Fated Hearts (17 page)

Henley was laughing when they entered the hotel. Something was different. It looked much like it had when they’d left, but she had changed. She was more content with who she was, instead of focusing on who she ought to be. Carter rested his hand on the small of her back as they crossed the lobby. She could feel the heat of his palm through her dress. It wasn’t the first time he’d touched her with casual intimacy. It wasn’t the only time she’d found the sensation erotic. But it was different, because she was.

“Thank you, Carter, for today.” The elevator doors snicked shut. Henley pushed the button for her floor.

“Tomorrow’s your turn.”

Carter didn’t reach for the control panel. He kept his hand on her back. His fingers moved; the jersey shifted, tickling her. Goosebumps peppered her skin. Anticipation quickened her heart.
Was he on her floor? What if he wasn’t?

He’d kissed her a few times now; she’d kissed him on the dock outside his house. She knew his attraction, had experienced his desire, and was equally stymied and excited by her reaction to both. She wanted him—she couldn’t deny it. But was she ready to take what she wanted?

All too soon the elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. Carter’s hand fell away, but he stepped out onto the third floor beside her. Henley wasn’t sure what would happen, but she knew she wanted to spend the night with him. When she reached the door marked 310, keycard already in her palm, she turned to face Carter and lifted her face expectantly.

“Good night, Doc.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, increasing the void between their bodies.

“Oh, yeah.” She spun around, not wanting him to see her disappointment and embarrassment, and unlocked the door. “Good night.”

Henley rushed into the room, caught the door before it slammed shut, and leaned back against it. Doubts crowded her. Carter had changed his mind. About her.

“You were quiet on the flight.” Carter glanced at what he could see of Henley’s profile and tried to gauge the mood behind her preoccupation. Traffic was usually light on a Sunday afternoon, but highway construction zones required his attention. He remembered the same road crews doing the same work more than two years ago. No matter how much had changed, how much he changed, some things were dependable.

“Thinking.” She offered him a polite grin that was more grimace than an expression of happiness and turned her face more fully toward the window. Guess that was a dismissal, as the Delaware River and what she could see of New Jersey from I-95 wasn’t an interesting view. If she looked left she could see Philadelphia’s Center City skyline. It never failed to impress him. But in order for her to do that, she’d have to face him.

“About your family?”

“Let it go, Carter.”

When she’d met him in the lobby, she’d resembled the woman who had first arrived in the Cove, sans a bat. But when he asked, she’d said her brunch with Rissa had gone well. Was Henley obsessing over the wedding, silently licking the wounds her family had inflicted, and she was too stubborn to share with him? He wasn’t having it.

“No. I don’t think I will. I’d appreciate it if you told me what changed between saying good night and good morning.”

“Why didn’t you kiss me?” Had the radio been on, he would have missed the quiet inquiry. As it was, he thought surely he had misheard.

“Excuse me?”

“I thought we had a good time. You walked me to my door. You simply said good night and left. Why didn’t you kiss me?”

“If you wanted one, Henley, you could’ve kissed me.”

“That’s not an answer.” He caught movement in his peripheral vision and glanced right. She’d rested her forehead against the glass. Her eyes were closed. The muscles in her face and shoulders were tight, and a blush rode her cheeks. He bit back a curse and forced his attention forward. She didn’t want him looking at her. “Did my parents change the way you see me? Or was it what my sister said?”

“Jesus Christ, no.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I wanted to kiss you. I’d been thinking about it all damn evening, starting the moment you stepped out of the elevator. You pack a punch when you’re not dressing yourself down. The dress you wore knocked every one of my erogenous zones into overdrive.

“I didn’t kiss you good night because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop. I went with you to lend emotional support, not to press a sexual advantage.”

“Oh.”

Carter glanced over to where her hands rested on her thighs. Her fingers were restless again. How would they feel on him? He wanted to know. “You could’ve kissed me,” he repeated.

