Page 36 of Save the Last Dance (Take the Backroads #1)

In spite of what he and Nina had been through today, he really, really wished he could pick up the phone and call her, too.

Because no one else on the planet was going to understand what a unique hell this night had been for him.

Although, now that he thought about it, maybe that wasn’t entirely true.

His mother would.

It’d been a long time since he’d had that particular thought.

But since he already had a failed marriage and now that he’d sabotaged the fledgling bond he’d tried to rebuild with Nina, maybe the time had come to at least to heal that relationship.

Tomorrow, he’d work on repairing things with his mom.

If he was lucky, Nina might forgive him one day, too.

But for now, he knew he’d never make it through the night without at least hearing her voice.

Nina’s phone rang in the middle of the night.

Sleepy and confused, she answered before she was fully awake. Cradling the cell to her ear, she hoped it wasn’t bad news.

“Hello?” She’d been too groggy to even look at the caller ID.

“Nina.” Mack’s voice came through the phone, so deep and warm that for a second, she forgot how chilly things had been between them when they’d parted earlier.

And then…she remembered. He wouldn’t be calling for phone sex after the words they’d had, that was for sure. Her he art hurt all over again as she stared at the exposed-beam ceiling in the upstairs bedroom where she’d spent her teen years.

“Is everything okay?” She shifted on the pillow, propping one eye open long enough to read the illuminated dial of the old-fashioned alarm clock on the painted white washstand. 3:00 a.m. He’d dropped her off over two hours ago.

She’d been scared he’d never speak to her again.

“I’m all right.” He sounded exhausted and wide-awake at the same time. Vaguely she wondered how she could tell. But she’d known Mack a long time and no matter how they’d hurt each other, she knew him well.

“What do you mean you’re all right? Why wouldn’t you be? What happened?” She flipped over on her stomach and propped her elbows on her pillow, all sleepiness vanished. Now, she was worried for him and whatever had happened that had made him phone her.

“After I dropped you off, I took the long way home. Up Quarry Road.”

He didn’t need to explain why. She’d been restless and edgy, too, only just falling asleep about half an hour before the phone rang. But the way he launched into the story—like there was a lot to tell—made her nervous. He wouldn’t have called unless it was serious.

“I noticed a sign was gone at the top of the hill, so I pulled over to see if it was in the grass.” In the background, the wind rose in a rushing sound, distorting his last few words. Mack must be somewhere outdoors.

“I would never have noticed something like that.” Who spotted missing signs in the dark?

But then again, the Finleys had been raised to believe that they were caretakers of the town.

That Heartache was their family. Sad that Mack needed to escape his family so badly that the town was off-limits for his future.

“Right, but I remembered this one. And when I stepped out of the car, I heard someone calling out.”

She gasped. “Calling out how?” She had visions of a robber or carjacker.

“It sounded like someone was hurt.” He huffed out a breath. “I tracked the noise down the steep hill.”

Her stomach hurt as she wondered what he’d found. “And?”

His voice changed. Became darker. More remote. “There’d been a car accident.”

Instantly, she understood the late-night call.

The tone in his words. A million memories from eight years ago surged.

The first time she’d heard there’d been an accident.

How many times she’d replayed it in her mind.

The fear for Mack when she’d discovered it had been his best friend.

And, of course, the crippling agony of guilt that she’d somehow caused Vince to be so upset and angry that he didn’t watch where he was driving… .

A strangled sound emerged from her throat. Clearing it, she asked, “Was someone injured?”

The person had to be okay because they’d been calling to Mack, right? Unless, of course, there’d been more than one person on the car. Nina sat up in bed, shivering in the dark and clutching the phone in a death grip.

“She’s okay, Nina.” Mack’s voice softened. Like he knew how freaked-out she would be right now.

She got up and walked to the window overlooking the field and the orchards. Not that she could see anything in the dark, even though she hadn’t bothered to draw the blinds under the sheer curtains.

“Who?” She laid a hand on the cold window and kept it there, grounding herself in the moment and the present. “Who was it?”

“Remember Ally’s friend who was helping her with the maze?”

