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He shook his head. “No, I was trying to avoid telling you where I live, for the simple reason that I know it sounds odd, but now you’ve forced it out of me.”
“You live at the office.”
“At the moment, yes.”
“Are you serious?”
“Don’t I look serious?”
“You look frightening.”
He gave a concessionary nod. “That’s serious.”
She gripped the wheel and looked straight ahead without moving. Finally she said, “I’m going to have to take you to my house.”
Evan gave a laugh. “You are taking this way, way too seriously. Look, just take me back to the office. I’ll go clean up, slap a bandage on and be fine. Honestly, Mer, I’ve been in worse condition than this before. I know what I’m talking about.”
Something passed between them. Whether it was surprise at his use of the old nickname, Mer, or horror at having to deal with such an indelicate situation, or simply irritation at realizing how many calls she was going to have to make to cancel credit cards, checks and so on, Evan wasn’t sure.
But it sure felt. familiar.
“Evan,” she said. “I think I can actually see your cheekbone through that cut.”
“Oh, come on.”
“God knows what I’ll see in good light.” She took a short breath, put the car back in gear and merged into the traffic on Lake Shore Drive. “We can clean you up at my place,” she said. “If it still looks as awful as I think it’s going to, I’m going to make you go to the hospital.”
He knew it wouldn’t, so it was an easy thing to agree to. “Fair enough.”
“Okay.” She drove on, and he watched her from his convenient vantage point beside her. She had to keep her eyes on the road, so he could study her profile as closely as he wanted, for as long as he wanted.
So he did.
“What are you looking at?” she asked almost immediately, glancing sideways at him.
“You,” he answered softly.
“I know that. Why?”
He shifted his weight in the seat, trying to get more comfortable. “Why do you think? Because I used to know your face better than I knew my own and seeing it again after all these years is fascinating.”
She shook her head. “The aging process in action.”
“You’re not aging, you’re maturing—”
She scoffed.
“Now, wait a minute, you didn’t let me finish. You’ve matured from a cute girl into a really beautiful woman,” he said, meaning every single word of it.
In fact, he meant it more than he could say. And the realization of what he’d missed the past twelve years hit him fully, like a blow to the gut. He should have been with her through all the changes. He should have been the shoulder she cried on when her father died; he should have seen her blow out the candles on her twenty-first birthday cake; he should have been the one to put those first faint smile lines around her eyes.
There was so much he should have done for her. And with her.
So much that could never be regained.
“You’re a really, seriously beautiful woman, Meredith,” he found himself saying. “In every way.”
Even in the dark of the car, he could tell her pale Irish skin had pinkened several shades. She tipped her head down—a gesture he’d seen her make a thousand times—so her veil of chestnut hair hid her face, at least from where he was sitting now.
“I don’t know what to say, Evan.”
“It’s a pretty standard compliment,” he said. “‘Thanks’ would do. Or nothing. Nothing would do, too.”
She gave a half laugh. “Thanks.”
He smiled to himself. A few weeks ago, he’d had no idea he’d ever see Meredith Waters again. Then, when he first did, their interaction had filled him with dread and residual adolescent awkwardness.
But tonight something had changed.
Or maybe something had clicked into place.
Because until he’d gotten punched in the face, he’d thought he and Meredith were going to be these strange semiacquainted former lovers—until he left and she would thank the good Lord he was finally gone.
Now … it was hard to describe. But now he felt like something inside him was complete again.
Evan stayed lost in his thoughts as they drove through the familiar-yet-unfamiliar streets of his childhood. It was odd, but he still knew the timing exactly. Left on Travilia Road, left again onto Denton, bear right onto Farm Ridge, then turn left onto.
Village Crest Avenue.
Was he hallucinating?
“Meredith, where are you going?” he asked, feeling the beginnings of alarm in his chest.
“My house.”
Well, yeah. Her house. Sure. He’d been there hundreds of times. He’d known the answer even before he asked the question. But the thing was, he knew it wasn’t her house anymore. She’d grown up, graduated from high school, graduated from college, moved on with her life.
So clearly, either she meant something else or he was dreaming.
For a crazy second he actually wondered what year it was. The song on the radio was an old one, so that didn’t help. The houses, well, they all looked the same. So that didn’t help, either.
“Who’s the president?” he asked stupidly.
“The president of what?”
“The United States?”
“What?”
He swallowed. It was a dumb question. He wasn’t time traveling. She was just driving to her parents’ house for some reason that would make sense in a few minutes.
Maybe she was driving him there because she didn’t want him to know where she really lived. Or maybe she felt as if she needed help. Hell, she might have just been afraid to be alone with him. The way he probably looked, he couldn’t blame her.