“I could have, yes. I should have. I expected you would, but when you didn’t, I thought … Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, does it?”

“I would say it does.” He passed the edge of the construction. The road widened, allowing the traffic to spread out and Carter to speed up. He put his hand over hers, trapping it against her thigh, and tried not to think about what rested at the juncture near his fingertips.

“I thought you’d changed your mind about me. Because of my family.”

“You need to have more faith in me and in yourself. Why did your sister say those things? There was more to that than just a bad night at the country club. She essentially called you a plague of insanity. And what was that warning about?”

“We weren’t always like that, Michelle and I. We’re four years apart in age, and we competed, which I thought was natural. My parents encouraged it. But it wasn’t until I started college and she was still in high school that our relationship became adversarial. She told me once that I would never know how debasing it was to always be second best. It got worse as we grew older. When things between me and my parents went south, she flourished as the ‘good’ seed. After I hit the road, and she had our parents’ singular attention … well, that was the death knell.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain the comments she made last night.” He wished he could feel her emotions as she could his. All he felt was a tingle, a pull from deep within that yearned toward her. Hopefully, she sensed his sincerity and concern—as well as the lust for her that simmered within him.

“It’s a long story and not a happy one.”

“We have about twenty minutes,” he encouraged her. She weaved her fingers with his. He imagined her tapping into him for courage and hoped, if she was, he didn’t disappoint.

“I went to Ohio State for college. It was intimidating. I wasn’t prepared for it. The atmosphere on campus was nothing like my sheltered childhood. I met a boy; I thought he was a man and I was a woman, but we were still children. Anyway, he was far from home, had grown up in poverty, and was on scholarship. He was more culture-shocked than I. We clung to each other and fell naïvely in love. My family didn’t approve. It caused a terrible rift when, sophomore year, I moved out of the dorm and into a rattrap apartment with Jacob. They threatened to disown me, revoke funding for my education, whatever they thought would get me back on program.”

“I don’t think that would work with any kid of a certain age.”

“It didn’t. I didn’t recognize, at the time, it was a subtle rebellion. But it was. And without my family to chart a course for me, Jacob became my entire world. I based every decision on him and the future we planned. He majored in economics and minored in law, and when he graduated, he was going to make his hometown a better place to live. He grew up in a terribly poor community, one where there weren’t many opportunities for young people. He said everyone’s hopes for a better future depended upon him.

“I was going to go with him. Use my literature degree to teach. But then Jacob became mercurial. He’d be hostile and erratic, shattering a glass against the wall, screaming obscenities at me. The next moment he’d be loving and fun, suggesting we toss off studying and go dancing at the club or take a picnic to the square on campus. Before you could say boo, he’d be riddled with paranoia. He accused me of conspiring to kill his people. Once he thought I was part of a conspiracy to destroy him. Said that I had seduced him in order to sabotage his education. That came when I tried to convince him to eat and sleep after he’d spent three days preparing a term paper without stopping for more than an hour’s rest and chewing the occasional energy bar in lieu of meals. But he never submitted the paper. When the professor questioned him, he’d become unglued, suggesting the professor was in on it. And sleeping with me. I didn’t understand what happened to the bright, beautiful boy I’d fallen in love with.”

“Henley, he was sick. And you were just a kid. How could you know?”

“I knew it wasn’t drugs. We had a finite amount of money, and I could account for both of our spending. I did beg him to seek help at the school’s med clinic. But he kept putting it off or screaming at me that he’d be okay if I’d just leave him alone. Then, miraculously, things went back to normal. For months, it was good, until finals, when he became agitated and unpredictable again. I realized the last time it happened was around midterms. I told myself he was suffering from academic stress. That was all and that it would pass. It had before.”

She quieted, apparently lost in another time and place. Carter let her have the silence, knowing how often he had similarly fallen into the nightmare of Justin’s death. Being pushed and prodded by the most well-meaning loved ones while navigating the tangle of your past didn’t help. It hurt. He squeezed her hand and let go to reclaim the wheel. He sensed her coming back to him when her hand caressed his shoulder.

