Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (21 page)

“I’m only in town for a visit,” he continued. “My father’s having health problems that got a lot worse today. My family needs my help more than ever. Plus there’s a lot more going on than my dad possibly . . . dying.” Oliver clenched his fists. “I’m not coping with things nearly as well as I should be. And the last time I felt this way and didn’t take care of it by working my program, I found myself at the bottom of a bottle of pills, wondering if I’d screwed up everything that was important to me for the second time in my life.”

Selena looked up, the honesty he might never have been able to give her one-on-one connecting them across a roomful of strangers.

“Alcohol,” Oliver continued, “was how I destroyed my best shot at a normal childhood. I haven’t had a drink since I was nineteen. I’ve made something of myself. I had everything in my life exactly the way I wanted it. Then two years ago I chose taking
prescription drugs over dealing with things that most days I still don’t want to deal with. I relapsed. Hard. I thought I’d fully recovered from that. The last few days . . . it’s clear I haven’t.”

He took a breath, felt the light-headedness of too little sleep and escalating stress. He saw again the downright frightened look on Travis’s face a few hours ago, when Oliver had nearly lost it in the CICU hallway.

“The meds were legally prescribed. I saw them as necessary, to keep me working harder and faster at an impossible job I do better than most anyone. My career is who I’ve become. It’s how I take care of people. Modifying my workload was out of the question. Time off meant letting people down. Stimulants kept me going, on my feet and functioning. They very nearly trashed my life. I almost blew a contract for a client who could have shot my reputation in the industry. I nearly destroyed my chance to make up for my hell-raising youth to my family. But . . .”

He thought about what Travis had said. And Dru. And Selena. Oliver looked her way again. Made sure he still had her attention.

“I’m starting to wonder if that’s not what I wanted from the start. If my relapse was somehow my excuse to come home. At least close enough to home to feel a little more of it, to want a little more of it, until I got my chance to dive all the way back in. My dad’s health crisis means I’m needed here, not just at work. I get this town back. People care about me here. And maybe I’m letting myself really take that in for the first time.”

He saw tears in Selena’s eyes. That’s when he realized his gaze was wet, too.

“At least,” he said to her, “that’s what I’ve been figuring out the last few days. I’ve made amends with people I didn’t think I’d ever see again. My rehab counselors tried to talk me into doing
that from the start. My family’s wanted me back for years. But I knew . . . somehow I knew how hard it would be to come home, and then return to the work I do. And my family will be needing the money my business generates even more now. Especially when it’s looking like . . .”

He kept his attention focused on Selena, which kept him going.

“I don’t know when my dad will be able to work again. If he’ll be able to. So I’ll work my ass off instead. No problem. That’s who I am. Except that will mean leaving him again. All of them . . .” Oliver cleared his throat. “So an hour or so ago, while I was talking with my dad, and I was scared out of my mind by how old and fragile he looked, I found myself thinking how easy it would be to stop by the pharmacy on the way out of the hospital and have a backup prescription for stimulants refilled. So I’d have a pill, maybe two or three—no more than a half dozen or so—to get me through this. Just while I’m home. Just while I’m starting back to work.”

Selena wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. So did he. And then she did the most remarkable thing. She smiled, and she nodded, supporting him the way he’d once tried to be there for her.

He smiled back, to let her know how grateful he was. He took a deep breath, the knot lodged in the center of his chest loosening a little.

“And that’s when I knew I had to be here. Because I can’t help the people I care about if I don’t take care of my sobriety first. I’m no good to my dad or anyone if I’m high.”

Heads all over the room nodded, strangers, brothers and sisters he’d never met. And Selena, even though she still looked as if she might sprint back out to her car.

“I have things in my life that are more important,” he said directly to her, “than a few hours of escape, or convincing myself
that feeling nothing is the only way for me to get through this. So I’ll stay clean today. Tonight, when my dad’s back in surgery. Tomorrow. Whatever happens, I’ll figure out where I need to be for my family and the people I care about—and I’ll make sure I’m there for them.” Remembering what his brother and sister and his rehab counselors had said, he added, “I’ll make sure I’m there for myself.”

