Until We Touch (Fool's Gold #15)(89)

She was moving forward. Painfully, slowly, but progress was made. The nights were the toughest. Not so much the evenings—she could keep those filled. But nights were long and empty and she spent them missing Jack.

Nearly everyone she knew was taking her side. Even Percy, whom she saw a few times a week, was trash-talking him. Larissa supposed she should have been gratified by the show of support. But all she could think was that he was alone in all this. Despite everything, she worried about him, wanted him, needed him. Loved him.

She accepted that maybe she was a one-man woman. That she would spend the rest of her days wanting what she could never have. And if that was the case, she was going to have to figure out how to be happy on her own.

“A problem for another day,” she told herself as she hurried toward the day spa. She went inside and used her shiny new key to open the door to her room. Once there, she paused to take it all in.

The walls were a cool, restful shade of sage. The massage table—the biggest, baddest one available—stood in the center of the large open space. To the left were the two storage units, now filled with pretty baskets of fresh sheets, blankets and towels. A corner cabinet held her oils. There was a bench by the door where her clients could sit to put on shoes and socks. Hooks and hangers gave them a place to hang their clothes. Her appointment book lay open on her small desk.

She reached for the small, backless, rolling stool that she would use during massages as well as at her desk, then sat down. After picking up the phone, she hit the talk button to access her newly acquired business voice mail.

“You have seventeen messages. Press one to hear your messages.”

Larissa frowned. Seventeen? Was she getting prank calls?

She pulled a pen out of her bag and a pad of paper from her single desk drawer, then pushed one.

“Larissa, it’s Eddie Carberry. I want to schedule a massage. One of those hot stone ones. But I don’t want any little rocks between my toes. That’s too weird. Thursday afternoons work best for me.” Eddie left her number and Larissa wrote it down.

The second call was from Mayor Marsha, also scheduling a massage. The next message came from Josh Golden saying he’d heard she understood about old sports injuries and he wanted to set up an appointment. And so it went. Seventeen calls with more than half of the people interested in standing appointments—either weekly or biweekly.

Larissa dutifully wrote all the information down. When she’d finished, she put the phone back on its cradle. She looked at her new license, then at the beautiful space she and her friends had created. And then she smiled.

* * *

ON DAY TWENTY-THREE without Larissa, Jack woke to the sound of rain on his windows. The house was silent otherwise. Empty. He was the only one there. He’d wanted to be by himself and now he was. He had no job, no friends, no lover, nothing. It should have been a dream come true. Instead, he found himself in hell.

He got up and crossed to the window. Low gray clouds obscured the mountains. He could have been anywhere. When he thought about it, there was nothing holding him in Fool’s Gold. He could be miserable somewhere else.

But even as he thought about packing up and disappearing, he knew he couldn’t go. There were things he had to see, had to know how they ended. If he was gone, he wouldn’t be there when Percy took the GED test and later when he found out he’d passed. He wouldn’t see Taryn get married or hear that Sam and Dellina were expecting their first child together. If he was gone, he wouldn’t know if Kenny ever fell in love and if he wasn’t here, he would never catch sight of Larissa again.

Because that was how he got through the day. Seeing her from across the street or by the park. He knew her routine, knew where she liked to run and who her friends were. There he was, Jack McGarry, star quarterback, Super Bowl champion, reduced to being nothing more than a pathetic stalker.

No, he couldn’t leave. But he also couldn’t stay like he was. Empty. Useless. Lucas would be so damned disappointed.

He pulled on his robe and went to the kitchen where he made coffee. After pouring himself a cup, he wandered into his office—a big library of a room he never used. There were books he hadn’t read and a sofa he didn’t sit on. Behind cabinet doors were boxes Larissa had dragged over to his place. They contained letters from families the two of them had helped. The only point of the room was the laptop on his desk that he used.

He started to walk toward it only to find himself circling around the lower cabinets and opening one of them. He pulled out a box and carried it over to the coffee table by the sofa. After sitting down, he raised the lid and looked inside.

On the top was a threadbare stuffed giraffe. It had once been purple, but had faded through washings to a pale gray. One ear and one leg were missing. Under that were pictures of a little boy holding the giraffe.

The oldest pictures showed a small, pale boy with a weak smile. Jack would guess he was three or four. The hospital setting made him look even smaller and more helpless. His parents tried to smile at the camera, but there was no way to disguise their worry.

More pictures showed the boy—Jeffrey—in a hospital bed, celebrating a birthday, then Christmas. Then the scene changed with a big banner behind the bed proclaiming Transplant Day!

The next photos showed Jeffrey with the telltale scar on his chest. But he looked better, with more color. He was sitting up instead of lying in the bed and his parents, while exhausted, had genuine smiles.