You're Still the One (2 page)

“Breathe in, Allie,” Jace said, holding an oxygen mask over my face.

That
voice
. That low, gravelly voice I had heard in my head every day for years. The pain came rolling on in, crashing against my insides. It was not pain from my leg.

It was pain from a long time ago; it should have been long gone. Tears filled my eyes, so for long seconds I left them closed, blocking out that face I knew so well, until I could gather my strength enough to open them.

When I did, I saw Jace and nurses, including Kevin, hovering around me.

“And hello again to our horse-loving friend who tried to escape the hospital,” Kevin said, clucking his tongue in admonishment. “I told you not to gallop off!”

Jace’s eyes were on mine and I could not look away.

I bet he thought the hay in my hair was attractive. Probably liked the circles under my eyes, too. I might well smell like a horse or a dog or both—a hordog. Why could I not have seen Jace again while wearing something silky and sweet, not bleeding and dirt covered?

“How are you feeling, Allie?”

I nodded, then took off the oxygen mask. His hand closed over mine over the mask, his fingers warm.

“I’m just dandy.”

I saw his eyes crinkle in the corners.

Sarcasm is my specialty. I used it to get through my childhood.

“Dandy, huh?” he said. “That’s why you passed out?”

“Yes. It was a swoon. Not a pass-out.”

The nurses laughed. I saw Jace’s mouth, that mouth I’d kissed a thousand times, turn upward the slightest bit. The smile, however, did not match the seriousness I saw in his expression. He knew why I had tried to leave.

“She swooned gracefully,” Kevin said. “There was definitely some elegance there.”

Jace seemed older, more experienced, the lines on his face more finely drawn. But—ah, shoot—sexier than ever. “Thank you, Kevin.”

“You’d call that a swoon?” Jace asked. “Didn’t look like much fun. You went white and then crumpled. I caught you before you crashed to the floor. Now you get to have your leg sewn up. More fun. A horse kicked you?”

I needed to mask what I was feeling, darn quick. Humor might work. I’d be humiliated if he knew what I was thinking, how crushed I felt looking at him. “She’s in menopause.”

“I’m sorry?” Jace said.

“I think she’s in menopause.”

“The horse is in menopause?”

I nodded. The nurses laughed.

“Spunky Joy appears to be having some emotional mood swings. She doesn’t like male horses.” I wondered if he was married. He didn’t have a wedding ring on, but that didn’t mean anything. Emergency room doctors who perform surgeries wouldn’t wear rings
.

“No male horses?” Jace asked.

“No. She’s off men. She wants them to stay away.” I wondered if he had kids.

Something flickered in his eyes and I knew he was relating that statement to us. I wanted to tie my tongue into a knot.

“Her horse boyfriend, Leroy, entered the barn, and Spunky Joy backed right into me, then kicked. I figure she is either madly in love with Leroy or they’ve had a bit of a spat.” I bet Jace loved his wife and kids dearly. He had always wanted a family; he had been clear on that. He would be an outstanding dad. I wanted to pull that silly hospital blanket over my head and sob my brains out.

Jace’s face finally started to relax, and he chuckled. It had been tight, focused, the second he saw me. “I’ll fix up your menopause wound and you’ll be good to go. You’re going to have to take off your pants.”

I sucked in my breath.

Something flashed in his eyes and this sizzle—yep, it was a sizzle—shook between us.

“I’ll leave, don’t worry. But don’t try to escape again, or we’ll have to track you down. You need to be sewn up.” He left and the nurses helped me get my pants off, then Jace was back in.

While he stitched me up I could not look away from him. The nurses stayed for a bit, then left to tend to other patients.

“Whose horse was it, Allie?”

“My dad’s.”

I saw his jaw tighten, his gaze sharp on mine.

“My dad died. He lived in the country.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, but it’s okay.”

“When we were in Yellowstone, you told me you didn’t get along with him, but you never told me anything else. I remember we talked about your not wanting to discuss your past.”

“It was a messy past.” I had told him few details about my dad. He had gently asked more, and I had given him, deliberately, the impression that my dad and I were temporarily not getting along. I didn’t go anywhere near the depth of our estrangement.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Heart attack.” I waved my hand. “I still don’t want to talk about him.”

“Okay.” His eyes gentled, his hand warm on my leg. He went back to stitching me up. “You live in Portland, right?”

He knew I lived in Portland! Had he checked on me, as I had him? I had followed Jace’s career online. I had felt like a stalker, but I did it anyhow. “I did. I moved recently to the country. My dad left me his house and an apple orchard.”

“I remember you loved apples. You made apple pies.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Now and then, over the years, I’ve had apple pies, but they’re never as good as yours.”

