“Please. For a few minutes.” He touched her arm.
She recoiled. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Well, I have things to say to you. And I’d rather not say them out here on your doorstep with all your neighbors walking by.”
Over his shoulder she could see the couple from down the street slowly walking their Cock-a-poo past the house, staring at her front door. Right behind them was the woman from across the street with her grandson in a stroller. She, too, was looking at Fiona’s house. It seemed like everyone on the block had seen or heard Nick pounding on the door. They all waved when they realized she’d seen them and she waved back.
“Okay, for a few minutes. I’m in the middle of…of stuff.” She walked into the living room, where she stood avoiding his eyes, her back straight and her shoulders set, not offering him a seat or taking one herself.
He glanced around the room. “You’ve moved the furniture around.”
She didn’t respond. She wasn’t about to tell him she was trying to find a way to stop seeing him every place she looked in her house.
He picked up the
Willamette Week
edition with her last White Knights story featured prominently on the cover and flipped through it. “I read all your White Knights stories online. You won’t need a cat named Pulitzer after these stories; you’ll have the real thing.”
“Thanks.”
The thump of the newspaper dropping back onto the table was followed by a long awkward silence.
He cleared his throat. “The…ah…'For Rent' sign out front...are you moving? I thought you loved this house.”
“I do. But…” She stopped, shook her head and continued, “It’s time to move on.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have a job offer in Seattle with a start-up online site modeled on
Politico
I’m considering.”
“You’d leave
Willamette Week
?”
“Nick, what do you want?”
“Can we sit down? It would be more comfortable, wouldn’t it, to sit while we talk?”
“I’m not interested in comfort, thanks. And I told you, I don’t have anything to say.”
“I do. You didn’t give me a chance to say it before I left. Hell, you haven’t given anyone a chance to say anything ever since we were in the middle of a crime scene and my brother-in-law was yelling at both of us.”
“Right. Because I…” She could feel herself begin to tear up. “You can’t just push your way in here like some intruder and then not leave when I ask you to. I’ll call the—”
“The police? I can outrank you on that call.” He sat on the couch. “Look, you might as well sit down and listen. I’m here until I’ve said what I came to say. When I’m finished, if you still want me to leave, I will.”
Eyes closed, head bowed, she thought about how hard it had been for her to come to terms with what had happened on the mountain and how scared she was he could bring it all back. But she also knew she owed him at least the courtesy to listen to what he had to say. After a long moment she gave in. “All right, have your say and then leave.”
He indicated with a gesture for her to sit next to him. Instead she went to the rocking chair across the room. Moving to the edge of the sofa cushion, he leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs, and watched her intently as he said, “When we were on Mt. Hood...”
“We’re not going there.” Her tone was as defiant as she could make it.
“Yeah, we are. But if you don’t want to go there first, I’ll start with something easier. I’ve missed you. I told you before everything blew up I thought we had something special. I haven’t changed my mind.”
Dismissing his words with a wave of her hand, she said, “It’s irrelevant now.”
Another long silence followed.
From the tension in his shoulders and the frown on his face, her refusal to engage seemed to be frustrating him, but he sat back on the couch and looked at the ceiling for a moment before saying, “Since you don’t want to warm up with the easy stuff, let’s get to the hard stuff then.” He lowered his gaze and tried to catch her eyes. “What happened on Mt. Hood wasn’t your fault. You’ve been punishing yourself and all the rest of us ever since because you think it was.” His look dared her to contradict him.
She didn’t. She didn’t say anything at all.
“Fiona, did you hear me? I said…”
“What you said is bullshit. It was made perfectly clear to me whose fault it was.” She looked down, feeling tears beginning to form again, wanting desperately not to cry in front of him, not sure she could hold it back. Her hands were folded on top of her knees, which were glued together like a well-behaved schoolgirl as she dug her fingernail into the pad of her thumb, trying to concentrate on the pain to keep from crying.
