Until Now (23 page)

Unfortunately, I only made it a few steps before Cody appeared in front of me, forcing me to stop.

“Let me explain,” he said.

I laughed and swiped some rain off my face. At least I was getting clean. “Seriously?”

“Come on,” he said, moving closer to me. “Kiara’s overreacting. It’s not like we ever had sex or anything.
Almost
doesn’t count.”

I shot him the dirtiest look I could muster and sidestepped around him, failing to notice the jagged crack in the sidewalk in front of me. The pointy heel of my shoe got snagged in it, making me stumble and fall into Cody. It was then, as he slipped his arms around my waist to steady me, that I glanced up and saw Ryan.

He was crossing the rain-slicked street toward me, wearing the same clothes he’d had on at the bookstore earlier this evening. And his face…the expression on it was a sickening mixture of disbelief, disappointment, and barely-contained fury. I’d never seen him like this, even when he spoke about his ex-wife driving drunk with Mason in the car.

“Ryan?” I said, half wondering if he was an alcohol-induced hallucination. I shook out of Cody’s grasp and stepped toward him, but the look in his eyes stopped me from getting too close. His irises were chips of ice, hard and cold. “What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”

His gaze shifted, taking in my stained dress, tangled hair, and makeup-streaked face before settling just to the right of my shoulder, where I assumed Cody still stood. “Nicole,” he said, eyes fastening on mine again. “She dropped by my apartment a while ago and told me you were here. And that it wasn’t the first time she’s seen you.” He glanced at Cody again, and I heard his unsaid words:
With him
.

I closed my eyes.
Nicole
. She’d kept her mouth shut the first time, either for me or for Ryan or for some other reason altogether, but twice had been too much. And I couldn’t blame her.

“She didn’t want me to come,” Ryan went on. Rain trickled onto his T-shirt, darkening the fabric. “But I had to. I needed to see it for myself.”

“Ryan.” I couldn’t stand the way he was looking at me, his face radiating disgust and shock. I loved surprising him, but not like this. Still, what could I say right now to defend myself?
It’s not what it looks like
? He’d never believe that old excuse, even though—at the moment, at least—it was true.

“Who’s this dude?” Cody asked, the muscles in his forearms constricting as he clenched his fists. Like he was getting ready to protect me. From
Ryan
. I felt like I was stuck in some bizarre nightmare.

Ryan crossed his arms, undaunted, his attention still focused on me. “Is this what you want?” he asked. The harsh, challenging edge in his voice warned me that his question was rhetorical. That the idea of me wanting this, the idea of
him
wanting a woman who lied and drank too much and got kicked out of clubs, was too ridiculous to require an actual answer. He’d already gone through it once with Chelsea; he wasn’t going to accept the same shit from me.

Chelsea
. The vodka had done its job—I’d forgotten, or at least repressed, the fact that he was seeing her tomorrow. But now, standing here on the sidewalk in the rain with his familiar face in front of me, the image of them together rushed back with a bolt of fresh pain.
No
, I almost told him.
This isn’t what I want. This life used to be good enough, at one point, but I don’t want it anymore. I want you.

But the words died on my tongue. The set of his shoulders and the tense, rigid way he carried himself, like he was struggling for self-control, told me he wouldn’t be very receptive to anything I had to say.

“Okay,” Ryan said, his tone as cold as his eyes. “At least I know where you stand now.”

Panic choked me. He
didn’t
know where I stood, or what I wanted, because I couldn’t seem to find the words to tell him. I could barely even admit my feelings for him to
myself
. That was the problem. And I had no idea how to fix it.

“No,” I said, finally finding my voice. I wiped my face with my fingers, blending rain and tears together in one cohesive smear, and took a step toward him. “I know it looks bad, but please…just let me explain.”

“No need.” His icy gaze fell on Cody again, but this time it lingered. “I think I get it.”

Beside me, Cody puffed out even more, his temper piqued. I sensed his next move before he even made it, and I threw myself in front of him without even thinking about it first, preventing him from moving toward Ryan. “Don’t!” I screamed at him. “Don’t you fucking touch him.”

Cody backed off, and a few seconds later I felt a vibration in my hand, followed by a slow, steady throbbing. I’d shoved him, I realized. I’d pushed against his hard chest with my hand and almost broke my damn wrist in the process.

