Finding Joy (The Joy Series) (Volume 2) (26 page)

“You think so?” she asked.

“Yeah, you’re not the problem,” I muttered, slicing the oars through the water and turning us back toward the boathouse.

This conversation was officially going in circles. I wanted to make it all about her, but no matter what I said, it kept coming back to me. I was the one with issues, and she couldn’t make a decision without taking them into account.

And did I really want her not to consider me in the decision? Twenty seconds ago, I had been angry because I’d thought she wasn’t putting us first. I didn’t know where my damn head was.

Neither of said a word as I rowed us back to the dock. I went inside the boathouse to tell Jake we were back, and Allie opted to stay outside. When I came out, she looked away awkwardly. We walked back through the park, the same way we’d come, but this time we didn’t hold hands, and the silence had grown to an almost oppressive level.

 Outside the park, I steered us in the direction of the nearest subway station. “Hey, Adam,” she said, her voice slicing through the silence like a knife. She stopped walking, so I stopped, too. “I’m going to catch a cab and go back to the office for a bit. I have a few things I need to finish before I call it a day.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I meant what I said,” she said softly.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I looked down the street for a cab to grab for her.

Her small hand closed tightly around my arm. “Adam,” she said. “I meant what I said. I choose you. I choose us.”

 Her steely blue eyes radiated resolve. She was choosing me over the baby.

But there was something else in them that bothered me. An underlying current that I couldn’t in good conscience ignore. Beneath the surface, she was sad. I could see it. I could feel it. It was tangible around us.

“Give me some more time to think about it,” I said slowly.

“Really?” she asked. And whatever I’d seen in her blue eyes before cleared, giving way to something else. Hope.

Fucking hell.

“Of course,” I said. My voice was gravelly and raw. “What do you think of me, Allie? Do you think I’m so unreasonable that I won’t consider what you want?”

“No,” she said meekly. “I never said that.”

“I want to give you everything. I want to give you the world. If this is what you need to be happy, I’ll try to find a way to make it work … for both of us.” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. This wasn’t how I planned for today to go at all.

As I looked at her peering up at me, almost awestruck by what I had inadvertently promised her, my mind raced. Disjointed thoughts and emotions slammed into me from all sides.

Relief. Because the elephant in the room had finally been uncaged.

Disappointment. Because she wanted this baby. She might not even realize it yet, but it was written all over her face.

Anger. Because if we compromised, I was going to be the only one to bend.

Fear. Because I didn’t want this baby. No fucking way did I want this baby.

Rage. Because life didn’t just get to go on, and my heart only had room to love one child.

“Maybe I’ll just come home,” she said, searching my face as if she was trying to read me like one of her books.

“Actually, I think I need to be alone for a little while.”

She hesitated before speaking again as if she wasn’t sure that’s what I really needed. “Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

I turned away from her and continued toward the subway station. Alone.

Completely and utterly alone.

Taking out my phone, I hit the button for Burke.

“Yeah, man,” he answered.

“Meet me at the gym in 15 minutes.”

CHAPTER 15

Alexis

The flight to Dallas had been uneventful. The plane was crowded, but it had been on time and a smooth flight. Full of people traveling for the holiday, there had been a level of excitement on board that I wished Adam and I could match. Unfortunately, neither of us was feeling it.

We breezed past baggage claim. Adam was already loaded down with our two small bags. I tried to hide my smile as I spoke with the car rental attendant, but I was grinning from ear to ear on the inside.

When I had made our original reservations, I checked the box for your standard midsized compact. But on Tuesday, in a moment of sheer brilliance, I’d called and upgraded my reservation. Adam wouldn’t have complained about driving some cheap little rattletrap with barely enough juice to merge on the highway. After all, it was only two days. Well, yeah, he actually probably would have complained a little. But that wasn’t why I changed my order. I just wanted to do something special for him.

