Hidden. Tara Quinn Taylor
Why couldn’t the baby have fussed a bit tonight? Distracted them? Cut into the time Scott generally lived for—time alone with the most fascinating woman he’d ever held in his arms.
“I brought you a beer,” she said, walking around the corner. She didn’t hand him the bottle, setting it on the low square table in front of him, instead. Then she curled up a couple of cushions down from him, balancing her glass of soda on one jean-clad thigh.
Most nights she changed into pajamas right after Taylor went down.
“Thanks.” He picked up the bottle, taking a sip since she’d opened it for him. Couldn’t have it go to waste.
“You looked like you could use a drink.”
Scott nodded.
“So, are you going to tell me the rest of the story?” Her voice was almost drowned out by the soft music.
He’d known the question was coming. Had felt it in her look, her tentative touch, all day. Ever since Blue’s Clues had ended that morning and Taylor had let out a wail protesting against being ignored any longer.
That had been right after he’d told her about driving his Porsche into the side of a mountain. Taylor’s cry had been like divine intervention. Saving him.
“Nothing lasts forever, huh?” he asked now, glancing at the woman who’d found a way into his life despite the dead bolts he’d firmly attached to any doors that might be left.
She shrugged. Sipped. “Some things do.”
“Yeah?” Divine intervention sure didn’t. Taylor wasn’t crying tonight. In fact, the rescue that morning had only bought him part of a day.
Or nothing at all. Because he’d spent the ensuing hours reliving the horrors. In one form or another.
“Sure.”
“Name one.”
“Love.”
Maybe. Finding out wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.
“Take Alicia, for instance. Whatever happened between the two of you, wherever she is now, the love you felt for her obviously still exists.”
Obviously. He stared at her, glad the dim light made it impossible to read the message in her eyes. And his. This wasn’t a time for expectations. Or declarations. It wasn’t a time to break the rules.
To care too much.
“So what happened?”
Maybe if she hadn’t spoken with such compassion he could have stood, walked away. Maybe.
He had to be able to walk away from her.
“She died.” Like millions before her. And millions after. Like Kelsey Stuart the day before. Too much like Kelsey Stuart.
He heard Tricia’s glass touch the table. Felt her sit back against the sofa. And then nothing. Heard nothing. Felt nothing.
“I did everything I could.” His voice belonged to a stranger, someone who was sitting a distance away, speaking of things Scott refused to think about. “It wasn’t much.”
Quiet had never been less peaceful. Or a muted room more filled with loud and bitter truth. He watched a drop of perspiration move slowly down the bottle of beer. Thought about picking it up and pouring it into his mouth.
“My ability extended to a phone call on my still-operable car phone. And to waiting for someone to come and do whatever needed to be done.”
“Could you get to her?”
Tricia’s voice slid over him, inside him, chafing the nerves just beneath his skin with her compassion.
“We hit on her side of the Porsche. She was thrown into my lap. I was afraid the car might explode so I moved her just enough to get us clear of the wreck.”
He’d made a mistake, doing that. The car hadn’t exploded. And her neck had been broken. If she’d lived, he’d have paralyzed her by that move.
Someone, at some point, had said better to have been paralyzed than blown up. Might even be something Scott would say to a victim. But it didn’t ease the guilt.
Neither did the beer he gulped.
Tricia didn’t move, didn’t reach out that slender hand to touch him. He was immensely thankful for that, yet he hated being with her and feeling so separate. So alone.
“Leaning up against a rock on the other side of the road, I held her and prayed for someone with medical knowledge to come past. Two cars passed. Stopped. But couldn’t help.”
“Were you hurt?”
Depended on how she defined that. “A few cuts and bruises…” A broken left forearm where Alicia had landed, slamming his wrist against the door. Not that it had hurt. He’d been so numb he hadn’t even known about the injury until hours later.
When everything had hurt. He’d gone crazy with the pain….
Scott got up, went for another beer. When he came back, Tricia was sitting just as he’d left her. Disappointed, relieved, he sat again.
“For forty-five minutes I waited there with her sticky blond hair spread over my arm, her sweet face going purple, and watched as she died in my arms.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Slamming his beer onto the table with unusual force, Scott turned, pinning her with a stare that he knew wasn’t nice, but one he couldn’t avoid, either. Other than in bed, his passion was always firmly under wraps. He couldn’t seem to keep it there at the moment.
“It was completely my fault,” he said, gritting his teeth so hard they hurt. The pain was tangible, identifiable, welcome. “I was larger than life, speeding like the spoiled, immature punk I was, so certain that I was above it all. Above the law…and death.”
“You didn’t do anything any other kid hasn’t done.”
Other kids might speed. But most other kids didn’t kill their fiancées while doing it.
His first reply was a derisive, humorless laugh. Followed by, “So many times I’d heard people—my friends even—say that I had it all. But in the end, I had nothing.”
Depleted, Scott picked up his beer, slid down on the cushion until his head touched the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. “No amount of money could help her hang on.” The words were as soft as his previous ones had been harsh. Moving his head, he looked over at Tricia, hurting all over again. “You know?”
She nodded, her gaze never leaving his. What was she thinking? Wondering whether she could trust her son to his driving? Glad she hadn’t been the one in his car, in his care, that Saturday so long ago?
“Money didn’t give me the ability necessary to help her. Nor could it revive her when help finally did arrive.”
He glanced away and then back, eyes open wide, completely focused on her as he finished. “No amount of money could ease the pain of knowing what I’d done, of having to face her family, to bury her, to live without her; and in the months and years that have followed, there hasn’t been enough money in the world to take away the guilt….”
God, she hated feeling helpless. Hugging her arms around her shoulders, Tricia sat beside Scott, studying his hunched silhouette in the dim light, aware that there was nothing she could do. No words that would change the circumstances of his life. Nothing she could offer him to alleviate the self-loathing.
She was a woman who’d once been in control of everything about her life, and the realization left her floundering. Should she get up? Leave him to the mercies of his conscience? Go to bed?
It was his bed.
She could sit quietly. For as long as it took. If he wanted her there, she wanted to be there.