Nick Of Time (Blue Ridge Romance 2) (20 page)

She pulled him a little closer and kissed his forehead.

“I don’t know if I’m fixable,” he whispered.

“It’s never too late for a second chance,” she said as she smoothed his hair back.

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I think you do.”

His fingers gripped her shirt fiercely as he cried.

“Please don’t leave me. I’m so sorry,” he said.

The contrast in his words now from when he’d first realized she was there made her aware of just how unstable he was at the moment. He was vulnerable and scared, and that might be why he was clinging to her now.

She would have to see where they stood when he was in a better place.

 

After convincing Cooper to stay in Roanoke, she ended the call and continued doing laps in the hall.

Tucker was released a few hours later.

He didn’t protest when she suggested he come home with her to Roanoke. They stopped at his loft so he could shower and pack. He held her hand and slept most of the flight.

Once they were home, an awkwardness seemed to settle over them. Where was he going to sleep? With her? On the sofa? Did she have any narcotics in the house? She’d been given Percocet for a root canal. Was it still in the medicine cabinet?

“Are you hungry?” she asked. He hadn’t eaten all day.

“Maybe a little.”

“Soup?” she suggested.

“Yeah. That would be great.”

“Maybe you could call your brother while I’m heating it up. I know he’s worried.”

Tucker nodded and left the room with her phone.

She could hear a mumbled conversation down the hall as she got the soup ready.

When he came back, his eyes were red and wet again.

Nichole went to him and held him close.

“Did he yell at you? I’ll kick his ass,” she threatened.

Tucker shook his head.

“No. He apologized to me.” Of course that would be harder for Tucker to accept than yelling. He always felt like he was a problem for Cooper. To know his brother actually cared had stirred up emotions.

“Tucker, I’m sorry, too. So sorry. It’s just it looked—”

“I know how it looked. I don’t blame you. I tried like anything not to be put in that position, but then I did something stupid. I was so happy after you and I talked on the phone that night. I felt like I could handle it. It was like I was testing myself. Other than falling asleep with my water bottle, I passed the test that night. I didn’t know she’d taken pictures that would ruin my life. I swear to you, I was never with her. Never. The last woman I was with was you, Nic.”

She kissed him softly and then hugged him again.

“I believe you. We’re going to be fine.” She pulled away and smiled while wiping away tears. “Now eat your soup.”

He slept next to her that night and she loved the warmth of him. Even though he was up numerous times throughout the night. He was hot and then cold.

She recognized the symptoms of DTs.

“I think I’m going to go for a walk,” he said without meeting her eyes.

“No.” She shook her head.

“I need to get out of here for a little while. You’re not my babysitter.” He was getting agitated, another sign he was having difficulty dealing with the lack of alcohol in his system.

“Fine. Then I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t need you to come with me.”

“Tucker, look at me.” She knew where he would end up if he left without her.

It took two tries before he could do it, and then he bit his lip and looked away.

“Damn it! I’m sorry.” He flopped down on the sofa and hung his head in his hands.

“Are you feeling confused?” she asked him as she went to her closet and pulled out a spare stethoscope and a tiny flashlight.

“No. I don’t think so.” He held out his shaky hands.

“How bad was detox the last time?” she asked, trying not to sound like a doctor, but it just happened. She checked his pulse and his pupils.

“I’m not sure. I was sedated the whole time.”

She nodded and picked up her phone. She called in a script for Ativan at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy and picked up her purse.

“You wanted to go out. Let’s go.”

“I’m sorry about yelling.”

“It’s normal,” she said. He nodded. “Let me know if you start to feel sick or confused.”

“Okay.”

“It’s important.”

“I know.” He nodded again.

She drove to the pharmacy in her pajamas and went through the drive-through window.

“I’m not sure if this is a good idea. Lydia gave me stuff. I don’t know what it was,” he explained.

“It was an opiate. This isn’t. It’s safe.”

He let his head rest back against the seat.

“The sexy white coat isn’t the only perk of your being a doctor.”

She laughed and squeezed his hand.

When she got him settled back in bed she lay next to him, watching and worrying.

At some point sleep must have taken over.

She woke in an empty bed.

“Tucker?” she called as she hopped up and all but ran to the living room.

He was on the phone, but otherwise looked fine.

