Long Shot

Chapter 24

Leith sat on the edge of the motel bed, cheap polyester bedspread sticking to his thighs, cold air rattling out from the window unit but just barely filling the room. The second floor window overlooked a parking lot near Stamford, Connecticut, off I-95.

Beyond that lay one hell of a challenge.

How much had changed in his life in the last twenty-four hours. Most of it not good.

His phone jumped from where it sat by his hip, buzzing and blaring Jen’s name. He hated to admit he’d been waiting for her call all day, but the truth was, he had been. He’d left Gleann early that morning, heading south, high on how throwing in the games had made him feel, even if he hadn’t thrown that well.

Now he looked down at her name and realized that if she’d stayed at the games, chances were he wouldn’t have picked up the stone or the sheaf fork or the caber again. He wasn’t quite sure how that made him feel.

He ran his thumb over her name then touched Answer. “Hey, you.”

“Hi.” It came out in a sigh, and he was thrown back two nights, to the sounds she’d made in the back of Da’s Caddy, her exhalations in his ear.

“How did it go last night?” he asked, because he felt like he should. “Everything squared away?”

“Um, yeah, pretty much. Saved the event. Retained the client.”

“Your superhero cape looks good fluttering in the breeze.” He’d meant it as a joke, of course, but she didn’t laugh. Neither did he. He wondered if Jen had heard about him throwing. “Have you talked to Aimee today? Or anyone back in Gleann?”

“No, I haven’t. She, ah, isn’t picking up my calls or answering my texts. Listen, can I take the train out tonight? I need to see you.”

He rose from the bed, his heart pounding with hope. “Absolutely. Hell yeah. I’m just in a shitty motel, but—”

“I don’t care.”

She was doing this, coming to him. She’d heard what he’d said about trying, about not running away. He started to pace, a strange brand of excitement pumping through him. On a day that had had such turbulent ups and downs, this was definitely an up.

“Can’t wait to see you,” he said. “I have a lot to tell you.” So, so much.

There came one of those pauses that lasted a beat too long, but still he could have sworn she was smiling. “Good. So do I. Pick me up at the Stamford station at 6:44.”

Two hours. He couldn’t wait to tell her face-to-face about throwing, how incredible it had felt—how she’d been right. She wouldn’t gloat. Not his Jen. She would look at him with those sparkling eyes and she would be happy for him. She would slide her arms around his neck and then they’d talk about his Da, how Leith had finally been able to let him go.

Then he would tell her that he’d lost the Carriage job.

He parked his truck in the Stamford train station lot and got out, leaning against it, waiting, unsure if he should go inside to the platform like they did in the movies and immediately drag her into his arms. It seemed like a month since he’d seen her, not a day. In the end he chose to stay in the lot, his weight shifting from foot to foot. But when her familiar figure—not carrying that purse with the laptop—finally exited the building and crossed the street to him, he pushed away from the truck.

She looked incredible. Just . . . phenomenal. Black pants that fit her thighs and ass perfectly. Black high heels he’d never seen before but would kill to see on the ends of her bare legs right before she wrapped them around his neck. She wore a short-sleeved top that might have looked demure on anyone not as achingly sexual as her.

Turned out he didn’t have to drag her into him. She came willingly, a great magnet pulling them together across the barren Sunday commuter parking lot. She wasn’t smiling, but that was okay because her eyes were filled with an apology. He folded her into his arms and she gripped him tightly, her hands splayed on his back, reminding him of how she’d clung to him naked.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

This time he was ready to hear it. Ready to accept it. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he whispered, and then he took her mouth in a kiss that burned with slow fire.

After he’d pulled his mouth away but kept his hands on her face, she didn’t look so sure that he’d accepted her apology. Or maybe it was something else. He couldn’t quite tell. But at that moment he didn’t really care. She was here.

“So this is Connecticut.” She smiled. “Your new home.”

He coughed. “Never been here?”

“I have. Just not with you.”

They got into his truck and he rumbled slowly out of the lot. “Are you hungry? Need a drink?”

“Sure, I guess.” When he pulled in front of a little cafe on a busy street whose narrow outdoor patio was dotted with orange umbrellas, she peered out at it and asked, “What’s wrong with your hotel?”

“Motel,” he corrected with a grin. “It’s a sad, sad place not fit for a superhero.”

Plus, he knew she would likely head back to the city tonight, and if they went back to his motel he would, without a doubt, have her naked for the next few hours. Believe it or not, he couldn’t afford that. He had things to tell her. Things he needed to say, to get out in the open, period.

