Just One Day (7 page)

“Jesse—”

He stood up. “His last memory of his mother is leaving her behind in an inferno. That’s something no kid should ever see.”

Silence ticked between us, and I could hear my heart beating over the wind.

“Maybe time will change things,” I said finally.

“It’s been four years,” he said quietly, some of the anger spent. I wondered how long it had been since he’d said any of that out loud. “He wants nothing to do with me.”

Chapter Seven

He dug at his eyes again and I saw the doors come back down. “Enough of all that,” he said, his voice ragged.

He set about checking random things that I had the feeling didn’t need checking, but gave him something to do. I let him be. That was one hell of a roller coaster he lived on, and it broke my heart. I wondered if it was the reason for the old phone attached to the wall—like maybe he didn’t want to be dependent on something that could die and cost him so dearly. Or maybe he just didn’t feel like he deserved the luxury.

I turned sideways in my booth seat and pulled a knee up to rest my arm on as I watched the wind bend trees across the street. The hail looked to have stopped, but the wind appeared stronger, fiercer. The gusts that hit the windows sounded brutal and the noise was constant.

I stopped checking the time. Nothing was going to matter for a while. Even my phone was still upstairs, although I doubted that Brad had called or texted. He wasn’t a fan of phone conversations and he’d promised me the day, so I knew he’d be true to his word. All the little voices of reason were talking at once and I knew what they were saying. I just didn’t want to hear it yet. And Jesse’s words—and the fact that I was thinking of him as Jesse instead of just Montgomery—was working on me.

“How long were you married?” said his voice to my right, making me jump. I hadn’t seen him walk up, and then there he was gazing down at me.

I cleared my throat. “Fourteen years.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What happened?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Boredom, I guess. We stopped talking to each other, and all we had in common was Lanie.” I traced the condensation on my unopened beer. “One day he said he wanted out, and I said okay. I didn’t even argue.” I looked up at Jesse with a small shrug. “I figured if it was that easy to end after fourteen years and a daughter together, then something was definitely missing.”

He leaned against the booth. “Maybe that’s why you’re balking this time around,” he said. “Maybe you’re afraid of hitting that rut again.”

It made me itchy. “Maybe I just—”

My words were severed by the sound of glass shattering upstairs. He sprung off the booth and was already on the stairway when I scrambled out and turned to look outside as I followed him. What I saw glued my feet to the floor.

“Jesse,” I said, the name slow and purposeful, only because I had to force my mouth to work. My guess is that it caused alarm, because it turned him back.

“What?” I heard behind me, but I knew he’d see it from where he stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Holy fuck,” he said under his breath, as more glass broke above our heads.

The wind outside was sideways and swirling, pieces of limbs and debris were flung randomly. But what was driving that was about two blocks away. Where there used to be trees. A thick, barrel-shaped funnel of swirling dirt and debris and water was ripping up the ground. And coming our way.

It was terrifying and mesmerizing all at the same time. I could even feel the rumble under my bare feet, like standing next to a train going by. Only this train was about to mow us down.

“Get in the pantry!” Jesse yelled, his voice cracking. “Now!” When I didn’t move, he yanked me by the arm and pulled me behind the bar and opened a section of wall I didn’t even know was a door. The movement stunned me into action and I ran in. Shelves of canned goods, bagged goods, paper products and boxes lined the walls. An old twin mattress leaned against the back, along with some folded cardboard containers.

“Get under that mattress and stay there, I’ll be right back,” he yelled, the deafening noise nearly drowning him out. I could see behind him to the tornado bearing down.

“Back? No! Get in here,” I screamed, feeling the panic rise in my chest. “It’s coming!”

“I have to get something upstairs, get under there now, Andie!” he yelled, shutting the door in my face. The little room went dark.

“Jesse, no!”

I opened the door just as Brad’s car tumbled and crashed across the parking lot like a child’s toy. Any other words froze in my throat. I slammed the door and scrambled to my knees in the dark, groping for the cardboard boxes and flinging them aside. I crawled behind the mattress and stuck three fingers in a ripped place to hold it.