“Okay. Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll see you then.” He touched the screen and put the phone down.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He took a deep breath.

“Can we talk for a second?” he asked, looking at the floor.

She knew that look. It was the same look Dennis had given her right before he informed her he was gay.

“Sure.” She sat woodenly on the sofa, and he sat next to her a few feet away. “What is it?” She swallowed and tried to put up some sort of defense around her heart.

“I’m going to need to go into a program,” he said, as if the words were broken glass ripping out of him.

“Okay.” She nodded, having expected this.

“I’m going to one in California. A sixty-day program.” She nodded again. She knew from experience at the clinic that insurance generally only covered thirty days; he was lucky enough to be able to afford longer care.

She was still tense, waiting for him to say they were over.

“I can’t expect you to want to wait for me.” He swallowed and glanced up at her quickly. “You’re a good person, and I know yesterday you said you could give me a second chance, but I’m not going to hold you to that.”

She looked at her fingers in her lap, which were turning purple from twisting them so hard.

“Tucker, are you trying to tell me you don’t want to be with me?”

His head snapped up quickly and his brown eyes glistened. “No. That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What do you want, Tucker? Just tell me what you want. No games.”

“I want you. I want you to wait for me to get my shit straightened out. I want you to somehow forgive me for all the stupid things I did, and the horrible things I said to you yesterday, when you came to help me.” He winced. “I want to be worthy of you, Nic.”

She moved across the sofa to him and kissed him. It took him a second to respond, and then he kissed her back. Really kissed her, before he pulled back and rested his forehead against hers.

“Can I tell you what I want?” she whispered. He nodded, making her head move along with his. “I want you to go to California and get healthy again.” A tear ran down his cheek and dropped on his jeans. “I want you to call me when you can and let me know how you’re doing. And then I want you to come home to me and let me love you, and help you make more hit songs.” She smiled and pulled away so she could look at him.

“I’m going to make you proud of me, Nichole. And I’m going to try every day to deserve you. I love you. Thank you for seeing something in me worth loving back.”

He pulled her onto his lap and held her for a long moment. He kissed her forehead and her cheeks and then her lips.

“Help me pack?” he asked as he rubbed his palm across his cheeks.

“Anything you need.”

They folded his clothes in silence, and an hour later she found herself crying alone as the cab drove off.

She knew a lot about statistics. She knew sixty days was a long time, and generally the person liked to start over fresh. A clean start for a clean life.

What she didn’t know was how that would affect her.

W
hen Tucker arrived in California, he was feeling pretty rough. Thankfully, the first thing they did when he got to the rehab center was put him out, so his body could purge while he slept through it.

Once his body was ready, he could focus on his emotional dependency issues.

He hadn’t been lying when he told Nichole he wanted to be worthy of her. He wanted that more than anything, but sixty days was a long time.

In sixty days she might realize what she’d signed up for and want out. In sixty days she could see a lot of things differently. She was a smart girl, educated about medical conditions. She had to know that life with a recovering alcoholic would be a constant struggle. An endless battle.

That meant he couldn’t rely on Nichole to make him happy and keep him out of a bottle. It had to be him. He had to find some inner peace or some shit. Something that would help him cope when things didn’t go the way he wanted. He needed to fix himself.

And then, maybe, if Nichole was still waiting for him in sixty days, he wouldn’t feel so guilty about taking her up on her gracious offer.

The first night out of detox was group counseling. Once everyone got over the shock of having a supposed rock star in their group, they introduced themselves, and things went back to normal.

Or as normal as a rehabilitation center could get.

It was coed, and he had two offers for alternate sleeping arrangements before he left the meeting room. He happily turned them down, knowing that one: it wasn’t good for addicts to hook-up, and two: he was determined to be faithful to Nichole.

Out of everything, his fidelity was the one thing he knew wouldn’t be an issue. He had been faithful to her even when she didn’t believe him. Even when the pictures on the Internet made everyone doubt him, he knew the truth. He knew he hadn’t ever touched Lydia.

He went back to his private room and looked at his phone. He wanted to call Nichole to tell her about his day, but he didn’t want to come to rely on her to make him feel better. After staring at the phone for a half hour, he finally gave in.

“Hey,” she said, her voice making his heart expand.

“Hey. I’m still here. I had my first group session. Tomorrow it’s all about me,” he joked, though it was probably inappropriate.