“It didn’t pass, did it?”

“I walked into our apartment one evening after a late class. He was tearing the place apart. I admit I yelled for him to stop, didn’t realize I was in danger. He’d never been violent, not at his most erratic. I don’t remember what happened after the first blow. What I do remember was how he looked when he rushed me—nothing like my Jacob. For years, that was all I saw when I thought of him, or when I had nightmares, the monster that had become Jacob. I woke up in one of Cleveland’s top hospitals with no recollection of how I got there.”

“Your coma.”

“My coma. I’d been unconscious for nearly three months. Neighbors had called the police. I didn’t have a pulse when the paramedics arrived; Jacob had caved my head in. They weren’t expecting to revive me, but they tried and they did. I lived. I survived the beating and all the surgeries that came after. And I woke up with a little something extra.”

“Your ability to feel the emotions of people with whom you have physical contact.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She shifted in her seat. Her hand dropped. “The responding paramedics had to sedate Jacob. He was arrested and charged from the psychiatric wing of the hospital. When he was stable, he was turned over to a local institution for evaluation and treatment. He had suffered a psychotic break. Was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The doctors found a drug cocktail that balanced his mind, and being an accomplished student with no criminal history, not even a parking ticket, he was released on his own recognizance pending trial. Instead of returning to our apartment or coming to see me in the hospital, he went home.

“He committed suicide after killing his high-school sweetheart—some woman he’d already pledged to marry and who I never knew existed because before he got sick he was an excellent liar. This happened weeks before I regained consciousness.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all that you suffered. Your family?”

“They couldn’t understand my grief or why I was more hurt by his betrayal than anything else. But worse, they couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t abort the pregnancy.”

Carter’s shock snapped his head to the right, and the car swerved with it. She looked directly at him. Her unshed tears tore at him.

“After I awoke, I was bombarded with the news and battered by the emotions of every person who touched me. My parents pressured me to terminate.”

“Did Jacob know you were with child when he attacked you?” Carter interrupted.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant; so no, he didn’t. But given his mental state, I doubt it would have made a difference.”

“The baby?”

“He survived the beating, the surgeries, the coma—he was strong, a fighter. How could I destroy that? I couldn’t. I put him up for adoption. I wasn’t stable mentally. I already told you I had a hard time when I came out of the coma. I thought giving him good, healthy parents was the most motherly thing I could do. You know the rest.”

The silence in the car was heavy. Carter didn’t know what to say that wasn’t inadequate, so he said nothing. He pretended not to see the tissues she pulled from her purse as he took the exit. When, several miles later, he turned onto a local access road, he chanced looking over at her. Henley appeared contained. In fact, she seemed at peace. She caught him looking. Her smile reassured him.

“Thank you. I know it was a lot to take in all at once like that. I haven’t spoken about Jacob or my son in a long time. I feel better now than I have in many years.”

“I know the feeling. I’d guess you feel much like I did when I shared Justin’s death with you.” She leaned her head against his shoulder.

“My family couldn’t tolerate the scandal. Their oldest child had shacked up with a psycho who nearly killed her before going on to kill someone else and himself. Add the pregnancy and the mental breakdown—the situation was unacceptable. And if I had just listened to them—”

“None of it would have happened in the first place,” Carter interrupted. “Christ, Doc, you spent all those years trying to make up for things that weren’t your fault.”

“Well, the second, very public breakdown destroyed any progress I’d made with them.”

“You’re a doctor of psychiatry and one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. You have to realize you were suffering from PTSD.”

“Why do you think I understood, so intimately, what you went through after Justin’s death?” That evening on the dock, he’d wondered if she was speaking from experience or training. And concluded it had been the latter. “And now you know what dark sins my sister was alluding to last night.”