A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,70
shook her head quickly. “But that doesn’t make the guilt go away. Nothing does.” She sat up and turned to face him directly. “And right now, being with you makes it worse.”
“We’re friends, Rachel.”
“We crossed a line.”
“We won’t cross it again.”
“You’re right about that,” she said hoarsely. “I need some space. Breathing room. When I’m with you, I want to touch you. I want to be with you like this.” She motioned to how close they sat, to where her knees overlapped his thigh. “Can you give me a few days at least to sort everything out in my head?”
“Of course.” He hated the thought of it, but he understood where she was coming from. He was struggling not to touch her, as well, and while that might have been “friendly” enough in the past, last night had changed things. “I’ll give you some time, and you let me know when you’re ready. Then we can put our mistake behind us.”
She tried to smile at him, but there was no joy in it, and that twisted something inside of him. He stood to leave before he could reach out for her again. Even though he understood her better, grasped a little bit of what she was going through, that didn’t make feeling helpless sit any better with him. Resisting the urge to hug her, he walked out of the Culver house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
RACHEL HAD RUN dry on excuses at the very worst time.
She’d missed the past two publicity committee meetings as well as one of the large-group asthma-benefit-planning sessions using work, recovering from work and plain old forgetfulness as her excuses. It was tricky in the first place because of her mom’s involvement—it curtailed any stretching of the truth Rachel might have been tempted to do.
And now, when she wanted—no, needed—to continue to avoid Cale, she hadn’t been able to think of a way out. It’d been over a week since she’d seen him, and she still wasn’t ready.
It didn’t help that her mom had decided this week’s meeting was a special beach picnic in celebration of the overall goal they’d hit in ticket sales a few days ago. Jackie was treating everyone to subs, chips, salad and cookies, and it was all being delivered directly to the beach at the site of the future benefit concert, on the Silver Sands Hotel property.
Rachel sat in her car in the hotel’s parking lot for a few extra minutes gathering her nerve. The building blocked the view from here, so she had no way of knowing whether Cale had arrived yet. Having learned from experience, she’d insisted on driving separately from her mom this time and was undoubtedly doing what her mother called dragging her feet.
The days since she’d spoken to Cale—since the morning when she’d told him the horrible truth about her fight with Noelle—she’d done nothing but work and sleep. Or try to sleep, rather. She’d taken as many extra shifts as she could get, but even then, she’d been on alert in the E.R., expecting to run into Cale bringing a patient in. If he had, she’d missed it. Which was for the best.
Against her will, she’d replayed the embarrassing, gut-wrenching scenes—both seducing him and then leveling with him the next day—in her mind over and over like a movie that was stuck. Every time, the nausea still overwhelmed her as the humiliation and guilt bore down on her. And now it was time to face him again. If she didn’t act right this minute and get it over with, she was either going to wretch right there in the parking lot or do something insane and inadvisable like drive her car right off the island and keep going.
Without a glance in the mirror—she knew damn well she looked awful with her sleep-deprived, haunted eyes and her pale skin—she opened the door, grabbed her bag and climbed out. Retrieving her beach chair from the trunk, she set off toward the sand.
She spotted the gathering as soon as she cleared the corner of the hotel. Heard her mom’s laugh and saw Cale’s light brown, shaggy hair right away. Her eyes zeroed in on him and nothing else, as if she had special radar. She forced her attention away from him, wanting to avoid eye contact at all costs. She slowed her pace and strategized as she took in the scene and the smaller groups that had formed. Cale was sitting on the far side near his sister and Eloise Painter, one