Page 23 of A Lonely Road (Spruce Hill #2)

Chapter Twenty

Jake

I was checking inventory spreadsheets in my office when Sam came into the restaurant. As she gave a perfunctory knock and opened the door, I froze. We’d always been able to read one another easily; she looked spooked, her shoulders tight, like she was bracing for something.

The relative calm I held onto for the first fifteen seconds probably had to be attributed to Nora’s effect on my general mood, but Sam’s strained expression chipped through it quickly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, half rising from my seat before she motioned me back down.

For a moment, she didn’t speak, gathering her thoughts in a very un-Sam-like way that sent my blood pressure skyrocketing.

“Sam, talk to me. What is it? ”

“Maybe nothing,” she said as she sat on the edge of the desk.

“I don’t like to snitch, especially not on my friends.

Even more especially not on someone who obviously doesn’t trust very easily.

I really don't want to intrude on Nora’s private life, and I probably have no right to make a big deal out of something if it actually wasn’t, but if she isn’t willing to let me help her through this, maybe she’ll be more open with you. ”

I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to brush away the sudden rush of fear that crashed over me when she started speaking. “I understand, Sam. Believe me, I do. But you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t plan to tell me what’s got you looking like that. Is Nora okay?”

Sam’s eyes, as familiar as my own, lifted and she gave a jerky nod. “She’s fine, or at least she says she is. I’m pretty sure she had a good time shopping, then after we stopped for lunch, something freaked her right the hell out. Like, panic attack level freakout.”

“Shit,” I muttered. I’d told Sam about the bachelor party incident, but not about the panic attack on the sidewalk afterward. “What happened?”

“I was on my way back from the bathroom and she got jostled into some guy in the crowd. I don’t know if she knew him or if he reminded her of someone, but she lost it.

Completely lost it. Gasping for breath, shaking uncontrollably.

She insisted we leave and she finally calmed down a bit once we got in the car, but it scared the shit out of me, Jake. ”

I stood then and came around the desk to wrap my arm around Sam’s shoulders. “Did you see him? What did he look like?”

She shook her head miserably. “Not clearly. Tall guy, dark sunglasses. Maybe blond or light brown hair? It was really crowded.”

“Okay. I’ll take care of her. You did the right thing by coming to me.” I sucked in a calming breath and squeezed her tight.

“I like her,” she said, her voice still muffled against my chest.

I huffed out a laugh. “So do I.”

Though I felt like there was an angry swarm of bees in my veins, I walked her out, gave her one last reassuring hug before she got into the Mustang, then forced myself not to sprint the entire way home.

As I hurried down the sidewalk, I thought about Nora’s swift, instinctive response to the drunk who’d grabbed her, the way she'd skirted my comment about running from something.

Not all rainbows and adventures.

Her words reverberated through my head again and again until I reached the stairs to her apartment, wondering at the source of her panic attacks.

Something had to have happened to cause them.

I paused halfway up, thinking again that I should text her instead of knocking, but the door opened before I could make a decision.

Nora propped her hip against the doorframe and gazed down at me.

She looked a little worn out, but otherwise hale and hearty, which dramatically reduced my anxiety for her wellbeing.

Her feet were bare and she’d changed into a pair of simple black leggings, which I had to admit was probably for the best, since that little skirt would've been a bit too distracting.

“I figured you’d show up sooner or later.” The barest hint of a smile curved her lips, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Please don’t hold it against Sam,” I said gently. “She was worried about you.”

The silent admission that I was worried, too, was probably written all over my face. Nora watched me as I slowly mounted the stairs. I half expected her to send me away, to slam those fragile walls back in place, but she stayed right where she was.

“I’m not upset with her at all. I figured she’d head over to tell you as soon as she dropped me off. Are you coming in or are we standing on the porch all day?”

I bounded up the remaining steps and cupped her chin in one hand when I reached the top. Nora waited patiently as my gaze traveled over her features, drinking her in like we’d been apart for a matter of years instead of hours.

As much as I expected her to downplay the encounter at the bistro, I really hoped she would trust me with this.

