He shifted against her and she caught her breath. He was ready, again. So am I.
“That was no line, Olivia. I still want you more than I want to breathe. But now I can at least think. If that was some of what changed your mind, what was the rest?”
Joel Fischer’s wall, she thought. “We got a lead on one of the condo arsonists. It looks like one of them OD’d and drove his car off the road Monday morning. He’s dead.”
“Guilty conscience?”
“I think so. I stood in this kid’s room, looking at all the plaques on his wall, all for service to his community. He wanted to make a difference. I think he got in over his head and couldn’t stand the guilt. I kept thinking that this kid did so much good, then one thing bad and it all unraveled for him. Then I thought about Lincoln, his guilt.” She paused. “Which you understood.”
Tensing, he moved his hand from her breast to her stomach. Covering it with hers, she held on. “I wondered what it was you’d understood,” she said. “You said ‘And’ last night when we argued about what happened after Mia’s wedding.”
He swallowed. “And?”
“You thought you’d done something else. Something worse. I wondered if I should have been more worried about that than I was. Then, I wondered what it mattered. You’ve more than proven the kind of man you are. I still wanted the answer to my question, but when I saw you… it seemed a lot less important. Because I wanted you more than I wanted to breathe, too.”
He drew a breath, let it out. “So what is your question, Olivia?”
She rolled to her back, found his eyes guarded. “Who are you, David Hunter?” She smiled up at him, trying to soften the words. “Besides a cat-saving firefighter who volunteers more than ten people combined?”
He looked away. “I don’t know. I’ve been that man so long, I don’t know anymore.”
She sensed honesty and frustration in his answer. “Then who were you before?”
He flinched. “Not so nice. I don’t think you would have liked that me.”
“How old was ‘that you’?”
“Eighteen.”
Eighteen years then, she thought. He’d lived half his life with whatever it was that he’d done. “And what did the eighteen-year-old you do?”
He rolled away suddenly, but she sprang to her knees, grabbing his arm as his feet hit the floor. “Don’t,” she said urgently. “Don’t you dare walk away from me. Whatever it was you did, or think you did, it kept you from coming after me for two and a half years. Whatever it was, it affected my life, too. That time is gone, David. Wasted. I don’t want to lose any more. I’m here, right now, in your bed. I’m not afraid of you. So tell me.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her, shoulders hunched. “I can’t.”
Drawing on instinct, she took a chance. “What was her name?” There was a long, long silence and she thought she’d try once more. “Was it about Dana?”
He turned his head slightly, as if startled. “No. I didn’t meet her until I was thirty.”
“Mia told me about her, how she helped those battered women, running from their husbands. How you helped her do it.”
“No, I just fixed the roof.”
“Which meant a hell of a lot to the frightened women who had a dry place to hide with their children. Why did you do it? For Dana or for the women and their children?”
“Both. Dana was doing something concrete. She didn’t just talk about the plight of these women and their children. She did something. I admired that.”
“You loved her. Dana.”
He’d turned back around now and she couldn’t see his face. “Yes,” he said and she felt the stab of envy and dismay. “Or maybe the idea of her,” he added quietly. “I always knew she didn’t feel the same. Maybe that made her safe. Sounds stupid.”
“No, not at all.” For long minutes they sat in silence. “What was her name, David?”
He shuddered out a weary sigh. “Megan.”
“And she was eighteen, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you love her?”
The harshness in his laugh made her wince. “Not as much as I loved myself.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died,” he said flatly. “Murdered by her step-father. Is my interrogation finished?”
“You said you’d answer my question,” she said quietly. “I’m thinking that who you are now has a great deal to do with who she was then.”
She waited a long time until finally he sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.”
She ran a hand down his arm. “How about, ‘Once there was a girl named Megan’?”
He swallowed. “We met in junior high. She was my first dance, first date. First kiss.”
“So what happened?”
“Time passed. We went on to high school, drifted apart, but we were still friends. Then my brother Max went pro and everything changed. He got drafted into the NBA. His life changed, and so did mine.”
“For the better?”
“At the time I thought so. I was sixteen and already so full of myself. I played on my school’s baseball team, my coach said I was a shoo-in for a scholarship. I was good-looking. Girls wanted me. Lots of girls. Then, that was everything.”
“What happened to Megan?”
“I’d left her way behind by then. I was an athlete. I needed the prettiest girl in class, the fastest. Megan couldn’t compete. I felt sorry for her… social awkwardness.” He said it with self-recrimination. “I shouldn’t have, not for that anyway.”
“Then for what?”
“Her dad died when we were in junior high. She had a little brother and her mom worked hard to support them. Then when Megan was sixteen, her mom remarried. Life was supposed to get better for them, but her stepdad was a piece of work.”
“Oh no,” she whispered sadly, as if she already knew what was coming.
“He yelled at them, all the time. Nobody knew he hit them, but we should have. But I was busy,” he said scathingly, “being popular. Having fun with the beautiful people.”
“It’s just a face,” she murmured, understanding now. “David…”
“I was busy,” he continued, as if she’d said nothing. “Going to dances, playing ball, basking in being the brother of an NBA star. I never cracked a book. The smart girls did my homework. My mother prayed for me every day, begged me to straighten up, fly right. But what did she know? I had the world by the tail.”
“How did the tail break?”
“We were seniors and there was a party. One of the kids’ parents were gone for the weekend and we were partying hard. Kegs, bottles, weed. Lots of girls. I got drunk. And Megan showed up.”
Olivia said nothing. His jaw was tight, his eyes staring straight ahead, unseeing.
“I was so drunk, so self-involved, that I didn’t see she had a black eye. It was dark and the music was too loud and I assumed she’d come for the same reason the other girls had. For this face. I kissed her, and for a minute she held on. Then I pawed at her. Ripped her blouse and she tried to push me away. Nobody ever pushed me away.”
“It made you angry.”
“Yeah. Then she started crying. Said she needed my help. Needed my car. She needed to get away. But I was mad, so I pushed her away, told her to ask somebody that…” His throat worked as he tried to finish, but his voice broke. “That cared. She was just Megan from down the street. I was David, Mr. Perfect.”
Olivia rested her hand on his back, felt him flinch, but he didn’t pull away. “And?”
“The party went on. No one saw her come in or leave. She was a nobody. We were popular. I didn’t give her another thought the rest of the night. I’d never been drunk before and the next morning I had a horrible hangover. All I could think was that I needed to get home before Ma got back from Mass or she’d kill me. And then I passed Megan’s house.”
“You remembered what you’d done?”
His lips twisted. “I had a vague recollection of what she’d said, that she’d cried. But I didn’t understand until I passed her house. There was a cop car parked in front, lights flashing. My heart started pounding. I stopped my car and ran to the front door and… I saw her. The cop inside tried to block my view, but he was too late. I’d already seen.”