Chapter Thirty-Two

ALEX COULD BARELY CONTAIN his anticipation when he crested the Continental Divide and began the downward descent into Denver on Thursday night. He’d texted Rachel several times and called once since he and Dina had left LA, but his messages had gone unanswered. She was probably busy putting together the proposal for Mitchell. He’d called Alex on Monday to tell him he’d made contact with Rachel for a possible partnership.

Alex couldn’t wait to celebrate their victory.

When they finally left the steep downward slope of I-70 behind for the city streets, Alex pulled out his phone and dialed. Dina would go straight to his place with the bulk of her possessions, but he couldn’t wait even that long to see Rachel.

The call went directly to voice mail. “Hey, it’s me. I’m back in Denver. I hear we have something to celebrate. I can’t wait to see you. I’m going to drop by your house on my way home to see if you’re there.”

The thought of seeing Rachel, having her in his arms, eased some of the weariness from his trip. There was still plenty to do: find a storage unit for Dina’s things, break the news of her return to their parents, help her find a job. He’d have time —no doubt Rachel would dive into plans for her new restaurant with even more enthusiasm than she had shown for the supper club. He just hoped she left some room in her schedule for him.

When he pulled up in front of Rachel’s house, the lower-floor windows glowed with light. A smile came to his face as he walked up the path and knocked on the front door. Inside he heard movement, but saw nothing through the stained-glass window. He knocked again.

This time the blur of motion resolved into a familiar shape. Chains rattled and locks scraped as the door opened.

He exhaled on a rush of pleasure. “Rachel.” He moved forward, wanting nothing more than to have his arms around her and her lips under his. But her posture stiffened and she backed up half a step, putting the threshold between them. He froze in place. What was going on? Had something happened?

“How was the trip?” Rachel asked.

Alex thrust his hands in his jeans pockets, perplexed. “Good. Dina seems happy to be coming back. After seeing the dump she was living in, I really can’t blame her.”

“I’m glad. Tell her I said hello and welcome back.”

He reached out to tuck a lock of stray hair behind her ear, but she jerked her head away. “Don’t.”

“Rachel, I . . . What’s going on?” She was acting like they were strangers, as if less than a week ago, she hadn’t told him she loved him.

“I saw.”

His eyebrows pulled together. “Saw what?”

“Your notes. The e-mail from your agent. It was an accident, but I still saw them.”

Guilt immediately coursed through him even though he had nothing to feel guilty about. The only e-mail he could think of was the one from Christine asking for more chapters. He couldn’t imagine what was so heinous about that. And the notes . . . What notes was she even talking about?

“I don’t understand.” He automatically moved closer, but she backed up another step. “What did I do?”

She shook her head, hurt and anger entwined in her expression. Tears glimmered in her eyes. “Are you or are you not writing about me?”

He froze. “Rachel, it’s not what you think.”

“It’s a simple question. Are you writing about me? Did you use the things I told you for material in your book?”

His heart was somewhere on the floor, one wrong move from being ground beneath her heel. “I did, but not in the manner you’re thinking. Rachel, before we met, I was stuck. I thought it was my guilt over what I accidentally did to your career that was holding me up, but I realized I was weary. Tired of my own cynicism. Meeting you changed everything. You inspired me.”

He’d heard many things in her voice to this point —anger, hurt, affection —but when she laughed now, it was the first time he’d ever heard bitterness. “Do you really think you can feed me some line, make yourself out to be the tortured artist, and I’ll just ignore what you did?”

“Rachel —”

“No. Now you listen. The first time you wrote about me and ruined my life, you claimed ignorance. You don’t get to use the same excuse twice. I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

The hurt and disappointment in her eyes were almost too much to bear. It made him want to grovel at her feet until she let him explain. But her walls were up again, locking him out. She’d made up her mind about him. Now she would never believe that he loved her, that he never meant to hurt her. In her eyes, he was exactly like her stepfather, using her insecurities to his advantage, making her heart the casualty of some twisted game.

Still, he couldn’t give up without one last try. “Please, Rachel, I’m begging you. Just read the manuscript. You’ll see what I intended. You’ll see I’m not using you.”

She held his gaze, a moment of longing surfacing before it disappeared again behind the hard mask. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door. “Good-bye, Alex. Tell Dina I hope she finds exactly what she’s been searching for.”

She shut the door in his face.

Alex stood there long after her shape disappeared beyond the stained-glass window, every bit of him sick and aching. He didn’t know how it had gone so wrong so fast. He only knew that he loved her.

And he’d lost her.

*   *   *

Alex let himself into his condo and dropped his bag inside the front door. It looked exactly as he had left it, and yet somehow the knowledge he would never see Rachel here again made it feel empty.

Sometimes it sucked being in touch with his feelings. Were he not a writer, did he not have his psychology background, he could go pound back a few at a local bar and convince himself he was better off without her. Unfortunately, he couldn’t lie to himself that easily.

The sound of running water from the bathroom indicated Dina had already made herself at home. The last thing he wanted to do was face his sister right now. Instead, he went into his bedroom with a sense of dread. Where his laptop had gone back to screen saver. Sure enough, the screen still held the e-mail from Christine, which ended with the damning words, The stuff with the chef is GOLD!