With the audience clapping their support, he stepped away from the folding table that the meeting coordinator, a local businessman named Walter Davis, had set up with fliers and other paperwork. It also served as a makeshift lectern. He shook Walter’s hand and took a seat on the front row of olive-green plastic chairs that looked to be seventies-era castoffs. A man Walter had introduced as Law Beaumont occupied the seat beside him.

A decade or so younger than Walter, a few years older than Oliver, Law’s handshake earlier had been firm, his energy intense but steady. He’d said he was recently married to the Chandler Elementary principal, which meant he likely knew Oliver’s family the same as almost everyone else in the room. The anonymity of AA only went so far in a small town.

Law glanced over his shoulder toward the back. “Friend of yours?” he asked softly.

“Not exactly, no.” Oliver fixed his attention on the next person from the crowd of twenty or so who’d walked to the front of the room.

Law leaned in. “She’s here pretty regular, but no more than once a week. If that’s going to be a problem, check with Walter. He’ll have a line on other meetings for however long you’re in town.”

Oliver nodded his thanks and crossed his arms, tuning in to the new speaker’s sobriety story. Except a part of him knew that Selena never got up, never moved. And that he couldn’t let her
slip away again, not without trying to fix at least part of what he’d bungled yesterday.

The meeting wound down. Walter invited people to stick around as long as they wanted, to grab something to drink or eat from another folding table sporting a coffee maker, bottled water, and a couple of bakery boxes from Dan’s filled with assorted pastries. If anyone needed a sponsor, there was a designated place across the room to deal with that, too. The smoking area was the alley out back.

A blur at the edge of Oliver’s vision told him that Selena was on the move. He pushed his way through the crowd—ignoring several people offering a handshake or a welcome—and out the front door into the balmy night. He caught up to Selena as she reached her car.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said, winded from sprinting across the parking lot.

“I believe you.” But she kept her back to him.

Inserting her key, she unlocked the sedan that appeared to be someone’s Frankenstein approach to melding three, maybe four, different makes into one. The faded green paint on the trunk screamed at the different tints of blue that covered the rest. The two tires he could see didn’t match. Neither did the chrome on the front bumper and the faded metal on the fenders. From the way it sat, tilted slightly on its axles, someone had wrecked the poor thing more than once.

“Talk to me.” Oliver stopped her from opening the driver’s door, his hand catching it near the top of the window. “Damn it. Just stand here with me for a minute. Help me figure some of this out.”

She dropped her head and rolled her shoulders, supple muscles flexing beneath the deep red T-shirt she’d thrown on over tight jeans. Travis had said she was a runner, too. Every morning
on the weekends. Damn, Oliver would give anything to see that. A sophisticated city girl turned and stared straight into him, wearing black, square-heeled boots. She planted her palm in the center of his chest and shoved him out of her personal space.

“Figure what out?” she asked.

“Hell if I know.” He kept his hands to himself by burying them in the back pockets of his jeans.

“I don’t want to do this in public, Oliver.”

“You don’t want to do it at all. You’re never going to want to, and this is the most privacy we’re likely to get for a while. I don’t know when I’ll have another break at the house, now that Dad . . .”

“What’s happened with Joe?” She brushed his arm, her touch loving, her expression concerned.

Oliver closed his eyes. “He needs a bypass, as soon as possible. I came here straight from the hospital.”

“I’m so sorry. Your family . . .”

“We’ll be fine.”

That Oliver had no doubt about, with or without his help. Look at how they’d all been pulling together to support him the last few days. Nothing kept the Dixons down, or stopped them from taking care of their own.

“But it’s going to be a rough go of it for a while,” he admitted. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do if Joe doesn’t . . .”

He simply couldn’t say it.

“I’m glad you had a meeting to come to.” Selena’s touch dropped away.

“Travis’s friend Walter was pretty stand-up about it, meeting me at the door and smoothing the way. I had no idea that you . . . How long have you been in AA?”

