See Jane Score

She knew, and it had burned like a charcoal briquet right beneath her sternum. In the end she’d told him to relieve his mind. He’d been so freaked out thinking that someone was lurking in the shadows… and she supposed someone was. Her. And she’d told him to relieve her own conscience. So why didn’t she feel better?

Jane tossed her suitcase on the floor and burst into tears. She’d spent roughly seven hours in taxis or airports or on planes trying to get home. Trying to keep it together. She couldn’t anymore. The pain of losing Luc racked her body and huge sobs tore at her lungs. She’d known losing him would hurt, but she’d never imagined so much pain was even possible.

Moonlight poured through the window of the small bedroom in her apartment, and she shut the curtain. Shutting herself up in darkness. She’d taken the first available flight out of Phoenix that afternoon. She’d had a two-hour layover in San Francisco before continuing on to Seattle. She was a physical and emotional wreck. She’d had to leave. She hadn’t had a choice. She could not have walked into the locker room the next night and seen Luc’s face. She would have fallen apart. Right there in front of everyone.

Before she left, she’d called Darby and told him she had a family emergency. She was needed at home, and she would catch up with the team once they returned to Seattle. Even though there was nothing in it for Darby, he’d helped arrange her flight, and she realized that he was more than just a cocky wheeler-dealer. There was a heart beneath those thousand-dollar suits and bad ties. And just maybe he would be good for Caroline.

She’d called Kirk Thornton, too. He hadn’t been as understanding as Darby. He’d asked the nature of the emergency and she’d been forced to lie. She’d told him that her father had a heart attack. When it was actually her whose heart was breaking.

She fell onto her bed and closed her eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking about Luc or remembering his face when she’d walked into the sports bar. He’d looked stunned, as if someone had hit him with a brick. She could recall every excruciating detail. The worst was his concern for her. And when he’d finally accepted that she was Honey Pie, his concern had turned to contempt. In that moment, she’d known she’d lost him forever.

Jane rolled onto her side and touched the pillow next to her. Luc had been the last person to lay his head on that pillow. She ran her hand over the soft cotton case, then she held it to her nose. She could almost smell him.

Regret and anger mixed with the pain in her soul, and she wished she hadn’t told him that she loved him. She wished he didn’t know. Mostly, she wished he’d cared. But he hadn’t.

Then I would hate to see what you do to people you don’t love, he’d said.

Tossing the pillow aside, she sat up in bed and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She changed into a large T- shirt, then moved through her dark apartment to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. It had been a while since she’d cleaned it out. She grabbed an old jar with one pickle chip floating on top and set it on the counter. She reached for an empty bottle of mustard and a half gallon of milk a week past its pull date and put them by the pickle jar. Her chest ached and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She would love to fall asleep until the pain went away, but even if that were possible, when she woke, she would face it again.

The telephone rang, and when it stopped, she took the receiver off the hook. She got her garbage can and some Formula 409 from beneath the sink and set them next to her within the light from the refrigerator. She cleaned to keep busy. To keep from completely going insane. It didn’t help because she relived every wonderful and exciting and horrible moment she’d spent with Luc Martineau. She remembered the way he threw a dart as if he could muscle a bull’s-eye. The way he rode his motorcycle and how it had felt to ride behind him. She recalled the exact color of his eyes and hair. The sound of his voice and the scent of his skin. The touch of his hands and body pressed to her. The taste of him in her mouth. They way he looked at her during sex.

She loved everything about Luc. But he didn’t love her. She’d known it would end. Eventually. The Honey Pie column had just prompted the inevitable. Even if she’d never sent it in, even if she’d never even written it, a relationship between her and Luc wouldn’t have worked out, despite her hope to the contrary. Ken hooked up with Barbie. Mick dated supermodels, and Brad married Jennifer. Period. That was life. The breakup was not her fault. He would have left. It was probably a good thing he’d left now, she told herself, instead of in a few more months when she would have discovered even more to love about him. When it would have hurt worse. Although she couldn’t imagine anything hurting worse. She felt as if a part of her had died.

Jane set her 409 on the counter and glanced across her apartment at her briefcase tossed on the coffee table.

There are some things in that Honey Pie piece-of-shit article that are just too close to be a coincidence, he’d said.

She’d always figured he’d recognize himself in the column, but she hadn’t figured he’d recognize her. She moved to the couch and sat. Things that were written about you and me that actually happened. She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. She brought up her Honey Pie folder and clicked on the March file. Until now, she’d been reluctant to read it. Afraid it was horrible and not flattering and not as good as she’d originally thought or intended. As she read, she was struck by how obvious she’d made it that it was her. It would have been more surprising if he hadn’t suspected anything. The more she read, the more she wondered if she’d left clues on purpose. It was almost as if she were jumping up and down from the pages and waving her arms and yelling, it’s me, Luc. It’s Jane. I wrote this.

Had she wanted him to figure out that she’d written the column? No. Of course not. That would be stupid. That would mean she’d purposely sabotaged the relationship.

She sat back and looked across the room at the fireplace mantel. At the photo of her and Caroline. At the crystal shark Luc had given her. When had she fallen in love with him? Was it the night of the banquet? The first night he’d kissed her? Or the day he’d bought her the hockey book all tied up in a pink bow? Perhaps she’d fallen a little in love with him all of those times.

She supposed the time didn’t matter as much as the bigger question. Was what Caroline always said about her true? Did she enter relationships with one foot out the door? With an eye toward the exit sign? Had she purposely written the article in such an obvious way to get out of her relationship with Luc before she fell too deep? If that was the case, she’d gotten out too late. She’d fallen deeper and harder than ever before. She hadn’t even known it was possible to fall so hard.

Her doorbell rang and she rose from the couch. It was past two a.m., and she couldn’t imagine who’d be standing on her porch. Her heart pinched even as she told herself that it wasn’t Luc, racing across the country after her like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

It was Caroline.

“I called all the hospitals,” her friend said as she hugged Jane tight against her chest. “No one would give me any information.”

“About what?” Jane extracted herself from Caroline’s grasp and took a step back.

“Your father.” Caroline lowered her chin and peered into Jane’s eyes. “His heart attack.”

Jane shook her head and rubbed her chilled arms through her long T-shirt. “My dad didn’t have a heart attack.”

“Darby called me and told me that he did!”

Oh, no. “That’s what I told the paper, but I just needed to come home and I needed a good excuse.”

“Mr. Alcott isn’t dying?”

“No.”

“I’m glad to hear it, of course.” Caroline sat hard on the sofa. “But I ordered flowers.”

Jane sat next to her. “Sorry. Can you cancel them?”

“I don’t know.” Caroline turned and looked at her. “Why the lie? Why did you have to come home? And why have you been crying?”

“Have you read Honey Pie this month?”

Caroline usually read all the columns. “Of course.”

“It was Luc.”

“I gathered that. Was he flattered?”

“Not at all,” Jane answered, and then she told her why. Through tears that wouldn’t stop, she told her friend everything. When she was finished, a frown pulled at Caroline’s brows.

“You already know what I’m going to say.”

Yes, Jane knew. And for the first time she actually listened. Jane had always been the smart one. Caroline the