Kristina Knight - Breakup In A Small Town

She didn’t want to lose him now. She couldn’t let him keep walking all over her, though. She was done with that. Everything had been Adam’s way since they got married. They’d bought the fixer-upper he wanted, drove the car he’d restored, watched the TV shows and movies he liked best. Hell, she’d taken the job he wanted her to take—and fallen in love with the intricacies of it, true enough.

It never bothered her before the tornado that her life was so closely wrapped up in his. She didn’t mind being the one to discipline the kids or pay the bills or make the vacation plans he wanted or bring up the possibility of expanding Buchanan Cabinetry. But now she had the job, and the parenting, and the house upkeep, and she didn’t even have Fun Adam to run around with the kids in the backyard while she caught up on the laundry. Or, God, the man she loved to have take her in his arms and kiss her senseless.

God, she missed being kissed.

She’d give anything if he would reach across the car right now to take her hand. To tug on her ponytail the way he’d done a thousand times in her life. Anything, just to let her know he was still there. She’d done all the reaching since the tornado, and no matter what she tried, she hadn’t been able to touch him in whatever dark place he lived now.

The Mustang flashed past the town sign, and Jenny slowed. She was through missing things. Missing Adam. Missing picking up the kids at school. Yes, her husband had limitations now, but that didn’t mean he could shut himself up in a room and avoid the rest of the world.

Act as if none of them existed anymore.

“It occurs to me that I’ve been too soft on you.” Jenny said the words carefully as she pulled to the stoplight outside Mallard’s Grocery. No inflection. No anger. Just words. Calm, cool, concise words. From the corner of her eye, she saw Adam’s head snap in her direction. Maybe this change in tactics was a good idea. “I don’t like this any more than you do, and I know you have it much worse than me because you’re living it. But I’m living it, too.”

The light turned green and Jenny continued to their home. Adam didn’t say a word as she pulled into the drive. “I’m watching you fade away and I’ve tried everything I can to stop it. To bring you back.”

“You think this is easy for me?” he asked after a long moment.

“I think this is the hardest thing you’ve ever done.” Her finger traced the small scar at his neck. His skin was warm, and it took all her self-control not to kiss the scar, the way she’d done a million times. She had to be stronger than the attraction she had for her husband.

Jenny pulled her hand back, not wanting to feel the heat of his skin against hers. God, she wanted to kiss him there. Just for a little while, she wanted them to be the Jenny and Adam they’d been since high school. She would kiss the scar and then make her way to his mouth. He would carry her inside the house and make love to her on the living room floor because there wasn’t time to carry her all the way upstairs, to that big bed he’d built for her when they were first married.

She pushed the hot thoughts of sex with Adam away as quickly as she’d drawn her hand away from his neck. Made herself remember the phone call that came in the middle of the night when she was fifteen. Aiden and Adam had lost control of their dad’s Buick on black ice and totaled it. Adam had cracked two vertebrae in his neck, and had to wear a halo for three months, until the bones were strong again. Then, after the halo came off, he’d needed screws to hold those vertebrae apart.

She’d thought at the time nothing would be harder than that.

God, how wrong she’d been. His life hadn’t ended with the car accident, and it hadn’t ended when the tornado tore through Slippery Rock. But she had no idea how to reach him this time.

“You’d think God would have been satisfied with one head injury, huh?” he said, and his mouth twisted in that familiar half smile that usually made her heart skip a beat. Instead of sounding like a joke, though, his words were flat, with hard, pointy tips.

“I could have done without either. You scared ten years off my life with that car accident. And when I saw the steeple start to fall during the tornado...” Jenny shook her head. “I know this isn’t easy for you. It isn’t easy for me, either. But we have to figure out how to get through it, because I can’t keep juggling all the balls you keep throwing my way.”

“The balls I keep throwing?”

“I’ve taken up the slack at work. I’m cooking all the meals, cleaning the house, getting the kids to and from school. I’m paying the bills and doing the laundry and chauffeuring you to doctor appointments—”

“I’ll call a taxi,” he interrupted, but Jenny kept talking. She had to keep talking or she would never get all this out.

“Slippery Rock doesn’t even have Uber. And that isn’t the point. The point is I’m doing it all. By myself. And you’re wallowing.”

“I have a deadly disease.” Adam narrowed his eyes.

Jenny popped the trunk, got out of the car and pulled the wheelchair from it as if she’d been doing it all her life. Some days, it seemed as if she had. She wheeled it to his door.

“Well, you aren’t dying today. And you say you’re well enough not to need a service dog. And yesterday you were well enough to use a knife to cut up an apple. You say you have no vertigo, no headaches...” She counted off the lies he’d told the doctor on her fingers. “And here I am, thinking I had to protect you from the world.”

“Jen—”

“No. Don’t Jen me. Don’t lie to my face and tell me you’re too weak, too scared, too...whatever. You say you’re fine, well, I’m taking you at your word.” She checked her watch. Still time to make the staff meeting at one, and if she hurried through the rest of her day, she could pick up the kids after school. “I have the Wednesday staff meeting. You know, the one you instituted last summer? We’re talking about new product lines, and I’ve been allowing your parents too much say in what Buchanan’s does. I’m going to the meeting, and I’ll pick up the kids—”

“I haven’t had lunch.”

“There is bologna in the fridge—you can figure it out. And while you’re figuring it, would you please do a couple loads of laundry? Frankie’s out of clean underwear and Garrett wants his favorite dinosaur shirt for school tomorrow.”

Jenny hurried around the car before she could chicken out on her demands. She was not going to let the man she loved fade away. Laundry would be her first battleground.

CHAPTER THREE

ADAM GAVE WHAT had been a white T-shirt but was now an odd shade of pink a side-eye as he read the directions on the bottle of detergent one more time. Nothing about the possibility of a color change. He tossed the shirt into the empty hamper and pulled another handful of clothes from the dryer. The jeans looked okay, but there was another T-shirt with odd pink streaks, and a bra that had one pink cup and one white. He was fairly certain none of Jenny’s bras were designed that way. Then, at the bottom of the dryer, he found a single red sock. The culprit.

Damn it. Jenny had asked him for one thing. Do a freaking load of laundry, and he couldn’t even do that without messing it up. Putting even more work on her plate. What the hell was wrong with him?

The grandfather clock in the living room chimed twice. Two o’clock. The work meeting would be over, and she would probably be back in her office. He had an hour until the boys were through at school to fix this. There was only one thing to do.

Fifteen minutes later, his mother bustled through the back door, chattering into her phone as she let the screen slam shut behind her.