When We Collide (8 page)

Troy was still throwing insults from near the fire,
the girl at his side begging him to stop.

I made another attempt to break free when Troy
yelled at her to shut up.

“Are you really just going to stand there and let
him treat her like that?” I flailed a hand in their direction.

“It’s not any of our business.”

Narrowing my eyes at Blake, I shook my head in
disgust. “How can you say that?”

Blake reached over to wrench open the passenger
door, didn’t meet my eye. “Just get in the truck, Will.”

I looked back and forth between Troy and Blake,
unable to believe my older brother, felt something rip open when
Troy dragged the crying girl toward the truck they’d arrived
in.

I cried out in pain and fury when I twisted and
rammed my fist into the side of Blake’s truck, having nowhere else
to inflict my anger.

This was complete bullshit.

Begrudgingly, I flopped into the cab of Blake’s
truck, laid my head back on the headrest, and closed my stinging
eyes. The door slammed shut beside me.

A couple of seconds later, Grace climbed in through
the driver’s door, Blake right behind her. I didn’t open my eyes,
just stared at the blackness behind my lids.

The twenty minute ride back into town was taken in
silence, the only interruption when Blake whispered, “I love you so
much, Grace,” into the darkness.

“I know,” she answered, so quiet I could barely hear
her, though I could tell she was crying.

Grace squeezed my knee when we stopped in front of
her house to drop her off. I couldn’t find it in myself to
acknowledge her. I just continued to pretend I was asleep, to
pretend as if this night had never happened.

For a few moments, the cab was silent and still when
Blake and Grace exited the truck, the only sound my labored breaths
filling the space. I tried to control them when the door cranked
open and the cab rocked a bit as Blake plopped down onto his seat.
The movement felt heavy with strain.

Blake emitted a loud sigh and shifted the truck into
gear. I felt his hesitation, could almost see him opening and
closing his mouth, before he finally spoke.

“I’m gonna ask her to marry me.” His words trumpeted
with awe and a flood of devotion, peppered with a hint of
apprehension and fear.

I cracked an eye open, unable to ignore my brother
any longer. “Yeah?” My voice sounded rough, and I cleared my
throat. “That’s…really good. I’m happy for you. Grace is a great
girl.”

Blake smiled a bit and rubbed a hand over his face.
“Listen…I’m sorry about earlier.” He ran his tongue across his
bottom lip, shook his head before he cut his eye in my direction.
It was dim in the cab, but I saw the sadness there. “Just don’t go
getting yourself mixed up in that situation.”

I frowned, focused ahead on the headlights splaying
light across the black pavement. “That wasn’t right, Blake, and you
know it.”

“Hell no, it wasn’t right.”

I jerked to face him. “Then why did you stop
me?”

Blake scoffed. “Because I didn’t want to stand there
and watch my little brother get his ass torn to shreds…that or get
into an all-out brawl with Troy and Kurt. Is that what you wanted?”
He palmed and squeezed the steering wheel, his tone softening. “And
because it won’t change anything, Will. That girl…she’s every kind
of messed up. She doesn’t need you making things any worse for
her.”

The constriction Blake’s assertion caused in my
chest told me I was already in too deep.

“Who is she? She looked…familiar.” I tried to play
it casual, tried to hide the desperation in my voice, to pretend as
if she were any other girl who I would have stuck up for.

“Maggie Krieger.” Blake raised a brow as he
delivered the blow.

Of course.

I dropped my face into my hands. I should have
known. But really, she’d just been a little girl the last time I’d
seen her, maybe ten years old at the most. She was young enough
that through school we hadn’t run in the same circles, but that
didn’t mean I was too old not to have heard the gossip that was
prevalent in this town.

Blake pressed on, shrugged, though it didn’t seem in
indifference. “Troy probably treats her ten times better than her
daddy ever did. I’d bet good money she’ll get herself knocked up by
the end of summer just to get out of that house.”

