Slowly, Zoey sat up from her prone position. But she didn’t scoot away from him as he had thought she would. Nor did she double up her fist and smash it into his face, as he also might have anticipated. Instead, she just sat there, her face mere inches away from his, and watched him, waiting.
“We could...we could change that, though, you know,” he told her, lowering his voice. “If you want. We could get to know each other better.”
She shook her head almost imperceptibly. “It’s probably not a good idea,” she said, her own voice scarcely a whisper. “I don’t think—”
Jonas silenced her with a kiss he knew he was mad for stealing. But he couldn’t help himself. She was just so beautiful, so warm, so soft and inviting. He waited for her to retaliate, waited for the rush of pain she would surely inflict when she realized what he had done, what he continued to do. But instead of injuring him, Zoey kissed him back. Gingerly, tentatively, as if she were thinking hard about what she was doing. She kissed him, he realized suddenly, as if she really meant it.
“That’s it,” he murmured against her mouth. “Don’t think. Just feel. Feel what it is you do to me. What I can do to you.”
And with that, he kissed her again.
Zoey wasn’t sure why she let Jonas kiss her. She only knew that when he did, something about his embrace blinded her to everything but him. There was nothing in her past to trouble her, nothing in her future to concern her. All she could register was the tangle of his fingers in her hair, the way he smelled like Ivory soap, the brush of his lips on hers and the way his eyes had held a promise—the promise that nothing he would do would ever cause her pain.
And then even those vague perceptions began to fade away, and she was left with the dizzying sense that she was falling. Jonas roped one arm around her waist to pull her closer, then cupped her nape with his free hand to rub idle circles on her neck. His mouth moved to her cheek, her temple, her jaw, then down to her neck where he tasted her with the tip of his tongue.
“Oh,” she murmured softly. “Oh, Jonas.”
“I don’t want to rush you,” she heard him say, his voice a scant whisper beside her ear. “I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Why?” she asked breathlessly. “Because you’re afraid of getting kneed in the groin again?”
She had meant the comment to be a joke and waited for him to laugh, or chuckle, or even smile. Instead, he pulled away from her, dropped his hands harmlessly to her waist and studied her.
“No,” he said evenly, his eyes blazing with something she couldn’t quite identify. “Because I don’t want to hurt you or scare you the way he did.”
Her heart hammered hard in her throat. “The way who did?” she asked.
“Whoever it was that made you so intent on steering clear of men for so long.” He lifted a hand to curl his fingers gently over her jaw and cheek, and she nearly melted with the gentleness of the gesture. “Look, Zoey,” he went on, “I can’t imagine any other reason why a woman like you would so steadfastly avoid a romantic entanglement. You’re too...too...”
“Too what?” she demanded, feeling suddenly defensive.
He smiled as he said, “Too incredibly amazing. You’re like no woman I’ve ever met. Any man would bend over backward to make sure he pleased a woman like you.”
She uttered a dubious chuckle. “That’s what you think. Most men these days don’t give a damn how they treat a woman, as long as they get what they want.”
“Then you’ve been running around with the wrong kind of man.”
“Nowadays, there’s only one kind of man.”
“No,” he told her with a decisive shake of his head. “That’s not true at all. And I think, deep down, you know that. You’re just afraid to admit that there might possibly be someone out there you could care for. Someone who could care for you in return. I think you’re just afraid of getting hurt, because some jerk guy did a number on you somewhere in your past.”
A long, silent moment passed that Zoey spent wondering just how much she should tell Jonas about herself. “Two,” she finally said, surprised at the decision she made.
He stared at her blankly. “What?”
“Two guys did a number on me somewhere in my past. But it wasn’t what you think. It didn’t happen that way at all.”
His expression went from blank to wary, but she had no idea what he was thinking. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked her.
Not really, she thought. She’d told no one about what had happened to her all those years ago. The only reason Cooper knew about it was because he had been the one to pick her up and shake some spirit back into her again after her husband had left her. But there was something about Jonas that made her want to open up and tell him about that time. Zoey wasn’t sure what it was or why he should be different from other people in her life, but for some reason, sharing her past experience with him felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“I was sixteen when I got pregnant,” she began, feeling as if she were speaking from somewhere very far away.
