Can't Get Over You (Fortune's Island, Book 2) (13 page)

Dark stirrings of need brewed inside her, and when his finger slid against her lips a second time, she opened her mouth to his touch, then tasted his finger. It was the same, oh God, it was all the same, but different, too, because she knew this wasn’t going to end in her bed.

“Sex isn’t everything,” she said suddenly, though the argument sounded weak to her ears.

“No, it isn’t. And that isn’t why I’m here.” He dropped his hand and stepped back.

She bit back a little mew of disappointment. She cleared her throat and pretended like she wasn’t a tiny bit hurt that he had moved away. “Then why are you here?”

“I’m not going to be a lobsterman,” he said.

That came completely out of left field. This was what Zach had come here to tell her? “Uh…okay. Good.”

“What I mean is, I’m not going to do what your dad did when he and your mom broke up. I’m not going to run up to Maine and fish for lobsters and leave you behind. My future includes you, Jillian Matheson, and I’m going to prove that to you.”

She remembered that story about her parents. About how close they had come to ending their relationship for good. The difference was her father had come back and fought for his relationship with her mother. Zach had been right here—right on this very island—for the last three months and hadn’t tried very hard to get her back, not until he saw her with someone else and finally realized that she’d meant it when she said it was over. He was too late, and she refused to let him back into her heart again. Yet, foolish hope kept her from saying that. From driving that final nail into the coffin of their relationship. “How can you prove something like that? You can’t force me to love you again.”

Zach didn’t say anything for a long, long time. She could feel his pain in the space between them. “Well, I never stopped loving you.”

She lifted her gaze to his, and her eyes began to water. She wanted to believe him, oh how she wanted to believe him, but how could she? All these months—weeks, days on end—he had done nothing. He’d let her slip out of his life like she never mattered.

“Zach. I can’t do this again. I can’t…” She shook her head. “We’ll just end up where we started, and I can’t go back there.”

Zach put out his hand. “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

“Now? Why?”

“You were out walking tonight, right? Let’s finish your walk.”

She thought of going upstairs to that empty apartment again. Of the hours that would stretch between here and when she fell asleep, alone in that king-sized bed. It was just a walk, nothing more. It didn’t mean she was getting back together with Zach. “Okay.”

Zach held her hand, not too tight, not too loose, just in that relaxed way of someone who had been with her for a long time. She’d always liked the way their hands fit together, as if they were made for each other.

They slipped into an easy rhythm as they walked, as if they’d never stopped going places together. Unlike her trip alone, this was nice, very nice. Comfortable. “So what were you doing out on the streets at almost two in the morning?” he asked.

“Proving something to myself.” She crossed the street with Zach, letting him set the course. The sound of the ocean grew closer, and the faraway bell clanged again in the breeze. “I was sick and tired of being afraid of the dark. Of being alone at night.”

“Because of what happened.”

She was surprised Zach had brought it up. That was twice in the course of one week that he had mentioned that night, which was as many times as they had talked about it in all the years they were dating. Zach talked to her the night it happened—the night he found her, dazed, scared, backpackless on the beach—and then a few days later after she’d made her police report. Then, as if by mutual agreement, they let the subject drop. Maybe she’d thought if she never talked about it, the whole incident would disappear from her memory. She’d resisted her parents’ efforts to get her to open up, their repeated offers of seeing a counselor, and just moved forward, avoiding the dark, both in real life and in her head.

“It was so many years ago, and I really need to just get past it and forget about it,” Jillian said now. “Fortune’s Island has a crime rate that’s almost a negative number. It was an isolated
incident, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. It was probably some tourist, anyway, and not someone who will ever be back here.”

If all that was so, then why did she still feel the specter of the robber over her shoulder?

“Yeah, yeah, probably a tourist.” Zach led her into the park that sat across from her apartment building. The slide stood like a tall sentry in the moonlight, with the swings flanking either side like soldiers. “If you ever found out who robbed you that night, what would you do?”

