Things I Never Told You, page 25
“No, you’re not. You’re running scared.” He exhaled, his eyes meeting hers. “And I get it. I really do. I’m scared, too.”
Right. “All I ever got from you was ‘You can beat this, Jillian. Everything is going to be okay, Jillian.’ And then you’d go off to work—”
“I admit it. I got caught up in work. Yes, I had that crazy project, but the truth is, keeping busy helped me not think about what was happening to you—it helped me not be so scared.” Geoff took a step forward. Stopped. “I wanted to fix what was happening . . . but I couldn’t . . . and without realizing it, I pulled away. I’m sorry.”
His admission, the pleading tone of his voice, tempted her to weaken. But she couldn’t.
“Fine. You’re scared. I’m scared.” Even as she said the words, she steeled her heart. “But I’m not changing my mind.”
Now Geoff would leave—and she could collapse. But he remained where he was, looking even more determined.
“There’s just one thing.”
“What’s that?” Her question wavered. Just the smallest bit. Had Geoff heard?
“You never said you didn’t love me, Jillian.” Geoff’s tone softened. “You’re afraid I’m going to stop loving you because you have cancer. Let me prove you’re wrong.”
“How?”
“Marry me. You want ‘for better, for worse, in sickness and in health’? I do, too. Let’s forget about the big wedding. All the other people. They don’t matter to me. You do.”
“Geoff, I’m not the woman—”
Geoff took three strides, pulling her into his arms. “I don’t care, Jillian. I don’t care that you’re bald. Wear the wig or don’t wear it.”
“It’s more . . . more than that.”
Geoff held her so close their bodies pressed together. With the back of his hand, he caressed her face, her neck, his hand trailing to her collarbone before he stopped. “I’m sorry you lost a breast. So, so sorry. But I still want you, Jillian, in every way a man wants a woman. I’ll wait until you’re ready, but know that I do want you.”
He bent his head, watching her. She should move away. Turn her face from his. But instead, Jillian slipped her arms around his neck, tugging him closer, his name escaping her parted lips on a sigh right before he kissed her.
So not fair. It wasn’t fair for Geoff to kiss her. She’d missed his voice. His laugh. His tenderness. But his kiss undid her, crumbling her defenses and igniting a longing for this man. There was no denying she still loved him. When Geoff held her, she was still a desirable woman, no matter how her body failed her.
Geoff ended the kiss. Whispered in her ear, “Will you marry me?”
“Yes. Yes, I will.” Her words eased an ache in her chest.
“You said yes.” Geoff held her away from him.
“You’re a very persuasive man, Mr. Hennessey.”
“I should have come and kissed some sense into you sooner.”
Laughter bubbled up inside Jillian and spilled out, but she stopped as Geoff pulled her engagement ring out of his pant pocket and slipped it on her finger. “You had my ring with you? You were that confident I’d say yes?”
“I’ve kept this ring with me ever since you left it in my desk drawer at work.”
“I’m sorry I did that.” Jillian refused to look away, even knowing the happiness in Geoff’s eyes would be shadowed by hurt. “I couldn’t keep the ring, not after we’d broken up . . . but I couldn’t face you again, either.”
“I understand.” Geoff pulled her close again. “You won’t believe how many times I’ve sat in my car outside your apartment and talked myself out of coming up here.”
“What changed your mind?”
A grin stole across his face. “Because today I’ve got it all planned out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to marry you, Jillian. Today.”
“Today?” It was her turn to pull away. “We can’t get married today.”
“Yes, we can.” Geoff sounded like he’d just won the Super Bowl and was going to Disney World. “I told you that I have a plan. We need to go get a license, but that’s doable. And a friend of mine’s mother is a judge. She’s agreed to marry us this evening in her chambers.”
“You’ve already asked her?”
“Yes.” He held up his phone. “She’s on standby.”
“You, me, and a judge?”
“It can’t be a whole lot simpler than that.”
“And then what?” Heat coursed through her body even as she asked the next question. “We flip a coin to see whether we come back here or go to your house for our wedding night?”
“I did make some plans for our honeymoon—”
“What if I’d said no?”
“But you didn’t.” Geoff reached for her suitcase. “You ready to go?”
“Can I change into a dress? Something a little more festive than my work clothes?”
“Sure. But we are on a bit of a schedule.”
“I realize that. Call the judge.” Jillian hesitated. “You’re not going to surprise me by having my family there or anything, are you?”
“No. It will be you, me, and Judge Estrada. A brief ceremony—and then a short honeymoon before we have to go back to work.”
“Did you even tell my family?”
“No. Now no more questions.” Geoff put his hands on her shoulders and directed her toward her bedroom. “Go pick your wedding dress, please. I’ll load your suitcase in the car. We can talk more on the way to get the marriage license.”
A moment later, Jillian stood in front of her bedroom closet, her arms wrapped around her waist. Memories of the disastrous day she’d gone wedding dress shopping flooded her mind.
And then a smile curved her lips. That day—with all its challenges and uncomfortable moments and the shock of Payton disappearing—held one unexpected benefit. A benefit that would be perfect for tonight.