“What got me into trouble was ignoring Sam’s instructions, not anything you did. If you’d talk to Sam or me, we’d tell you,” Nick said.
“Oh, good. Just what I need, more dissection of what I did. Here’s what I know: if I hadn’t let my…what did you call it? My passion for a story? If I hadn’t let it drive me up the mountain, you’d have never been used as a punching bag by those skinheads.” She stopped to wipe at the tears now flowing freely down both cheeks.
“How do you think it felt when Sam accused me of getting you seriously hurt? When he asked me if I realized how upset Amanda would be?” She took several shuddery breaths to get the tears under control. “The worst part…the very worst part…is I had to admit to myself who I am.”
Finally, she looked straight into his eyes and said, “I wanted the story. I went up there to get it and you got beat up because of it. That’s who I am—a person who would sacrifice the man she…sacrifice another person to get a story. So between guilt piled so high I can barely see over it and realizing my job trumps everything else in my life—which probably makes me not a very good person—it hasn’t been…”
She stopped talking and stood up again. “What difference does it make? If you came here to make me feel bad by bringing it all up again, you’ve accomplished your goal. I’m sure it’ll make me a better person to have rehashed it for the millionth time.” She started for the door.
Nick rose and grabbed her arm. “I’m not finished. What Sam told me afterward, when he’d looked at things with a clear head, changed everything.”
She stared at his hand on her arm so intently he removed it. “It’s time for you to leave,” she said. “You’ve run out of the few minutes I had to listen to you.”
“You’re sure you’re not curious about what Sam said?”
“It can’t change anything so, no, I’m not.”
He looked long and hard at her face. She willed the tears to stop as she held his gaze with a look as fierce as she could make it. Finally, he sighed and said, “Okay, if you’ve made up your mind. I don’t know what else to do.” He walked to the door. “This isn’t how I wanted things to turn out.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
His hand was on the doorknob. He waited a few seconds before turning it, as if he had more to say. Then he turned it and pulled the door open. “Disappointed hardly begins to cover what I feel.”
She fell back against the door after he closed it, torn between relief he’d left and misery he wasn’t still in the room where she could smell his aftershave; touch him. God, she wished she’d touched his face just once while he was there, his sweet, handsome face. The memory of how his mouth tasted washed over her. Damn it, why did he have to show up just when she thought she was getting over him?
With the sleeve of her sweatshirt she wiped away the tears leaking from her eyes. As soon as she heard his car pull away, she’d start getting over him—again. Start all over forgetting how much she loved him—because she did love him. Had loved him for a long time now. But it didn’t do her any good to finally admit it. She didn’t see any future for them. Not after what she’d done.
She realized she’d heard no car door slam. No sound of an engine starting up. Hadn’t he left yet? What was he doing out there? Waiting for her to come out? Did he think she’d chase after him?
And what had he meant, Sam had said something to change things? How could words change what happened? She already knew the story. She’d written thousands of words about it. What else was there to know?
Still no sound of a car driving away. Had she missed it because she was crying? She opened the door a crack and saw an unfamiliar car at the curb, but there was no sign of Nick. When she fully opened it, she found him leaning against the railing around the small porch in front of her door.
He straightened, brushed off the seat of his pants, and walked over to her. “I figured your curiosity would work in my favor. It was the part about changing the story, wasn’t it?” His expression was hopeful.
“I only came out to make sure you were gone.”
“Seriously? You don’t want to know what Sam said?”
“Absolutely not.” She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed over her breasts, an Amazon guarding her domain, an image somewhat undermined by Pulitzer rubbing up against her ankles and purring.
“Well, then, I guess you do want me to go. So I will.” He went down the steps and out toward the curb.
“Wait, Nick. Maybe…”
He stopped but didn’t turn around. “You’re going to have to tell me what you want, Fee. I’m kinda at a loss here.”
“I’m not sure I know either.”