“Did you open up?” she asked.

“Nah. No one ever talks in their first meeting.”

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize there was a cool way to do this.”

He laughed at her joke, which was just as inappropriate. They were perfect for each other.

“I’ll get around to talking. I want to get better.”

Her voice was soft when she spoke. “I think you were better before I messed everything up. I’m so sorry.”

“Nic, I’ve told you, this isn’t on you. It’s me.”

“But if I had been more supportive and trusted you like I should have, you wouldn’t have—”

“Baby, we don’t know what I would have done. And if I had dealt with what happened like an adult instead of drinking it away, we could have worked things out without the emergency-room visit and the sixty-day vacation, but that’s not what happened, so let’s just move forward, okay? We can’t change the past.”

“Okay,” she answered, but he could still hear uncertainty in her voice.

“I’m going to let you go so you can get some sleep. I probably won’t call every day. They keep our schedules kind of packed. I’ll check in when I can.”

“Tucker, I’ll be here whenever you need me.”

“I love you,” he told her, feeling it down to his toes.

“I love you, too. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Good-night, baby,” he said before he disconnected the call and went to bed.

Six days later, he’d talked in group twice. He’d also met with his therapist, Dr. Alan Heller, seven times, and was heading into his office for visit number eight. He was at the part of his recovery where he felt raw inside from sharing so much.

At times his voice got hoarse from talking, and he’d cried like a baby on more than one occasion. There were moments he felt helpless, because he had so much shit going on in his mind and he didn’t think he’d ever get it all sorted out.

The doctor had labels for everything, which Tucker assumed was supposed to make him feel better. He could be considered somewhat normal if he had something with a name. It didn’t make him feel better. He wished he could be like all the truly normal people who didn’t have a label for every fucked-up thing they were feeling.

He hadn’t bothered Nichole again since that first night. Though she had left a voice mail on his phone, telling him she was thinking about him and hoped everything was going well.

It made him miss her even more as he listened to the message six times in a row, like some kind of psycho.

“Today I’ve set up a conference call with Nichole,” the doctor announced as Tucker sat down on the comfy leather chair.

“What? Why?” Tucker’s stomach plummeted to his feet. He didn’t want the doctor telling Nichole things that would scare her off.

“You want her in your life, which means she’s going to be part of your recovery. That means she needs to be part of this program.”

“She’s a doctor. She understands all this. We don’t need to bother her. She’s busy running a clinic.”

“I’ve already spoken to her and she’s eager to be involved.”

“But I don’t want her to know all this stuff. It will scare her.” Hell, it scared him.

“I think you’re underestimating her.”

Tucker knew he was, too. Nichole could handle just about anything, but he didn’t want her to have to
handle
him or his problems. No more than he had wanted his brother to love him because it was his duty as a brother.

Dr. Heller reached for the phone and Tucker heard the speaker engage, followed by a few beeps as he began to dial.

“Hold on,” Tucker practically shouted at the doctor. He stood up and paced the office. The doctor hung up the phone and waited. “The last time, my brother did this step. Can—can we call my brother?”

“The last time, your brother was the only person you had an attachment to. You’ve told me a few times that you hope to cultivate a serious relationship with Nichole when you leave here. So this time I think Nichole needs to be your support system. Don’t you?”

“No. I don’t want to call Nichole.” He ran his fingers through his hair frantically.

“Can you tell me why?”

He had the doctor tone. Tucker sighed. Why not tell him?

“She feels guilty about what happened. She thinks it’s her fault that I started drinking again, because she broke up with me. I don’t want her to know how bad I am because it makes her feel bad.”

“Then we need to make sure she doesn’t feel bad.” With that, he hit the button, and the room filled with the sound of a dial tone followed by a bunch of beeps and then ringing.

Nicole picked up immediately.

“Hello.”

“Hey, baby,” Tucker said, unable to stop the smile on his lips at the sound of her voice.

“Hi. How are you?” She sounded relieved, and he felt bad for not calling her back and for making her worry.

“I’m great,” he answered as the doctor’s brow rose. “Uh. Well, I’m working on things, you know.”

“Nichole, we’ve handled Tucker’s physical dependency issues and now we’re working on his emotional struggles,” the doctor explained in the Tone. “We want to make sure he has the ability to utilize different options when he’s faced with emotions he’s not comfortable with.”

