Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) Read online

  He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Dark hair cascaded halfway to the waist of her gauzy dress. Tall, willowy, fragile, Selena still exuded the vulnerability that had devastated him when they’d first met, first kissed, and eventually became each other’s first lover. As if the forever place they thought they’d made in each other’s hearts was there for him to claim.

  When he was placed with Marsha and Joe at thirteen—after his single mother had been robbed and killed at her night job as a convenience store clerk—he’d discovered Selena living next door. She’d seemed as lost as he’d felt, still dealing with her dad walking out on her and Belinda. One look into her impossibly brown eyes and Oliver had begun to believe that someone else could understand the loneliness sucking him under. She hadn’t seemed to belong on quaint, picturesque Bellevue Lane either.

  Together, they’d learned how to love and dream and believe again—at least in each other. Then their senior year in high school, they’d let it all slip away, drinking and raging and trying to burn through the kind of loss no one else could possibly fathom. He’d seen the end coming and tried to pull them both out of the spiral. He’d been too late.

  More than once over the years, he’d dreamed of stepping around the flowering bushes that separated their front yards and finding a grown Selena waiting for him like this. But whatever she was doing in town after all this time, it had nothing to do with him. Mentally kicking himself, he watched an adorable child—her daughter?—run up to the woman who’d said she never wanted to see Oliver again.

  “Hey, mister.” The kid’s soft lisp was even cuter than her off-centered ponytails. She pointed to the Frisbee at his feet. “Throw it back.”

  He bent and grabbed the toy. When he stood, an insomnia hangover dug claws into his skull. After hauling ass around the clock for weeks on end, he’d spent the night checking in with Travis hourly about Joe’s condition—and wrestling with the pros and cons of driving the half hour between Atlanta and Chandlerville. By sunup Oliver had accepted that he had to get himself home, if only to spend a few hours with his parents before heading back out of town. At this point he was practically seeing double.

  He threw the Frisbee over the hedge. It glided in a bright, curving arc. The little girl scampered away, giggling.

  Selena made hesitant eye contact, looking a little afraid of him. He knew exactly how she felt. This was pointless. Painful. And avoidable.

  Nodding, he walked to his truck, snatched the bag he’d come out for, and headed inside. He was being rude. But it was for the best. He couldn’t let their teenage mistakes distract him from the reality that had finally convinced him to return to Chandlerville. Joe Dixon might be dying. It simply wasn’t possible.

  Oliver stepped into the Dixon house. Its stillness further frayed his calm. Because the small-town simplicity of it was more him than anywhere else he’d lived. He leaned against Marsha and Joe’s front door, his head thudding against worn wood.

  His father’s denim jacket hung from the coat rack beside the entryway, though Joe wouldn’t need it for another six months or so. Marsha’s flair for throwing color and pattern together still infused the living room with hominess. Handmade slipcovers and throws and pillows softened the edges of furniture sturdy enough to endure the beating it received on a daily basis. Kid flotsam was strewn everywhere, cast-aside books and toys and shoes. Marsha’s nightly threats to throw things out if they weren’t picked up never entirely cleared the playing field.

  Framed images of the Dixon clan stared back at him from the wall across the entryway: his own foster brothers and sisters, plus the newer passel Marsha and Joe were raising. Oliver scanned pictures of himself mixed with all the others, including his senior portrait from Chandler High. He counted at least a half dozen more kids than the ones he’d known.

  Footsteps sounded on the wooden front steps. He edged away seconds before the door opened and a tall, muscular man stepped inside. Travis Bryant fully grown would have been intimidating enough dressed in civilian clothes. The sheriff’s uniform he wore these days was downright overkill.

  “Hey, man,” Travis said in a booming voice that he somehow kept at a whisper, in deference to the kids—and their grown foster sister, Dru—he’d warned would still be sleeping upstairs.

  “Officer.” Oliver smiled for the first time in what seemed like forever.

  “That’s Deputy to you.” Travis took Oliver’s measure. “Damn, son, you’re looking good. A little Night of the Living Dead at the moment. But if I took you on, it just might be a fair fight.”

