Love Me: The Complete Series (26 page)

Carter’s mouth hitched at the corner and he blinked. Then he smiled.

Jennifer let out a giggle then clamped her hand over her mouth and darted a look to her side.

Dr. Bernard was the only one who didn’t appear to see the humor, but he stayed silent.

“You were a lifeguard?” Carter asked. “Seriously?”

“Yep. Damn straight.”

He huffed. “I wish I’d seen
that
. Well then—you’re right. I guess we’ll blame you. This pity party is officially over. We have a scapegoat.”

Abby let the weight of fear roll off her shoulders. It had been a gamble to try such a bold move, but what else was she going to do? Sit around and listen while they all tried to take the blame for something that couldn’t be changed, even if they tried? What point was there in that? Thankfully, Carter hadn’t gone off the deep end and lost his temper. He hadn’t yelled at her for making light of a very not-light situation.

No, instead he stepped right into her and wrapped those big warm hands around her waist. He dropped his head to her shoulder and kissed lightly against the line of her collarbone. Right there in front of all of them. “Thanks, Abs. What else can we blame you for now?”

When Carter followed Abby into the kitchen a short time later, he registered the significance of what had transpired. Admittedly, she’d made light of his past but still, the weight on all of them was the heaviest blanket he’d been under. Making sense of something that had no sense had never worked.

“You feel like a glass of iced tea?” His chest squeezed when her eyes softened. How had she known what to say to get them over that moment of self-loathing? If he were honest, it was one of many that haunted him over the years. He imagined it was worse for Jennifer and the doc.

She nodded, obviously uncomfortable with what she’d discovered. He dug a pitcher from his mother’s cabinets and filled it with ice cubes. The pot for brewing tea bags was in its familiar spot and he filled it then started the brew. “People used to tell me I was lucky I hadn’t been there that day. It pissed me off.”

There had been nothing lucky about arriving by bus at your home to a slew of police cars and an ambulance. His father had greeted him at the gate in silence. The heaviness in his expression had never been forgotten. At the funeral, Carter overheard his dad tell a friend, “No one ever expects to bury their children when they come into the world. It should have been the other way around. This isn’t natural.”

It wasn’t natural.
Neither were all the years that followed where they each chose a different way to deal.

“They meant well.” She ran a hand up his arm and squeezed the knot at the base of his neck.

He hadn’t given a shit what they meant at the time. There was nothing lucky about losing a sister in such a stupid way. He shrugged.

Carter turned toward the window and stared at the barn that acted as a barrier between the house and all the pain in that field. He loathed what lay beyond. The very existence of the building shielded them from seeing it every day.

He closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long they stood there—her hand on his back with the dim light from outside peeking through.

The sizzle of water bubbling over the pot broke the silence and he whisked it from the stove. Pulling the steeping bags out, he dumped the tea over the ice and added water. He was thankful for a task that kept his hands and mind moving.

“Good intentions don’t change much, do they, Abby?”

Abby’s jaw tensed as he handed her the tea. She took a sip.

As much as he appreciated the way she’d broken the mood earlier, the full weight of Abby’s betrayal still felt like a fist around his heart. She hadn’t trusted him with the truth either. Why should he have expected her to? “Don’t you have to get home?”

She pulled another long sip from the glass then tipped it over the sink and dumped the contents. The plastic glass clinked against the counter where she left it before striding to the door.

He flinched when the door banged behind her. Her car starting and crunching on the gravel was the final straw. The floodgate opened on years of disappointment.

He cried.

Not the loud, moaning sobs his mom had done—or the handkerchief hidden sniffles of his dad. He stood at the sink listening to the whir of her car disappear into the wind, and the tears slid down his cheeks. Just a couple. Nothing earth shattering. That wasn’t happening. Hell if it hadn’t hurt worse to give up on her than it had to let go of Carley.

