Were they paying attention to each other? A sharp curl of guilt made its way to her belly. Avery had ended the game rather abruptly, and now—
“Do you think you know what you want to be when you grow up? I bet people ask you that all the time.”
Avery stole a look over her shoulder. Tucker and Shanna had continued playing as if nothing had happened.
“They do,” admitted Shanna. “But it’s because I’m an interesting person.”
Tucker laughed. “You’re pretty interesting.”
“I thought I might want to be a vet, like my mom.” Shanna scanned the cards in her hands. “Or maybe a photographer, like you were saying. That way I could travel.”
“Traveling is awesome.” Tucker sounded so pleased. “There’s no place like home, though. Travel will make you appreciate it like nothing else.”
Worry set in like a low-grade fever, and Avery’s heart raced ahead of her nerves. Talking about home and careers with Shanna seemed dangerously close to the truth at the center of all this. Not now, Avery thought. I don’t have a plan for this. The worry gripped her while she made up a batch of taco meat and heated tortillas in the microwave. It hung on tight while they ate around the table. Avery had never been very good at faking her emotions, but she gave it her all.
It didn’t matter.
As soon as Shanna’s footsteps had retreated up the stairs, Avery tried to make a break for it. She piled Shanna’s plates on hers and got ready to flee to the sink, only to be stopped by Tucker’s huge, gentle hand on her wrist.
She met his eyes. Green, made clearer by concern and an intense focus on her. It brought another bloom of heat to her cheeks. She needed to go outside and lie in the snow. Clearly, that was the only solution.
Tucker took his hand away, but his eyes never left hers.
“Avery, can we talk?”
Avery didn’t want to, but her knees felt weak. She sat heavily in the chair next to him. Oh, why not? Why not look at him, drink him in, and get it out of her system? She let her eyes roam over his flannel shirt, which emphasized his biceps and made her want to squeeze each one in turn to see if they were as hard and firm as they looked. Time had been kind to Tucker. His chin was still as sharp as ever, but it had filled out with the years. She liked the look of manhood on him.
It had gone on a moment too long. Avery cleared her throat and folded her hands on top of the table.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I want to talk about what happened.” Tucker leaned forward, his own arms folded, eyes on hers. “I can’t remember now, and I want to know. Will you help me out?”
Avery took a deep breath. Her instinct was to get up and walk away. She could go up to her bedroom right now and shut the door on this conversation. She could. That was an option.
But it wouldn’t change what had happened. It wouldn’t erase the memories. She’d have to live with those upstairs, too, only Tucker would be down the hall in the guest bedroom. Might as well get it out into the open between them. Again.
“You broke up with me.” The first words out opened the floodgates, and that sick, broken feeling swept back across her like an enormous wave. No matter how much time had passed, it still turned her stomach. “You got a job offer to intern with a professional photographer and you just…you left town, Tucker. That’s what happened. And when you left, I had to go on with my life. I went to college as planned.”
He blinked at her, slowly shaking his head. “I did that?”
“You broke my heart.” A righteous fury overtook the hurt from her old wounds. “You broke it, and you left, and you didn’t care at all.”
Tucker frowned, face darkening. “Well, it must not have been too bad, since you moved on so quickly.”
“I—”
He didn’t know. Tucker didn’t know he was the father. She’d never told him, and he still hadn’t figured it out—he didn’t know. That was how Avery had kept it all these years, and that was how she wanted to keep it now.
If only it weren’t for the guilt.
Tell him, said the voice in the back of her mind. Tell him right now.
The whiplash of her emotions made it hard to think, hard to focus on his face. But then another memory came. Tucker, laughing in the sun. Tucker, turning to her to say: I don’t want a wife and kids tying me down. I have too much to do.
“I don’t know why it matters to you,” she said finally. “You were the one who didn’t want me. You said you didn’t have time for a family and didn’t want a wife, or kids. Well, you did it, Tucker. You never got the wife and kids. And now you’re right back here where you started.”
She left him sitting at the table with her words.
5
If there was one thing Tucker knew, it was that Avery wasn’t a liar.
So her words stunned him more than anything else. If she said he’d broken up with her, he had. And if she said he’d left her behind for an internship, he had. Only he just couldn’t picture it.
He sat down in the kitchen until he could wrap his mind around the concept, and then he got up. He did the dishes. And then, because the snow outside fell in thick, whiteout waves, he went up to the guest bedroom and went to bed.
The next morning, he still couldn’t understand why he’d ever left her, even for a dream job. The light outside was murky, the sun hidden in the clouds, but he couldn’t