“The blonde.” Of course she remembered. The girl looked like she’d walked out of a high-end magazine, her hair the color of corn silk. “Rachel, I think.”

“Yeah. Rachel Wagoner. She was alone and she was okay, even though she was stuck inside the car.” He must have stepped under a shelter or back inside somewhere, because the wind that had been whistling in the background suddenly stopped.

“She had a broken leg that will need some surgical repair, but nothing major. The EMTs said she was fine, and she was lucid when they put her in the ambulance. She was asking for Ally, actually.”

“They must be good friends.” Nina let go of the glass, relieved the girl was okay. Mack must have been living an old nightmare the whole time. She found the flannel robe Gram had bought her and slid her arms inside.

“I guess. The girl didn’t want her mother there, so I drove Ally up to the hospital so she can sit with Rachel when she gets out of surgery.”

That was nice of him. Then again, he was probably wishing like hell that he’d had the chance to sit with Vince that night. He’d always regretted letting his friend take his car when he was upset.

“Is that where you are now? The hospital?”

“No.” He paused. “You have FaceTime or Friend Time on your phone?”

“You want to video chat?” She tucked stay strands of hair behind her ears. “That’s fine. I can…” She stared at the phone and saw his contact info. “Hang up and I’ll call back. ”

Switching on a bedside wall sconce with a floral embroidered shade, Nina pressed the button to connect via video chat. When Mack answered, it was dark all around him, though his phone emitted enough light to show his face when he turned it toward him.

“Hey.” There was a starkness to his features.

Dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes.

Some thin scratches on his cheeks, as though he’d wrestled with a few thorn bushes.

A scruff of whiskers along his jaw. “I wasn’t sure if you’d been here before.

” He walked into the wind as the swooshing sound of the breeze picked up, his shoulders moving. “I drove out to Vince’s grave.”

Her chest squeezed tight. She hugged her arms around herself and dropped onto the quilt-covered chest at the end of the full-size four-poster bed.

“I’ve been there.” She hadn’t spent much time in Heartache after graduation, but she’d made that trek more than once. “My counselor in college—someone who helped me with the grief—advised me to visit. And, you know, talk to him.”

Mack shone the phone on the headstone. He must be squatting close to it because she could see Vince’s name clearly. The date of his death.

“I always liked the Zeppelin quote.” Mack traced the words from a rock song about a feather in the wind.

“Did you suggest it?” Nina asked, curious and full of emotions too entangled to name. If the night felt darkly nostalgic to her, she could only imagine the strangeness of it for Mack who’d discovered the accident.

He had to be reeling.

“God, no. I hardly spoke to his parents that year. I felt so guilty and they were grieving so hard.” He angled the phone back toward him and Nina realized he was seated on the cold, hard ground beside his friend.

“His dad played guitar with Vince occasionally. I think he must have come up with it. But it always seemed apt to me. Vince was here such a short time.”

She wished she could put her arms around him right now and comfort him.

She considered getting in the truck and driving out there to be with Mack, but she also didn’t want to compromise the connection she felt to him right now.

He wasn’t a guy who ever talked about his feelings.

She didn’t want anything to disrupt that or distract him.

“Did you ever talk to someone about it?” She cleared her throat and hoped he wouldn’t be offended. “A counselor, I mean?”

“Jenny and I both met with someone before we got married. She thought it would help us make sure we were together for the right reasons, and I was trying to…make her happy.” He held the phone far enough away that she could see one of his shoulders moving and she guessed by the rustling sound that he was swiping fall leaves away from the grave.

“So the counselor didn’t help?” She smoothed her hand over the handmade quilt on the chest beneath her, her fingers tracing the pattern of the square cut from a nightgown she’d worn when she first came to live with Gram. The fabric was soft linen and beautifully made—clothes from a different life.

“She taught me about the stages of grief. I don’t blame anyone anymore.

But acceptance? I’m not sure that’s what I call my endpoint in the process.

I don’t accept Vince’s death. But I’ve made a certain peace with it.

” He went still again and then turned the phone to the grave, now free of leaves. “Better.”

I don’t blame anyone anymore .

“You blamed me.” It wasn’t a revelation, exactly. Plenty of other people had.

But still…