He was back on the porch in a few strides, not giving her a chance to change her mind again. “Let’s figure it out together. Do we have the same conversation about doing it in front of your neighbors or will you let me in this time without the discussion?”
Saying nothing more, she moved from the doorway and he came back into the house. When they got to the living room he took a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and began to blot the remains of her tears. The feel of his hands on her face, the tender way he wiped the tears away, made her want to rest her head on his chest so he could wrap her in his arms. She pushed him away before she could act on the thought and went to the bathroom for a tissue. After she splashed water on her face, she blew her nose and returned to the living room.
He was sitting with his left arm along the back of the couch, one ankle resting across the opposite knee. He stretched out his hand to get her to sit next to him. Instead she sat as far away from him on the couch as she could.
“Okay. Let’s figure out what you want, Fee.”
She shrugged her shoulders but didn’t say anything.
“I can’t read your mind. You have to tell me.”
With a gesture of acquiescence, she gave in. “All right, Nick, you win. I want to know what Sam said.”
“Should have started with Sam, shouldn’t I? My journalism profs would be so disappointed I buried the lede. They taught me better.” He was grinning, more relaxed now than he’d been before.
She glared at him.
“Okay.” He held up his hands in surrender. “So, Sam. First, he’s been kicking himself from here to hell and gone for what he said to you on the mountain. He apologizes to me every time I talk to him. He’s sure you disappeared because of him. Although, come to think of it, I like having him in debt to me this way.” He paused, as if giving her a chance to smile or laugh, but she didn’t react.
He went on. “He started calling you the next day to tell you, but you wouldn’t…”
“To tell me what, Nick? Get to the point.”
“That it wasn’t your fault. When he saw me, all he could think was he’d catch hell from Amanda because I looked pretty banged up. He lost his temper. But when he talked to your editor the morning after it happened, he discovered you’d done everything the right way. Ben said you told people at work where you were going and when to expect you back in case there was trouble, checked in every hour by phone, only went back up on the mountain when you had been assured by your source the cabin was unoccupied.” He took her hand and held it, warding off her attempts to shake him off.
“You tried to get me to meet you there so you weren’t alone, notified the sheriff’s office, even called Sam, for God’s sake, and told him what you were doing. He just didn’t get the message until he got back to his desk. Sam knew then he had to apologize for what he said in the heat of the moment, but he hasn’t been able to talk to you.”
“So he thinks I did things the right way. BFD. How does anything change what happened to you?”
“Let me finish. I, on the other hand, was given a set of specific instructions about what I was to do until the police got there and I violated every one of them. I did myself in, not you.”
“You wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for me.”
“I wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t been taking photos with Travis.”
She managed to free her hand and pulled away from him. “You were at the cabin because you got my texts.”
“We were at the cabin because we were on the other side of it photographing Lava Lake. You were right, by the way. The lake isn’t very far from the cabin, maybe half a mile. You and I just came at it from a different direction than Travis and I did.”
“You didn’t get my texts?”
“I didn’t know you were there until I heard your voice. I recognized the area when we were shooting and wanted to show Travis the cabin. When I heard you and saw the skinheads roughing you up, I called Sam. He gave me hell for calling him first and not 9-1-1. It was the first thing I did wrong. It wasn’t the last.
“He told me to stay out of sight and keep quiet until he or the Clackamas County sheriff got there. I think his biggest concern was Travis. He knew he had a weapon and was afraid he’d use it. It didn’t occur to him I’d be the one who’d play cowboy.”
“Why did you?”
“You looked terrified. I wanted to be the one who rescued you. They were hurting you. I thought the cops were taking too long. Take your pick. Hell, pick them all.”
Finally, she reached for him, tentatively touching his face. He covered her hand with his and kissed her palm. “God, I’ve missed the feel of you.”
Realizing her mistake, she pulled her hand away and stood up to get away from him. “No, I won’t let you get around me. How my skin or your mouth feels doesn’t change anything.”
“My mouth?” He smiled at her. “What about my mouth?”