  Oliver jerked his chin. “When I’m done, I guess there’d be something left of you. But I’m not making any promises.”

  “Before or after I throw your ass in jail for assaulting an officer?”

  “Nothing says welcome back,” Oliver quipped, “like being fingerprinted and processed.”

  Everyone who’d lived at Marsha and Joe’s when he’d moved in had done their best to make him feel welcome. Travis, too, though he and Oliver had fought like mongrel pups at first. Squaring off, they’d gone at it in a turf war that had evolved into mutual respect and a brotherly bond that still endured.

  Oliver reached out his hand to shake. Travis yanked him into a bro-code hug: quick, hard, powerful. They pushed away, leaving unspoken, deeper emotions beneath the surface.

  Travis cleared his throat and propped his hands at his waist, shoving aside the gun holstered to his belt at his right hip. “Dru up yet?”

  Oliver shook his head—at the question and the changes in his brother. As a teenager Travis as much as Oliver had challenged authority and balked at their parents’ well-intentioned structure and limits.

  “I just got here,” Oliver said.

  “That why Selena was standing in the yard next door when I pulled up, looking like she’d seen a ghost?”

  Oliver exhaled. “It was just bad timing.”

  “Not if you want to mend a few fences.”

  “I need to clean up before we head to the hospital.” Oliver hefted his duffel onto his shoulder.

  He didn’t ask why Travis hadn’t mentioned Selena’s return to Chandlerville. Just like Travis hadn’t pushed over the last year and a half about Oliver taking on two successive client contracts in Atlanta, while still keeping his distance from the family.

  “Use Marsha and Joe’s bathroom.” Travis—using Marsha and Joe interchangeably with Mom and Dad, the way most of their foster siblings had—looked like a man picking his battles. “Dru’s bunking on the floor in the baby’s room. Teddy’s been keeping Mom and Dad up nights. Try not to wake either of them. She’ll have to get the brood breakfast and off to school soon enough.”

  “Sure.” As much as Oliver wanted to see his sister, he needed to get to their parents first. “So, she’s engaged, huh?”

  Travis had said Dru would be at the house with the kids overnight while Travis hung at the hospital with their parents, waiting on updates and keeping everyone else in the loop. Oliver remembered his sister in braces, scrambling after him and the other boys, determined to keep up. Now she had a fiancé?

  “Since last Christmas,” Travis confirmed.

  Oliver narrowed his eyes at the lack of details. His house key bit into his clenched palm. The one his foster parents had presented to him his first day there, the way they did all the kids. Everything that was theirs had been his forever, just like that.

  He gazed through the doorway into Marsha’s kitchen, where she reigned supreme as the family gathered for meals, making the kind of memories that held on when everything else let go. He and Selena had done homework in there, too, eating cookies or leftovers or something Marsha had whipped up special for them.

  “Bite the bullet,” Travis said, “and talk with the woman.”

  “Dru? Yeah, sure. Later, when we get back from the hospital.”

  “I meant Selena.”

  Oliver’s scattered thoughts refocused on his brother. “Don’t go there, man.”

  “The woman�
�s living right next door. Where else is there to go?”

  “I’m going upstairs for that shower so the CICU staff doesn’t hose me down on sight.”

  Travis met Oliver’s stare. “Listen, man. I know all of this has to be tough, and you’re worried about Dad. Everyone will be thrilled you’re home. But are you going to be . . . I mean, after what happened last year, is all of this going to be too much for your—”

  “I’m fine.” Oliver shoved the house key into his jeans pocket and carried his duffel up the stairs of the sleepy house. He was going to be fine. Over his shoulder, he added, “I just need to stop smelling like the bottom of a rancid gym bag.”

  He’d yet to clean up from last night’s run. He’d botched the conference call with Seattle. He’d prowled his condo like a caged animal for hours before he’d ditched his running gear and thrown on whatever clothes he could find so he could head home. He wasn’t certain he’d packed anything but jockey shorts and socks in his bag.

  “Ready to head out in twenty?” Travis called after him.

  “Down in ten.”

