The Prodigal's Return (19 page)

“I'm not afraid of you, Neal.” She looked up at him. “I've never been afraid of you.”

“Not of me.” There was such passion in her insistence, in her heart, he didn't know how he'd ever let her go. “Of what being with me would mean. What letting someone into your heart again could cost you if everything went to hell. You've been hurt so badly, Jenn. And I was part of that. It's killing me to know you might never be able to trust your heart again.”

“I…” She swallowed twice, as if to keep herself from continuing. Then those brave shoulders straightened, and she stepped back. “I love you, Neal. I'll always love you. But loving you makes me… You're right. The thought of losing you again terrifies me. And I…”

The fact that she couldn't finish saying it all didn't change the truth written all over her face.

She needed to be alone and safe more than she needed his love.

“I understand.” He kissed her forehead, wishing to hell he didn't. If he hadn't spent so long running himself, maybe he could be angry at her for giving up. But all he could do now was understand, and somehow help make what she needed okay. “Don't worry, it's okay. You've given me my father back, Jennifer. You've let me be your friend again. Even
let me help you just a little. It's more than I ever thought we'd have. For the rest of my life, I'll be grateful that I came back to Rivermist and found you here.”

He brushed damp hair away from her face, kissed her one last time and turned away.

He had to get out of there.

“Neal, don't go,” she begged.

“I'll meet you back at the house.” He needed some time. He had to be anywhere but next to her while she told him she didn't have enough hope left to fight for the new beginning they'd almost had. “I…I think I'll go for a run.”

 

“A
RE YOU OKAY
?” B
RETT ASKED
from where he sat on the edge of Traci's bed.

Jenn hesitated just outside the girl's room, still shaking from saying she loved Neal, then watching him walk away.

When the bruised teenager nodded from her nest of pillows instead of answering, Brett took her hand.

“Are you sure you don't want your parents?” he asked.

Traci shook her head, wincing and bringing a hand up to cup the bruise swelling from her right temple to her jawline.

“I can't face them,” she finally said. “I know they're glad I lost the baby, and I just can't—”

“They're glad you're okay.” Jenn stepped into the room. She couldn't let this child believe something like that. She couldn't watch love die here, too. “And they know you're hurting about the baby. They love you, Traci, don't turn them away now. Don't let yourself think you don't need them, just when you need love the most.”

“She's right,” Brett agreed. “I was there. Your mom started crying when she heard. I know you guys are still fighting, but they thought they'd lost you, and they're really upset about the baby. Let them come back here. They want to be with you.”

Traci looked at Jenn, as the teen had done so many other times over the last few weeks, her eyes asking Jenn to tell her what to do. And Jenn's answer had to be the same as it had been from day one.

“You're the only one who knows what's right for you, sweetie. You have to follow your heart.”
It's killing me to know you might never be able to trust your heart again.
“What… What does your heart tell you to do?”

Brett squeezed Traci's hand.

“I… I want my mom,” Traci whispered on a sob.

Jenn ran, relieved that Traci was giving her future this final chance to work. Terrified that she herself had just let panic and fear keep her from grabbing onto what she'd dreamed of always having. She returned in less than a minute with Bob and Betty at her heels.

“Oh, honey.” Betty engulfed her battered daughter in the gentlest hug Jenn had ever seen. “Thank God you're okay. We're so sorry about the baby, honey. So very sorry.”

Traci looked at her father. “Really?”

When Bob stepped around the foot of the bed, Brett moved so the man could reach his daughter.

He gave Traci's bruised cheek a soft kiss.

“The baby meant the world to you, Traci, and you mean the world to me. I'm so sorry that you're hurting. I never wanted anything like this to happen to the ba… To my grandchild. I'm…” He wiped at the tear that had run from the corner of his eye to his jaw. “I'm so sorry, honey.”

Seeing her father in tears got the best of Traci. She started sobbing, and then she was enveloped in her parents' hugs. In their love.

“Come home, Traci,” Betty begged as she drew away. “Please, honey.”

“If you want to,” Bob added as he took his wife's hand, effectively forming a half circle around the teenager. “We want you home, honey, as much as we always have. But we heard you at dinner tonight. We almost lost you in that accident. It feels like we've been losing you for months. Because I've been too stubborn to let you grow up. You stay at the Cain house as long as you need. When you're ready to come home, we'll be there.”

Traci looked at Bob Carpenter like he was once again the daddy she'd loved as a little girl, then her gaze moved to Jenn.

“You were right all along,” she said, holding tight to her mother's hand, still bruised and crying, but healing where it was most important. “My heart
did
know exactly what to do.”

“I
THOUGHT YOU
were going for a run.” Jenn found Neal sitting behind the wheel of the busted-up Mustang in his father's garage.