“Oh God, oh God,” I cried. “Oh my God, please help us.” Adrenaline rushed through me so fast I could hear my own blood moving. “Please, Jesse, get back here.”

In the dark, everything intensified. I felt the rumble beneath me as if the earth were cracking open. Glass shattered outside my little world, something I assumed was furniture slammed against my door, making me scream. Horrible groaning sounds of metal bending against its will filled my ears. Walls collapsed over my head and cans of food fell all around me, bouncing off the mattress and slamming to the floor. I pulled my soft shield against me as tightly as I could, and something flat and heavy landed on top of me. I squeezed my eyes shut, my cries becoming wails. I’d never felt so utterly terrified and helpless, and as the roar got so loud I feared my eardrums would burst, it got worse. Leaves and sticks were hitting the floor around me, sweeping under the mattress into my face. There was only one way those things could get in.

“Oh God, please,” I sobbed. “Jesse.”

I wanted to vomit from the piercing fear and the images I held in my head of what might have happened to him. I screamed out his name again and again as the planet caved in around me. That’s what it felt like. I thought of my daughter and couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked to her or when I’d told her I loved her last. No one even knew where I was. No one would know if I died there. Something else flew across the room and shattered against the wall, and I concentrated on my daughter’s face and the funny way she scrunched it up when she laughed, hoping I’d see it again. Hoping she’d never know fear like that.

Then it stopped. Like—poof.

The only sounds were my labored breathing and the rain falling softly. My arms had gone into rigor mortis from the tension, and the mattress was suddenly too heavy to move. I couldn’t push it off me, but I could see out the side that it wasn’t dark anymore. My first loopy thought was that the lights had come back on. The next one told me that the monster had created a new sunroof. Through two floors.

“Jesse!” I screamed, my voice raw. “Montgomery! Can you hear me?”

I was angry at him for not staying. Angry at the tornado for taking so much. Angry at the day. Rage filled me as I shoved at the mattress pinning me down, but it wouldn’t budge. I shifted and squirmed instead, grunting, pulling myself inch by inch out from under it, clawing at the wet floor.

The scene that slowly unfolded for me was too shocking for words. Not just the cans lay on the floor, but the shelves as well. Broken and splintered like toothpicks. The smell of opened food products permeated my nose as the grief of reality squeezed me from all sides. Food products were everywhere. Splattered and dripping down the walls, oozing down pieces of shelving. Glass shards from plates and shattered jars sat weirdly clustered in one corner, as if they’d been scooped up and dropped only there. Napkins and paper towels were shredded across it all, soaking up the colors like a weird art project. A fork stuck out from a newly exposed portion of wall. From the handle out. A chair I recognized from upstairs perched upside down in front of the door.

“Oh my G—” I cried, feeling the crushing weight of what had happened. I stopped pulling and pressed my forehead to the wet wooden floor. My hot tears mixed with the cool rain that was still driving down through the hole, soaking everything. An overwhelming sense of despair crept over me, but the need to survive—to find Jesse—pushed through it.

I wiggled onto my side and managed to pull one leg free. That’s when I saw what the weight was about. Pinning the mattress on top of me was a large section of ceiling. It had fallen right on me. I blinked against the rain and used my free foot as leverage against the weight to pull my other leg free.

The sound of things slamming around outside the door stopped me cold, and my heart jumped in fear of another twister. Or of the building collapsing. Were more things going to cave in? But my panicked thoughts cleared with one word.

“Andie!” came the roughened cry from behind the wall.

Fresh tears flooded my eyes as relief poured over me. “Jesse!” I croaked. “Oh, thank you, God.”

“I’m coming,” he said, and I heard the movement of more heavy things that must have blocked the way.

Hearing his voice gave me a fresh rush of strength, and I kicked and shoved at my captor till I was free of it. I got up on shaky knees and tried to clear a path, but most of the objects, like one of the heavy shelves, wouldn’t budge.

