Need You Now (Love in Unknown)

chapter 16





Caine left his office the following afternoon and braced himself for the disapproval. He just knew the ladies of the Garden Club were going to be waiting to give him hell about the golf cart. This morning, he and Gage had towed the ridiculous thing over to Leo’s Auto Shop to have the repairs done, at his cost of course. Still, he knew Jemma Hartsfield and her cronies were going to be pissed that he’d let something happen to their precious golf cart.

He was supposed to meet Micah and Gage for drinks and the Fortune Saloon before he headed home, so he decided to walk. Walking meant that he was more likely to get stopped on the way, but he knew he needed to take his medicine and get it over with.

“Mr. Mayor!”

Caine stopped walking and turned towards the sound of the voice. He saw Charlotte Gardener and Ada Brown, his predecessor’s widow, bustling towards him. “Good afternoon, ladies. You both look lovely today.”

“Thank you, dear, you’re very sweet,” Mrs. Gardener said, sounding a little out of breath.

“We want to talk to you about something important, young man.” Mrs. Brown, in her yellow dress, resembled a giant cheese puff stuffed with indignation.

He bit back a sigh and put on his political face. “What can I help you with?”

Mrs. Gardener gave him a small smile. “We just wanted to know what’s being done about catching the hoodlum who ruined your golf cart.”

“It’s a sad thing when there’s a crime in a peaceful town like ours, but it’s even worse when it happens to the town mayor,” Mrs. Brown added.

“Gage and the rest of our fine police department are hard at work trying to find out who’s behind this.” Caine shifted his weight. “We’re fairly certain that it’s linked to the attack on the Unknown Family Clinic earlier this spring and the vandalism of Dr. Carr’s vehicle shortly after that.”

Mrs. Gardener pursed her lips. “This is just unacceptable. Dr. Carr is such a sweetheart and you two are just adorable together. Who would be so cruel that they’d want to attack the two of you?”

“In my day, no one would be so cowardly as to go after someone like this,” Mrs. Brown groused. “I know she’s a bit of an unconventional girl, but Melody Carr doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

Caine blinked at the women in surprise. He knew that the people of Unknown had started to be more accepting of Mel since they began dating, but he didn’t expect an old dragon like Mrs. Brown to be such a fierce supporter. “It’s good to know that the people of Unknown are behind us.”

“How is she doing? I haven’t seen her around today.”

“She went to the office early this morning,” Caine said. “I’m going to pick her up on my way home tonight. She’s doing well, all things considered. She’s a bit shaken up.”

Mrs. Brown shook her head and made a little tsking noise, her hands braced on her ample hips. “I’d be shocked if she wasn’t a little shaken. You let her know that we’ve organized all of the neighborhood watch organizations to be on full alert. This vagrant isn’t going to get away with this if we have anything to say about it.”

Caine opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. These feisty little old ladies were rushing to Mel’s defense. The town was remembering that Mel was one of their own. “Thank you, both. It’s good to know we’ve got the town looking out for us. Just make sure you don’t get in Gage’s way, otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll stay out of his way.” Mrs. Gardener patted his cheek. He nodded goodbye to them and started to continue on his way to the saloon.

“You just worry about getting that girl to marry you.”

Mrs. Brown’s last statement had him doing a double take. “Pardon me?”

“You heard me, young man.” Mrs. Brown’s glower was lethal. “We’ll worry about helping your brother catch whoever it is going after your young lady. You just worry about how you’re going to get her to marry you. You won’t find a better choice.”

“Yes ma’am.”

He walked away, a little shell-shocked. Deep down, he knew that marriage was definitely on the table, but no one vocalized it before. Marrying Mel would be the best thing that ever happened to him. There was no question about that. He could see the two of them, living together at Fortune Hill, waking up next to each other just like they had this morning. Upstairs, there’d be two or three kids running around, frantically trying to get ready to go to school. They’d be a family. They’d be a family who loved each other and spent time together and they’d both be happy. God, that sounded like a good idea.

After they got through this mess, he was going to propose to her. He was going to get a ring and get down on one knee and prove to her that she was the only woman he ever wanted to be with. Yeah, he liked that idea a lot.

#

A week after the incident with the golf cart, Mel’s temper still hadn’t calmed down. There was only one person she could think of who would pull stupid shit like this. Andrew the Rat Bastard. It had to be him. The last thing he’d ever said to her was, “I’ll never let another man have you.” He knew where she was from. Wouldn’t take a lot for him to come here and snoop around. But someone would have seen him. They got a lot of tourists in Unknown, but if a new person was seen more than twice, the whole town got curious.

Agitated, Mel slammed the medical book closed on her desk. She needed to finish the last article she’d promised the New England Journal of Medicine, but her focus was completely shot. What pissed her off the most was that they’d dragged Caine into this. An attack on her was fine. She’d been bullied and teased and picked on most of her life. Came with the territory, and she was tough skinned. But Caine didn’t deserve it.