“Really?” I was so pleased, I could feel myself blushing. “I still love apples, and now, I suppose, I have all the apples I need in that orchard.”

“Sounds beautiful.”

“It is. Sort of.” That orchard was bringing back all sorts of harsh memories I didn’t want to deal with.

“I’ll take one of your apple pies.”

I instantly envisioned me bringing him an apple pie,
naked
.

“I . . . uh . . . you want one of my apple pies?”

“Sure. Anytime. How about tomorrow?”

He smiled. So many times I had smiled back. Kissed those lips, held his face in my hands, pulled him down to me . . .

“I . . . uh . . . tomorrow? For a pie?”

“Sure. It’ll be Wednesday. Wednesday is always a good time for apple pie. As are Tuesday and Friday . . . Monday isn’t bad. I’ll even take one on Sunday.”

“You forgot Saturday.”

“I’ll have one then, too.”

My leg was being sewn right up, his hands competent and efficient, comforting. It was like watching a seamstress.

The seamstress was turning me on and rebreaking my heart.

He stopped sewing and looked at me—serious, contemplative, flirty—daring me. For a second his eyes dropped to my shirt. I knew it was gaping. I looked down. That red push-up bra was doing what I paid it to do to my boobs.

It was all still there between us. That instant, intense, electric connection. How ridiculous that sounds; how true it was.

In those dark eyes I saw everything that I was feeling. I felt that . . . magnetism . . . what a dumb word. Electricity. Sparks. More silly words to describe my feelings toward Jace, but there it was.

He remembered.

He remembered everything.

He hadn’t forgotten a thing.

Neither had I.

Not forgetting had been excruciatingly painful.

Apple trees have been around forever.

They have an interesting history. Eve and her apple eating—naughty lady. Johnny Appleseed. Sir Isaac Newton and the apple. Apple pies.

On my dad’s property in Schollton there are Jonagold, Gala, Honeycrisp, and Granny Smith apple trees. When I arrived five weeks ago, suitcases in hand, it hurt to see them. Yes, it
hurt
to see the apple trees.

How could he?
I thought, stomping through the orchard west of his hundred-year-old, two-story, white, run-down home the first day I explored the property. There were two bullet holes in the house. One in the floor, one in the wall. I wasn’t surprised. He probably put them there in a blast of self-righteous anger.

I zipped up one row and down the next, steaming mad. Why would he buy a dilapidated house and land with an apple orchard and leave it to me? Was he mocking me to the very end? He knew I loved apples. He had seen me eat them by the dozen. He knew why I ate them by the dozen.

“Spike me in the heart and twist it, Dad,” I whispered into the orchard. Then I decided not to whisper. I would not let him smother my voice any longer. I picked up one apple after another and pelted them through the rows, swearing every single time an apple hit a tree. “You jerk . . . you were never a dad . . . you were horrible to Mom . . . you never even hugged me . . . and now you have an apple orchard? Really? An apple orchard?”

I threw those dead apples until I was sweating, my hair falling all over my face, my chest heaving. I started kicking the apples on the ground, sending them flying. When I was totally exhausted I collapsed against a tree, an
apple
tree from my stupid dad, and sobbed.

I sobbed for him, for us, for what he’d done to our family. I sobbed because I was so angry. So frustrated and resentful. And
guilty.
I felt guilt. He didn’t deserve for me to feel guilty, but I did.

 

 

I composed the letter later that night.

I sent it to the top of the ladder.

Hopefully a wrong would be righted.

She shouldn’t be allowed to give people nervous breakdowns.

 

 

At dusk, my bandages tight on my thigh, I limped out to my dad’s creaking deck and stared at the orchard as the sun sank down over the blue-gray hills in the distance. Margaret and Bob, my dad’s brown and white furry mutts, played together in the grass. Marvin, a gold cat, and Spot the Cat, a black cat who had no spots, perched on the rail of the deck, side by side. I saw Spunky Joy the horse in the field, she neighed at me, and I rolled my eyes.

“Hey you, menopause horse!” She swished her tail. “You gave me a bunch of stitches. Do you know that? Cool it with the hormonal swings and we’ll get along better.”

She neighed again.

“I don’t like men, either, Spunky Joy, but that’s no excuse for your hoof coming up and kicking me in the thigh.”

She neighed.

“Yep. Women are better on their own, I agree with you there.” I shook my head at the irony here. From retail executive supervising hundreds of employees, wearing outfits that cost hundreds of dollars and heels so high I could have broken an ankle if I fell, to an apple orchard, farm animals, and a sagging house where I sat on a deck and talked back to a horse.