She responded with the same weird pause he’d heard over the phone two hours earlier, only now he saw the accompanying facial expression. Jen, who always looked people in the eye with confidence, now turned her face to her lap, brow furrowed, that beautiful mouth drawn in a tight line.

“Superhero,” she murmured with a little shake of her head.

His heart turned over. A sick feeling bubbled up in his throat.

“Oh, no.” He wrenched off the ignition and turned in the seat toward her. “What.”

She licked her lips and met his eyes. “Do you want to get out of the truck? Go sit down?”

“Something tells me I don’t want to be in public for what you’re about to say. We already did that once yesterday and I didn’t really care for it. Just say it. That’s why you came, right? To tell me to my face that you don’t want to try after all?”

“No!” She stretched for him with both hands, placed them on his chest, and he was powerless against their pressure and heat. “That’s not it at all. But I have some news that I know you won’t like.”

With the air off, the cab was starting to get stuffy, so he gave the truck half power to lower the automatic windows. Sweet summer air rushed in. It even smelled different than Gleann.

“What is it,” he said.

Another lick of her lips. “I’m going to London.”

That’s it? Really? “London. Okay, when?”

“Tomorrow.”

Ah, okay.

“And”—her hands pressed harder into his chest—“I’ll probably be gone for a month. At least.”

Ah, shit. “Let me guess. Work?”

Now her hands slid off him as she nodded. “Tim’s co-owner, the guy who’d been running the London branch of the company, had a major heart attack early this morning. He survived, but he’s old and Tim’s pretty sure he’ll want to retire after this. Tim wants me in London ASAP to oversee everything while they figure things out and find a replacement.”

“And that replacement will be you.”

She blinked. “Well. No. I’m temporary.”

He scrubbed a hand over his cheek, unshaven since yesterday morning. “You said you’ve been gunning for a big promotion, a partnership. An owner gets sick and retires. This is it. You can’t see that? Tim will send you over there under the pretense of everything being temporary, on a ‘trial basis’ or some such, and then he’ll spring the promotion on you. He’ll want you to take over in London.”

He really didn’t know what he’d do if she tried to deny it again. She wasn’t stupid; she was just being thickheaded and trying to soften things for him. He didn’t need softening. He just wanted the truth. He wanted her to admit it.

“And then you’ll accept it,” he went on, “because that’s what you do. That’s what you’ve convinced yourself you want. This would put you at the top, and you’ll proudly plant your flag up there and take a picture to send back to Iowa.”

“I haven’t accepted anything.” She glanced away when she said it.

“Look.” He stabbed fingers into his hair. “I’m not telling you not to take it. I’m not telling you to quit and buy a little Connecticut house with me and make dinner every night, or some other dumb idea that doesn’t serve either of us well. All I’m asking you to do is reevaluate what you really want. Because sometimes what we’ve been conditioned to want isn’t really what’s best for us.”

She looked at him askance but said nothing.

“I’m talking about your mom,” he added. “I’m talking about Iowa.”

“I heard you. I know what you meant. I think I need some air.” She opened the door and swung her feet out. She was so composed he couldn’t tell if she was angry or hurt or bothered. Or anything.

He jumped out from behind the wheel and jogged to catch up as she entered a little park bisected by defunct railroad tracks. She took a seat on a wooden bench.

“Can I finish?” He kept his tone even and low as he sprawled next to her. She just looked at him, her hair swinging next to one ear. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did. I want you to be bigger than your childhood because you are utterly special in ways you haven’t even defined for yourself. I’m telling you this because I . . . care about you.”

She winced at that, at the fact he didn’t use the L word, but since she hadn’t said it to him, he wasn’t even sure if it was the right word to use at all.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You think you’ve escaped Iowa, that you got away from your mom by getting to the top of your field, but she still rules you. In fact, I think she has a bigger power over you now than she did ten, fifteen years ago.”

She made a pleading gesture to the sky. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Damp strands of hair tickled his forehead and neck. The evening was almost unbearably hot.

“I miss my da more than anything,” he said, “and you were right, I never processed his death. Never said good-bye. Part of what made it so hard, the biggest part, was grief, but a much smaller part of it was resentment.”

She let out a little gasp. “Resentment?”

He shrugged, then reached down to pluck a few blades of grass and roll them between his fingers. The scent of his future always made him feel better.

“He was my best friend. My hero. When he started to weaken when I was in high school, I had to do more and more for him. I didn’t mind; I loved doing it. To carry him the way he’d carried me my whole life. But then you left and went to college and, even though I wanted to get out of Gleann, too, I had Da and he only had me. His health went downhill fast after you left, so I stayed. I had to make do.”