She dropped into one of the swings and toed off, sending it rocking with a creak of the metal chains. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. There’s got to be some sort of time limit on that kind of thing, right? And whoever that was got rid of my backpack pretty fast, so I doubt there’s any evidence.”

“True. But if you knew who it was…”

She thought for a moment, while she pushed the swing back and forth. “If I knew who it was, I’d probably report him to the police. There may be nothing anyone can do legally, but at least then he’d be on the police’s radar if something like that happened again. But I guess it would be hard for me to do that because…” She looked over at him. “Because I know how tough it was on you when your brother went to jail. I’ve seen that side of it, too, and I’d hate to put anyone through that.”

Zach was quiet for a while. “Yeah. Doing the right thing isn’t always as easy as it looks.”

“Either way, I would tell the cops.” She let out a breath. “No one else should get scared like that, and be so worried about walking alone at night, not on this island.”

Zach sighed. He lowered himself into the swing beside her, but just sat there. He hung his head and stared at the ground. “I guess I didn’t realize how scared it made you all these years.”

“I didn’t talk about it much. I didn’t want to ruin my image as the cool chick.” She laughed, as if it was no big deal, as if she hadn’t tried to make the subject go away because every time she thought about it, she was back there again, in the dark, scared, helpless.

“You were always the cool chick.” Zach raised his head and smiled at her. God, she loved his smile, the way it was just a little crooked, how it always made him seem a little vulnerable. “You were my first and only groupie. That automatically makes you cool.”

Jillian laughed. “I don’t think if I’m the only groupie that I technically qualify as one. There’s got to be a
group
to have a groupie. At least back then. Now you guys have a regular following, but when you started…”

“You and Duff’s mom were our only fans.” He chuckled. “Okay, so how about number one fan?”

“Now it sounds like something out a Stephen King novel.” She twisted in the swing, sending her foot on a semicircle path in the sandy earth below. “Like I might chain you to the bed and force you to sing for me.”

“I’d sing for you without being chained to the bed.”

That sentence sent her mind whirring down a whole other path. Damn. It had been a long time—too damned long—since she’d had sex with Zach. With anyone. And right now, she was thinking about nothing but having sex with Zach.

Then she remembered how much things had changed between them, how the Zach she fell in love with long ago had changed. Become a guy who put everything ahead of her. Who had gradually stopped talking to her about his music. Maybe that was why she had felt compelled to go to music college alone—because there she could be a part of the world she loved. Talk to people who loved it as much as she did.

“You used to do that,” she said softly. “Sing to me. All the time.”

She missed the sound of his voice. She heard him several times a week at The Love Shack, of course, but it was different when it was just Zach and her, and he sang a 70s ballad to her, or made up words to go along with whatever they were doing. Those little private concerts made her feel special.

Loved.

Then at some point, he’d stopped singing to her when he helped with the dishes, or held her in bed late at night. And she’d stopped feeling special and loved.

Zach reached out and grasped the chain for her swing, pivoting her around until they were facing each other. His eyes met hers, and the familiar want stirred inside her again.

He began to sing, but in that dark smoky voice of his that made even his version of the “You Are My Sunshine” children’s song sound sexy.

“Zach…this is silly.”

But he went on, singing about gray skies and love and never taking his sunshine away, with the crooked smile she loved playing on his lips.

His gaze met hers. Held. Her heart stuttered, her pulse raced. Their knees brushed as the swings drifted, and she swore she felt an electric current. She wanted to climb onto his lap, and sit in that swing and kiss him and pretend everything was okay. But then she thought of the last eight years, of how Zach had procrastinated and delayed and chosen his car and his music over her, time and time again.

She was done playing second fiddle to a Mustang and a Fender. “I can’t do this,” she said. She pushed off the swing and got to her feet.

“Jillian, wait.” He reached for her, but it was too late. His hand caught only air.