God, he’d been so freaking considerate and thoughtful lately. At his insistence, she’d stayed at his house the past seven nights because of the gate and security fence. Trust the Maddox family to have a veritable compound, even in a town like Unknown. Still, she couldn’t let herself settle in. Her gut told her all of this mess was her fault, and she felt so guilty. He didn’t deserve to be pulled into her mess of a past.

“You leaving so soon?” Anna’s question startled Mel. She hadn’t even realized she’d gathered up her stuff to leave. She needed to get out of her own head and stop brooding, it seemed.

She forced a smile. “Yeah. I thought I’d get home early and spend some time with Caine. He’s working from home today.”

“I must say I couldn’t be happier for you two.” An almost maternal look settled in Anna's brown eyes. It reminded Mel of how her mother had looked the other day when they’d talked about Caine. That proud, quiet assurance that women who knew what it was like to be loved always had. "That man is too good of a catch for most of the women in this town. And from the way you've been glowing lately, I'd say he's just what the doctor ordered for you."

Glowing. Hell. She knew she could just take out a freaking billboard already. She’d fallen for Caine. Maybe she’d never stopped loving him. She didn’t know which it was. Either way, it had to stop. Now. If she stayed with him, he would just get pulled deeper into this and might even get hurt.

Every night she had awful nightmares, each time a little different. In some, she saw Caine bruised and broken in the middle of the road. Others, he was shutting a door in her face, the words you’re not worth the trouble echoing in her head. With each subsequent nightmare, she woke up in a cold sweat, doubts swirling in her head even as Caine held her close and tried to tell her everything was all right. She didn’t want to lose him, but she couldn’t bear to see him hurt because someone had it in for her.

Mel spent the drive out to Caine’s house rehearsing her speech. Breaking up with him the first time had been hard enough. She remembered the uncontrollable nausea that had plagued her that day. Although she’d tried to blame it on something else at the time, the sick feeling in her stomach had come from the sobbing that she couldn’t seem to stop. When Caine finally knocked on the front door of her parents’ house, she hadn’t been able to go to the door. She sat on the landing of the second floor just out of sight and quietly sobbed into a sweatshirt of his she’d stolen while her dad told him she didn’t want to see him anymore.

She should have told him the real reason before she agreed to give it another shot with him. Something held her back and now she knew what it was. She needed an escape hatch. A permanent wedge that she could use to protect herself if the situation called for it. For the first time since that day, she felt like a scared, confused teenager who just needed her daddy to fix everything. And back then, he had fixed everything. She let him end it for her and it hurt. A lot. She’d spent two days crying in her room, ignoring the pebbles Caine threw at her window until her dad scared him away.

This time would be worse. So much worse. She didn't have the same solid justification now that she’d had last time. She knew that. If she told him she was ending things to protect him, he'd pull the macho "I don't need my woman to protect me" crap. Maybe he was right. But she couldn't sit back and let him get hurt because of her. So she’d play her trump card and force him to let her go.

Mel pulled her car through the gates and into the garage of Caine’s house. She entered as quietly as possible and went to the bedroom. Forcing herself not to start tearing up, she packed her things. Easier to make a quick exit if she didn’t have to worry about leaving anything behind.

“Mel? That you, sunshine?”

Sunshine—every time he called her that, her traitorous heart fluttered. He’d given her the nickname when she was five and would only wear yellow. It stuck and only he ever called her that. She wouldn’t let anyone else.

Caine’s footsteps echoed down the hallway. She didn’t respond, just kept throwing things into her bag. She felt him in the room before she saw him. She kept her tone even and neutral. “Hi.”

“Hey. What are you doing?” He came over to sit on the bed beside her bag and took her hand to stop her from tossing in the last bra.

She tried to pull away, but he only tightened his grip. “I’m leaving, Caine.”

Confusion furrowed that smooth brow of his, the look made darker by the slightly scruffy beard he hadn’t shaved that morning. “What? Why? I thought we agreed that you would be safer staying here.”

“No, Caine. You agreed with Gage. Not me. In case you missed the memo, I'm an adult. High-handed alpha male bullshit isn't going to work on me." Best way to pick a fight. Go for the angry, ignored female routine. "You know, I really don't think this thing between us is going to work out."

“What are you talking about, Mel?” Uh-oh. There it was. Confusion melded with hurt. “I thought you were doing well. We fit together perfectly.”

God, she hated this. She jerked away. "Yeah. Well, I got to thinking—"

“You really have to stop doing that," Caine said. "You thinking always ends really badly for me."

Glaring at him, she leaned against the dresser, needing the physical space between them to do this. "Caine, I'm not the right girl for you. I have issues. A lot of them. All I've done since I got back to town is cause trouble and dig up old wounds. There’s too much that’s happened between us and I don’t think we’ll ever be able to deal with it. Maybe it’s just better if I go back to my original plan.”

“Your original plan? What, meet some random guy, fall in love and pop out two point five kids?" His voice was harsh now. "You really think that'll work, Mel?”

“I don’t know.” The time to bite the bullet was coming closer. She knew that and all she wanted to do was run in the bathroom and puke. “I don’t know if I can make it work with anyone. You may not see it, but I’m damaged. It is so hard for me to trust anyone, especially a man I have so much history with.”