  Oliver was a mess, and that had to stop. He was going to be where he was needed today—at the hospital with his parents, not wandering around his foster home remembering and wanting it all back. Not chasing after Selena and the absurd notion that talking with her could correct things that had been wrong for too long to fix.

  He was going to do the best he could for his family with the short time he was back. Then tomorrow he’d refocus on his pitch to a Fortune 100 paper manufacturer that wanted him on the next plane to Canada.

  Chapter Three

  You need help, Selena, Oliver had said to her forever ago. She’d been drunk. Again. She’d been an alcoholic, though it would be months yet before she’d begin to deal with it. Sober for the first time for much of their senior year, Oliver’s gentle encouragement that she dry out, too, had sounded to her still-messed-up self as criticism. Disappointment. Rejection. This is my fault, he’d said. You wouldn’t be so out of control if it wasn’t for me. Let me help you—let me make this right.

  I don’t want your help! Selena had screamed, certain he was dumping her. She’d been certain for weeks. You want out, just like my dad did. He said he loved me. How long’s it gonna take before you leave me, too? Huh? I’ll tell you how long. Now! Because I’m the one who’s through this time. We’re done.

  Anything had seemed better than Oliver finally giving up on her for good.

  So she’d raged onward solo, after his parents had insisted he stop drinking or he’d have to leave the foster home he’d already aged out of. Until she’d destroyed the last of her childhood, their love, and Oliver’s life in Chandlerville.

  “Do we get to stop for doughnuts?” Camille asked, dragging Selena back to the present.

  She hadn’t moved since Oliver and then Travis disappeared inside the Dixon house. Her heart was still doing pirouettes in her throat. And now her daughter’s watering can was empty, and Camille was hopping up and down at Selena’s feet.

  Ouch! Make that on Selena’s feet, smearing dirt and Georgia clay all over Selena’s soft-soled shoes.

  “Mommy, you said we could get—”

  “A chocolate doughnut on the way to school.” Selena led her daughter back to the house. She banished her memories deep inside, to the emotionless corner of her mind where the past wasn’t an old wound forever seeping fresh blood.

  The toes of her favorite shoes squished, sinking into the boggy soil beneath Belinda’s drippy spigot. Selena mentally crossed off another piece of her once stylish wardrobe that was too delicate for a busy day in Chandlerville. Her silk ballerina flats had been bought to accompany a chic sheath dress embroidered with a matching array of seed pearls and tiny bows. The dress was long gone. The shoes she’d talked herself into keeping, because they were beautiful and made her smile. Now they were another casualty of Selena underestimating just how long her rocky fresh start would be.

  “Perfect,” she groused at the spigot, twisting the dial on the hose’s timer and setting the water to shut off in half an hour.

  “What’s wrong?” Her six-year-old tugged at Selena’s thrift-store dress.

  “Nothing, sweetheart,” Selena replied to the question no child should ask as often as hers did.

  Selena turned the water on. It gushed from the sprinklers. She grabbed her things and knelt in the grass by the porch steps, kissing Camille’s temple on the way down. She tightened the ribbons she’d tied around her little girl’s wispy pigtails. She always managed to make them slightly off-center.

  Had Oliver noticed how beautiful Camille looked, regardless?

  “We’re snagging your nutritionally barren, dairy-free, nut-free breakfast to go,” Selena said, rather than dwelling on questions that would get her nowhere. If she were going to do anything more than stare at the all-grown-up version of Oliver, she’d had her chance twice already. “We want to get to school before Karen Davenport hoards all the best craft supplies.”

  “I’m going to rule the art table.” Camille pumped a tiny fist into the air, celebrating her impending triumph over the reigning mean girl in daycare.

  Selena dropped Camille at Chandler Elementary’s early child-care center each morning Selena worked as a substitute teacher, without having to pay the fee she couldn’t afford until her divorce was finalized. She was fortunate the school’s principal, Kristen Hemmings Beaumont, kept her in mind so often for the part-time opportunities that a long list of subs could fill. Practically every day for over a month, Selena had had steady work, custom-made to fill the hours her daughter was in school. Kristen seemed genuinely committed to helping them reclaim their financial footing—at least until school let out for the summer at the tail end of next week.