Jillian shoved the hangers in the closet to one side, reaching for the dress she’d hidden in the deepest corner. Even covered in the clear bag, the soft lavender chiffon dress seemed to shimmer in the light.
No one—not her mother, not Johanna, not even Harper—knew she’d gone back to the bridal shop to try on this dress after noticing it while the two mothers were trying on their dresses. And certainly no one knew she’d bought it for a reception dress, back when she still believed her wedding would happen.
Now, of course, there would be no white gown. No long-dreamed-of April wedding. No reception, where family and friends watched her dance with Geoff—their first dance as husband and wife.
The truth was, the months ahead held so many more questions than certainties.
But it didn’t matter.
She and Geoff would be together.
And tonight . . . tonight she would wear this dress. She would feel beautiful. And she would stand beside the man she loved—the man who never stopped loving her—and say, “I do” to facing the future together.
28
THE FLICKER OF THE GYM LIGHTS caught me off guard. Practice was over already? That couldn’t be right. I swallowed a laugh, realizing that I’d lost track of the time—again—as I’d worked with my middles.
Wait a minute. My middles? This was Sydney’s team. These were Sydney’s girls. I’d agreed to be a backup assistant coach—nothing more. I’d help out at practices sometimes as a favor to my former coach. Come to games when I could.
And yes, there was a part of me that was excited about being involved in volleyball again.
“Thanks, Coach.” Katelyn ran past me as she dumped a ball in the rolling mesh bucket cart. “It was fun tonight.”
Coach? “You had a great practice tonight. If you want to come about a half hour early next time, we can work on your hitting.”
A grin lit her face. “That’d be great!”
“Okay. You can get my number from Sydney if there’s a problem.”
“Thanks.”
Jody stopped beside me. “Coach Sydney was your coach, too, right?”
“Yeah, when I was in high school.” I tossed a ball over the net. “My sister and I both played on varsity.”
“Did you play in college?”
“No.”
“Neither of you? Why not? I thought Coach said you were good.”
It was a straight-up question. Jody didn’t know how complicated the answer was. Of course, I could keep my answer straight-up, too. “Pepper—my twin sister—was killed in a snowmobile accident during spring break when we were juniors in high school.”
“Oh. Wow.”
This was almost like the start of tryouts, where everyone knew what was going to happen—volleyball—but didn’t know the order of the specific drills. I was an adult. I knew how to have a basic conversation with other people, but I avoided talking about Pepper, about her death, for this very reason. Straight-up answer or not, telling someone your sister was dead made them uncomfortable.
Time to move the conversation on to a better topic. “Anyway, after that, I didn’t want to play volleyball anymore. I own a party-planning business with a college friend.”
Parents were trickling into the gym to pick up their daughters. The girls sat along the left side of the court, changing into warmer clothes and checking their phones. One dad lingered just inside the door, hands stuffed in his pockets.
Wait. That wasn’t a dad. That was Zach.
He waved as we made eye contact. I offered a small wave back, my initial surprise blending with a sense of pleasure mingled with awkwardness.
Maybe my agreement to meet him for coffee after practice when he’d called late last week was a mistake.
But we were just meeting for coffee. Nothing more. I wasn’t even sure why I’d said yes when he’d followed up on the suggestion he’d made on Christmas Day.
“Is that your boyfriend, Coach?” Chandler tossed the question my way.
“What? No. No, that’s . . . He’s a friend.”
“He’s cute.”
“Sure, if you say so.” And that sounded adolescent. “Thanks for your help taking the nets down.”
Sydney and I chatted for a few minutes about the practice. “Is that guy waiting for you?”
“Yes. He’s a friend. We’re going to have coffee. You want to meet him?”
“Absolutely. Just a friend, huh?”
“Yes.” I stopped with a couple of feet between us. “Hey, Zach. Sorry to keep you waiting. Um, this is Sydney. She owns Club Brio.”
“Hi, Zach.”
“And Zach is my . . . I mean . . .” Why was I stumbling over this?
Zach shook hands with Sydney. “Zach Gaines. Payton and I knew each other in high school. I came to a couple of her games back then.”
There. Why hadn’t I just said that? We knew each other in high school. Of course Zach and I were barely friends in high school. And we were casual friends now. Nothing more, nothing less.
A small cross hung against Zach’s T-shirt. Another reason there would be no “more” for Zach and me. I didn’t know much about being a Christian, but I knew enough to realize I wasn’t the kind of woman he was looking for. That would be someone like Kelsey.
He wasn’t the kind of guy I was looking for, either.
I wasn’t looking at all.
Which made it easy to decline Zach’s offer to ride together over to the coffee shop. To friend-zone him and pay for my own coffee and begin dumping in sugars as I asked how his Christmas was.
“Monterey is beautiful. But I was glad to get back home to the cabin.”
“And Laz?” I refused to mention Kelsey.
“Of course.”
“And a few days was enough time with your parents?” Even as I asked, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d overstepped a boundary.
“It works best for all of us. We’re still trying to find our way with each other. They’re still not sure what to make of the new me.” His smile was brief. “Besides, my parents’ holiday tradition is to head to England for New Year’s.”