“I don’t understand. You love landscape design. You told me so yourself.”

“I do. But even when I knew my business was dying in Gleann, I felt the compulsion to stay. For Da’s memory and the roots he laid down. He always told me that home and family was the most important thing in the world, and to him, that family was me and Gleann. I felt like I had to stay for the people who cheered me on and looked up to me. I felt like I had to stay, even though I knew I should have ripped out those roots years ago.”

He tossed down the now-shredded grass blades. When he turned his head to look at her, those green eyes were huge.

“So Da dies. I’m lost. The only thing I have left is my business and the people who love me. Then Hemmertex closes, and I feel obligated to stick around as their billboard whatever and their replacement MacDougall. Meanwhile my business goes in the shitter.”

She sat straight-backed, but he saw how her fingers dug into her thighs.

“Do you see what I’m saying? Do you get it?” He heard his voice rising but couldn’t bring it down. “You’re climbing and climbing, but for what? For who? Your mom, or for you? Honestly, I would love for you to say it’s what you really, truly want, what really, truly fulfills you, but I just don’t think that’s the case. I’ve never heard you say you love your job, only that it drives you and that you’re good at it. I want you to love what you do and the end product. I don’t want you to get caught up in something you can’t twist yourself out of down the road.”

“You twisted yourself out of all that stuff you just told me about. You’re starting over here.”

He wasn’t sure she was hearing him. Maybe she wouldn’t; at least, not tonight. Not in front of him.

Their eyes met. Now would have been the perfect time to tell her how Hal Carriage had called him shortly after he’d left Gleann for Connecticut. How Hal had told him that because Leith hadn’t come down that weekend—the only weekend he’d be in town for a long while—Hal had met with and hired another landscape company. A bigger one, an established one. One that could guarantee to have the work done by his daughter’s September wedding.

Yep, now would have been perfect. Except that she’d take it that he was trying to guilt her into staying. She’d think he was trying to make her feel bad for asking him to stay for the games. So he kept his mouth shut and let his points about her mom and Iowa do their own work.

He wanted her to stay in the U.S. for herself. And, yes, he wanted her to stay for him—there was no denying that—but she had to come first.

“I’m not trying to talk you out of going to London—”

“Yes, you are.” She stood up, and as she glared down at him, he knew the rational part of their conversation was over.

“I’m trying to talk you into doing something for yourself. If you decide it’s London and your job, great. Then I’ll know you’ve embraced your dreams and I will have to live with that.” Hands on his knees, he pushed to his feet, towering over her. “But I know what distance does to us. That’s history. That’s fact. You have yet to prove me wrong.” Maybe that was harsh, but it was the truth. And she knew it, too. “Tell me you don’t feel what’s between us. Tell me that it isn’t worth fighting for, that it’s not twenty times as strong as it was a decade ago. Tell me you no longer want to try. I’m sorry, but if you go to London and take that promotion they’re surely going to give you, that’s exactly what you’re saying.”

She swallowed. “You’re not sorry.”

No, he guessed he wasn’t. “I’m not doing a long-distance thing. I can’t. I’m not built for it. Not with you, when I want all of you. I guess I’m selfish like that.”

“Take me back to the train station,” she said, all warmth gone.

“That’s it?” he threw at her as she turned and headed to his truck.

“I need to think,” she fired back.

They said nothing more on the short ride back to the station, Jen staring out the side window the whole time.

He didn’t park, but instead just pulled up to the curb outside the station steps and left the truck idling, the air-conditioning blasting. He gripped the steering wheel and spoke to the space between his hands. “I’m not saying it again, Jen. You know how I feel about you.”

When she inhaled, he could have sworn it was ragged. That maybe she was dragging back her tears by their heels.

“If you want to hear those words,” he said, “I need to hear you say them first. And then I’ll know for sure whether or not you think we have a future.”

She sat there for so long he lost track of the branches of his thoughts. They raced away from him, splintering, turning into so much doubt and dread.

“I need to think,” she said again, only this time in a whisper that filled the truck cabin. “And I’m trying really, really hard not to be angry. I’ll call you.”

Then she did look at him. There was definitely anger in her. But there was also sadness and attachment, and a powerful amount of determination that he recognized as her brand. He desperately hoped she’d figure out for herself what that brand meant.

She opened the door, the latch and squeak ringing in his ears. Once on the ground she looked back into the cab and said, simply, “Bye.”

Then she was gone, moving slowly up the steps into the building.

He knew right then that she would be going to London, and that she wasn’t coming back.