden from them.

  I would leave if he was home, pretending I was going to do homework at someone’s house. In reality, I would go hide outside somewhere, usually in the orchard, but I would also sometimes bike to a forest near our home and hike around, sit on a rock and fall apart, watch the leaves change color, or follow a squirrel. It’s where my love of nature started.

  Nature didn’t judge, it didn’t hit, it didn’t scream and intimidate, it didn’t make me feel bad about myself. Nature was always changing, comforting, soothing. There was originality and beauty in every leaf, flower, and tree. Nature was a friend who gave back without words. I lived half of my childhood in nature.

  But I couldn’t avoid my dad all the time.

  “Don’t wear that T-shirt. You look like a whore . . . You better be home when I get home, Allie . . . If I find you with a boy, I’m coming after you and I’m bringing my gun. I’m not raising no slut . . . You got all A’s on your report card? Must be an easy school . . . What’s wrong with that mud-brown hair of yours? Don’t you brush it? . . . Where did you get those clothes? Think you’re a model or something? Your mom was like that, too, always trying to dress higher than she was, always looking for better. She wanted a rich man. She never thought I was good enough. I know she cheated on me . . . then she took off, damn her . . .”