Going the Distance (22 page)

“Keep moving,” he ordered softly, thrusting his fingers for emphasis.

Olivia bit her lip and whimpered as she rocked back and forth, dragging a rough moan from her implacable boyfriend. He kissed her again and this time she didn’t mind, wrapping her arms around his neck and her tongue around his, feeling him in every part of her, just like he wanted. Like she wanted.

When neither of them could take it anymore, he gripped her hip and surged into her, again and again, deep and hard. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder and didn’t try to stifle her cries, feeling Jarek’s coarse whispers against her hair. He opened his hand and reached for her clit with his thumb, rasping over the shrieking bundle of nerves until she exploded. She came harder than she’d ever come, nails digging into his back, teeth buried in his shoulder. He jerked viciously as his orgasm followed, then went still.

“That was something,” she mumbled several long moments later, feeling him laugh beneath her, tasting the salt from his skin on her lips.

“That was
anything
,” he corrected.

She smiled. “I think I need another shower.”

“Don’t go yet.” He still had his fingers in her ass and he squeezed gently, keeping her in place as he kissed the corner of her swollen mouth. “Don’t go anywhere.”

S
HE’D
L
ET
I
T
G
O
, just as he’d asked. It had been one week since he’d almost—mostly—told Olivia he loved her, and as per his one-word request, she hadn’t brought it up again. And try as he might to think about anything but, he couldn’t stop wondering just what she would have said if he’d finished the thought and allowed her to respond. Would she have balked, looking appalled and uneasy? Or stiffened, standing frozen like a deer in the headlights? Or, worse yet, might she have said it back—
I love you, Jarek?
He couldn’t bear the thought of her uttering the words, knowing he’d doubt every one of them. How could
she
love him? How could she
love
him? How could she love
him?

He resumed taking out his frustration on the punching bag that hung in the corner of the gym trailer. It thudded against the wall with a soothing, familiar knock that shouldn’t have relaxed him, but did. Just because he’d stopped hitting people didn’t mean he didn’t miss it. And just because he hadn’t finished telling Olivia he loved her, didn’t mean he didn’t. Fuck. He hit the bag harder, feeling his shoulders burn.

“Dude. Would you
stop?”

It took four more punches before the words filtered in. Jarek turned, sweat dripping from his brow and landing in a shiny puddle at his feet.

Dale lay on the weight bench, hands gripping the bar above him, clearly reluctant to hoist two hundred pounds over his head while the trailer shook.

Jarek wiped his chin. “Twenty more minutes.”

“You’ve been at it for thirty!”

“So? I’ve got energy.”

“You’ve got rage, idiot. What’d your brother say?”

Jesus Christ. He’d never known gossips like these men. Olivia had e-mailed him some of the pictures from Beijing and he’d forwarded them on to his brother, who had promptly replied with a picture of their father, wasting away in a hospital bed. He hadn’t seen the guy in years, and he looked nothing like the man he remembered.

Aidan McLean had been a stocky, imposing figure, now shriveled to a hundred and twenty pounds of skin and bones, with gray, sagging skin and sunken eyes. Tubes ran in and out of his body and machines glowed in the background, their countless lights just blurry halos in the photograph. Jarek hadn’t responded to the e-mail—not that there had been an actual message included, just a subject line altered to read “a matter of days,” so Jonah had started calling. And calling. Just that morning Jarek had fielded a call that had gone the same as all the others:
He’s dying. He doesn’t remember much, but he asks about you. Come home. Say good-bye.
The only person Jarek had said good-bye to was his brother, when he’d hung up and turned off his phone. So the asshole had taken to calling Brant, asking him to apply pressure to the black sheep of the small family. And Brant had told Dale. Of fucking course.

“Same as usual,” he grunted, snatching up his towel and mopping his forehead. “I’m done here. Go ahead.” He dropped the towel on the floor and used it to wipe up the pool of sweat, surprised at the amount. Maybe he’d been working harder than he realized. Or maybe he’d gotten soft.

“You think you’re going to go back?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“What difference would it make?”

“I don’t know. Seems like you should.”

“You didn’t go back for your daughter’s birthday.”

“I sent a gift.”

“You think I should send a fruit basket?”

“I think you should be less of an asshole.”

“You first,” he said, tossing the wet towel at Dale’s head. The corner caught his cheek before it fell to the floor, and the other man grimaced.

“You’re disgusting.”