Right beside it was his notepad —his reminder to check on the feature he’d negotiated for Rachel at the top; ideas for the last-minute articles beneath it, some of which had stemmed from the things Rachel had told him.

Alex stared at the notepad for a long moment and then swept his arm in one furious stroke across the desk’s surface, sending the contents crashing to the floor.

It always seemed to make people in TV shows feel better, but he felt just as miserable as before. And now he was staring at a mess he’d have to clean up.

Dina appeared in the doorway of his bedroom, wearing her pajamas and a shocked expression. “What happened?” She rushed to grab the laptop from where it swung in a slow arc, the plug’s position in the port as precarious as a climber’s grip in the pouring rain. A few more swings and it would be on the ground, possibly damaged, his files potentially unrecoverable.

“Leave it,” he snapped. What did it matter? He couldn’t publish the book as it was now. So much of it had been inspired by or centered around Rachel. He’d intended on letting her see it when the time was right, just like he’d intended to tell her that he loved her. He’d simply waited too long.

Dina ignored him and rescued the laptop, then swiveled to face him. “What happened? What did you do?”

“Why do you think I did something?”

She arched an eyebrow at him.

“It doesn’t matter. She made it clear she doesn’t want to hear my explanation and she never wants to see me again. It’s over.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Alex wiped a hand wearily over his face. “You know what? It’s fine. It’s not like I’m not busy. Now that you’re back, we need to find you a job and a place to stay —”

Dina perched on the edge of his desk, bracing her hands on either side of her. “Listen, Alex, I appreciate you coming back to LA with me to get my stuff. And it’s been really nice to have you around for the last few days. But you need to butt out.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“I don’t need you to fix this for me. I don’t need your help.”

“How can you say that when I helped get you into this —”

“No. You didn’t.” Dina rose and moved to face him straight on. “I made my own decisions. Yes, you stood up for me to Mom and Dad, but you didn’t force me to do anything. I know it’s hard to believe since I’m your little sister, but I’m a grown woman. I can make my own decisions, and I can take responsibility for them when they don’t work out.”

Her expression twisted into one of sympathy that made her seem like the elder sibling. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what Rachel said. About not being afraid to take risks. And I realized that for all Mom and Dad did to try to make us succeed, they never taught us what to do when we failed. They demanded we fix our mistakes, but that’s not the same thing.”

She shrugged. “I’m not a mistake to be fixed, Alex. I don’t want to be your project. And I’d venture to say neither does Rachel.”

His sister’s words were like a punch in the gut. Alex sank down on the edge of his bed, barely noticing when Dina slipped out of the room. Was that what he had been doing this whole time? He’d thought that helping Rachel was the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do. Had he been treating her like a project instead of a person?

His eyes drifted back to the laptop and notepad, now glaring at him. He could certainly refuse to publish out of respect for her, even though she’d completely misunderstood the role she played in the essays. It would mean tossing away his best chance at a contract, but it might show her that she was far more important to him than any book deal.

And yet for the first time in years, he felt like he had something worthwhile to say, all thanks to Rachel. She’d made him reevaluate his own cynicism, see his surroundings in a purer way.

She’d helped him to stop looking at the world as something that existed only to be fixed, corrected, perfected.

Mitchell’s words, which now felt so long ago, came back to him. “Whatever decision you make, be sure you’re doing it because it’s what God would have you do, not simply because it’s most comfortable.” Right now, it felt easier to bail on the book and beg Rachel to take him back. He loved her.

And yet he wanted the world to get a glimpse of her heart, the ways that simple, pure, uncomplicated gestures could change everything for a person.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Bryan. “Any chance I can borrow the cabin in Breck for a week or so?”

It was technically Mitchell and Kathy’s cabin, but Bryan was the only one who used it these days. Calling it a cabin underrepresented what it actually was —a sizable house in log cabin style, complete with sauna and hot tub, at the base of the Breckenridge ski area.

“Sure,” Bryan said finally. “No one’s going to be up there until the slopes open. But why? I figured you’d be spending all your time with Rachel now that you’re back.”

“She’s not speaking to me. Likely permanently.”

“What did you do?”

“Why does everyone immediately think I did something?”

“Didn’t you?”

Alex ignored the question. “Can I come by and get the keys?”

“If you do it tonight. I’m driving to Pueblo early tomorrow to teach a climbing clinic.”

Alex had intended to wait until the morning, but there was no reason to delay. He packed up his laptop, his notebooks, and a hard copy of his proposal, then swapped out the dirty clothes in his roller bag for clean ones. Then he strode out into the living room, where Dina had made herself comfortable on his sofa.

He tossed her his house keys. “I’m going to Breckenridge for a few days. Make yourself at home. Take my room while I’m gone, even. When I get there, I’ll text you the cabin’s phone number just in case.”

“You’re leaving? I just got here.”

He smiled even though he knew it held little humor. “I’m doing what you asked, Dina. I’m butting out. I’ll come back if you need me, but in the meantime, I have work to do.”

He bent to give her a hug good-bye, then let himself out of his apartment, sure for once of his direction. Yet he found himself driving not to Bryan’s but Rachel’s place. He parked across the street, staring at the now-dark windows while he debated the wisdom of his actions. Then he yanked the envelope containing the printout from his bag, marched up the steps, and left it leaning against her door. There. No one could say he hadn’t tried.

Even if he feared it wasn’t nearly enough.