“I think it’s safe to say you’ll agree with me on rescinding our invite to her to live with us.”
“Uh, yeah. And she can fend for herself with Mom and Dad.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes. He laced his fingers through hers. “I hear real estate’s pretty reasonable in South Dakota. You know damn well Jack loves you, too. I saw how he was over you, talked to him myself. He was probably trying to protect his heart, afraid you’d never come back once you left for Ohio.”
She ignored the last part of his comment. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Who says you have to?”
She rolled over in his lap and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “There’s nothing keeping me here. I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with Amy after this, either. I think my relationship with Mom and Dad would benefit from some distance and a few state lines between us. I can work from anywhere I have high-speed internet. I bet Tim’s offer is still good.” He played with her hair. “You and Jack could have a heart-to-heart and patch things up.”
“You’d do that for me?”
He nodded. “Uh, duh. You’re my baby sister. You’re the one person in my life I know loves me the way I am.” He brushed another stray hair away from her face. “You’re as miserable without them as I was living at Mom and Dad’s. I’ve got my happily-ever-after, romance writer girl. Well, happily enough for me for now considering what the past couple of years have been like. It’s time for you to get yours.”
She snorted. “Tell Jackson Kelly that. I won’t ask Tim to break up with him, and Jackson made it perfectly clear to me where I stand with him.”
“So? Then we can move anywhere you want. You name it. I’ve got health insurance, so that’s not an issue. I’ll pay my share of the bills. Roomies. We could move to Laguna Beach.” He winked.
She ignored his implication. “Too expensive to live there.” She’d never lived anywhere but Ohio, within twenty minutes of her parents. “I don’t know. Moving’s a huge step.”
“Think about it. Whatever you want to do, kiddo. Seriously. You and me.” He held her chin and made her meet his gaze. “Let’s take a chance and do it. As long as we have each other, we can do anything, right? Just you and me.”
She patted his arm. “You and me.”
Jack spent a miserable morning at work. He knew he radiated a foul mood from the minimum ten-foot distance everyone gave him. He threw pens and file folders down on his desk, and nearly broke his desk phone when he slammed the handset down.
It didn’t help that he’d gotten into a screaming match with Tim the night before over the phone, and again this morning. Now he was wondering if he’d lost both Gwen and Tim because of his stupidity.
I should call her. I should call her, apologize, and beg her to come back.
He couldn’t make himself do it. Mostly, because he didn’t know why he wanted to do it. He still wasn’t convinced his feelings for Gwen were really for Gwen and not because she looked like Mel. Sure, Gwen was a great person in her own right, but would it be fair to her in case in a month or a year he realized he wasn’t in love with her for who she was?
That didn’t ease the ache in his heart.
She called Ruthie back a little later, after she’d blown her nose and washed her face and didn’t feel like throwing up. She forced cheer into her voice. “Hey, girlie, what’s up?”
Ruthie sounded subdued. “I need to talk to you.”
Gwen’s stomach knotted and threatened to upend. “About what?”
Gwen heard her take a deep breath. “I’m going to leave Bob.”
“What?”
“Before you ask me, yes, I took my meds this morning, and yes, I had breakfast and lunch.”
Gwen ignored Liam’s questioning look. “Honey, what’s going on?” As if she couldn’t guess. Gwen wondered if the rat bastard told Ruthie she’d confronted him and Amy at the doctor’s office.
Ruthie actually sounded calmer and more rational than she had in years. “I overheard him talking to someone on the phone last night. I didn’t confront him. I heard him talking about meeting her today. So I called him on his cell a little bit ago, asked him how he was doing, and he said he was at work.”
Gwen closed her eyes. “And?”
“So I hung up with him and called his office. I told them who I was, that I’d just got off the phone with my husband, and said he asked me to call them to see if he left his umbrella there. See? I didn’t go off half cocked. The receptionist went and looked for me. Obviously, he wasn’t in his office. So I called him right back and pretended like I forgot I needed him to bring stuff home for me from the store and talked for another minute or two, like everything was fine. Then he told me he has to go, that he’s going into a meeting.”
“Maybe he didn’t mean at the office.”
“No, he told me his receptionist came in to tell him his appointment was there early.”
Gwen didn’t know what to say, so she kept her mouth shut.
“Gwen, I can’t live like this. I know I don’t always think clearly, but dammit, for the past six months, something’s been different about him and even I know it. He hides his cell phone all the time. If he leaves it around, he’s wiped the call logs. He changed the password on his e-mail account. He did a bunch of little stuff I didn’t think about at first. I know I’m not easy to live with, but I can’t live with him if I can’t trust him.” She cried. “He’d be better off without me anyway.”
“Ruthie,” she soothed, “please don’t talk like that.”
She let out a snort of disgust. “I don’t mean killing myself. I don’t even mean killing him.” She sniffled. “I already called my brother. He’s driving over right now. He said I can stay with them. He’s always hated Bob anyway.”
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
“Yeah. I don’t even want to know who it is. I don’t care.”
Gwen stifled a guilty pang. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
Ruthie sniffled again. “Listen, I need to get off here and pack some stuff. If Bob calls you looking for me, don’t tell him where I am, okay? Please? Just tell him I’m safe and that I wanted to go away for a few days. I need to get my shit together, get my life back. I’m tired of living like this. You can call me on my cell, I’ll have it with me.”
Maybe this was a good sign. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course you can, as much as you put up with me.”
“Liam and I might be moving.”
She gasped. “You’re getting back together with your guys?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d say that.” She wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of hope. “I haven’t even decided for sure if we will move, but Liam wants to move, and frankly, I want to be someplace else. We love Amy and our parents, but we agree it’d be healthier for both of us to put some distance between us and them. At least for now.”
“Good for you!” She laughed. “I’ll still call you and bug you.”
Gwen laughed, too. “You’d better. I’ll get mad if you don’t.”
“You’re a good friend, Gwen. Do you know how much I love you?”
She would miss Ruthie like hell. As exasperating as her friend could be at times, she really did love her. The things that had happened to her weren’t her fault, and Gwen couldn’t honestly say she wouldn’t have reacted exactly the same way Ruthie had. “I love you, too, Ruthie. I promise we’ll come visit you.” They said good-bye. After Gwen hung up, she stared at the phone.