After several minutes of grunting, the door started to move. Every yank he gave pried it open a little more. I wished I could reach the door and push.

“Almost there,” he said, his voice strained, as I saw part of his shoulder emerge so he could use it as leverage.

Rain fell a little harder, but I didn’t care. As he finally squeezed through the door, seeing him alive and in front of me trumped everything. He was soaked from head to toe, with a rip in his shirt and red-rimmed eyes. He locked eyes with me and everything brave in me fell away as he shoved that chair aside and scaled those shelves like they were nothing.

All inhibitions were gone, stripped away by adrenaline and fear. As soon as he was within my reach, I wrapped my arms around his neck and melted into his warmth. I felt arms come around me and hands in my hair, pulses going mad. I didn’t know whose I felt stronger, his or mine. He was crying too, as we sank to our knees together. I didn’t want to let go. Ever.

“Are you okay?” he breathed, pulling back to look at me. His face looked ravaged with anxiety.

I nodded, too overcome with tears of relief to voice it. I let my hands travel his shoulders, face, hair, as if that would prove he was really in front of me. “You—” I attempted. “I thought you were—” I couldn’t finish it.

His face was inches from mine, his heart was pounding against mine, and suddenly words weren’t sufficient.

The second my mouth landed on his, we came alive. Electricity flowed through me, heightening every touch, every taste. Jesse’s mouth devoured mine, and hands were on the move. I wanted skin. I wanted to feel as alive as I was lucky to be. I pulled his shirt off in the same movement that he pulled off mine, and in seconds his mouth had claimed one of my breasts.

I moaned at the sensation that sent shooting to every nerve ending in my body. I twisted fingers in his hair, offering my face up to the rain. Then he sat back on his heels and yanked me against him so that I straddled his lap. I sucked in a breath at the hardness pressed against me, and again as he cupped my ass and held me tight as he pushed harder.

I felt the trembling of heart-pounding adrenaline as I licked the raindrops from his bare shoulder and a rumble of raw desire came from his chest. In one deft movement, Jesse picked me up, sent cans clattering out of the way with one sweep of his arm, and set me on my back, his mouth landing back on mine with a hunger I’d never known. I reached to pull him closer, I craved feeling his skin against mine, but he pulled away, peeling the wet sweats down my legs till I could free one.

That’s all we needed.

Crazy with need, he lifted my bare leg up to his shoulder and nibbled at my thigh as I pulled him free of his pants. At my touch, his body tensed and shivered, and the three seconds that it took his fingers to find me almost did me in. Everything in me arched when he touched me, putting me nearly over the edge.

“Please, Jesse,” I begged, my voice not even sounding like mine.

That was it. With a growl, he was inside me and driving hard. I didn’t need much. Three thrusts, and I could have crawled that floor upside down. My whole body moved into him and I stopped breathing as the waves hit me hard.

My screams were primal. There was no thought, no logic, no care of anything else, of the disaster around us. Only extreme sensations and pleasure shooting from my toes on up.

Then it was his turn. His fingers dug into my thigh as his entire body shook and he came explosively, right behind me. His roar could have brought down the rest of the building.

As our waves came back down to earth, he let go of my leg and collapsed against me. I wrapped everything I could around him. Both of us shook uncontrollably, each trying to stem it for the other, not wanting to leave that safety. As I opened my eyes finally and looked up at the relentless sky still spilling its guts down on us, and at the destruction all around us, the tears trickled into my hair.

The reality of everything the last hour had brought settled into the pit of my stomach. Not once—not one single time since I saw that funnel cloud, the car somersaulting, since I thought I was going to die in a mangled building and then made mad passionate love to another man—had I thought about Brad.

Chapter Eight

Jesse’s fingers threaded into my wet hair, which was tangled from the many versions of wet and dry it had seen. It was about to be that moment. That awkward post-sex moment where you have to look the person in the eyes and mentally admit to the twisted person you can be. We had the additional baggage of an almost-fiancé, a dead wife, and the wreckage that just became his life. Again.