Only vaguely aware of the pain—and the small audience of smokers who’d emerged from the protective overhang to watch the drama—I swung back around to look at Ryan. But all I saw was the back of him as he walked away. Not away from Cody, who wasn’t even worth the effort of a punch in the face, but away from
me
. Like Kiara, he was done.

Numb, I stood there on the sidewalk and let the rain sluice down my body, rinsing away what was left of the stickiness. Cody backed away even further, absently rubbing the spot on his chest where my hand had connected. “Crazy bitch,” he snarled at me before walking away too.

Unable to stand upright any longer, I tottered back over to Fusion and lowered myself to the ground a few feet from the door, my back against the rough brick wall. Minutes or hours later, some girl took pity on me and called me a taxi on her phone, then gave me a couple of bills to cover the fare. I may have thanked her.

By the time I arrived back at the Brogans’, I was both drenched and exhausted. And still a little drunk, apparently. On the way up to my room, my heel got caught in one of the stair runners and I pitched forward, landing painfully on my right knee. Cursing, I slowly flipped around and sat down on the stairs, my head dipping toward my lap. Fuck it, I thought. I’ll sleep here.

“Robin?”

I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently. I cracked open my eyes and peered through the damp web of hair that had plastered itself to my face. Emma stood a couple of steps below me, her eyes wide with fear. “Hi, Em,” I whispered, in case she thought I was dying. The poor kid had obviously never come across a drunk person passed out on the stairs in the middle of the night before.

“Should I get Lynn?” she asked.

“No,” I said quickly. Or it might have been five minutes later, I wasn’t sure. “Just help me up.”

She bent down, tucking her arm through mine, and that was my last cognizant memory before waking up the next morning to more shaking, but this time it was much less gentle.

“How you feeling?” Taylor asked. There was no trace of concern in her words…just angry, unforgiving disappointment. She sat down on the edge of the bed, jostling me. “Emma told me what happened last night. Or should I say this morning, since it was three a.m. when you woke her up and scared the hell out of her. She told Dad, too. And Lynn.”

My head pounded like someone had stuck it in a vise grip and squeezed. I pressed my face into the pillow, avoiding both the sunlight streaming in through the window and my best friend’s wrath. But she wasn’t fazed by my obvious suffering.

“They’re downstairs discussing whether they should ask you to leave,” she went on, merciless. “Lynn said you’ve already had one warning. She didn’t tell me because she thought
you
should.” She stood up and looked down at me, her eyes glossy with hurt. “But I guess trusting my best friend to be honest with me was a stupid mistake on my part.”

“Taylor…” I said, lifting my hand toward her. But it was too late. She’d already left the room, not bothering to shut the door behind her.

I stayed in bed for a moment, trying to keep perfectly still as the events of the past twelve or so hours swirled around in my head, making it throb even more. My stomach joined the fun soon after, and I scrambled out of bed and across the hall to the bathroom, making it without a second to spare.

When I ventured downstairs an hour later for coffee, I found the three of them—Taylor, her dad, and her stepmom—all sitting around the kitchen table, waiting for me. Here we go, I thought, pausing in the doorway. Reckoning time.

“Get your coffee and sit down,” Lynn said, unsmiling. Shit. This could not be good.

I obeyed, taking the seat between my best friend, who still looked like she wanted to kill me, and Steven, who just seemed uncomfortable. He didn’t like confrontation.

“We discussed it,” Lynn said, curling a hand around her coffee mug. “And we’ve decided that you can keep staying here.
But
,” she added before I could open my mouth to thank them. “We’re giving you a deadline.”

I nodded, hot tears prickling behind my eyes. “Okay,” I said.

“August twenty-second,” Steve said. “That’ll give you lots of time to find a place and get settled in before school starts. Fair?”

I nodded again, unable to speak. It was more than fair, and more than I deserved. “Thank you. Thank you both. I—” I stared into my coffee, blinking fast. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Ever since the twins—”

“Stop using the twins as an excuse,” Taylor broke in. Her voice was like a whip, slicing into me. “You’ve been doing that for years. You went off the rails when you were seventeen after you found out your mother was pregnant with them, and now you’re doing it again because they’re gone. You can’t base your behavior—good or bad or otherwise—on them. How you act is on
you
. When are you going to figure that out?” She got up and hastily pushed her chair in. “I have to get to work.”