Jarek snatched up his bag and strode across the site and down the street to his apartment building. It was seven o’clock at night and pleasantly warm, but his skin felt prickly and hot. Agitated, much as he’d been since Jonah had started nagging him in earnest. He entered his dim apartment and climbed in the shower, keeping the water cool and holding his head under the spray, trying to drown out the persistent worry clawing at the back of his skull. What if he ended up that man, alone and withered in a hospital bed? There were certainly plenty of people who would love to see that picture, the man who had tortured them dying his own slow death, richly deserved. But what he really couldn’t shake was the look in his father’s eyes as he’d stared at the camera. The thin, unfamiliar face and unhealthy pallor belied the awareness that shone from the same blue eyes he faced in the mirror every day. In the split second the photo had been taken, Aidan McLean knew. He knew regret and shame and loss, the same feelings Jarek stubbornly refused to acknowledge or forgive.

He allowed himself the quick fantasy of taking the coward’s way out, telling his brother that not only was he not going home to say good-bye, he wasn’t coming home in July, period. If Olivia extended her contract, he could stay here with her until December, and pretend this was his real life. He’d said his good-bye to Aidan a long time ago, but he couldn’t envision saying good-bye to her. Not yet.

He had keys to her apartment now. Olivia was the only woman to ever give him keys.
The only ones he’d ever even considered accepting
, he thought as he let himself in. She’d pretty much forced them on him, saying she didn’t want to wait for him in the mornings when she had to go to work, and if he was that uncomfortable with the idea he could toss them back through the metal door once he’d locked it. Then she’d given him that look that said she thought he was a colossal idiot and an immature man child and he’d better not actually do it. So he’d put the keys in his pocket and now he shut the doors behind him and tilted his head to see her sitting in bed, watching something on her laptop.

“That better not be
Parenthood
,” he warned, stepping out of his shoes.

The sound cut off. “It’s definitely not.”

“Olivia. We’re only supposed to watch on Wednesdays.”

“Yeah. Well. I didn’t know you were coming over.” They’d gone for their normal Monday run earlier, then he’d bailed on their dinner plans to go to the site and smack around the punching bag. It was a much less formidable opponent than his girlfriend.

Jarek got a carton of chocolate milk from the fridge and climbed onto the bed beside her. The last rays of sunlight filtered through the closed curtains on the window, and an ancient ceiling fan spun in the center of the room. It was nice in here. Calm. Safe.

“How many episodes have you watched?”

“Just the beginning of this one. I was making sure it was good quality.”

“Uh-huh.” It was hard to believe, but sometimes the counterfeit DVDs they bought were not perfect.

She peeked up at him. “So…”

“Well, start over if you already watched it.”

“Just five minutes.”

He reached over and hit the back arrow, then play. “If you say so.” Jarek put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He fiddled with her hair elastic so the sloppy bun came loose and her hair spilled down, brushing over his fevered skin. He leaned back to watch the show, unable to believe how ridiculously invested he was in the tangled lives of the Braverman family. Growing up they’d only had one television and Aidan was normally stationed in front of it, angry at the news or the basketball game or whatever happened to be on. They’d stayed out of his way, and as a result never got into the habit of sitting down to stare at the thing. But now here he was, watching TV like a normal person, with a girl next to him who thought he was okay, too.

The show ended and he yawned, stretching as he got up to throw away the empty milk carton. When he returned to the bedroom Olivia was sitting on the edge of the bed looking nervous. He stopped at the door. “What’s wrong?”

“I heard from Willa today.”

“That’s your teacher friend, right? The one in Boston?”

“Outside of Boston, yeah.”

“She all right?”

“She’s pregnant.”

His heartbeat ground to a halt. They’d been careful, except for that one morning when he’d slipped up and been inside her for seconds—
seconds
—without a condom. How long ago had that been now? She couldn’t be—

Olivia rolled her eyes. “I’m not trying to tell you I’m pregnant, Jarek.”

He tried to swallow, his mouth suddenly painfully dry. “I didn’t think you were.”

She made a face that said she didn’t believe him. “Anyway,” she said with emphasis.

“Anyway…” He took a few tentative steps forward. Some distant part of him told him to man up and stop wondering about Willa, the friend whose intimate life details Olivia had shared some time ago, the one who’d lost a baby and was indirectly responsible for sending Olivia to China. He’d never met Willa, but he liked her.

“She’s going to take maternity leave early, as a precaution, and the school still wants to hire me, if I’m available. Starting with summer school in July.”