So maybe the crazy monkey sex was lower on the list.

He pulled back, blinking and wiping his eyes in one move, not meant for me to see. But when he looked at me, I could tell he’d been emotional too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

I blinked a couple of times, blinking that had nothing to do with the rain. “That’s what you’re leading with?”

He shut his eyes and hung his head slightly. “No—that’s not how I meant it. I just—” He sighed and ran a finger along the trail my tears had made. “You’re crying. And I haven’t—” He closed his eyes again and bit back the words I already knew.

“I know,” I said, holding his face in my hands. It was a pretty safe bet, given the kind of man he was, that he hadn’t been with another woman since his wife died. I kissed his lips softly. “I know.”

He shook his head and looked at me so seriously for what seemed like forever. “Why are we always wet when we do this?”

The laugh bubbled up from my core, from a place of exhaustion and delirium that needed the release. He dropped his head and let the laugh take him over, too. He rolled onto his back and we giggled like children until we had nothing left.

He reached for my hand as we lay there in the rain, not talking. His fingers were warm on mine, and it felt comfortable. Oddly so, considering our state of undress and unconventional environment.

“That was my home up there,” Jesse said finally.

I rolled my head to the side to study his profile. Up close, I could see the tiny laugh lines next to his eyes. “I know,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

His head moved slowly from side to side, then turned to me. “Come on,” he said, giving my hand a squeeze. “Let’s get dressed.”

He got to his feet and held a hand out before I could respond. Boy, talk about post-sex nothing. Last time I at least got cuddling.

“O—kay,” I said, using his hand and crossing an arm over myself self-consciously. I bent for my wet shirt, thinking that would cover more, and faster.

He lifted me back up, however, and hugged me to him. “Hang on,” he said, as I let him hold me while I gripped my shirt in front of me. He pulled back and laid his forehead against mine. “I’m out of practice, so I suck at this.”

I tried a smile. “It’s all good, Jess.”

He closed his eyes. “No, it’s not. What just happened between us was—”

“Hot,” I finished. I didn’t want him to lessen it or make it something analytical. I cheated on Brad. That needed to at least be an emotional reaction. “Coming right off of pure terror.”

“I was going to say ‘amazing,’” he said. I opened my mouth to react, and then closed it again as girly little goose bumps trickled down my back. “I just don’t know how to process it right this minute, with all this other—” He gestured around the room.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling away to tug my shirt back on. “I get it.”

I was disconnecting, whether I wanted to or not. I felt it. I knew his feelings were justified. I knew he had
Titanic
-worthy baggage on his plate, but my life had just gone down the shitter, too. I was car-less and phone-less and probably about to be homeless right along with him. Damn it, I knew I was feeling ridiculously needy, but it was
Jesse Montgomery
. Again.

“Andie.”

“Let’s go check out the damage,” I said, pulling my pants back up and starting the awkward climb through the broken shelving that he’d made look so easy. “We need to find some paper and make a list—”

“I don’t need to, I’ve seen it,” he said, and something in the clip of his voice made me turn around. “I was on the stairs for the whole show. The upstairs came down, the downstairs went out the window, and somehow we survived it. Now will you come here?”

I could hear my heart beating in my ears. He looked just as good standing there wet and beat up as he had the first time I’d met him.

I shook my head as tears sprung to my eyes. “No,” I whispered. “You have a lot to process. You just said that.” I held my hands up. “So do I. You know who I thought about the whole time this place was falling on me? Not Brad. Not once.” Tears spilled over and I didn’t bother wiping them away. They mixed with the rain, anyway. “I thought about my daughter and I thought about you. I prayed for you. Brad didn’t even cross my mind when I thought I was going to
die
, Jesse,” I said, hating the way my voice shook. “He didn’t pop up till after we—” I swallowed back the guilt. “Till after.”

Jesse’s face went passive as he listened to me, and I had no idea what he thought. Maybe he thought I was heartless to be able to do such a thing.