  Until then, Selena had to wake her daughter for school much earlier than when they’d lived in New York, so Selena could get to Chandler and plan for the day ahead. It wasn’t what she wanted for Camille, but Belinda headed to the post office each morning at five. So for another week at least, this was the way things had to be.

  Selena hugged Camille close. Her earliest memories were of her parents fighting nonstop, and of one or both of them threatening to move out. Then Selena and her mother had had to make their way alone, finally arriving on Bellevue Lane—with Belinda earning barely enough in those early years to keep the lights on and food in the house. Now that was Selena’s daughter’s reality. And Selena was determined to make all the scary changes and confusion and worry up to Camille. They would get through this—one day, one squishy footstep at a time.

  “Let’s go, Cricket,” she said, using her favorite nickname for her daughter. She led Camille to their car.

  Selena had affectionately named the heap Fred. He’d been all she could afford with what remained of the money she’d squirreled away before filing for divorce from her cheating, fabulously wealthy, well-respected yet not-to-be-trusted husband. When Fred slowed as he struggled up a hill, she imagined there was a rusted-out hole beneath the floor mats where she could stick her feet through, like one of the Flintstones pedaling to help the engine along. But he was hers free and clear. She didn’t owe anyone anything for him. And he’d come through like a champ on their long journey back to Georgia, charming Selena down to her unpedicured toes.

  Slipping behind the wheel after buckling Camille’s car seat, she turned the key. The ignition sputtered and then died. Black smoke spewed from the tailpipe.

  “Uh-oh,” Camille said.

  Selena’s next attempt to rouse Fred from his funk ended in an emphysemic belch.

  “No doughnuts?” Camille asked.

  Selena laughed. She dropped her head to the steering wheel. This wasn’t happening.

  She didn’t mean to glance next door at Oliver’s shiny red truck and the Dixon home. Her head just rolled to the side on its own. Then she gritted her teeth and turned Fred’s key again. Because he was going to cooperate. The rumblings beneath his hood warned that he didn’t take kindly t
o being bossed around. But the engine finally caught and roared to life.

  “Yay!” Camille cheered. “Chocolate!”

  Soaking in her daughter’s celebration, Selena cajoled her ancient Chevy into reverse. She steered him out of the driveway and pulled away from their morning’s rocky start. Taking the turn onto Maple, she headed for Dan’s Doughnuts on Main and settled into the drive. She’d almost cleared her mind of everything but her daughter’s morning treat and the workday ahead, when Mission: Impossible heckled her from the depths of her tote.

  Sighing, one hand on the wheel, she kept her attention fixed on the road in front of her and fumbled the phone from her purse.

  “I’m driving,” she said after thumbing the call through and putting her mom on speaker.

  “Tell me you’re going to steer clear of him,” Belinda insisted.

  “Mom . . .” Selena tried to remember that her mother was trying to help, not obsessed with every new mistake Selena might make.

  “I heard he was back. Jonathan Ritter said his mother saw a red truck pull up into the Dixons’ drive while you were working in the yard.”

  “Janet Ritter needs something else to do with her time than peeking out her front windows at what the rest of the neighborhood is doing.”

  And Jonathan needed to stop being quite so interested in every move Selena made. Her mother’s coworker at the post office had graciously offered more than once to let Selena reconsider her hasty decision not to date his fifty-something, single, still-lived-with-his mother self.

  “Was it Oliver?” Belinda shuffled things on the other end of the phone.

  Selena didn’t answer. Thanks to Mrs. Ritter, she didn’t have to.

  “Did you talk to him?” her mom wanted to know.

  “No.” A touch of disappointment escaped with the word. A deluge of unwanted questions that made Selena queasy.

  Had she missed her last chance to clear the air with Oliver? To make things right with him and his family?

  “Tell me,” Belinda insisted, “that you’re going to steer clear of the Dixon house and the hospital until he’s gone again. Don’t complicate your life even more.”