He shook his head, obviously not getting what she was saying. If she wanted to get through to him, she was going to have to go all the way.

“Is this about Andrew? Damn it, Melody, I'm not that asshat."

It took a whole hell of a lot of willpower not to flinch at the accusatory tone in his voice, at the pain that flashed in those blue eyes. She kept her focus on the bed behind him, trying not to let her mind stray to how the red comforter had felt on her sex-sensitized skin. “No, you’re not. But in some ways you’re worse than him. You hurt me more than he ever could.”

“Hurt you more?” Caine surged to his feet to pace, agitation crackling around him. He rubbed a hand across his scruffy jaw, fighting his temper like a prizefighter. “Mel, he cheated on you. Not to mention the emotional abuse. How in the hell did I hurt you more than he did? You ended things, not me.”

Mel took his place on the bed. Between his constant motion and the tightness in her chest, she was getting a little dizzy. “I ended things because you weren’t there when I needed you most.”

“What are you talking about? I was gone for two weeks and when I came home, you flipped.” Caine stopped his pacing, bracing his hands on lean hips.

“You were gone for three weeks. Three weeks of pure hell for me.” She stared straight ahead, doing her best to avoid looking at him.

Caine came to lean against the wall in front of her. “Okay. What happened while I was in the Caribbean?”

It would be so easy to just grab her stuff and run. She doubted she would make it far, but she could try. If she slammed a door or two, she might slow him down enough to make a get away. But she knew that was only putting off the inevitable. She’d never planned to tell him this. Now, not only did she have to tell him, she had to use it to hurt him. Closing her eyes, she took a deep, shaky breath. “Two days after you left, I was packing up my dorm room. Going through my bathroom stuff, I found an unopened box of tampons and I realized I was over a week late.”

“Late as in…” Mel watched the words sink in and Caine’s eyes widen. “Jesus, you were pregnant?”

She ignored him, plowing on. “My dad showed up in the middle of my freak out. I was sitting in my dorm room crying and just having a complete melt down. Dad being Dad, he just took charge of the situation. He helped me get everything packed up and drove through the night to get me home.”

“You told him everything?”

“Yeah.” Mel nodded, tears burning to break free.”God, I’ve never seen him so mad before.”

Caine crossed his arms over his chest. “Mad at you? Did he expect you to live like a nun all your life?”

“I’m sure he would have preferred that.” Mel wrapped her arms around herself. “No, he was mad at you, actually. For leaving me alone to deal with that, for getting involved with me in the first place. I honestly thought he hated you for a while there.”

“I didn’t know.” Mel had seen him with that shell-shocked look one time before— when he’d fallen out of the tree house as a kid. “Jesus, Mel. How could you not tell me you were pregnant?”

She groaned. “Because I wasn’t. But I had to wait over two weeks before I could take a pregnancy test. Two weeks scared out of my mind. I was eighteen years old and possibly knocked up by a rich, playboy who was off playing on a tropical island with his rich, spoiled friends while I sat around with my dad, waiting to find out if my life was thrown off course for good.”

“You could have called me.” Tension radiated off of his body. He was pissed. She knew that much. Any other time, he’d probably have blown a gasket by now. “I would have been here in a second if I’d known what was going on. I would have -“

“Bullshit.” Mel stood up, needing to be on his level in some way. “Even if you hadn’t been on a private island with no cell signal, you wouldn’t have been here. You would have run for the hills. Responsibility scared you shitless back then. All you gave a damn about was what made you feel good. Booze, parties, casual sex with me. The second things got complicated or permanent? The last thing I would have seen was the taillights of that ridiculous sports car you drove back then.”

Caine straightened, his gaze shuttered. He was holding back. A lot. “That’s what you think of me, isn’t it? No matter what I do, you’ll always see me as that guy I was in college.”

No, she wanted to blurt out. No, I don’t see you like that. Instead she stayed silent, closing herself off.

He grabbed a book off of the beside table and threw it on the floor in frustration. She winced at the sound of hardcover meeting wood floor. He never would have thrown a book in front of her unless she’d pushed him to the edge. The pain in his eyes flayed her resistance. She'd succeeded. She'd wounded him, cut to the bone. "Damn it, Melody. Don't you know I would do anything for you? Give up everything just to have you in my life?"

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust what we have. Every time I start to believe that we have a chance, I remember how I felt during those weeks on my own. I don’t ever want to feel that alone again.” The ache in her chest stole her breath. Oh, God, she loved this man. She had to stay strong. To get out now. "Goodbye, Caine. I'm sorry. I hope you'll understand in time."

To her profound relief, he didn't try to stop her as she picked up her bag and left. In truth, she almost ran out of his house. She couldn't let him see her cry, no matter what. She stayed strong until she got outside the gates. Then tears began to trickle down her cheeks. By the time she let herself into her apartment, sobs wracked her body.

Unable to go any further, Mel slid down the door and let the pain take over. No way around it. She just had to fight her way through it. She'd done what was best for him in the long run, and that's all that could matter right now.