“So yeah, that tells me a little bit about myself that I’m not proud of, and a whole lot about the stupid twenty-two-year-old girl who got her heart broken.” I tapped my own chest. “Because she zeroed in on that
I knew I loved you in one day
line like a crack whore.” I took a deep, shaky breath and closed my eyes for a second, wishing I would shut up. “You have stuff to do. Okay,” I whispered. “But you left me then, and you’re already backpedaling now, so just let me go—somewhere. I’m too old for this shit.”

As I turned around, strong arms came around me, hauling me out of the mangled wood I was so hell-bent on mastering. He set me on my feet and spun me around.

“I’m not backpedaling,” he said through his teeth. “And maybe I should let your headstrong ass to go tread water all the way home, but I for one have been wondering if this was a second chance with you ever since you walked back in here.” He backed up and held up his hands dramatically. “If I let go of you, will you be still?”

I crossed my arms and tried to look like the grown-up I was supposed to be. The one I was every other second of my life, except, evidently, around him.

Seemingly satisfied that I wasn’t going to run for the door that was only lodged open about a foot or less, he continued. He rubbed roughly at his face and back through his hair, making it stand up in all directions. Unfortunately, that didn’t help me. He just looked more adorable.

He met my eyes, unblinking. “I did fall hard for you back then, and even right now—” He clinched his jaw. “You do something to me. I haven’t done—” He took a quick deep breath and blew it out. “I haven’t been with another woman until today. And that was okay. I was fine with it. I’ve been around plenty of women, been set up by friends—nothing. Today, you waltz in looking like a frat party gone bad—”

“Excuse me—”

“And all I can think about is being near you again.” He shook his head and his eyes got misty, making me fizzle a little on the frat party remark. “When I didn’t know if you were okay, it was like the fire all over again. All that mattered was finding you.”

I wanted to go to him, but my feet wouldn’t move. “Why did you leave?” I asked.

“I wanted my family photo,” he said. “But I didn’t make it in time.”

That hurt my heart, but it wasn’t what I meant. “Back then,” I said softly. “Why?”

“Because your friends told me you had a boyfriend,” he said simply.

My eyes went wide. “They did what?”

He nodded. “I went down on the beach to drink my coffee. One of your friends came and told me. So I got pissed and left.”

My jaw dropped. “Who was it?” I hissed, feeling sixteen. I didn’t even know where any of them were anymore, but I was pretty sure Google could be my friend.

He chuckled. “I don’t know. She was blonde.”

“They were all blonde.” I laughed through my tears. “Jesse, I didn’t have any boyfriend. No kind-of, no sort-of—”

He took my face in his hands and wiped my tears with his thumbs. “It’s all good, Andie,” he said, mocking me with my own words. “Things happen like they’re supposed to. I met Beth. Had Jamie. You met—who?”

I felt like I’d been dragged behind a truck. “John Mandey.”

He winced slightly. “Andie Mandey?” I just shut my eyes, and he cleared his throat and continued. “Anyway, you met John. Had your daughter. We wouldn’t have our kids without them. We wouldn’t be who we are now.”

“True.”

There were a few seconds where neither of us said anything, and he wiped the raindrops and tears from my cheeks. “You’re so beautiful.”

I chuckled. “Uh, no, I’m a frat party, remember?”

He winked. “I was making a point,” he said, pulling me closer. “I think you’re stunning, and I’ve really only seen you like this and the way you looked when you came in, so just imagine how speechless I’ll be when you are fixed up.”

I laughed, pressing my forehead into his chest. He was a hopeless mess and I was falling for it all over again. Damn it.

“Fate came back around today,” he said, pulling me all the way to him. I went into his arms, suddenly too tired to argue, and wrapped mine around him. “Decided to bring you from Brad to me.”

“Well—fate and waffles,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Brad hates waffles,” I said into his chest. “I felt the need to be rebellious.”

“What kind of devil’s spawn hates waffles?”

