The Bourbon Kings
Page 38

The period of silence that followed made her feel like he was in the room with her.
“I’m glad you haven’t hung up,” Lane said finally.
“I wish I could.”
“I know.”
She cleared her throat. “I thought about what you told me all the way home. I thought about the way you looked when you were talking to me. I thought … about the way things were.”
“And?”
“Lane, even if I could get past everything—and I’m not saying I can—what exactly do you want from me?”
“Anything you’ll give me.”
She laughed in a tense burst. “That’s honest.”
“Do I have a shot with you again? Because I’ll tell you this right now—if there’s any chance you’ll have me, I—”
“Stop,” she breathed. “Just … stop.”
When he did, she pulled at her hair, tugging, tugging, so hard it made her eyes water even harder. Or maybe that was happening for other reasons.
“I wish you hadn’t come home,” she heard herself say. “I wish … I was almost over you, Lane. I was getting my breath back, my life back. I was … and now here you are, saying things that I want to hear, and looking at me like you mean them. But I don’t want to go back. I can’t.”
“Then let’s go forward.”
“Like that’s so easy.”
“It’s not. But it’s better than nothing.”
As the quiet stretched out again, she felt the need to speak, to explain things further, to go into greater detail. But as words jammed in her head, she gave up the fight.
“There hasn’t been a night, a day, that I haven’t thought of you, Lizzie.”
The same was true for her, but she didn’t want to give him that kind of ammunition against her. “What have you been doing all this time up there?”
“Nothing. And I mean that. I’ve been staying with my friend Jeff … drinking, playing poker. Waiting, hoping to get a chance to speak with you.”
“For two years.”
“I would have waited a dozen.”
Lizzie stopped with the hair pulling. “Please don’t do this—”
“I want you, Lizzie.”
As what he said sank in, her heart pounded so hard her she could feel the increase in blood pressure all across her chest and face.
“I’ve never stopped wanting you, Lizzie. Thinking about you. Wishing you were with me. Hell, I feel like I’ve been in a relationship with a ghost. I see you on the streets of New York constantly, some blond woman passing me by on the sidewalk—maybe it was the way she had her hair, or the sunglasses, or it was the color of her blue jeans. I see you in my dreams every night—you’re so real that I can touch you, feel you, be with you.”
“You’ve got to stop.”
“I can’t. Lizzie … I can’t.”
Closing her eyes, she started to weep in the solitude of her oh-so-modest farmhouse, the one she had bought and was almost finished paying for, the very best symbol of why she didn’t need a man in her life now or ever.
“Are you crying?” he whispered.
“No,” she choked out after a moment. “I’m not.”
“Are you lying?”
“Yes. I am.”
THIRTEEN
As Lane stared across at the old still that had been made by one of his ancestors, he knew he was under the legal alcohol limit to drive a car, but that wasn’t going to last. At his hip was a bottle of No. 15 that he’d snagged from a shipping carton, and although he hadn’t cracked the seal on it, he had every intention of drinking the thing dry.
All around him, the Old Site was dark, and he’d been surprised that the lock pad and the security alarm had had the same codes as before. Then again, he would have broken in if he’d had to. He felt some compelling drive to be here … as if connecting to his family’s beginnings would somehow improve where he was at.
He knew he should leave Lizzie alone.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I want to say all the right things, do the right things, and I know I’m not. I know I didn’t. Goddamn it, Lizzie.”
He cocked his head to the side and held the phone between his shoulder and his ear. Picking up the bourbon, he opened the bottle and put it to his mouth.
The idea he’d made her cry again ate him alive.
“Are you drinking?” she asked.
“It’s either that or bang my head into a wall until it bleeds.”
As she exhaled, he took another pull. And a third.
When he was finished swallowing and the burn down his throat had eased, he asked the question he’d been dreading the answer to. “Are you with someone else?”
She took a long time to answer. “No.”
Now he was the one exhaling. “I don’t believe in God, but at this moment? I’m willing to call m’self a Christian.”
“What if I don’t want you anymore? What are you going to do then?”
“Are you saying that’s true?”
“Maybe.”
He closed his eyes. “Then I’ll back off. It’ll ruin me … but I’ll go away.”
More quiet. Which he passed by working on his bottle.
“Friends,” she said eventually. “That’s as far as I’m going. That’s all I can do.”