“Pretty much since I left town.” She scanned the quiet parking lot and then the star-shot sky overhead. “So far, my sobriety
is one of the few things I don’t think the general public around here is keeping tabs on. I’m betting that’s going to change if you don’t let me get in my car and drive out of here.”

Oliver’s fingers closed around her toned forearm instead. “It wasn’t my intention to ambush you tonight. Or at Belinda’s yesterday. I only wanted to get things out in the open and talk. But when I saw Camille up close, and she . . .” He forced himself to focus. “Can we give this another shot? I’m usually a lot better at dealing with people’s difficult issues.”

“That’s what your website says. No computer problem’s too big or too broken for you to fix. You find a way to deal with one client’s difficulties, then you move on to someone else’s.”

His website? “You’ve been googling me.”

“No.” Embarrassment pinkened her cheeks. “A little. Not much. Marsha said something to my mom about how proud she and Joe were of you. I may have . . .”

“Internet stalked me?

“Once or twice.” Selena shoved soft, sleek hair behind her ear. “Besides, you positively reek of it now.”

“What?”

“Success. Control. Business. Everything about you—except your deplorable wardrobe—says you’re at the top of your game. A player to be reckoned with, running your own company. Not that I’m surprised as much as some people will be when word spreads. When I saw you the other morning I would have guessed you’d landed on your feet even if I hadn’t already known part of your story. I’ve been around enough of you.”

“Enough of who?”

“Corporate types. Movers and shakers. I can recognize one from a hundred paces, long before he throws a Hello Kitty Frisbee over my head. You’re eaten up with it, even if you look like you’ve
slept in your clothes for three days. I bet you dominate whatever business environment a problem draws you into. And now your difficult issue is my daughter and dealing with her.”

“For my family’s sake.”

“I was inside just now. I heard how hard all of this is for you. Being home and leaving again soon. I’m assuming learning about Camille—maybe being a dad and not knowing what to do about it—is part of what’s thrown you for enough of a loop to need a meeting tonight.”

“Okay. It’s personal for me. But I have my family to think about, too. And I know you’re worried about them, or you wouldn’t have avoided my folks for two months, or have looked so guilty at the hospital when you finally visited them.”

Selena gazed over his shoulder to where the meeting was still going on. “The fact that Camille exists doesn’t mean our worlds have to be karmically linked forever. I never meant to hide her from your family. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I never thought I’d come back. Everyone was living their lives . . .”

“But you did come back.”

“Shit happens, Oliver. We were supposed to have been long gone by now.”

“Yet you stayed.” And that reality seemed to be messing with her as much as him. “It scares me, too, Selena. I still don’t know how to wrap my head around what family means. Or what it doesn’t. But . . . I don’t want to just run again, not until I’ve figured some of this out.”

Selena squinted up at him. “I’m happy you want to give Chandlerville and your family a second chance to be in your life. But you don’t know if you can actually go through with that, do you? And I’m terrified of what that might mean for my daughter.”

“I’m just asking for a chance,” he pressed. “Hear me and my family out—the way you listened to me inside. You’ve always been able to see me, understand me, like no one else could. Do that again, Selena. I’m not a bad guy. I’m not out to hurt you or Camille, and neither is my family.”

She seared him with her disbelief. “Are you telling me you could rock your world and be a hands-on father if Camille is yours? Because unless you can, I’m trying—I’ve been trying since Tuesday—to understand how there’s anything but heartache ahead for my daughter if we take her down this path.”

“Having Marsha and Joe as grandparents would be a good thing for Camille,” he hedged. “Look how happy she is with Belinda.”

“She needs consistency.”

“Then give her that in Chandlerville.”

“Because surrounding ourselves with this town and our families worked out so well for the both of us when we were kids? My mother just announced that she kicked my father out twenty years ago, instead of him leaving on his own. Clearly my childhood was going to be messed up from the get-go.”

“That doesn’t mean Camille will have the same experience.”

“No. But being a part of either of our families doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be happy.”

“She deserves as much family as we can give her, even if—”