There was no denying it. Things between us had been strained since we had gone our separate ways at the park. I’d ended up working the rest of the weekend, and he’d gone to The Shelter without me on Saturday night. Since then, we had been like two ships passing in the night. We’d barely seen each other, and when we had, conversation was almost nonexistent.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried. I’d tried. But it had been like pulling teeth to get Adam to talk about anything. I tried a million different subjects, and each time his responses were short and shallow.

The one subject I hadn’t brought up was the one that was dragging us down. Though neither of us had spoken of the baby, it was a big oppressive shadow hanging over us, threatening to smother us.

I aimed to fix that this weekend.

Adam

“Your car is in stall number one, Ms. Harper,” the rental attendant said, with an appreciative nod directed at Allie. He looked her up and down as if he was sizing her up.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the key from him and practically skipping toward the door to the parking lot. I’d never seen anyone so happy about a rental car.

“Wow. Stall number one,” I muttered. “Do you always get this kind of service when you travel?”

“Only when I pay for it,” she said smugly.

I wasn’t sure what that meant until we got to our car, and then my jaw hit the pavement at my feet. “What the hell, Alexis? What is this?” I asked.

Her formerly bright eyes darkened. “Don’t call me that,” she said.

She was fine with other people calling her ‘Alexis.’ Ethan did.  Professionally, she was only known as Alexis, and when we walked into her favorite restaurant, the hostess always greeted her by the name on her birth certificate. But with me she had always been ‘Allie.’ It set me apart from the others. I was the one she’d let in … the one who had broken through the fortress she’d constructed.

She was being dramatic, but I understood why. Things between us were tense, and it had her on edge, overanalyzing my every move. I had felt it all week. Every word that came out of my mouth was picked apart and weighed as she tried to find some hidden meaning. It was exhausting for both of us.

She was studying me now as she tried to figure out the deeper meaning. I hadn’t meant anything by it, merely thinking that it couldn’t have been cheap to rent this car. “Sorry. I just meant that you shouldn’t have spent so much money on a rental car.” As we’d walked up to the car, she had been ecstatic. Like a kid on Christmas morning. And I’d sucked the joy out of the moment for her. I paced around the car, looking at it from every angle.

A mischievous smile spread across her face. “But you like it, right?” she asked. “Personally, I wanted to get the Aston Martin, but I figured you would like this better. It’s like the one on that show we watched, right?”

Other than the color, it was nearly identical to the one that we had seen on
East Bound and Down
. And black was definitely a better color choice. I didn’t think I could cruise around Dallas in a lime green STS Viper. Not even for just a couple of days. But this … this I could drive.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, I like it. We have it for the whole weekend?”

“Until we leave on Saturday,” she said. Her head bobbed up and down excitedly, and she tossed the keys at me. “It’s awesome, right? I knew you’d like it better.”

With the keys in my hand, it was my turn to feel like a kid on Christmas morning. “Get in,” I commanded, clicking the unlock button on the sleekest key I’d ever seen. It wasn’t even a key really. Just a sleek plastic fob that contained magic.

While she slid inside, I popped the trunk and stowed our two small bags inside. I slipped my coat off and laid it across the bags that nearly filled the trunk space. Sliding into the driver’s seat, I took in my surroundings. The computerized dash was still dark since I hadn’t turned on the car yet. It was the farthest thing from my archaic Shelby. There were buttons and knobs everywhere, and I fully intended on using each and every one of them.

Though I’d had gotten to stick my head under the hood of one a few years ago, I’d never had the opportunity to actually drive it. At the time, I had been living at home again, and I’d taken a job as a mechanic in a garage just to have something to do. It was how I had found my car and where I’d restored her. Some guy had dropped one off for some routine service. After we had worked her over good, my boss, Warren, and I had taken her out for a
Ferris Bueller
style joyride. He hadn’t let me drive though, and I couldn’t wait to fire up this monster now.

I looked over at Allie who was staring at my shirt. “We are freaks?,” she asked, reading the print across my chest. “Really? That’s going to make a great impression.”

“What?” I asked, shrugging. “We kind of are. Let’s not pretend to be anything we aren’t. You ready to roll?” I asked.