TWELVE

Zach finished practice early Friday morning, then begged off when the guys asked him to go to the beach for the day. After last night, he wasn’t much in the mood for anything, much less hanging around Fortune’s Island and possibly running into Jillian and that guy again. “Sorry. I promised my folks I’d eat dinner over on the mainland tonight. If I go over early, I miss some of the traffic.”

Ian scoffed. “Mommy calls and you’re blowing us off?”

“Dude,” Duff said, “it’s his mother. Let it go.”

Ian shook his head and fished his car keys out of his pocket. “Whatever. I’m going to the beach. Who’s in?”

The other guys filed out, climbing into Ian’s car. Zach started up his Mustang and headed in the opposite direction, toward the ferry. It was a short ride across the bay, then a quick cab ride down to his parents’ house. He could have taken the Mustang, but the fee to bring the car
across the water was twice what the cab would be, so most trips, he opted for the taxi. He’d be back before too late anyway, given how early his mother made dinner.

He was looking forward to his mother’s cooking, that was for sure. Seeing his dad, not so much. Zach would be lucky to escape the dinner without a lecture about his irresponsible life and his lack of ambition. To Zach, it seemed like Carl Gifford had put all his hopes and dreams into his two sons, and all either one had done was disappoint their father.

His parents had lived in Manomet since the day they got married. Zach would probably still be living there himself if he hadn’t met the guys in the band and then gotten the regular gig at The Love Shack. Once he’d escaped the mainland—and his father’s constant thin lips of disapproval—Zach wanted to stay far, far away. He did the family dinner thing a couple times a month, mostly because he didn’t want to let his mother down. He could sit in her kitchen and eat home-baked bread all day long. It was when his father came home that the mood shifted, and Zach got the itch to leave again.

He parked, bought his ticket, then boarded the gangplank and headed up the stairs to his favorite vantage point at the bow. None of the couple dozen chairs set on the front deck were filled. It was still early yet, the first trip of the day for the ferry, and that meant Zach pretty much had the boat to himself. Just the way he liked it. Quiet, peaceful, with a tranquil sea that seemed to stretch on forever. He stepped over the coiled ropes and slipped into place behind the stem.

“That always was your favorite view.”

Zach’s heart skipped a beat. He turned around, sure he’d find out he was hearing things, that the sweet voice he’d heard wasn’t hers. But no, there was Jillian, standing on the bow a few feet away. Her hair was up in one of those clip things, while the light wind played with a few loose strands. She had on dark shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt with tiny buttons running
down the front. There was a day when he would have undone those buttons, one after another, slow and easy, exposing her delicious skin like a present he’d been dying to unwrap. But not today, and maybe not ever again. She’d made that clear last night.

He’d been an idiot and come on too strong, too fast. It wasn’t like they could pick up where they’d left off. Even a fool knew that. The problem? Every time he saw Jillian, all he wanted was to go right back to her being in his arms, hearing her laugh, seeing her smile. Skip this rocky road and find the smooth path they’d once had.

Even with sunglasses covering her beautiful eyes, she looked incredible, and that made him ache a little. “Hey, Jillian,” he said.

Yeah, just play it cool. Like he wasn’t stunned to see her here and even more stunned that she was talking to him after last night.

“Are you going over to visit your parents?” she asked.

“Yeah. Couple times a month, like it or not.” He grinned, as if that was a joke, but Jillian knew his parents and knew how much he dreaded the visits.

“Maybe the visit will go well,” she said. “Please tell them I said hello.”

“I will.” His mother adored Jillian. His father had never said anything much one way or another. But those family dinners with Jillian by his side had been ten times more enjoyable than this one would be. He wished she was going with him. Wished she would slip into place beside him, so he could wrap his arms around her and let the wind buffet their joined bodies as the ferry made its way across the water. He nodded toward the mainland in the distance. “What are you doing on the ferry?”

“I…I had someplace to go.”

He shouldn’t be disappointed that she wouldn’t tell him what she was doing, but he was. There used to be a day when Jillian told him everything, but those days were gone. He realized he knew very little about what she was doing nowadays, except for the fact that she was dating some guy who took her to fancy restaurants.