“I’m impressed you can still say ‘emotionally distraught.’ ”
By the time Hope stumbled home, she was having a hard time putting thoughts together. Everything in her head collided and churned into an undecipherable mush. She managed to crawl to her bedroom, where she found her beer helmet and the boxer shorts Dylan had given her to wear the morning after the first time they’d made love. She put on the helmet and the boxers; then she did herself a favor and passed out. When she woke up her head felt as if someone had hit her with a concrete block.
She sat up, her stomach heaved, and she ran into the bathroom. As she sat on the cool tile floor, wearing Dylan’s boxers and praying at the porcelain altar, she got angry. Angry at herself and angry at Dylan. Sure, she probably shouldn’t have lied to him for so long, but hers hadn’t been a big lie. Not like his. He should have trusted her and believed in her, but he hadn’t, and she never should have fallen in love with him. She felt like she had the day Blaine had served her with divorce papers. Like she’d been kicked in the chest, only this time it was worse. This time it was her fault, because this time she could have prevented it.
From the start, she’d known there was no future with him, and yet she’d let it happen. Well, maybe “let” wasn’t the right word, but she could have prevented it. She could have run the other way and told him no the night of the Fourth of July. She should have protected her heart from his smiles and the sound of his deep voice melting her and calling her honey. She should have backed away from his touch that tingled her skin and made her heart beat faster. She should have avoided his gaze that seemed to reach out and caress her like the touch of his hand. She should have put up some sort of resistance, but she hadn’t. She’d run toward him even as she’d known to run the other way. Now she was paying with a shattered heart.
“What am I going to do?” she whispered. A part of her wanted to go. Just pack up and leave. Run away from this place. Gospel wasn’t her home.
She lay down and pressed her cheek against the cool, clean tile. Yet there was another part of her that rebelled at the thought of running away. She’d been knocked flat before, but this time she wasn’t going to hide from life. She wasn’t going to let the pain get the best of her again. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been before she’d driven into Gospel. She wasn’t going to stay down. Her heart was broken and it hurt like a bitch, but she was going to live her life on her feet.
She raised her head, the room spun, and she lay back down. Yeah, she was going to live life on her feet. Just as soon as she could pick herself up off the bathroom floor.
Dylan looked across the table at his son. Adam rolled his corn on the cob across his plate for about the five- hundredth time in the past five minutes. It bumped into the bites of steak Dylan had cut up for him, then rolled into a biscuit. “Why don’t you eat that instead of playing with it?”
“I hate corn.”
“That’s funny. Last time we had corn on the cob, and you ate four or five pieces.”
“I hate it now.”
Yesterday they’d taken one step forward. After the ordeal in town that morning, they’d taken two steps back. Seeing Juliette so upset, Adam blamed himself. He blamed Dylan, too. In his seven-year-old mind, he figured if he hadn’t acted naughty, his mom wouldn’t have brought him home early. She wouldn’t have been in Gospel, and the reporters wouldn’t have found her. She wouldn’t have cried.
“Your mom’s going to be okay,” Dylan tried to reassure his son.
Adam looked up. “She said they were going to cancel her angel show.”
She’d said a lot of things during the hour-long drive to the Sun Valley airport. “She was just upset. No one will cancel her show.” In all the time he’d known Julie, he’d known she could be very dramatic, but he’d never seen her
Hope. Even if Hope hadn’t known about Adam and Juliette before she’d moved to Gospel, she’d run with the story the moment she’d discovered the juicy details. He didn’t believe for one second that she wasn’t responsible for that scene outside the Cozy Corner. And even though she’d denied involvement, even as she’d stood there surrounded by other tabloid journalists and paparazzi, looking into his eyes and telling him, “I didn’t do this,” it was just too big a coincidence for him not to think she wasn’t involved up to her little blond ponytail.
He’d gone into the relationship with Hope thinking he would end it when Adam returned home. He’d thought he could spend a couple of weeks enjoying her company and then go back to the way things had always been. He’d quickly discovered that he didn’t want to go back. When she was around, she made him laugh. She made him happy, and she made his life better. He hadn’t wanted to give that up. To give her up. He hadn’t wanted it to end, but it had. It was over, and it was ironic as hell that it had ended according to the original plan.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Dylan asked Adam.
“I told you, I don’t like corn.”
“What about your steak?”
“Hate that, too.”
“Your biscuit?”
“Can I put jelly on it?”
Since nothing had gone Adam’s way since he’d been home, Dylan decided to give in about dinner. “I don’t care.” He bit into his corn and watched his son open the refrigerator.
“Where’s the grape jelly?”
“I guess we’re out. Try the strawberry.”
“I hate strawberry.”
Dylan knew that wasn’t true. In a pinch, Adam would eat it.
“Why didn’t you get some?” his son asked, like he’d committed a heinous crime.
Dylan set his corn on his plate and wiped his hands on his napkin. “I guess I forgot.”
“Probably too busy.”
And they both knew what Adam meant. Hope. He’d been too busy with Hope. Ever since they’d returned from the airport, Adam had been spoiling for a fight. Dylan recognized what was happening and tried not to let it get the best of him. “Are you going to eat any of your dinner?”
Adam shook his head. “I want grape jelly.”
“Too bad.”
“You’re not going to get me jelly?”
“Not tonight.”
“I won’t be able to eat breakfast without jelly.” Adam stuck his chin in the air. “Lunch, either. I guess I won’t ever eat again.”
Dylan stood. “That will save me the trouble of fixing you anything to eat.” He pointed to Adam’s plate. “Now, you’re sure you’re finished?”
“Yes.”
“Then go brush your teeth and get your pajamas on.” For a few tense moments, Adam looked like he was going to fight about that, too, but he stuck out his lower lip and left the room. Dylan grabbed Adam’s plate and put it on the floor. “Here, dog,” he said, and Mandy crawled from beneath the kitchen table and devoured the steak and biscuit in seconds. She licked the corn, then turned away.
He should have saved himself some trouble and just fixed Wheaties for dinner, he thought as he picked up the plate from the floor. A little over twenty-four hours ago, he’d thought his life had gone straight to hell. He’d been wrong about that. It hadn’t quite hit bottom yet. Now.
Before dinner, he’d spoken to his mother on the telephone, and in her most optimistic voice, she’d reminded him that “things could always be worse.”
Yeah, he supposed she was right. He could get kicked in the nuts or Adam could get sick, but barring physical abuse or illness, he didn’t see that things could get much worse.
Dylan left the dishes on the table and the pans on the stove and relaxed in front of the television. He reached for the remote and started to flip channels.
