Page 16 of Save the Last Dance (Take the Backroads #1)

“He doesn’t even hear me.” Bethany’s voice broke but she recovered herself, waving away the offer of a tissue from Nina’s purse. “He gave me lilacs for my birthday last year. Three days late, too, but…Lilacs!”

“You don’t like lilacs?” Nina must be missing something.

“I’m allergic!” Bethany’s raised voice was thready and upset. “I had a major allergic reaction to them two years ago and he has zero recollection of that fact. How much more proof do I need of his indifference when he doesn’t even care if his gifts sent me to the emergency room?”

“He must have felt bad when he remembered the allergy.” Nina didn’t know what else to say. Men could be forgetful and clueless. But Scott always seemed so well meaning. She wasn’t sure Bethany would thank her for standing up for him just now, though.

“I wouldn’t know how he felt. He was in Nashville with his mom that day. I got the flowers from a delivery truck and went into anaphylactic shock. His sister took me to the hospital and picked up Ally from school.”

Oh, Scott.

Did he have any idea how close his marriage was to imploding? Nina’s heart squeezed tight for both of them. She wanted to ask more, to find out how Ally was doing, but Bethany stood abruptly.

“I’m so embarrassed for talking about me the whole time, Nina.

We need a girl date where guy-talk is off-limits.

But there’s the delivery I was expecting.

” She pointed to a tractor trailer just pulling into the parking lot, its smokestack puffing a gray cloud into an otherwise blue sky. “I should really?—”

Her walkie-talkie crackled to life, a woman’s voice suddenly blaring from it.

“Mrs. Finley?”

“I see the truck, Grace. I’m coming.” Bethany gave Nina an apologetic look as she got to her feet.

“I’ll let you get back to work.” Nina rose, careful not to split the skirt of her sheathe dress as she hopped off the picnic table bench seat.

Grace’s voice crackled again. “It’s The Strand Salon on the phone for you, ma’am. They said it’s urgent. Ally is hurt and they need you to come down there right away.”

Mack hated hospitals .

He shoved through the main doors downstairs at the facility in Franklin, a full half hour drive from Heartache.

He understood why Bethany had brought Ally here after the girl had cut herself—purposely—at work today.

But damn it. The scent of antiseptic and bleach always brought him back to the nights as a kid when his mom had an “accident” with her medicine.

Or later, when he’d brought Jenny to this very same hospital.

His phone vibrated—as it had every five minutes with a text from his mother asking for an update.

Stalking toward the elevators, he pulled his phone out of his back pocket, tempted to heave the thing across the reception area so he didn’t have to answer it anymore.

Didn’t have to pretend everything was okay for his mom’s sake.

“Mack?”

Nina’s voice stopped him. She appeared out of the crowd on his left, her red linen dress and heels making it apparent she hadn’t planned to spend her day in a hospital, yet here she was. Her expression looked as worried as he felt inside.

And he couldn’t deny a rush of relief to see her, even if he still wondered what had gotten into him when he’d asked her out again. She’d always be a restless spirit with notions of the white picket fence and family he’d never be able to fill.

“Hey.” He shoved his phone back in his pocket, another text already causing it to vibrate. “Thank you for coming.”

She gave a jerky nod, a caramel-colored strand of her hair teasing her cheek while the elevator doors swept open and a crowd of people carrying flowers and “get well” balloons rushed to fill it.

“I was with Bethany when she got the call that Ally had—” She gave a helpless shrug.

“Hurt herself.” She breathed out a shuddering sigh.

“I feel so bad for their whole family. Bethany was close to the breaking point even before the call. I drove her to the salon because there’s no way she could have gotten behind the wheel. ”

“Thank you. You don’t seem that steady yourself.” Unable to stop himself, he reached for her hand. Squeezed it. “How are you holding up?”

Seeing her fingers wrapped around his helped to settle him even if it didn’t do a damn thing for her. He had to be careful. It was one thing to ask her out to dinner so they could put the past to rest. But having her here, with his family, stirred up so much more.

He wished they wanted the same things. But he’d be leaving Heartache soon and he could never fulfill the longing she had to have a real family of her own.

She deserved it after what she’d gone through with her parents, never having siblings and barely having her parents in her life.

But Mack’s family had created so many problems for him that he refused to recreate the same situation with children of his own.

He’d visited shrinks plenty of times over the years just to be sure his occasional bad days were normal.

Level. He wasn’t about to pass on those fears to a kid.

“I’m okay.” She let go of his hand to retrieve some tissue from a leather purse tucked under one arm. “I drove her and Ally here because Bethany didn’t want to call an ambulance, and I didn’t blame her. Ally’s arms had stopped bleeding by then.”

The weight of what his niece was going through him hit him like a semi-truck.

“I got a text from Scott.” He didn’t mention the thirty texts he’d received from his mother.

“He beat us to the ER so he was able to help Bethany when we arrived. I stayed down here to wait for you because I didn’t want to be in the way, and I knew coming here would be—” she gestured to the waiting room “—tough.”