Blake parked in the drive, and I stumbled out and
trudged inside and upstairs, muttering a halfhearted goodnight to
Blake before I fell into bed. Curling around my pillow, I focused
on ridding my mind of whatever insane, convoluted feelings I must
have conjured up about her. I told myself again and again that I’d
never even spoken with her, that I didn’t know her, and that I
definitely didn’t
want
her.

Yet every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was that
shy smile mixed with the intense fire that had roared in the depths
of her eyes, and I knew beyond anything else, Maggie wanted
more.

William ~ Present Day

I stared up at the ceiling from my childhood bed,
watched the shadows from the tree outside my window spread out
across it, my throat tight with the memories. Somehow Blake and I
had both known we were at a crossroads that night, and life
decisions were about to be made. Blake had been wise and loved a
girl who’d loved him back. I lay thinking now how I should have
just looked away like everyone else had done that night. I should
have turned my cheek and my heart away from the hook I’d allowed
her to sink deep into my soul. But I’d been a fool, had chased her
when I’d known I could never really have her, when I knew it was
both wrong and so incredibly right.

I closed my eyes, saw the face of Maggie’s little
boy, thought of the dreams, questioned my sanity. I believed
nothing in superstitions or fate or any of that other bullshit. But
whether it meant something or meant nothing at all, it didn’t
change the fact I was here and I had a son. One look and I’d known.
The other thing I was certain of was that Maggie would deny any
claim I made.

And I had no idea what to do about it.

God.

The bed creaked when I rolled to my side.

Confusion and emotions I didn’t know how to deal
with plowed through my senses, left me weak and drained and
unbearably restless.

I couldn’t just leave the child there, but I didn’t
think I could take him away from his mother, either. I wouldn’t
pretend to know the boy, but his bond with his mother had been
clear. I also didn’t think I could ever openly expose what we’d
done, hurt her that way.

Something inside wouldn’t allow me to believe she’d
put her child in danger, but did I really know her at all? I never
would have believed she could be capable of keeping something like
this from me.

And then there was this little nagging voice that
kept asserting my instincts might be wrong and the boy might not be
mine. It whispered I’d just overreacted and made assumptions that
should never be made. I mean, I’d been careful
every
time,
but then I had to admit I’d been warned before nothing wasn’t
one-hundred percent.

I groaned and flopped onto my other side.

The worst part of it all was that gnawing in the pit
of my stomach. It was the same familiar ache I’d tried to bury and
stamp out beneath years of work and faked satisfaction, a need that
glowed bright, unearthed and exposed.

I loved Maggie now as much as I did the day she
walked out of my life.

Maggie ~ Present Day

I sucked in a shuddering breath and tried to hold
the fractured pieces together. Regret splintered through my heart
and cut me in two.

How could I have been such a fool to have believed
he wouldn’t be there? That one day, even if it weren’t today, he
wouldn’t have eventually returned? But I had spent my entire life
being a fool.

So many years had been spent fantasizing about him
at night that I’d never imagined it’d be possible that he’d
manifest in the day.

Sinking to my bedroom floor, I hugged my knees to my
chest and hoped for the same numbness that fell over me when the
fists came to pervade me now.

But William had always made me feel alive, and there
was nothing I could do to shield myself from that light now.

I
felt
everything.

His anger, my shame, the love for him I’d kept
stored up and buried so deep inside—a flicker of his before it had
been chased away by his disgust. It all culminated in a searing,
scorching burn.

I had known better, but my mom had been so insistent
earlier this afternoon.

Every weekday after I dropped Jonathan off at
kindergarten, I would slip in the back door of the ratty old house
I’d grown up in, pushing aside the memories of that place. My mom
needed me, and the echo of my father that lingered in its walls was
not enough to keep me away. Usually I’d climb the stairs to find my
mom curled up in bed. I would feed her, bathe her—love her—even
though there was a huge part of me that hated my mother. It was the
same part that hated myself.

Today, though, she had been downstairs where she was
hunched over the kitchen counter. Her hair was dingy and straight,
and almost an inch of gray roots had grown into the dull color I
had washed into it three months before. With unsteady hands, she’d
handed me the casserole she made and asked me to take it over to
the Marsch’s. Her eyes were glassy as she told me to tell them how
sorry she was for their loss.