“Pregnant?” Jonas repeated.
She could hear his astonishment in that one-word question, but she didn’t comment on it. If he thought he was astonished now, she wondered, how he would react when she concluded her story?
“Yes, pregnant,” she continued. “I was very much in love with my baby’s father, and he was in love with me. We were just a couple of kids whose adolescent passion got out of hand, but that’s where the cliché ends.” She sighed as she recalled the memories she had forbidden herself for so many years. “I had the baby shortly after we graduated from high school, but it wasn’t your typical teens-in-trouble scenario. Jack had a pretty good job working as a mechanic, and we’d been planning to get married after we graduated, anyway. The baby just moved the timing up a little, that’s all.”
She smiled as she remembered what happened next. “We left Pittsburgh and found a little apartment in South Philly, downstairs from Jack’s grandmother. She helped me out a lot with the baby when he arrived. Jack and I named him Eddie, after Jack’s late father. The first few months were pretty rough on both of us, but once we got used to parenting, we really got into it. And we were really good at it,” she added enthusiastically. “We may have just been a couple of kids, but it was like Jack and I were made for being a dad and mom. The three of us had so much fun together. Jack and I made all kinds of plans for Eddie’s childhood.”
There was a long, silent pause, presumably because Jonas was waiting for her to continue. But the rest of the story came to Zoey reluctantly, and for a long time she simply couldn’t speak.
Finally he asked, “So what happened?”
She sighed again and stared down at her hands. Without realizing it, she had tangled them up in the throw’s thick fringe while she was speaking. Now she released the heavy fabric and began to smooth out the wrinkles, but she didn’t really pay much attention to what she was doing. “What happened was that Eddie never quite made it into childhood,” she said quietly. “When he was eighteen months old, he came down with bacterial meningitis. Before a week was out, he was gone.”
“Oh, Zoey.” She felt Jonas’s hand cover hers and reflexively curled her fingers with his. “Zoey, I am so sorry.”
She felt her chin begin to crumple and bit her bottom lip to stop the action. “Yeah, me, too,” she finally said, her voice sounding weak and distant. “He was such a sweetheart, you know? And so incredibly bright. By the time he got sick, he was walking and talking better than most two-year-olds. Big gray eyes, curly blond hair. Eyelashes that would have been every woman’s downfall,” she added with a forced chuckle. “That little guy could charm the birds right out of the trees. I can only imagine what he’d be like now. He would have turned twenty this summer.”
The realization stunned her. She hadn’t, until that moment, allowed herself to think about how old Eddie would be now. “It’s just as well,” she said softly, still staring at her hands. “He probably would have caused me all kinds of grief, been in trouble all the time. He would have had to fight off the girls with a big stick. Who knows? He probably would have wound up in the same kind of trouble as Jack and me. I might even be a grandmother by now.”
Something wet and warm fell onto Zoey’s hand, and only then did she realize she had started to cry. It felt strange crying for Eddie. So many years had passed since she had. What had happened to her when she was a teenager seemed almost as if it had occurred in another person’s life. She didn’t allow herself to think about her son these days. Sometimes, if she tried very hard, she could almost make herself believe the whole experience had been a dream.
“Zoey...” Jonas began again. But his voice trailed off after he uttered her name, as if he simply couldn’t think of anything adequate enough to say.
“Jack and I tried to make it alone after Eddie’s death,” she began again. “We really did try. We even talked about having another baby. But we were both so devastated that we just couldn’t do what was...”
This time it was Zoey’s voice that faded away for a moment. She rubbed at her eyes before she spoke again. “I guess I never have forgiven him for not being there for me when I needed him. Then again, I wasn’t there for him, either. We were so young, and our emotions were still kind of immature. We finally split up about six months after Eddie’s...six months later. The divorce became final on my twentieth birthday. The next day, I enrolled in nursing school.”