“I didn't really want to be anyplace but here.” He smiled down at his lap instead of looking at her.

“Yeah.” She approached slowly, watching him through the gaping hole where the windshield should have been. “I… Sometimes it takes something like Traci's accident to help you figure out what's really important. Where you really want to be.”

“Or maybe it just takes time.” His smile slipped away. “Timing is everything.”

She wrenched open the banged-up passenger door and sat next to him in the car he and his father had gotten the chance to destroy, if not build, together.

“What are you reading?” She finally saw the papers strewn all over the inside of the car.

“Letters.” He picked up a sealed envelope and ripped it open. An envelope that looked strangely familiar in the glare of the garage's bare lightbulb.

She reached for the papers closest to her, and Neal tensed. But he didn't stop her. The handwriting was instantly familiar, as was the jagged emotion written into every word.

“Oh, my God.” She picked up another one, scanned the date, but couldn't bring herself to read a single word. “You… You said you never read these.”

“I didn't.” He ripped into another faded pink envelope. “Not before now. But I never could let them go. I couldn't keep myself from staring at them night after night in my cell. They were a part of you, the only part I thought I'd ever be able to touch again. Some days, having them was the only thing that got me through.”

Tears flooded her eyes at the thought that she'd meant so much to him during a time when she'd been so sure he'd forgotten all about her.

Then what he was doing, what he was saying, took on another meaning entirely.

“Why… Why are you reading them now, out here in this trash heap of a car?”

Why wouldn't he look at her?

“I brought them back with me from Atlanta. I wanted you to have them. I wanted you to know… I didn't want you to think I hadn't needed you. That I didn't love you, even when I couldn't face you or anything else about this place.” He finished reading
the letter he held and passed it over. “But then everything that made you remember, everything about me, seemed to hurt you so much. I've kept them in my room. I was going to take them back with me to Atlanta when…” He ripped open another envelope. “I guess I finally needed to read them tonight. Because…”

Timing was everything.

“Because you've decided to leave?” She stacked the papers she held and passed them back, refusing to believe he was saying goodbye. “Here, take them back!”

“I'm not leaving now,” he explained, tossing the paper and envelopes into a box at his feet. “It's just that after… When I'm not needed here anymore, I'm going back to my work in Atlanta. And I wanted you to know—”

“I know.” She reached out and turned his face fully toward her. For the rest of her life, she'd never forget the shock of seeing the tears tracking down his cheeks.
God, please don't let it be too late.
“I know how much you love me, Neal.”

She took the box and laid it on the dashboard.

My heart
did
know exactly what to do,
Traci had whispered just a half hour earlier. The teenager's heart had led her back to her parents' love.

And Jenn had come looking for Neal.

“You know what you said at the hospital?” When
he didn't respond, her heart sank, but she wasn't giving up. Not this time. “About me being too afraid of this thing between us to give it another chance? Because I couldn't risk my heart and have it broken all over again?”

“Yeah,” he finally said. He reached out and pulled her against him, kissing her hair. “And I understand, Jenn. More than I want to. It's not your fault. It's just the way things are.”

He understood so well, he'd been sitting out here alone trying to find a way to say goodbye.

“Well, thanks to Traci Carpenter, I realized something else after you left. Something I learned for the first time when I watched you walk out of that courtroom when we were kids, and had been so sure I'd die from losing you.”

“What?” he asked, memories from the worst day of both of their lives simmering in his voice.

“I remembered that I didn't die, Neal. I didn't give up, no matter how hard I tried. I guess I'm like you. I'm just not made that way. No matter how bad things got, or how hopeless life seemed, I kept going, the same way Traci has. The same way you did. Somehow along the way I got being alone mixed up with being safe. I was so busy making a life for my daughter, and hiding in other people's problems, that I let myself believe it was better not to trust the heart I thought had died when I lost you. But I survived,
and I made it back here somehow. Just like you. It's a miracle, really, when you think about it. The way caring about our fathers got us to do what we've spent the last eight years running from.”

“What are you saying, Jennifer?” His strong hands cupped her face.

She loved the way he said her name. The way the hope shining in his eyes wrapped around her heart.

She loved him.

“I'm saying I never really wanted to be alone, Neal. My heart never really died. It's been right here, all along. Waiting for you. No matter how scary it may be, or what happens next, you're what my heart wants, what it's always wanted. I love you. I always have. And I don't know how to give up on that.”

She kissed him first this time, and she kept on kissing him. Reminding herself with each touch, each gentle word that he murmured as he kissed her back, exactly why she was willing to risk anything, to hold on to the perfect piece of now that she held in her arms.