• • •

Abby hunched over the steering wheel like an eighty-year-old woman headed to church. An hour later, her neck started to ache and she readjusted in the seat. She’d darted about five glances at the rearview mirror, hoping Carter might follow. He hadn’t. Why should he?

Even if he had, there wasn’t any mechanism to explain her deceit. Funny, it seemed plausible at the time. Before she knew him. Before she cared—and she did. The knot in her chest tightened. Why? She had no need for a relationship at the moment. Her business was drowning her. There was no time to devote to anyone else. He understood that better than anyone.

Then it hit her. She thunked a palm to her forehead. That was the reason. It mattered that he believed in her, simply because
he believed in her.
Her entire family doubted her ability to sustain a business and chided her to be sensible. He did the opposite. He had applauded her entrepreneurial spirit—admired and encouraged her.

Her phone blinked on the seat and she glanced at the screen. A chat message. Great
.

A cold rock of guilt settled deep in her stomach. Not doing this anymore. He had to know the truth. All of it.

Still, she couldn’t abandon him. Not after what just happened. Abby whipped the car into a parking lot, put it in park, and lifted the phone.

Traveling To Survive: I just spent half a day with the most horrible person. One of those people that you can’t decide whether you want to strangle or
…

What did the dots mean? She cringed and typed.

Traveling To Survive: Where were you? Weren’t we supposed to meet the other night? I waited for a while. Then this horrible woman I knew showed up with some friends and I, well, I wasn’t going to deal with that too
.

Abby clicked in a response with tears sliding down her cheeks.

She stared at the words, then backed them out and started over.

Traveling To Survive: You were there? Really? Oh crap! I took the hat off but only for a few minutes
.

She stared at the blinking cursor, knowing he had a million things flying through his head at the moment. Right about now he was cursing her for showing up and ruining his good time. Again. What would he say if he knew that truth also?

Maybe all the support he’d given was just to get in her pants, but damn if she hadn’t needed that desperately. A huge slice of support pie served up by a gorgeous man who made her toes curl. That was exactly what she wanted, though she’d never realized it.

What had he wanted? Underneath everything else, what had he hoped for from her? She had thought maybe just a fling. Nope. Something that she’d been unable to give.

Honesty.

Roger’s presence at Carter’s house two weeks later should have seemed peculiar. They hardly ever visited each other, though they met for beer or lunch during the week. Sometimes they played golf. Yet, before Carter opened the door, he knew the man by the banging. Roger always rapped four times, loud and hard, with the last one delayed a tick.

“What?” Carter scruffed a hand over his face in an effort to brush the sleep away. He hadn’t bothered to dress or shower, nor had he planned to. It was Saturday morning. He peered at the widescreen, which had been blaring all night while he lounged on the couch.

Roger stepped past and drew in a breath. “Shit. I thought
I
was a pig. Want to tell me what’s going on with you?” He picked up a half-eaten piece of pizza from the open box on the floor and sniffed it, then lifted a brow before tossing it back.

“Nothing. I’m just taking advantage of my time off. Haven’t had any in a long time.” Carter scratched his naked chest over the top of gray sweats he’d cut into shorts long ago, when he wore a hole in the knee. “You need something? Is there a problem at work?”

Roger tripped over a pillow cast to the floor the night before and teetered toward the philodendron. Carter lunged at his arm and steadied the man. The plant was none the worse, still as green as ever. Still trailing along the floor and curling into his life.

“It looks good. One of Abby’s?”

“Yeah, you want it?”

“I suck at plants, but that’s why I came. Have you seen their new blog for the store?” Roger leaned to whisk the pillow and toss it back home on the couch. “Got any beer?”

“At this time of morning?”

Roger had a rule about drinking before noon. Or maybe it was one o’clock?