“Lara’s always thought of us...taken care of us,”
she’d said when I tried to refuse and offer up an excuse why it was
a terrible idea for me to go over there.

I hadn’t been able to come up with one my mom found
acceptable. I couldn’t exactly tell her the real reason, could
I?

“I still can’t believe Lara is gone,” Mom had said
with a disoriented sadness, shaking her head. The movement was
exaggerated by the tremors that plagued her body. “And Glenda,
losing her sister so young. Both of ‘em have never been anything
but kind to us.”

I’d understood. For once, my mom was giving and not
taking.

Reluctantly, I had accepted the dish, but I was
unable to stop the acute anxiety that came with the thought of
going over there. For years, I’d avoided the Marsches the best I
could in a town this small. I try not to make eye contact with any
of them when we crossed paths.

I’d been the reason they’d lost him. I knew all the
rumors. I had heard the disparaging words about the notorious
William Marsch who’d shunned his family once he’d graduated from
college. The town talked about his mother’s heartbreak and Blake’s
anger that he had somehow thought himself too good for them and too
good for this town.

But I knew better. I knew what’d happened the night
he left.

And I knew it was my fault.

He’d never come back in six years, and I hadn’t
expected him to now, either. It was stupid, really, to think he
wouldn’t come back for his aunt’s funeral.

I’d had to sit in my van for an hour to even build
up the nerve. By then it was already time to pick up Jonathan from
kindergarten. I’d buckled him in while I told him we just had to
make a quick stop, my voice strained as I imagined walking through
the Marsches’ door.

I’d kissed Jonathan on the forehead to give myself
some courage and to gain that sense of being whole I felt whenever
I was near my son. He was the one thing that kept me sane.

I’d just step in and come right back out, I’d told
myself, give my mother’s condolences, as well as my own.

Then I’d run.

But when I helped Jonathan from the car and took his
hand to cross the street, he whispered up to me that he had to go
to the bathroom. He always held it until the last minute. Feeling a
hint of panic, I squeezed his hand and asked him if he couldn’t
hold it.

With a baby-faced grimace, he’d shaken his head and
almost begged, “No, Mommy…I gotta go right now.”

Pointing to the house up ahead of us on the right, I
said, “That’s where we’re going. I’m sure they have a bathroom you
can use…but you have to hurry, okay?”

He nodded and ran ahead, taking the sidewalk and
steps as fast as his little feet would carry him, and he had
followed a couple inside.

It wasn’t until I was halfway up the walk that I
noticed the expensive black car parked in the Marsches’ driveway,
partially hidden from view by the huge truck parked behind it.

It had California plates.

My knees had gone weak.

There was nothing I could do, nowhere I could run,
and I’d had to face the ultimate consequence for all of my
sins—looking at the hate on the face of the only man I’d ever loved
and knowing that hate was directed at me.

He’d thought I was scared of him, I knew. That
reflex to protect myself had come unbidden with the touch of an
angry hand. But never for a minute would I believe William would
strike me, even though part of me had wished he would instead of
looking at me the way he did.

Then maybe the numbness would come and I wouldn’t
have to feel
this
.

I hadn’t lied, though.

Jonathan shouldn’t be his.

Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I pulled
myself together enough to stand. I swayed with dizziness with the
sudden motion, but Jonathan would soon wake up from his afternoon
nap, and I didn’t want him to find me like this.

I found my feet. My legs wobbled under me, and I
fumbled out of my room and down the hall. The little house we lived
in wasn’t much, but it was a hundred times better than what I’d
grown up in, and I took good care of it because it was Jonathan’s
home.

Late afternoon light seeped through the floral
drapes on the living room window. The house was wrapped in shadows,
cold and much too quiet. I crossed the room and flicked on the
overhead lights in the kitchen. I blinked against the harsh light,
and I was hit with another wave of nausea.