She finally turned, and she gazed at him out of blue, mountain sky eyes that revealed nothing. “I never left.”
“The way you were. That’s what I want.”
“You are in a mood tonight.”
To his dismay, he could feel his throat closing up, but even so, he couldn’t be silent. “I want it the way it was at the beginning. I want you silly and funny, imitating the landlady and teasing me for being too serious. I want dandelions back on the dinner table, and fatback and beans. I want you to start giggling so hard you wet your pants, and when I walk in the door, I want you to throw yourself at me like you used to.”
Her forehead crinkled with concern. She walked over to him and rested her hand on his arm in the same comfort-place she’d been touching for nearly four decades. “I can’t make you young again, Jim. And I can’t give you back Jamie and Cherry and everything the way it used to be.”
“I know that, dammit!” He shook her off, rejecting her pity and her suffocating, never-ending kindness. “This isn’t about them. What happened has made me realize I don’t like the way things are. I don’t like the way you’ve changed.”
“You’ve had a hard day. I’ll give you a back rub.”
As always, her sweetness made him feel guilty, unworthy, and mean. It was the meanness that had been driving him lately and telling him to push her so far, to hurt her so badly, that he’d destroy the icy reserve and find the girl he’d thrown away.
Maybe if he gave her some evidence that he wasn’t as bad as he knew himself to be, she’d soften. “I’ve never screwed around on you.”
“I’m glad to know that.”
He couldn’t let it go at that, giving her only the part of the truth he wanted her to see. “I had chances, but I never went all the way. Once I got myself right to the motel door—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“But I backed off. God, I felt good about that for at least a week. Smug and self-righteous.”
“Whatever you’re doing to yourself, I want you to stop it right now.”
“I want to start over. I thought maybe on our vacation… but we hardly talked to each other. Why can’t we start over?”
“Because you’d hate it now just as much as you hated it then.”
She was as unreachable as a distant star, but he still needed to touch her. “I loved you so much, you know that, don’t you? Even when I let my parents talk me into agreeing to a divorce, I still loved you.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Jim. Gabe came along, and then Ethan, and there wasn’t any divorce. It was all so long ago. There’s no sense in stirring up the past. We have three wonderful sons and a comfortable life.”
“I don’t want to be comfortable!” Fury exploded inside him, fueled by frustration. “Goddammit! Don’t you understand anything? Jesus, I hate you!” In all their time together, he had never once touched her in violence, but now he grabbed her arms and shook her. “I can’t stand this any longer! Change back!”
“Stop it!” Her fingers dug into his upper arms. “Stop it! What’s wrong with you?”
He saw the fear on her face, and he jerked away, appalled by what he’d done.
Her icy reserve had finally melted, leaving rage behind, an emotion he’d never until that moment seen on her face.
“You’ve been torturing me for months!” she cried. “You belittle me in front of my own sons. You poke at me and jab me and draw blood in a thousand ways every day! I’ve given you everything, but it’s still not enough. Well, I won’t put up with it anymore! I’m leaving you! I’m finished!” She raced from the kitchen.
Panic welled inside him. He started to run after her, but then stopped just as he reached the door. What would he do when he caught her? Shake her again? Christ. What if he’d finally pushed her too far?
He drew a deep breath and told himself she was still his own Amber Lynn, sweet and gentle as a mountain afternoon. She wouldn’t leave him no matter what she said. She just needed time to calm down, that was all.
As he heard her car peel out of the driveway, he kept repeating the same thing to himself.
She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.
* * *
Lynn’s chest was so tight that she had to gasp for breath as she raced along the narrow, winding road. It was a treacherous piece of highway, but she’d been driving it for years, and not even her tears made her slow down. She knew what he wanted from her. He wanted her to open her veins again and bleed with love for him the way she once had. Bleed with love that would never be returned.
She struggled for breath and remembered that she’d learned her lesson years ago when she’d been little more than a baby, naive and ignorant at sixteen, utterly convinced that love could conquer the enormous gap between them. But that naïveté hadn’t lasted. Two weeks after she’d told him she was pregnant with Gabe—Cal had only been eleven months old—her innocence was shattered forever.