“G
RANDPA
,
THEY'RE ABOUT
to start the dancing!” Mandy squealed. And despite the sound of her daughter's laughter, Jenn felt her eyes fill with tears.

They were missing one very special grandpa today.

She glanced up from where she sat at Nathan Cain's kitchen table to see her father pull Mandy close, a suspicious sheen of moisture coating his eyes as well. They were having a party. The entire town had turned out. Buford was in the corner chatting with Dr. Harden. Traci and Brett and a bunch of the kids were on the porch outside. The once-empty house was packed. And everyone had vowed there would only be laughter today—to celebrate the life of the man who'd become special to them again, even if it had only been for a short time.

Nathan's wake was the social event of the season, bringing together the community that had rallied around him the last month of his life, no matter how much he'd griped and complained about the atten
tion. After Jenn and Traci had mentioned his ill health at the church council meeting, and after his appearance at the hospital to make sure Traci was okay, it was no wonder that Southern hearts had started to melt up and down North Street. Long made-up minds had started to change. Traci had also let it slip to her parents how he'd confronted Jeremy Compton that awful night the creep had come to the house. How a sick and limping Nathan had stood between the town princess and a boy no one had known at the time could be so dangerous. And that was that. Nathan had become an honest-to-goodness local hero.

Bob and Betty Carpenter had been the first family to bring a home-cooked meal over to share, their way of thanking Nathan for all he'd done for their daughter. But they had been in no way the last neighbors to offer whatever help they could. Even Brett and his friends had arrived one afternoon, and returned like clockwork for weeks, adding their muscle to the endless home improvement that remained to be done on the house. Until just a week ago, when the work had finally been finished.

Nathan slipped into a coma in his sleep the very next day, and he'd drifted away the following night. But he'd seen his home restored to its former beauty. He'd seen that the town he'd once loved hadn't forgotten him after all. And he and Neal had finally had their talk.

A real one this time, in which nothing was dented or destroyed, and very few words had actually been spoken. But around midnight one night, when the wind had settled down enough for the two of them to sit on the porch and watch the stars the way they once had with Neal's mom, Neal had told his father he loved him. Then he'd cried in Jenn's arms when he'd come upstairs to bed. Because in a gruff, almost impossible-to-hear voice, his father had said he loved Neal, too.

The doorbell rang.

Jenn watched as her fiancé crossed the foyer to answer it, the suit coat he'd worn to the funeral discarded and his tie askew. Nathan wasn't the only one the town had decided to accept after the events surrounding Traci's accident.

Neal opened the door to none other than Catherine Compton. Her about-face change in opinion toward the Cain family had been the most dramatic of all. It couldn't have been easy for her to face first Traci's parents and then Jenn's father, after what Jeremy had done. Coming to visit Nathan, after the things she'd said about him and Neal, had to have been the hardest gesture of all. But she'd made the effort, and she'd shaken Neal's hand as she left that day, beginning to see in him what so many others already had. Redemption instead of past mistakes. A man who could be a trusted friend, if he were only
given another chance. And maybe in forgiving him, Catherine had finally begun to put Bobby's death behind her.

Neal showed Catherine in, then he looked Jenn's way, his troubled gaze softening into the smile that warmed her heart every time she saw it. Jeremy was being held without bond, pending his DUI and vehicular battery charges. A simple comparison of blood types had been all they'd needed to rule him out as Mandy's father. His bitterness and anger couldn't hurt Jenn or anyone else now, but his threats and accusations and mixed-up anger had cost an unborn life, when the person he'd really been gunning for was Jenn. Seeing him or Catherine wasn't going to be pleasant for Jenn for quite a while to come.

In the den, classic jazz began playing from the stereo system. The music Nathan had made Jenn and Neal listen to as kids for hours on end, then had played night after night over the last month as they had learned to trust in their love for each other all over again. Neal came toward her, his hand reaching out as their friends and neighbors looked on. He led her into the den, where they'd removed all the furniture just for today, and pulled her close. They began to slow dance to Nathan's favorite Miles Davis album, holding tight to each other as the memories wrapped them in slow, smooth notes from the past.

There could be no more perfect moment, no more perfect feeling, than laying her head on the shoulder of the man she loved, and believing with all her heart that he would still be there holding her tomorrow. Loving her. Marrying her in just a few months. They'd be saying their vows in this very room in fact, with her father officiating and Mandy giving Jenn away.

And though there were tears in her heart for Nathan, there was also the laughter he'd wanted for this day. So as she looked up, smiled at Neal and noticed her father dancing with Mandy nearby, she gave herself over to the beauty of the music Nathan had loved. The perfection of the future he'd played such a cantankerous role in bringing about for all of them.