The sky was a painting full of shining colors folding over the mountains. I swallowed more pain-reliever pills. I hate taking medicine, but I did it anyhow. Without it my bruised and cut leg would be throbbing.

I thought of seeing Jace at the hospital, letting him handle my thigh, talking to him again . . . and I smiled. Then I cried, some of the tears I’d dammed up forever spilling over. I cried as other memories slipped back in about a trailer awash in fear and domination and a young man in a lake who hugged me close.

Next I thought of the deranged man who had burst through the emergency room doors wielding a ferocious temper.

 

 

“I thought you were working for Mackie’s Designs, Allie.” Jace made a couple of final stitches, his hands sure, capable.

“I was. I was fired.”

Jace’s eyebrows rose. “You’re kidding.”

“No.” Fired and my dad died. In one day.

“Why were you fired?”

“My boss pushed me to the edge of the cliff and I decided to jump instead of continuing to work for her. I told her what I thought of her and the way she treated other people. She didn’t appear to like my input, and I left with a pair of designer heels.”

“How did she treat people?”

“Worse than cattle. If she’d had a cattle prod and a red-hot branding iron, she would have used it.”

He asked more questions. Jace was always curious, always wanted to know more about me, what I thought, my life. Most people don’t. Bare essentials are enough for them.

“Way to go out in a blaze of glory, Allie.” Those dark eyes said it all. He respected my decision. “Good for you. What do you want to do next?”

“I don’t know. It hasn’t been that long, but it feels like that person, who I was, is a strange and mysterious creature; and who I’ll be in the future is also a strange and mysterious creature.”

“Do you want to go back to retail management, back to being a VP?”

Aha! He knew that about me, too! I felt a bit giddy. “No, I don’t want to.” I thought of my bank account. I could not be poor again—could not. “If I
had
to go back to being an exec, I would. The thought makes me feel ill. I was not happy.”

“Why weren’t you happy?”

“Besides my boss, who arrived on a chariot from hell with a whip, my whole life was marketing and selling clothes. Choosing lines.Working with designers, public relations, managers, traveling. I love clothes, I love style.” At least I used to love style. Wearing the latest fashions and four-inch heels allowed me to hide the “trailer trash” girl my father always told me I was. “Yet there was no substance to my job. There was nothing of value. I figured out how to sell expensive clothes to expensive people. I was exhausted all the time and I didn’t have a life.” I stopped. “Why am I telling you all this?”

“Because I asked.”

“I know, but I haven’t seen you in years and here I am, yammering on.”

“We’ve always yammered on together.” He smiled, and I saw sadness in his eyes, probably the same sadness that lived in my eyes. “If you could do anything, what would you do?”

“Bake pies. All day. I’d bake pies.” I laughed and pushed a strand of hair back behind my ear. How I wished I’d washed my hair in the last three days, but I hadn’t. Turmoil does that to a woman. “I’ve hardly baked pies at all for years, but I used to love it.”

“They were delicious.”

“Thank you.” I blushed
again
. “My whole life needs a reset. After I was fired and my dad died, I decided to move out to his house in the country. My condo sold really fast. I don’t know how to take care of apple trees and I now have two dogs, Bob and Margaret. Bob thinks squirrels are his sworn enemies and Margaret has to sleep with a stuffed pink bear in her paws or she won’t sleep at all. I was up for thirty minutes the other night looking for that dumb pink bear.”

We both laughed, and as we talked I continued to pretend I was confident. I pretended I was brave. I pretended I was in control, amusing. And I pretended I wasn’t completely spun up about seeing him; that my insides weren’t shaking.

“I’m so glad you’re a doctor, Jace. I really am. Congratulations.”

He looked at the floor for a second, then met my gaze. “Thank you.”

“Tell me about medical school, where you did your residency, everything.”

He smiled and told me about medical school. He made it short; he didn’t talk about the newspaper articles that had been written about him, humble as always. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to cry on his shoulder. I wanted to tell him all my worries and problems. I was with the very best friend I had ever had in my life.

Only he was so much more than my best friend, because I wanted to climb into a naked hug with him. I actually envisioned that, and could feel my face getting hot. I tried not to stare at his mouth. Tried not to remember kissing him, holding him close as I lay down and he lay on top of me in a tent, or by a river, or in a field on a blanket. I tried not to remember what that black hair felt like running through my fingers, and how that slight razor stubble would grate against my cheek in a way that turned me on even more.

I tried not to remember what those hands had done to me, what he’d said to me, how there had been this huge fire blazing between us.

I tried not to remember
us
. I tried hard.