His damn heart stopped again. Somehow this news was worse than the possibility that she was having his baby. At least then they’d be together. “Are you? Available?”

She shrugged, looking up at him. “I haven’t signed the new contract yet.”

He sat down beside her. “When did you hear this?”

“I went to check my e-mail after our run. I was just watching
Parenthood
to try to distract myself from thinking about it.”

“Don’t make excuses. You were watching
Parenthood
because you’re dishonest.”

She smiled and relaxed a little. Jarek tried to do the same, but couldn’t. It wasn’t too long ago that she’d asked him about the work he did in Virginia and he told her he worked off and on for Brant, then kicked around aimlessly between jobs. He’d made Katrine a rocking chair when she was pregnant and she’d gushed about it to every woman she knew—which was approximately a million—and he’d taken random gigs making furniture for people when he felt like it. He wasn’t rich but he had plenty of money saved; he could have easily stayed in China until the end of the year, job or no job. But he wouldn’t stay without Olivia. Of course he hadn’t told her any of this when she’d brought up the possibility of extending her contract. As far as she knew he was only staying two weeks past her original end date, and she’d be on her own for the rest of the year. Why the hell hadn’t he said something?

He fingered the ends of her hair. “You going to take it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you want to.”

“It’s a good opportunity.”

“It sounds like it.”

“And if I stayed here, it would only mean two extra weeks, right? Before you went back?”

He studied his scraped knuckles. “Yeah.” Yeah. Right. It wasn’t like he’d been contemplating moving his whole life here for her or anything.

“Is Jonah still calling about your dad?”

“Talking to anyone who’ll listen.”

“Do you—”

“Enough talk, okay?” Jarek resorted to doing what he did best with Olivia, since getting the answers he wanted never seemed to work with her. He placed her laptop on the floor and yanked his shirt over his head.

“Alan, come sit up here, please.”

The classroom chatter ceased as everyone turned to look at Alan, sitting stick straight in his seat near the back. He looked at Olivia, confused and alarmed, and she smiled to calm him. “You’re not in trouble,” she said. “Just come sit at my desk. I need you to help me with something.”

“Help” was a word the kids knew, and at once they were all eager to assist. Tiny hands shot into the air and a chorus of “I want to helps” filled the air. “Thank you, thank you for offering,” Olivia interrupted over the din. “But I only need one person to help me right now, and that person is Alan. Take your bag, too.”

Alan cautiously shuffled up to the front and climbed into Olivia’s vacated seat. She tried not to smile as she waited. He was a conflicted kid, that one. At once loathe to be the center of attention, yet craving it intensely. She’d figured out that part of his disdain for her had come from the fact that he found the material too easy, but the contempt had been tempered by her continued enthusiasm and encouragement of his dance routines. In order to feel like a good teacher and not just a cheerleader, she’d started giving him smaller, more challenging assignments to keep him busy while she reviewed material he already knew too well.

Olivia handed Alan a stack of mixed up alphabet flashcards and asked him to help put them in order from A to Z. She tried to look embarrassed as she lied and said she’d dropped them, though the truth was she’d shuffled them up before class started just so she’d have something to keep him busy.

“I WANT TO HELP!” Rose trilled.

Olivia silenced her with a raised eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

Rose pouted and slumped in her chair. She was still thrilled to be in charge of the CD player, but she required a lot of attention sometimes, though perhaps not the kind Olivia cheerfully bestowed on her. “Stand up, please, Rose.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “No.”

“Now.”

Rose clapped a hand to her brow and stood up dramatically. The class was familiar with Olivia’s hideous brand of torture, and Rose in particular had an abundance of experience with it. Though they had come a long way in their English education, no one appreciated being forced to stand up in front of the class and answer five English questions.

“How old are you?” Olivia inquired.

Rose sighed, pained. “I’m five years old.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Red.”

“Full sentences.”

Rose blew out a noisy breath, lips flapping. “My favorite color is red.”

“Tell me something that is yellow.”

“Bananas is yellow.”

Close enough. “What animal eats bananas?”

“The monkey eats bananas.”

“Hmm. Very good.”

Rose tried to sit down.

“Stand up, Rose. That was only four.”

Rose rolled her eyes and remained standing.

Olivia scratched her chin like she was trying to think of a really good question. The children giggled in anticipation; the final question was always the same. “Tell me, Rose…” she began slowly, “do you like me?”