“Let’s do it,” she said, shaking her head and snapping her seatbelt in place.

I simultaneously pushed the brake pedal and the ignition button, and a deep growl roared from under the hood. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave any rubber behind in the rental car parking lot,” I said, as I pulled out of the parking spot and stealthily maneuvered the car through the tight rows of compacts, sub-compacts, and clown cars.

I reigned in my need to put the pedal to the floor until we were completely out of the DFW airport. Once I merged onto the highway, I let ‘er rip. The roads were pretty clear. We’d taken the earliest flight we could so it was still reasonably early. At 10:30 in the morning on Thanksgiving morning, the only people on the road seemed to be suburban families in minivans, and I was the only one in a hurry.

As I got closer to central Dallas, I let up a little on the gas. As fun as it was to drive, I was suddenly in no hurry to get to our destination.

“You know,” Allie said. “We don’t really have to be there yet. I didn’t give them a set time, and we aren’t supposed to eat until two o’clock. We could go for a little drive if you want.” It was as if she had sensed my discomfort.

“You don’t mind?” I asked.

“Not at all.”

I gave her an appreciative nod and took the I-30 exit instead of the I-75 exit that would have taken us to her parents’ house. I revved the engine just for effect, and she arched her eyebrows in delight.

“By the way, we are having sex in this car before we return it,” I said.

“Right now?” she asked, reaching for her seatbelt.

I laughed. Her eager beaver attitude was admirable. And tempting. But it probably wasn’t a good idea to fuck her brains out before we went to her parents’ house. And that’s exactly what I wanted to do right now. We were going to need all our brainpower to deal with her parents this afternoon.

Still, it was a relief. Other than a few accidental bumps and nudges, I hadn’t touched her in days. Not since the park. To be fair, she had worked late every night, but the sex drought hadn’t been her fault. I’d been avoiding her, going to bed before she got home and getting up extra early to go to the gym. I was acting like a damn woman.

Her hand was still on the button of her seatbelt, and she was watching me expectantly. I grabbed her hand, pulled it over onto my lap, and rubbed it against my hard cock. “Feel that? Tonight ... when we get to the hotel ... I’m going to bury it inside you. There isn’t enough room in this car to do what I want to do right now.”

“Yes, please,” she said. She was both agreeing and begging, and it was exceptionally hot. She continued to rub her palm back and forth causing the dull throb in my dick to become more of a dull roar.

“Jesus, Allie. If you keep that up, I’m going to turn this car around right now. And we won’t make it to your parents’ at all today.”

“That would be all right,” she said. But she’d already removed her hand and was reaching for the radio instead. I readjusted myself the best I could in the confined space while she pushed buttons on the radio. She flipped through station after station until she found something she knew we could agree on.

As she settled back into her seat, I felt like we were finally back in tune with each other. An old Pearl Jam song filled the space around us, and I ripped up the highway. For the first time in days, Allie seemed comfortable with not talking. The silence wasn’t strained or awkward. It felt good ... right even ... just to be in her presence.

An hour and a half later, we finally pulled into her parents’ driveway. The monster of a house was exactly what I had expected. Traditional and magnificent, it suited Garrett Harper to a ‘T.’

It sat on a double lot. Large, wide steps led up to a sprawling porch that spanned the entire width of the house. Large urns on either side of the full length glass door contained tall column-shaped cedar trees. “What’s up with the penis trees?” I asked, as we stepped up onto the porch.

Allie laughed. “They are kind of phallic, aren’t they? Don’t tell my mom. She does all the landscape design herself. She’s not involved in the actual execution, of course, but the design part is kind of her thing.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that your mom has dick on the brain.”

She slapped me on the arm. “If you say that to her, you’ll give her a coronary. She’s kind of ... ummmm ...,” Allie looked thoughtful for a second while she thought of a way to describe her mother. I already had some preconceived notion in my head of what she would be like, but it wasn’t based on actual experience. It was based solely on my long-time dislike for the Harper family.