“Because of your son’s illness,” Jonas said. His comment was a statement, not a question, as if there were no way of denying its truth.
She nodded. “I’d never considered a career in nursing before Eddie. But the nurses at the hospital were always so helpful, so comforting. I don’t know what Jack and I would have done without them. I guess, somewhere along the line, I decided it was the kind of job I wanted.”
Jonas paused for a moment before venturing, “No, I meant, maybe you went into nursing for another reason that had to do with your son.” His next words were offered slowly, as if he were being cautious about Zoey’s reaction. “Maybe because you felt helpless to prevent Eddie’s death, but by becoming a nurse, you could help other children.”
Zoey shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m sure it’s not that at all.”
Jonas didn’t contradict her, but she had the feeling he wanted to. Before she could address the matter, though, he asked, “Did you see much of your ex-husband after...after that?”
“Only once,” she told him. “About five years ago at Terminal Market. I was waiting in line to buy some halibut, and I saw Jack standing in line at the next stall to buy produce. He’d gained a lot of weight and lost a lot of hair, but I recognized him immediately. He didn’t see me, though, so I didn’t say anything to him.”
What Zoey didn’t tell Jonas was that one reason she had said nothing to her ex-husband was because she had noticed the gold band on his left ring finger. The other reason was that a little girl who looked to be about six years old had run up to him with a demand to be held by her daddy. Jack had laughed—the way he used to laugh, Zoey recalled, before Eddie had died—and scooped up the child into his arms, and the little girl had hugged him back with all her might.
Jack had gotten on with his life, Zoey thought now. So why couldn’t she get on with hers?
“Zoey, I had no idea—” Jonas began.
“No, of course not,” she interrupted with a sniffle, swiping at her eyes. “How could you? I haven’t told anyone about it. Cooper is the only one at Seton who knows, and that’s only because he and I have been good friends since way back. Not even Livy and Sylvie know about Eddie. And I’d appreciate it, Jonas, if you wouldn’t repeat any of this to anyone. It’s not something I can share easily. And it’s certainly not something I want to relive again.”
But she had shared it with him, Jonas thought. And she had relived it for him. Why had she told him about her baby when she hadn’t revealed it to even her closest friends? And now that he was one of the few people who had knowledge of her past, how was that going to change things between the two of them?
“I haven’t been romantically involved with anyone since Jack,” Zoey continued. “I don’t know why, really. For years after my marriage dissolved, I just wasn’t interested in starting a relationship. Then when I finally did start dating again, no one seemed to be worth the trouble somehow. All the guys I’ve known have wanted to move things along so quickly. And nurturing a new relationship takes so much time. Eventually I just lose patience or get exhausted. Does that make sense?”
He wanted to tell her that she was being unrealistic or that her expectations were too high, that relationships were there to be had for anyone looking hard enough. He wanted to say that shutting herself off from the possibility of falling in love again was just a way of hiding from life. But for some reason, what she said did, indeed, make sense. Hadn’t he felt that way himself for the most part? That he simply didn’t have the energy or time to spend on developing a lasting relationship? Now that he thought about it, maybe he was the one who was being unrealistic, the one who was hiding from life. At least Zoey had a legitimate reason for her hesitation to get involved. What was the explanation for his?
“I should go,” she said softly when he offered no response to her question.
She struggled to liberate herself from the tangles of the throw, but unless Jonas rose from the couch, there was little chance she would free herself. So he remained where he was, his hands still settled loosely on her hips, waiting until she realized he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Jonas?” she asked when he made no move to facilitate her movements. “Would you mind shifting over a little so I can get out?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’d mind very much.”
She looked at him then, the first time her gaze had connected with his since she had begun her story about the loss of her child so many years ago. But she said nothing in response to his statement, only stared at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“I don’t want you to leave, Zoey,” he told her softly. He lifted his hand to her shoulder, pushing back a long shaft of hair. Then he cupped her cheek in his palm and touched his forehead to hers. “In fact, I think it would be a terrible mistake if you left. For both of us. I think you should stay here with me tonight. All night. I think we should be together.”