“They didn’t.”
“Unfortunately, they did. I guess the city thought it was getting dangerous.” Another shrug. “And I supposed that I thought I was getting too old to enjoy doing it anyway. A teenager who was too cool to hang with his parents.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Because I was a pain in the ass teenager?”
She pinched his hip. “No,” she said. “But because you lost that part of your past.”
He’d never thought about it that way.
But he supposed he’d been mourning for it in some small way since his mom had passed, missing all the easy times of the traditions they’d had, the chance to make new memories with her.
“What happened to your parents?” she asked gently. “You said they were gone, but . . .”
He blinked, and for a moment, grief threatened to swell up over him, but he battled it back, kept this woman who had become intrinsic to his life in such a short time close. “My mom died a year ago, my dad five years before that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What about yours?” He slid his hand up and down her arm.
“They still live in the town I grew up in.” There was a note of sadness in her tone, and he wondered if he should ask about it, but then she kept talking. “Still the same house, actually. Hell, they drove the same station wagon from my teenage years until two years ago when it broke down and the mechanic couldn’t find parts to repair it.” The words came fast and furious. “So, they were stuck buying a new car and hated every minute of it.” Her voice had been overcome with sadness, the words finally coming to a halt.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked after she’d gone quiet and stayed that way for several moments.
She cleared her throat. “No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I hijacked your story.”
He frowned. “I asked you about your family.”
“Right.” Another whisper, something fragile in her tone.
“I want to know all the things that make you tick.”
A shudder wracked her frame, and this time it wasn’t from the cold or the way he was holding her, touching her. This was a pain remembered, slices of agony that ran deep inside a person’s soul. He knew because like recognized like, because he’d so often felt those same cuts after his father had been murdered, after cancer had stolen his mother. Two good people taken, leaving him behind with just memories. So, he stayed quiet, held her close, and waited.
“You don’t.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then she was pulling out of his hold and moving over to the railing, hands gripping on the metal bar. He might have let her have the moment, allowed the quiet to grow and stay that way if not for her wiping away a tear.
Just a sly small motion, fingers darting up for her eye.
But he did see it.
And he was moving toward her before he even registered that his feet were in motion.
“Hey,” he said softly. “What is it?”
She shook her head, wouldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry.”
Another apology.
“Stef.” He turned her to him, hooked a finger under her chin. “Honey, what is it?”
She stepped away from him, tears glistening on her cheeks. “I’m so—”
“Don’t apologize,” he snapped, not as gently as it should have been, worry having crept in as the tears started to come in full force. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
But she either couldn’t or wouldn’t, and when she stumbled back a pace and bent at the waist, a sob hiccupping out of her lungs, he closed the distance between them, scooped her up and carried her to the couch.
And all the while she kept apologizing.
And all the while he kept telling her to stop apologizing.
But eventually, he realized that his orders weren’t helping anything and just shut up and held her as she cried, as she repeated, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” over and over again.
It killed him, that painful nonstop rhetoric, as though by saying it repeatedly she was atoning for something.
What could she possibly have to atone for?
He knew he needed to find out, that it was locked up with whatever he’d seen the previous Sunday, what had occasionally crept into her eyes throughout the week—the expectation that he would look too close and then leave.
This was the puzzle piece to the distance she held.
The wall she’d erected, the barb that was shoving them apart.
When all he wanted was to get closer.
Finally, she grew quiet and limp in his arms, and he was almost afraid