I chuckled. “Brad Marcus hates everything good and tasty in this world.”

I hadn’t even gotten the sentence finished before Jesse let go of me like I was the last legitimate leper. The temperature change was palpable as Jesse backed up a step.

“What?” I asked.

“Brad who?” he said, his whole tone of voice on a different plane.

I frowned. “Brad Marcus. Why?”

The way he looked at me was—weird. Distrustful. Like I stole his dog or something.

“Brad Marcus,” he repeated slowly, as if I needed to correct him or change my mind. “From Beringson Bank and Trust?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Yes. You know him?”

“That’s your fiancé?” he said.

“That’s—” I stopped, tilting my head. What was he doing? “What’s going on, Jesse?”

“Did—” He backed up and nearly tripped on a fallen shelf. “Was this a game?” he asked, pointing behind him and then gesturing around. “Did you just play me? All that shit about Jarvis and May? You didn’t get it from them, you got it from
Marcus
.”

“What the hell?”

He narrowed his eyes like I was a criminal and I was about two seconds away from having enough. But there was something else in his face besides the anger. Hurt?

“Either this is the grandest coincidence ever,” he said, pointing at me, “or you have no fucking soul.”

He walked past me, over the shelves like they were pickup sticks, and squeezed his body through the door.

I turned in place, watching him in absolute stunned silence. The second he disappeared, I followed—not as gracefully. After stumbling my way through, I emerged with fire on my tongue, but the sight of what was once a wall of windows nearly choked me. There were no windows anymore. Only twisted metal was left snaking upward. One of the booth seats was upside down on top of the bar, leaning heavily against the pantry door. The rest of the booths, tables, and chairs were missing entirely, save for one solitary chrome chair planted in the middle of the room like the winner of a contest.

“Oh, holy shit,” I whispered, hardly able to reconcile that room with the one I left not even an hour earlier.

I turned to see the old mammoth white clock still ticking away, all by itself on a piece of wall still attached to a beam. All around it, feathery pieces of insulation stuck out, either blowing in the breeze or glued together by rain. The clock listed slightly to the left, but clearly didn’t care. It just kept ticking. In that moment, I didn’t care anymore, either. Let it tick. It wasn’t going to change my life either way now. I’d already done that.

The sound of Jesse throwing things around stirred me back to his crazy words, and I picked my way around the shards of glass, still barefoot.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I called out before I actually saw him. As I rounded a corner, I saw him pick up something small and flat from a pile of random objects. As I got closer, I noticed they were from upstairs, mostly because my flip-flops were there, too.

I plucked them from the melee and put them on before fate decided to top off the day with stitches in my feet. In Jesse’s hands was the framed photograph of his family I’d seen earlier. The glass was cracked but the photo was still intact.

“That’s what you went back for, isn’t it?” I asked.

He didn’t look up. “Please leave me alone,” he said, his voice tight and low.

Without another thought, I grabbed the picture from his hand and held it behind my back. It was brazen or stupid or childish, and I had no idea what my next move was, but I wanted him to talk to me.

“Feeling guilty for loving someone else?” I said, mentally cartwheeling backward over my word choice.
Did I just say love? Did I just say love?
I nodded. “Welcome to my world.”

His face tightened, his dark eyes flashing. “I asked you to leave me alone.”

I pushed through the punch to the gut. “And I asked you why you just went all Jekyll and Hyde on me,” I said. “Who is Brad to you and why are you mad at me for it?”

“Did he send you here?” he said, his voice monotone.

“Oh my God.” That was it. I tossed the picture back on the pile and grabbed the front of his T-shirt, pulling him to me. Trying to get him to feel something again. “You’re being a dick. Quit talking in circles and answer my question.”

He stared down at me, all kinds of pissed off radiating from him. “Okay, I’ll play,” he said, which I knew should tick me off but I didn’t know why yet. “Your fiancé—”

“Quit calling him that,” I said.

“Is the leader of the march to repossess my land.”

All the fire turned to liquid inside me as I processed his words.