in his heart, Danni had absolutely no idea what to do. What can you say, when a man has his entire life stripped from him in the space of five minutes?
She was useless here. More than anything she wanted to turn tail, run inside the restaurant and send Laila out here. She was Jim’s best friend; she always had something unexpected and wise to say, or at the very least, she’d hold him close and be here for him.
Which would only be another reminder of something he’s lost.
It looked like she was it, then, God help her. What did she say? How did she start?
A moment later, he stopped hitting the tree. “I know you’re still there,” Jim said, his back stiff. “I can hear you breathing. I can feel the indecision jumbling around in your head.”
That was Jim—the only man she’d ever known who didn’t treat her with wary diffidence because he’d never been frightened by her fighting reflex or sarcastic tongue. He treated her like every other woman he knew, with teasing and truth. With the respect he gave to all women.
The only man she’d never been able to feel cynical about…at least until he’d ended her most private hopes before they’d truly begun.
But all that was past. He needed help now, and she was the only one around.
She stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Jim.” The words sounded stilted, even to her.
Using only one shoulder, he shrugged. Was he blocking her off, or unable to speak about it? She didn’t know. She didn’t know him well enough to judge.
What an ironic commentary on my life, considering I’ve known the man, been in the same circle of friends with him ten years.
“Your real mother called?” She wanted to hit herself for the stupid question, but she had to start somewhere, and she had no idea of how to reach out to him.
Still leaning against the tree with a balled fist, he nodded.
What did she say from here? More inane questions to force him to talk—or did she give him the peace and space to think?
To grieve, you mean.
Yes, she understood that—from personal experience.
“Um, do you want me to get Laila?” I’m no good here. I shouldn’t be involved in this.
He didn’t answer; but in his stillness and silence, his stiff stance, she still felt the waves of need coming from him. He didn’t want to be alone; but being Jim, he didn’t know how to ask for help.
What could she do?
Forcing her feet to move, she walked to him, doing what Laila would have done. Reaching out to him, lifting her hand to touch his shoulder, hoping it was enough. That she was enough, because no one else had bothered to come out to see if he was all right, if he needed anything.
Not one of Jim’s many friends had come to him.
She frowned. Why hadn’t they come out? Jim would have done so for them—he had done it, whenever any of them needed him. Laila was the only one with a valid excuse—and she was the only one fretting over his welfare, or had even noticed his pain.
At the touch, he turned his face and looked down at her. His eyes were shattered.
“Oh, Jim,” she breathed. Though she was wading waist-deep in a stormy ocean of the things she’d always avoided before—vulnerability, emotional attachment to a man—she worked on an instinct she didn’t know she had, tugging him toward her.
Wanting to comfort him.
With a muffled sound, the tortured moan of an animal caught in a trap, he grabbed her and hauled her hard against him, dragging in ragged breaths.
A drowning man holding onto a leaky life preserver. Wishing she knew how to help, she sighed and gave up, wrapped her arms around him and let him be.
Six foot four of raw masculinity surrounding her had a swallowed-alive feel to it. The hot, sweet tenderness so foreign to her two years before when he’d held her returned in a rush. The jumble of changes in her life in a single hour left her humbled, confused and wanting all at once. She didn’t know what to do with the inner whisper telling her she was in the right place at the right time.
Yet somehow, her silence wasn’t wrong or pitiful. Maybe quiet was what he needed far more than her imperfect words. After all, words had just torn his life apart.
They stood locked together for a long time. The quiet shimmered with peace, like sunlight on a winter pond, gentle and beautiful. Though she’d never done this with a man before, standing in Jim’s arms, holding him close and giving him comfort felt so natural she almost forgot to question it, to remember the differences between them.
Perhaps that was the reason: the biggest differences between them had been removed. The rug of secure family had been pulled out from beneath his feet, while she’d never had a rug. Suddenly opposites had become two of a kind—but the welter of confusion, fury and unexpected grief had blinded him. He’d need a guide to walk him through the darkness.
And she knew that darkness well: the parental lies and omission; feeling as if you don’t belong anywhere; feeling lost and alone. She’d walked in that darkness ever since the day she’d realised other kids’ mummies and daddies actually liked each other. They didn’t all buy separate groceries, use the kitchen at different times and sleep in separate bedrooms. They didn’t all stay together for the sake of the child, living in a trap of semi-polite hatred and needle-fine insults.
Some parents loved each other.
Some parents didn’t lie to their kids—and gentle, honest Jim had just discovered, at age thirty, that he’d lived a lie all his life. He’d been a lie all his life.
Slowly, the stiffness in him softened. He still clung to her, but it felt more relaxed, sharing rather than the drowning man’s hold. She could breathe again.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her hair.
“You’re welcome,” she murmured back, feeling her hair move, and his breath touch her skin. She shivered.
He lifted his face and looked at her, those dark eyes filled with turbulence; and yes, the wanting she couldn’t help feeling for him, even here and now, it was there in his eyes, too. Even though she knew Jim was an expert in playing the game—he’d had girls hanging off him for as long as she’d known him—in the reflection of the deep blackness of his eyes, she still felt beautiful, truly desired as a woman for the first time.
And she felt—vulnerable. Feminine. Lost, but happy to be so…and her lips parted…
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Danni blinked, trying to reorient herself. The kiss they hadn’t shared had seemed so real, she felt as if he’d wrenched it from her—just as she’d felt it two years before when he’d turned her down and walked away without looking back.
Tonight had been a terrible shock for him, she admonished herself. He needed time to adjust, not kisses, biting wit or sharp-tongued defences: he needed a friend. She couldn’t leave him alone with this.
As