Nina must remember him telling her about the nights as a kid when his dad would wake them up so he could drive their mom here. She didn’t know about that darkest of ER visits with Jenny.

“The toughest part is realizing that Ally could be facing the same kinds of issues Mom does.” The elevator doors swished open and an orderly pushed a wheelchair with a smiling young mom holding a newborn wrapped in pink. A dad juggling bags and flowers sprinted out ahead of them, car keys jingling.

“You don’t think—” Nina bit her lip, her gaze lingering on the pink bundle before returning to him. “That never occurred to me. I guess I just figured…I don’t know. Teenage angst.”

Unlike him, who saw mood disorders everywhere he looked.

He nodded toward the stairs. “Do you mind if we walk up?”

“That’s fine.” Nina double-checked her phone. “Ally is waiting for a consultation from a dermatology specialist upstairs, but Bethany said we could meet in the fourth-floor waiting area.”

“Did Ally say much on the ride here?”

“No. The ride was so silent I intruded with babble just to make noise or make it less awkward. But then I thought maybe I was the only who felt really awkward.”

“There’s a lot of silence going around in that house.” He reached in front of Nina to shove open the door to the stairs, the scent of her vanilla fragrance stirring memories in spite of the hellish day. Didn’t it figure she would smell incredibly edible?

His phone vibrated. He cursed.

“If you need to take it in private,” Nina offered, “I can meet you upstairs.”

“It’s not that. It’s Mom.” The door fell shut behind them and the elevator started to climb.

Mack withdrew his phone again and checked the message.

“She’s had a rough year since Dad’s death and I’m…

” He blew out a pent-up breath. “I’m not Scott.

I can’t provide constant reassurance. I just—can’t.

I’ll send her a note when we get upstairs. ”

Nina was quiet.

“I know that makes me a heel.” What decent guy ignored his own mother?

“God, no,” she confided, her frankness something he’d always enjoyed about her. “I can totally identify with drawing boundaries when you have a strained relationship with your parents. I just didn’t realize you’d reached that point with your mom.”

Long ago. Mack had left town before his mother had found the right mix of medications that seemed to be helping her more lately. But unfortunately, he hadn’t found a new, healthy way to relate to her. Avoidance had become his go-to coping mechanism.

“You remember she ended up in the hospital after Vince’s accident.” One of many reasons he never could have gone to New York with her.

Nina tried not to let her jaw hit the floor at Mack’s comment. Had he honestly just said that?

“Of course I remember. That was one of many things I blamed myself for in those months after we broke up.” She’d been devastated when he’d told her his mom had been hospitalized. That was in the first few weeks after Nina had left town, when they’d still been speaking..

“Why would you blame yourself?” He halted on a step. “You must have known she had problems long before that, even if I never talked about it.”

Mack had never talked about himself, his emotions, or his family. To a grown woman, that would have been a red flag. For Nina, she’d been too caught up in all the good stuff they shared to think about what they didn’t.

“I was eighteen. I tended to believe everything was my fault,” she backpedaled, not ready to talk about the argument she’d had with his mom before she left town.

He had too many other family concerns to deal with today.

“I remember thinking at that exact moment—when you told me she’d been admitted—that you were never coming to New York with me. ”

That had been devastating enough. But it had been far worse to imagine she’d played a role in pushing his mom over the edge when they’d argued.

“That wasn’t the main reason I didn’t get to New York.” Mack’s boots thudded heavily on each stair as if the weight of old grief dogged his steps even now. “If it had just been my mom…”

He trailed off and she guessed all the ways he might fill in the blank. Logically, she understood the aftermath of his best friend’s death had been traumatic. That she should have been stronger for him instead of expecting him to be there for her. She’d been selfish. Self-centered.

And eighteen.

“I know it was more complicated than that. I just meant?—”

“Jenny miscarried Vince’s baby two days after the accident.

” He hit the top step on the fourth-floor landing but paused before he opened the door.

“I’d promised I wouldn’t share her secret back then because she was eighteen and scared to death, but she came to terms with that a long time ago. She wouldn’t mind me telling you now.”

Shock glued her feet to the floor. In all these years, she’d never guessed.

Never suspected there might be something so…

significant that had drawn Jenny and Mack together.

Her picture of the past reshuffled like a deck of cards in an electric dealer, the placement of all the pieces shifting too fast to comprehend.

“I had no idea.” Even as new understanding dawned, finally giving her insight into everything that had happened since she left town, she also felt the sting of hurt that Mack had willingly chosen to keep her in the dark after all that they’d shared.

He’d chosen Jenny over her. “I’m so sorry you had to bear that. ”

“It felt like the right thing to do at the time, and it was a lot worse for Jenny.” He met her gaze evenly. Stoic even now. Until he blinked slowly. Shook his head. “But I can’t help remembering it today because I brought her to this same ER. The whole thing happened two floors down.”