“Of course,” Nichole said, having a bit of the Tone herself. Tucker rubbed his head.

“I’m sorry, Nic. If you’re busy, we can do this some other time.”

“I have time. I scheduled this in. I want to help. Whatever I can do.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Tucker said, sounding somewhat annoyed.

“Tucker, why don’t you think Nichole owes you anything?” the doctor asked. Tucker had almost forgotten he was there.

He rolled his eyes before he answered. “It’s on me. This is all on me. Not her. She’s not responsible.”

“But she is, in a way,” the doctor said calmly.

“No, she isn’t!” Tucker yelled.

“Tucker, he’s right. I abandoned you,” Nichole said from the phone.

“No!” he yelled louder, because they weren’t listening.

“Tucker suffers from abandonment issues. When you broke things off and gave him no way to reconcile, he felt abandoned, which caused him to turn to alcohol and then prescription narcotics to ease his pain in the way he’s become accustomed.”

“No.” Tucker paced angrily. “Don’t spin this to make it her fault.”

“Tucker,” Nichole’s voice filled the room, “he’s right. Please calm down.”

He took a deep breath and did what she asked, only because it was her who was asking.

She went on. “I’ve been in therapy myself. I know all about abandonment issues. My dad left me when I was little too, remember?”

“He died, Nic.”

“I know, but I still felt abandoned. I grew up worrying that if I loved someone too much they would die and leave me alone, so I tried to keep everyone at a safe distance.”

That made sense. He sat down again as she continued.

“When I saw the photos of you and Lydia, I should have talked to you about them. I should have believed you, but instead I bailed on you before you got the chance to abandon me. I left you so it wouldn’t hurt so bad. The problem is, it hurts just as bad.”

He remembered very well how bad it hurt. So bad he did something desperate to make it stop.

“Nichole abandoned you. Cooper abandoned you. How did that make you feel?” the doctor asked.

Tucker looked up at him as if he were crazy.

“How did it feel? How did it
feel
? It felt pretty fucking awful, that’s how it felt!”

“Tell us about it.”

Tucker tried to calm down, but the doctor had struck a nerve, and he couldn’t get the memory of frustration and helplessness out of his head.

“I knew from the beginning I wasn’t good enough for Nichole. I was always her friend’s little brother who caused trouble. An annoyance. And she’s so perfect. I thought she was just slumming it out of boredom. But then I got to really know her. And I care about her.”

“You love her.”

“Yes!” Tucker took a breath in an attempt to calm down.

“But she left you.”

Why was he pushing this?

“Because she thought I’d cheated on her.” Tucker tried to reason.

“But you didn’t.”

“I know that!”

“But she didn’t believe you.” The doctor was pushing all his buttons. He could almost feel himself snap.

“No! She didn’t! She’s had one foot out the door ever since we started seeing each other. She’s just been waiting for me to mess up so she had a reason to bail. She expected it to happen, and look! It did!”

“Tucker,” Nichole said. He could hear the tears in her voice.

“Why did you even bother, Nic? Why didn’t you just spare us all the trouble and send me away when I asked you to?”

The only answer was soft sobbing on the other end of the line. She was crying, and as much as he wanted to tell her it was okay, he didn’t know if it was true.

“Maybe we should pick this up another day,” the doctor suggested.

“No,” Nichole interjected. “He needs to get this out. It doesn’t feel great on this end, but I’m not giving up.”

“Is he right?” the doctor asked.

There was a long silence before she spoke again.

“I think I was expecting you to leave, like every other guy in my life has. That wasn’t fair to you. You’re not every other guy. You’re more important to me than anyone else, which made it even more terrifying. When you love someone and then they’re gone, it hurts, regardless of the reason.”

“Yes,” Tucker agreed. It hurt like a son of a bitch. “I don’t want to go anywhere, Nic.”

“I . . .” She took a deep breath. He wished so badly he was close enough to hold her. “I believe you. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I promise, I’m in this with both feet and all of my heart.”

“I’m sorry for yelling.” He looked at the doctor, who was smiling at him smugly. Apparently he’d had a breakthrough. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m glad you got it out. I don’t want there to be anything unspoken between us.”

Maybe this would be okay after all.