“You weren’t lonely, up in the cabin all by yourself?”
“Nope. There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude.” Zach still hadn’t taken a drink of his coffee. “I spent a lot of my years looking for the next party. Filling my hours with people and noise and alcohol and drugs. I couldn’t hear myself think and I didn’t know who I was. The truth is, back then I didn’t want to be alone. Christmas Day was the best one I’ve had with my parents in years, but I wouldn’t say it was comfortable. Not yet. Being in the cabin by myself? I enjoyed every minute . . . and the fact that I was okay with that shows how much I’ve changed.”
“You were one of the kids I always envied in high school.”
“What?”
I couldn’t blame the guy for being confused by such a sudden change of topic.
“You were Zach Gaines. The guy with all the friends. You broke all those athletic records—”
“And you were Payton Thatcher, one half of the too-cool Thatcher twins.”
“The lesser half.” Had I just said that out loud?
“Come on, Payton.” If Zach had been drinking his coffee, he just might have spewed it on me. “You really believe that?”
“Yes. Pepper was the better athlete. Pepper was more outgoing. Pepper was—”
“Well, you can’t say she was prettier.”
“No, I can’t. Because we looked exactly alike.”
How did we get from talking about Zach’s Christmas to talking about who was prettier in high school—Pepper or me? The truth was, Zach wasn’t that confident teen athlete anymore—and most likely he’d struggled with insecurities back then just like me and every other kid in our high school.
Zach rubbed his right forearm through the material of his long-sleeved T-shirt. Was the guy nervous? Or had he hurt himself somehow? It didn’t matter. I didn’t want to be curious about Zach Gaines.
Keep it simple. Keep it safe.
Zach shifted, reaching for his coat, retrieving something from the pocket. “This is for you.” He placed a small square package wrapped in bright-blue Christmas paper and topped with a gold bow on the table between us.
“What’s this?”
“Just a little something . . .”
“A Christmas present?”
Zach laughed, nudging the present across the table to me. “You, Miss Thatcher, are quite astute. Yes, it’s a Christmas present. You going to open it?”
Yes, I was going to open it. Once I got over the fact that Zach had given me a gift.
“Thank you.”
“You haven’t even seen what it is yet.”
Zach wasn’t one of those people who took malicious pleasure in over-taping gifts. Within seconds, I held a small wooden box, tracing the elegant lines with my fingertips. The polished wood glowed varied shades of browns and yellows.
“You made this, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“It’s beautiful, Zach.”
“Thank you.”
Such an unexpected gift—not like something you receive from a family member who is supposed to get you something, maybe even a repeat of the same-old-same-old thing they get you every year for your birthday. Like a candle in a scent you don’t like. Or bath salts you regift. Or a book—and you don’t read sci-fi.
Zach had made this. Maybe had even thought of me as he did. And it was one of a kind.
I turned the box over and found ZG intersected with a small cross.
“Is this how you sign your work?”
“Yes.”
“Distinctive . . . and meaningful.” My skin heated. “I’m sorry I don’t have something for you—”
“It’s a gift, Payton—and you get to keep it even if you didn’t get me anything.” Zach’s smile accompanied with a soft chuckle eased my desire to apologize again. “You said you had a good Christmas?”
“It was different.”
“Different, but not good?”
How was I going to explain all this to Zach? “I hoped that telling my family the truth about what happened the night Pepper died would change things.”
“And it hasn’t?”
“It has . . .” My voice trailed off. “I think I mentioned that my oldest sister didn’t understand . . .”
“I remember you saying something like that when we talked on Christmas Day.”
“We had a huge argument out in front of my parents’ house.” I pressed my lips together, unable to admit I’d slapped Johanna.
Zach had the strength to not look shocked. “Why?”
I twisted a strand of hair, tucking it behind my ear. “I found out something that explains why things are like they are. I was an emotional mess after Pepper died. Johanna read my journals.”
“Doesn’t that break some sort of sister code?”
“Johanna may not have gone about it in the right way, but I think it was her way of being the big sister, of watching out for me. Of stopping another disaster. She had to be upset over what she read. I—I was suicidal for some months.” At the admission, I stared down at the table. “I don’t know if I would have actually done anything . . . but I wrote about it a lot. Wanted to be dead. Couldn’t imagine being alive without Pepper.”
“Understandable.” Zach covered my hand with his. “You had to be heartbroken.”
“I was.” I shook my head, refusing to be pulled back into the memories. “Johanna told my parents—not the details, she said, but that she was worried about me. She’s eight years older than me, and she recommended professional help. My parents sent me to an inpatient facility for teens.”
“Did they talk to you about it before?”
“No. That was the worst part. I came home the last day of school to find my suitcase packed. They told me I was going. No discussion. Nothing.”
“Not to defend your sister, but she probably did what she thought was best—”
“Johanna always does what she thinks is best. And what she thinks is always right.” My hand tensed beneath Zach’s. “After my confession to the family, Johanna wanted to know if I was going to be honest about everything—about the fact that I was going to kill myself back then.”
“But you said you weren’t sure you would have gone through with it. . . .”