Roger hitched a brow and gave the
you-have-to-be-shitting-me
look before tapping his watch twice. “It’s not morning where I come from.” He strode to the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge, then paused to pull a trash bag from a cabinet before returning. After popping the top, he tossed the bottle cap into the bag. He slugged a drink then set down the beer. “Go get your laptop and take a look. They’ve been advertising like crazy on their blog. All sorts of crazy shit. You need to see it.”

“No thanks. I’m a little capped out right now on rambling technology conversations. Blogging. Texting. Tweeting. All that shit. People can say and do whatever they feel like and hide behind a mask of anonymity, or worse, false identities. What are you doing?”

Roger scooped the pizza box, a half dozen plastic cups and paper plates, and some wadded paper towels into the trash bag. “I’m cleaning up, man. Someone better before the landlord comes in to fumigate the place. It’s gross. You’re gross.”

“That matters to you why?”

“If you don’t get your shit together, and fast, we’re going to lose this job. You’ve been sulking around for days, and we have a deadline coming. If you don’t get your head straight, we’re toast.”

“Don’t you mean I’m toast?”

The plastic bag rumpled as he wadded it and thrust it into the bin near his sink. “Yeah, and since I’m tied to you like a sail because I jumped on your bandwagon when you sold it, I’m toast too. What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve never lasted more than a few months with any other girl. Why’d you expect it to be different this time?”

Well, shit. If he put it like that, Roger was right. Too right. Carter never lasted because he never wanted to. Never trusted anyone. Which had been pointed out so many times, he’d lost count. Yet, he’d tried with Amanda, and then Abby.

“She lied to me.”

“Waaa-waaa. Get over it. You lied too.”

Carter jolted his eyes at the silhouette against his window and squinted when the drapes ripped open to reveal the blinding sun. “I did not.”

“Sure you did. The day you met her.”

What the hell was he talking about? “At the park or the restaurant?”

“When you ran over her with the damn dog. Remember. You said she had big brown dirt spots on her ass and you never told her.”

Seriously? “Big deal. I wouldn’t exactly call that lying—”

Roger strode close and leaned up, attempting to gather enough height to intimidate. It hadn’t worked, though Carter dared not snicker. “You didn’t tell her. Lying by omission is still lying. Weren’t you the guy that said just the other day that
not
telling something is as untruthful as an outright lie?”

“It was just dirt. How the hell does that compare to—”

“Yeah, it was just dirt. On her ass. And those messages were just texts. Go back and look at them. With the exception of the one about her body, what had she meant by it all?”

“She pretended that Jackson—”

Roger waved a hand. “I know. I know. But hell, we’d just insulted her, and you have to admit it was funny.”

Carter frowned. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, it was. Go get your computer. I want to show you her blog. You aren’t going to believe—”

Bang. Bang. Bang.
Someone was at the door. Carter peered through the glass. What the hell? Flowers? He yanked it open.

A man in a blue shirt and jeans held out a bouquet of white roses. “Delivery for C. Coben. Is she here?”

“I’m Coben … Carter Coben.”

“Oh, uh, that’s weird.” The man shot a glance at Roger then grinned. “Can you sign for them?”

After dashing his signature on the pad, Carter closed the door and carried the flowers to the kitchen. Who the hell would send him roses?

“There’s a card.” Roger nodded and plucked it from the ribbon, tossing it toward Carter.

The tiny white envelope landed on the tile and hissed across the surface. Carter snatched it just before it could tumble over the edge. He slid out the message and read.

My favorites are the white roses—if you strip the petals and scatter them around (especially in the bedroom), they’re like silk to step or lay on. And they smell like heaven.

--Gene in OK

“What the hell does that mean? I don’t even know anyone in Oklahoma. These have to be for someone else.” Carter tossed the card back.

Before Roger could read the note, the door summoned again. Roger chuckled. Another delivery, which didn’t seem to surprise Roger one bit. “Go ahead. Open the door.”

Carter signed for another bouquet. This time it was some frilly white and purple things that frothed like waves of ribbon, surrounded in a bunch of green leaves. With another card: