“Hey.” My mouth spread into a wide smile.
“Hope it’s okay for me to drop by.”
My father spoke from behind a newspaper. “Trust me. You just made his day.”
“Thank you for outing me, old man.”
“Hi, Farrah.” Dad waved.
“Hi, Phil.”
Without me having to ask, my father folded up his paper and winked before heading to his bedroom to give us some privacy.
She stepped inside. “I just thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing.”
“I’m glad you did. I’d been trying to give you space after the drama that went down the last time we were together, but I’ve missed you.”
“How are things going with work?” she asked. “Nathan told me you gave your job notice in North Carolina, and you’re diving into the construction business headfirst.”
“Yup. Now that I’ve formally made that decision, I feel good about it. And things are in a much better place at Muldoon than they were three years ago. No real messes to deal with this time.”
“Good.”
Lowering my voice, I said, “I really need to get my own place. I love my dad, but I miss my privacy.”
“Are you planning to buy something?”
“Eventually.” I felt a desperate need to take her away somewhere. “Want to get out of here? Go for a ride? I’ll drive you back to your car after.”
She took a moment to answer. “Yeah. Sure.”
Yes. “Okay. Let me grab my keys.”
We ended up driving to a lake I’d discovered recently. It was about a half hour away. I went there a couple of times a week to clear my head in the middle of the day. I took her to my favorite spot under a shady tree, overlooking the water.
Farrah sat atop a rock and looked around at the gorgeous scenery. “This is really nice.”
“It’s my secret hideaway—not so secret anymore.”
“Thank you for sharing it with me.” She took a deep breath of the fresh air. “You guys are coming over for Christmas, right?”
“If you’ll still have us.”
She smiled. “Nathan is counting on it.”
I lifted my brow. “And you? Counting on it or dreading it?”
After a short delay that had me on edge, she answered, “I want you there, too.”
I smiled.
We took some time to enjoy the silence, no sounds but birds chirping and leaves rustling.
“So…I’ve been working on myself lately,” I eventually announced. “Finally seeing a therapist, which I know is long overdue.”
She reached for my hand. I didn’t realize how much I’d been starving for the contact until she touched me.
“That’s wonderful, Jace. You know, I stopped seeing mine a couple years ago, but I need to go back. Are you finding it helpful?”
“So far, yeah. I’ve only had two sessions. But we started with the tough stuff. We talked about how my leaving town three years ago wasn’t about fear of Nathan or hurting him. It was my own guilt that made me feel I didn’t deserve you because of the blame I’d placed on myself. Until I’m willing to face those memories and face my role in everything, I won’t begin to heal.”
She let go of my hand. “Why do you think you’re able to face it now and not three years ago?”
“Ironically, it took the loss of one of my own parents to make me realize I don’t have forever to work it all out.”
My therapist had encouraged me to talk to Farrah more about some of the things I’d been keeping in—specific memories. As hard as it was, I decided to put that into practice.
I looked up at the sky. “Your mother was holding my hand that day. I think on some level she felt like she needed to protect me the way she would her own son.” My eyes shut tightly. “It was in those seconds, holding her hand, that I decided I needed to protect them. The guy was pointing the gun at your dad, and I counted to five before lunging forward. The gun slipped out of his hand, but he grabbed it before I could. And that’s when he...” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
With tears in her eyes, she reached for my hand again. “It’s okay.”
“I have to accept that I may have caused what happened. But when I made that decision, I felt like he was going to pull the trigger. I didn’t want your mom to have to witness that. I don’t know what would be different today if I hadn’t lunged. I don’t know if it would’ve changed the outcome or just the circumstances. But keeping it all inside, trying to block it out, has been toxic. When you don’t deal with something like this, it grows inside you like a cancer. And eventually, it will kill you. Guilt and negative emotions can kill you.”
“You’re so right,” she said. “I spent the majority of my teen years trying to hold it together, never wanting to show my pain or burden others with it. But the truth is, sometimes, even today, I’m so angry at the world, I just want to scream.”
I looked around at the vast lake. “This looks like a pretty damn good place to lose it. There’s no one in the vicinity.” I arched my brow. “I’ll scream if you scream.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am.” I grinned. “On the count of three, okay?”
“Okay.” She squeezed my hand.
“One…two…three…”
We screamed together at the top of our lungs like a couple of lunatics, our voices echoing in the open air. It might have seemed like a crazy thing to do, but it was beautiful. We were letting go—together. Each time we’d stop, one of us would do it again. We probably screamed for three minutes straight.
When we finally stopped, an indescribable calm came over me. It felt like what I imagined a race car driver felt when he finally stopped his car and got out. I sensed the same calmness in Farrah as we resumed sitting in silence again, staring out at the lake.
About five minutes later, our peace was interrupted when a police car pulled up on the gravel road behind us. The cop got out and headed toward us. We both stood. Farrah brushed some grass off her butt.
“Everything okay, officer?” I asked.
He ignored my question and headed straight to Farrah. “Are you okay, ma’am? Someone reported screaming coming from this area. Was it you?”
I guess this lake wasn’t as private as I’d thought.
• • •
Christmas Eve at Farrah and Nathan’s was low-key and just what the doctor ordered. I’d refused to let Farrah bear the brunt of all the food preparation this time, so I’d insisted on handling everything. I placed an order for an entire ham dinner with all of the fixings from Regina’s. Dad and I picked up the food on our way to their house.
We had a nice, drama-free meal. Farrah and I had a blast telling Dad the story of how we’d nearly gotten arrested for causing a public disturbance down at the lake. The best part of the night? When Farrah announced that she’d officially closed the door on any reconciliation with Niles. She’d met with him to exchange some items and made it clear that things were over between them for good. That news was the best damn Christmas gift. Even if she never wanted to be with me again, at least I knew that asshole wouldn’t be the one to have her. She deserved so much better.