My careful inspection finally drew a tiny smile from her, along with a sigh of resignation.

When her expression remained calm and open, not a shutter in sight, I almost sagged with relief.

I kissed her before I dropped my hand. It was a light, chaste kiss, barely brushing my lips past hers, but its effect seemed like just as much a balm as my gaze. Her posture relaxed slightly before she backed into the apartment. I followed, closing the door firmly behind us.

This place had been as familiar to me as my own a year ago, taking up most of my free time and every last drop of energy.

With Nora here, everything felt different, softer.

Instead of the bachelor pad Jenkins had commissioned, it had become something more intimate, more feminine. The light suited her.

Unbidden, the thought that she needed more light in her life sprang up within me.

Before I could reflect more on the changes she'd brought, both to the apartment and to my own life, Nora perched at the edge of the loveseat and patted the cushion beside her.

I sat, stretching my arm along the back so my fingers could thread gently through the ends of her hair, and waited patiently for her to speak.

She stared down at her hands in her lap, clenching them into fists and then unclenching, so I reached over to cover them with my free hand. As my thumb stroked over her knuckles, I felt the instant when her muscles started to relax.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, we can just sit here a bit,” I offered.

Nora took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I definitely don’t want to talk about it, but I think we need to. I need to.”

She fell silent again, but she turned both her hands so they were sandwiching mine between her palms, clasping my hand like a lifeline. I lifted them to press my lips against her knuckles and she squeezed tighter .

“First, I feel like I need to give you some background on . . . well, everything.”

I recognized this moment for what it was—another wall crumbling between us, another thorny hedge set ablaze. “You can tell me anything, Nora, I hope you know that.”

She nodded. “Like I mentioned, I was a Navy brat. We moved around a lot. I didn’t mind so much, but for my mom, it was pretty lonely. As soon as I left for college, she split. Asked for a divorce, packed up her stuff, and moved out. My dad wasn’t even in the country at the time.”

“Ouch,” I murmured.

“It gets worse,” she said, sighing. “College was where I discovered I worked really well with noise around me, so I let my friends drag me to bars—they’d drink and flirt, I’d write papers in a corner.

One night, though, this guy approached me, asked me out, didn’t want to take no for an answer.

His name was Shawn Milton. My friends noticed that he wasn’t taking a hint and brought the guys they were talking to over to scare him off. ”

Anger simmered across my skin, but I kept it together and nodded for her to go on.

“Things escalated. He had his hand wrapped around my elbow, but when he saw the guys coming, he grabbed my wrist to try to yank me out of the bar. I fought him, but I had no training of any kind back then, and we were almost to the door when the group reached us.”

“Christ,” I whispered. “No wonder you reacted the way you did at The Mermaid.”

She gave a weak smile. “Yeah. I thought my friends were going to be too late. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life, and I never wanted to feel that way again.”

“I take it they made it in time?”

“Barely. He shoved me into a table and ran when they got close. Then he moved on . . . to my mom. I found out she’d hooked up with him a few months later. I have no idea if he sought her out because of me, or how he even found her. Maybe it was a coincidence.”

My brows drew together. “Pretty big coincidence.”

“Yeah. When I told her about that night, she brushed it off. She told me he made her feel young again. I got my own apartment at the end of freshman year and didn’t make a lot of effort to see her—Shawn gave me the creeps, and my dad was devastated by the divorce.

You’d think at nineteen, it wouldn’t feel like you had to choose between your parents, you know?

But maybe if I’d visited her more, I might've seen it sooner.”

I lifted my hand from the cushions and stroked her hair. “Might have seen what?”

“The signs. The little ways he took control of her, the manipulations. We weren’t all that close, but she’d always called or emailed a couple times a week when I first left for school.

It slowly tapered off to a short email once a month, and eventually I started to think it was Shawn writing them instead of her. ”

My muscles tensed. “He was abusing her?”

“Physically, I don’t think so, but I still don’t know for sure. Something weird was definitely going on, though. ”

“Right.” I forced my jaw to unclench. “Go on.”