Cheeks burning, I kept my head down as she said good-bye to her father and stepmother and then left through the deck door, slamming it shut behind her. I glanced up to see Steve and Lynn exchange a solemn look, and that was when the full extent of what I’d done hit me. It had finally happened, the one thing I’d spent the last three years trying to avoid: I’d become a disappointment to the people who mattered to me most.

“I have to get ready for work, too,” I said, gathering my untouched coffee and transferring it to the sink. Each tiny motion set off starbursts of pain in my eye sockets, but I endured it. Welcomed it, even. “Thank you,” I repeated, forcing myself to face them, to look into their eyes. “For giving me another chance. I won’t screw it up this time. I promise.”

Steven’s face softened at my words, but Lynn’s shrewd expression didn’t falter. “We know you’re going through a rough time right now, so we’re not going to throw you out on the street,” she said. “But next time, Robin, you won’t get another chance. You’ll be gone before the hangover even sets in.”

I swallowed.
Ouch
. But I welcomed that, too, because given the choice between compliance and homelessness, I definitely preferred the former.

* * *

I spent the rest of the weekend with my head down, quietly moving from work to my room to work again, with little in between. I ate by myself, cleaned up after myself, and generally just stayed out of everyone’s way. Taylor was still mad at me, and after the third time I approached her, desperate to mend things, she asked me to give her some time. I agreed, then slinked back into my self-imposed isolation.

Ryan needed time too, or so I assumed. He hadn’t answered any of the texts I’d sent him, asking for a chance to explain. Maybe, I thought as I lay wide awake in bed on Saturday night, he was still with Chelsea, discussing the pros and cons of getting back together. Or maybe they already
were
back together, and celebrating their reunification by—

I kicked off my blankets, suddenly overheated. No. I couldn’t even think about that.

When Monday afternoon arrived and I still hadn’t heard from him—not even after I’d skipped Sunday dinner at his parents’ house, which I was sure would’ve prompted
some
form of contact—I gathered my nerve and drove across town to Margins after work. The store was always especially dead on Monday afternoons, so I knew we’d have some privacy to talk. Also, ambushing him at his workplace was probably the only way I’d convince him to see me.

As predicted, the bookstore was empty of customers when I walked in. Ryan wasn’t at the cash, but I could hear his footsteps approaching from the back as the door clicked shut behind me. Seconds later he appeared, his features shifting from expectant to stony once he realized it was me.

“Hi,” I said, drinking him in greedily. He looked about as exhausted as I felt, the light in his eyes dulling to a flat, mistrustful glare at the sight of me.

“I’m working,” he said, then backtracked, heading into the stacks. I sprinted forward, catching up to him in Science Fiction and closing my fingers around his arm. He immediately pulled free, holding his hands up as if warning me to stay away. I took a step back.

“Five minutes,” I begged. “Just give me five minutes. Let me explain. Please.”

He rested his back against the shelf behind him, positioning himself as far away from me as possible in such a small space. “There’s nothing to explain. It’s pretty simple, actually. You’re not the person I thought you were.”

I flinched as if he’d kicked me. This was the most painful thing I’d heard yet, maybe because it was also the most accurate. “No,” I said. “You’re right. And I’m sorry for letting you believe I was something I’m not. I’m sorry for deceiving you and your family. But what happened the other night, at Fusion—”

“You don’t need to tell me what happened.” He folded his arms tightly over his chest. “I was there, remember? I saw.”

“But you didn’t see everything.”

He shook his head, his mouth twisting in disgust. “It’s a good thing I didn’t, or else I’d probably be in jail right now for pushing that douchebag in front of a bus.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, slightly heartened by the fact that he still cared enough about me to want to inflict bodily harm on Cody. “You didn’t see what happened before, in the club, when I was trying to get away from him. Or when his girlfriend showed up and threw her drink at me. What you saw outside…that was me trying to
leave
. Nothing happened between me and that guy, Ryan, or any other guy since you and I got together. I haven’t—I’d never cheat on you.”

“Nic
saw
you,” he said through gritted teeth, his skin reddening with anger. “She saw you last night, saw him putting his hands all over you. She saw you with him a few weeks ago too, and that was
after
we’d gotten together. She told me exactly what day it was. You were there with him one fucking night after you were here, with me, on that couch right over there. So don’t give me that
nothing happened
bullshit. You think I’m going to believe you over my own sister?”