But now she was looking at him with something more than concern. “Okay, that’s it, we need to go to the hospital now. I think you have a concussion.”
“I don’t,” he said immediately, though of course he couldn’t be sure.
“Then you’re crazy and in need of psychiatric help. Evan, you’re asking me who the president is!”
“I know, I was kidding. Sort of. It’s just that I could swear you’re driving me to …” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. She’d pulled up right in front of it.
Her parents’ house.
Looking exactly as it had the last time he’d seen it, twelve and a half years ago.
Prom night.
The night he’d left Chicago and the girl of his heart, and thought it was for good.
Chapter Ten
When seeing Evan in the office, Meredith had managed to somehow separate her memories of him from the reality they were living today.
But pulling up outside the house she’d lived in when she’d dated him in high school—a house she’d only been back in for a short time now—she felt as if she were time traveling.
From the look on Evan’s pale face, he was clearly feeling the same thing.
“I bought the place from my mother when she moved to Florida last year,” she explained.
He looked relieved. “For a minute there, I thought I was going nuts.”
She took the keys out of the ignition and said, “For a minute there, I thought you were going nuts, too.”
“Thanks.”
She loved his dry humor. “I should have put a Pixies CD on and asked how you did on your term paper,” she continued. “As long as we didn’t pass a Hummer or something, I probably could have had you going.”
“You’re cute,” he said, getting out of the car. “Real cute.”
“Uh-oh, I’ve been demoted.” She singled out her house key as they stepped onto the front porch. “A few minutes ago you said I was beautiful.”
He pointed at his head. “I was injured. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“Ah.” She put the key in the lock and clicked it open. “Good excuse.”
They stepped into the cool, air-conditioned foyer.
Evan looked around as if he was in a time warp.
“I know,” she said. “I have to redecorate. I just haven’t had time. You remember where the kitchen is?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
“Go on in and have a seat. I’ll run and get the first-aid kit, then meet you there.”
She rushed upstairs on legs that were shaking. Evan looked bad. He looked really bad. And it was all her fault, she thought, scrambling into the bathroom and throwing the cabinet doors open. Her father had always told her she had to be way more careful walking around downtown Chicago. He’d warned her over and over again that she was too lax about things like personal safety.
She, in turn, had told him he was paranoid, that she’d be fine and he just had to stop worrying so much.
She pushed around in the cabinet, moving cleaning supplies, curlers, half-used bottles of shampoo, until she finally found the white plastic box with the red cross on the front. It was about a thousand years old, but she doubted anything in it had ever been opened.
She grabbed a washcloth to clean Evan’s face, thought about the amount of blood, and put the washcloth down in favor of a full-size bath towel.
Thus armed, she hurried back downstairs to the kitchen, where Evan was sitting on a stool by the counter, shirtless, still looking around in a bemused way.
He’d already cleaned the blood off his cheek and while the wound was a bit less dramatic than she’d thought, it was still more dramatic than he’d indicated. He had folded a square of paper towels that he was using to alternately apply and release pressure.
“I threw my shirt away,” he said, in answer to her unasked question. “I figured it was less rude of me to sit here half-naked than to sit here in a disgusting bloody shirt.”
“Good call,” she said, but her mouth was suddenly dry.
His upper body was far more muscular and developed than it used to be, cut and contoured with sinewy muscle. His skin was bronzed from the sun of wherever it was he’d been this past decade, and he looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of a Sports Illustrated sun-and-surf edition.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, pouring antiseptic onto a cotton pad.
“It doesn’t tickle,” he said, eyeing the pad dubiously.
“Neither will this,” she said, gently pressing the antiseptic to the wound.
Evan cussed and drew back.
“I’m sorry!” Meredith stepped back. “It’s a necessary evil. You don’t want to get an infection.”
He gave a rueful smile. “I’m not sure about that. It might hurt less than this.”
“Yeah, until your face turns green and falls off. Come on.” She put her hand on his head, her fingers touching his dark hair for the first time in ages. She swallowed, took a quick, steadying breath and said, “On the count of three.”
“Don’t you want to say ‘this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me’?”
She smiled. “Sort of, but I’ll refrain.”
“Thank you.” He winced as she put the antiseptic to his face again.
Once it was cleaned up some, a closer examination of the wound revealed that it actually wasn’t quite as bad as Meredith had feared. It probably didn’t need stitches. “I think one of these sealing bandages will be good enough,” she said to Evan.
“I told you it wasn’t so fatal.”
She shrugged and took a bandage out of the first-aid kit and unwrapped it. “If it were me, I’d still go to the E.R. and make sure I don’t need stitches. You might end up with a scar.”
