Rourke parked at the drop-off lot at the train station. They got out and he set her suitcase upright and pulled it to the entrance to the station. They stood facing each other, snowflakes flurrying around them.
“So I’m off,” she said.
“Good luck in the big city,” he said.
“Thanks, Rourke. Thanks for everything.”
“Can I say something?” he asked.
“Sure. Anything.”
“I’m going to miss you like hell.”
She laughed to cover her reaction. “At least you’ll get your own bed back.”
“Hey. I’m very attached to my sofa.”
“Well, now you can get back to your love life.”
“I have no love life.”
“So what do you call all the gorgeous women you date?”
He laughed. “Not love.”
“Then why do you do it?”
He laughed even harder. “I’m not even going to answer that.”
“You have to. You once said you’d tell me anything.” Which was such a lie, since he hid so much of himself. “What’s up with the supermodels, Chief?”
“Nothing’s up. They come, they go, end of story. They’ll never be more than something to do on my night off.”
“How can you know that? Have you ever really given some girl a chance?”
“How can I know that?” he echoed. He stepped close to her. Very gently, with his leather-gloved hand, he touched her under the chin and tilted her face up to his. “I think we both know,” he said simply, and placed a chaste—yet devastating—kiss on her lips. “Have a safe trip to the city,” he added, and then he walked away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jenny had brought a book to read on the train. She had downloaded three episodes of This American Life to her iPod. And she’d brought her new laptop, which had so many bells and whistles she would take years to discover them all.
Yet throughout the trip, all she did was sit and stare out the window. Rourke’s unexpected parting words and the way he’d looked at her and kissed her haunted Jenny as the train steamed southward, toward Grand Central Station. What was she supposed to do now? Dismiss the things he had said? The more she thought about it, the madder she got. He’d finally decided to show his hand when she was heading out of town. How convenient for him to choose a time when it was safe for him to do so, when she couldn’t stick around and force him to make a commitment.
Then again, she was the one leaving. Fleeing, if she wanted to be accurate, fleeing a past they couldn’t resolve and Rourke’s conviction that he’d failed Joey—that they’d both failed him. The patchwork snowscape rolled by, as rural and timeless as a Currier & Ives etching. Gradually the scenery shifted. She saw less snow and more traffic. The sky felt heavier and the world appeared more dingy. Strip malls and suburbs gave way to urban high-rises.
As she watched the changing scenery, a familiar and most unwelcome throb of panic thrummed in her chest.
No, she thought. This can’t be happening.
In the space of just a few minutes, the palms of her hands grew slick with sweat. Her heart rate accelerated. She shut her eyes and did the exercises Dr. Barrett had shown her. She breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth. She visualized a safe place filled with golden light, where nothing and no one could harm her. She imagined a world in which there was only kindness and love.
It didn’t work. She hadn’t really expected it to. She felt miserable and trapped, and not a little foolish. She was a practical, down-to-earth person. She didn’t go into a panic for no reason.
Nearly jumping out of her skin, she swayed and lurched her way to the washroom. There, she blotted her hands and face with a damp paper towel. Then she swallowed half a Xanax and went back to her seat.
The pill kicked in, wrapping a gauzy cushion around the sharp edges of the panic, and imparting the dull surrender of sleep. This, Jenny knew, was an artificial reprieve, but she would take any and all she could get at this point.
She leaned back in her seat and stared out at the great nothingness of the world outside. She tried to concentrate on the people she saw scurrying here and there, and imagining what their lives were like. Did they have families? Laugh together? Hurt each other? Struggle with regrets?
But no matter how she tried to distract herself, her mind kept returning to one crazy thought. She had believed the panic attacks were over, because she hadn’t experienced one since the night at Greg’s house. Like a fool, she had believed the days of assessing her freak-o-meter on a scale of one to ten were over.
Yet the panic had returned with a vengeance, and she had to reassess her thinking.
Maybe the attacks had not stopped because she was finally adjusting to all the changes in her life. Maybe the attacks had stopped because she was with Rourke.
Which was insane, because she wasn’t actually with him. Even when he kissed her goodbye at the station—oh, God, he’d kissed her and she’d nearly melted—she wasn’t with him.
Because that would make her even more insane than the panic screaming through her. She took out her cell phone. Scrolled to Rourke’s number. Her thumb hovered over the Send button. She could call him. She needed to ask him about that kiss. Ask him what, though?
Enough, she told herself, flipping the phone shut. Philip was waiting, a man who seemed desperate to be a father to her. To be in her life. That was something to focus on.
She couldn’t let her