“I’m not calling your sister a liar,” I said, my voice rising to meet his. “She did see me with him, but it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t
there
with him. I’m not dating him. I don’t want him. I’ve never slept with him. He’s just some guy who cheats on his girlfriend and can’t keep his hands to himself. He’s no one. He’s nothing.”

“Then why were you dancing with him and letting him touch you? Why did you walk out of here on Friday when we weren’t even through talking, then ignore my texts and head straight for some nightclub so you could get drunk and rub up on some other guy?”

My vision swam, causing his face to blend into the rows of books behind him, and the next words erupted from my mouth like water from a geyser, loud and turbulent. “Because I was upset! Because the thought of you and Mason spending time with Chelsea drove me so insane that I couldn’t even
think
straight. Okay? There. Now you know. I’m jealous of your ex-wife. I’m scared you’re going to go back to her. I’m scared I’m never going to see my brother and sister again. I’m scared all the damn time, just like you, except sometimes I try to smother it with vodka. Wrong, I know, but there it is. I don’t know what else I can say.”

He stared at me for a few moments, his chest rising and falling under his arms. The ice in his eyes had melted a little, but his skin was still flushed. “I’m not going back to Chelsea,” he said, his voice lowering to its regular pitch. “I don’t trust her anymore, and I can’t be with someone who I don’t trust.”

He looked right into my eyes as he said this, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about Chelsea. Still. Now that the floodgates were open, I didn’t want to back down. “Even if she’s the mother of your son?”

“Even then.”

“Well, what if she wants custody of Mason?” I asked, my heart stuttering at the thought of her taking him, ripping him away from Ryan and Jane and everything he loved. “If she took him back to Hyde Creek, wouldn’t you move back there too, to be closer to him?”

“I’m not moving back there, and she doesn’t want custody of Mason.”

“How do you know? Did she tell you that at mini-golf on Saturday?”

“I know because she wasn’t
at
mini-golf on Saturday,” he said. “She didn’t show up.”

For a moment, I forgot we were fighting. “What?”

“Her parents said she wasn’t ready.” He turned to the side and scanned the line of books at his eye level, searching for discrepancies. It drove him crazy when people took books out and then put them away in random spots. “I think she just chickened out. She’ll probably never be ready to face him. Or me, for that matter.”

I let out a breath. Even though Chelsea’s failure to show up was unconceivable and sad and whatever other terms could be used to describe a mother who’d bailed on seeing her only child, I felt a rush of selfish relief. He hadn’t been with her. They weren’t back together. She clearly didn’t want Mason fulltime if she wasn’t even up to spending two hours with him. They weren’t going anywhere.

But the look in Ryan’s eyes when he turned back to me and saw the relief painted all over my face was anything but comforting. “That makes you happy?” he asked coldly. “My son having a mother who will probably always let him down? Because I’d think that you, of all people, would know how damaging that can be.”

He walked away, toward the front of the store, leaving me in the stacks with my skin on fire. God. I didn’t even have to
say
anything to piss someone off. I could do it with a simple facial expression now. Collecting myself, I went after him and found him sitting behind the cash, staring darkly out the window. Outside, the sun beat down on the road, glinting off the chrome of passing cars and the occasional shard of broken glass on the asphalt.

“I’m sorry,” I said, standing in front of him, the counter between us. “Of course it doesn’t make me happy. It’s just…I’d miss you if something happened to make you leave. You and Mason.”

He glanced at me once and then went right back to peering out the window, his expression blank and closed off. Something
had
happened, obviously, and he wasn’t ready to accept my side of the story and forgive me for it.

“I have inventory to do,” he said, still not meeting my eyes.

I stood there for another minute, silently watching him, waiting for him to look at me and tell me that he’d changed his mind, that inventory could wait. That everything could wait, until we made things right again. But he didn’t, so I turned around and left.

My tears held until I was safely inside my car. Then, with no one around to hear me, I finally let go, alternately crying and cursing as everything pressed down at once, overwhelming me. I’d gone back on almost every promise I’d ever made to myself. I’d run headlong into all the things I’d worked so hard to steer clear of. I’d failed the twins and my best friend, my only motivations for staying on track. I’d gotten involved with a single dad in spite of my policy against dating them, then quickly messed it up. I’d lost his trust and his respect, and even worse than that—and even though I’d vowed never to be the woman to do it—I’d ended up breaking his heart.