In the end, before the deranged man walked in, it came out in my tears, which he gently, sweetly wiped away. I saw tears in his eyes, too.

We smiled at each other, one of his hands resting on my thigh where he’d fixed me up, burning me through, but comforting at the same time. Then all hell broke loose in the corridor. Instantly, Jace whipped around, threw open the curtain, and was gone. I heard yelling, swearing, and a man’s voice bellowing, “Let me go and be free,” and “You can’t make me go in this prison,” and “Shut up, weasels.”

I followed Jace, worried about him, about what was going on, when I saw a young man being restrained by two medical personnel. He was thrashing about, head back, eyes wild.

Jace walked right up, his white doctor’s coat billowing out behind him, and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. Behind the young man I could see two people who were clearly his distraught parents.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Rios.”

The young man swore at him, stumbled a bit, then said, “I don’t want to be here!”

“I hear you, man,” Jace said. “A lot of people get the sweats walking into hospitals. I’m here because they pay me to be here. If there wasn’t a paycheck involved, I’d never set foot in this place. Never.”

I chuckled. I wasn’t surprised by what Jace was saying. He was always so quick on his feet, so entertaining.

“Everything’s white and sterile,” Jace went on calmly, as if he was conversing over a steak dinner. “There are shots here, bad-tasting medicines, all kinds of beeping machines, people in white coats rushing about who want to poke and prod you. No, I’d rather be biking.”

“Yeah?” the young man yelled, still belligerent, still being restrained but slightly calmer. “I don’t like it here. Yeah!”

“Yeah,” Jace said. “Biking or fishing for me, that would be a better place to be. What would you rather be doing?”

The young man looked confused. “I dunno, man! Maybe fishing for a shark. I know I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t mean to do that much of that white powder, and I only needed to chill out, you know, kick back? The whole thing messed with my brain and I don’t like it here.”

“I know, friend.” Jace patted the young man on the shoulder. “How about if you and I sit down and I’ll make sure you’re doing all right, and then we’ll send you back out and you can go fishing for a shark. How’s that sound?”

The young man struggled again, still confused, still fighting but halfheartedly. “Okay, but I’m not stayin’ in a hospital. No way. You can’t make me.”

“That’s right. I can’t.” Jace nodded. “It’s a free country, buddy, and you can make your own choices. But you look like someone I can sit down and talk to, and I need a break. I need to sit down, rest my feet. It’s been a busy night—a lady got kicked by a horse—so come on in this room and we’ll get things figured out.”

“Nah. No. I don’t want to go in a room. You might lock me up. Leave me there. I’d be alone. I gotta take off my clothes and my head is all screwed up and I itch and I’m seeing weird stuff in front of my eyes. Is there an elephant in that corner?”

“No. No elephant. We got rid of the elephants last week.” Jace put his hands out. “They took up too much room. But look here. There’s not even a door on this room. Only a curtain. You want out, you’re out. Come on in. Let’s talk. Five minutes. I know you’re busy.”

“I’ll give you five minutes,” the young man insisted, holding seven fingers up. “Five. I got things to do and my guitar is talking to me and I gotta get some Jell-O. I need Jell-O.”

“We have Jell-O here. I think it’s red. Or green. Can’t remember. We’ve got chocolate chip cookies, too, I think. I like those. Not as much as apple pie. Allie’s apple pie.”

I froze on my good leg as Jace turned toward me for a millisecond and grinned.

“Anyhow, I’ll have someone bring the Jell-O up. Come on in and hang with me for a minute.”

“Okay, doctor dude. I’ll do it. Let’s go, Mom.”

The young man’s parents, already limp with stress, sagged in relief when their son stopped fighting.

I didn’t want to stay in the hospital any longer, either. Hospitals make me nervous, too. All those shots, machines, scary things happening. But there was Jace. Gorgeous and kind. He was one reason to stay, but I knew I wouldn’t.

I limped out. As I passed, I listened to Jace speaking calmly to the young man, figuring out what drugs he’d taken; so soothing, so in control. I glimpsed the back of his head, that black hair I used to love to touch.

I started crying even before I walked through the hospital’s exit door. My tears lasted all the way down the highway, back into the country, by the vineyards and farms, and up to the seriously-needing-work white house my dad had left to me. Probably the only thing he had ever given to me.

My leg burned as I went up the stairs of the deck. I sank onto a couch in the family room, stunned. Seeing Jace again had knocked me down like a pitchfork to my heart. The pain was as raw and as fresh as the day we broke up.

Margaret and Bob put their heads in my lap and I petted them. Margaret whined. She’d lost her stuffed pink bear again. I got up to find it.

I didn’t think I’d see Jace again in my entire life.