Let It Snow (The Hope Falls Series) (15 page)

“Jake,” she whimpered in need.

His strong jaw tensed as his name left her lips and his fingers clenched, holding her tightly in place.

“Fuck,” he grunted loudly as he pulled away from her and was out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

Tessa blinked several times in shock. The next thing she knew, he was at her side of the car swinging her door open. When she looked up at him, his gaze was unreadable. She wasn’t sure if he was pissed off or if they would be continuing their ‘moment’ inside the house.

Realizing that there was only one way to find out, Tessa placed her feet on the side bar and then prayed that her shaky legs would support her as she stepped down onto the driveway. Her prayers were answered and she was able to stand. Jake shut the door and started up towards the house. She followed, taking in his broad back as his long legs carried him in measured strides.

He’d always had a lean, athletic build as a teen, but now his body looked as though it had filled out in all the right places. She could only imagine what he looked like beneath the layers of clothes he wore. She’d seen glimpses of his arms, his neck, and all it had done was make her eager to see more.

Hopefully, when they got inside, she would.

Jake silently opened the door and motioned for her to go inside. She did. As she passed him, her shoulder brushed against his chest, and just that innocent, fully clothed contact had her on the brink of exploding.

Moving inside, she only made it a couple of steps before she heard Jake say from behind her, “Goodnight.”

Spinning around, she saw the front door closing, leaving her alone. She watched as the deadbolt turned, locking into place. Reaching out, she held on to the staircase railing as she listened to Jake’s key pull out of the lock and his heavy-booted footsteps as he walked back down the path.

She slumped against the wall and slid down until her butt hit the tiled entryway. The loud engine of Jake’s SUV roared to life. Then the sound slowly faded.

As she looked around the dimly lit, mostly empty house, tears began to slip down her cheeks. Not because Jake hadn’t come in and they hadn’t made love tonight. As much as she wanted him, she knew that was probably for the best. No, she was crying out of grief. For the life they lost. For the life they could have had.

‡

J
ake’s head was pounding so hard he thought there might actually be a demolition crew smashing in the walls of his brain. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry like he’d eaten an entire bag of cotton balls. His stomach was knotted in pain and nausea. His whole body ached.

A groan escaped him as he rolled to his side and struggled to open his heavy-lidded eyes. A sliver of sunlight shone in brightly through the small, parted space in the dark drapes covering his bedroom window. Even that tiny amount of light caused him to squint and immediately regret his decision to open his eyes at all.

Harsh sounds of a bell ringing and raucous knocking thundered down his ear canal. Lifting his arm, which felt like dead weight, he pulled a pillow over his head to try and mute the offending noises.

Lying perfectly still on his back, Jake took in steady breaths in hopes that the nausea rolling through him would pass. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this. It had to be when he’d been in college.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” his brother’s voice boomed.

“Go away,” Jake said into the pillow that was still covering his face.

He heard two steps, some fabric rustling, then another two steps before the only thing that was protecting him from the harsh realities of the world was yanked off of his face.

Jake hissed as he rolled his head to the side to try and avoid the intense rays of sunlight shining brightly through his now wide-open window.

“Get up,” Eric commanded. “Meet me in the kitchen. We need to talk.”

The blurry outline of his brother turned and Jake watched the dark figure leave his room. Eric was usually not such an asshole, but the past couple of days his brother had definitely been displaying a-hole-like tendencies. Jake wanted nothing more than to tell his brother to kick rocks and go back to bed, but he knew that Eric wouldn’t leave and it would just draw out this little meet and greet. So even though his entire body was screaming in protest, Jake sat up and carefully lowered his legs off the side of the bed.

When his feet hit the cold hardwood floor, he rested his hands on his down comforter and pushed up. Jake stood gingerly, giving himself time to adjust to the entire world tilting on its axis.

Breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, he walked slowly down the stairs and into his kitchen, where he found Eric leisurely sitting at the breakfast table, eating a Danish, with Lucky sitting like a ‘good boy’ beside him, begging for a bite.

“Sit.” Eric motioned to the seat pulled out across the table from him. “Drink.”

Jake noticed a piping-hot cup of coffee sitting in his black Batman mug on his white oak kitchen table, and the tempting smell of roasted coffee beans overrode his instinct to tell Eric to go to hell and not bark commands at him like he was a dog.

Sliding into the chair, Jake sank down and leaned his elbows on the cold wooden surface of the table. Closing his eyes, he lifted his warm java-filled mug with both hands, bringing it to his mouth. The second the hot liquid touched his lips, he began feeling more alert. After several drinks of the strong coffee, the hangover-induced fog he’d been navigating through began clearing up.

When he opened his eyes, he found his brother staring at him with a smug look on his face.

“What?” Jake asked defensively.

“You look like shit,” Eric stated bluntly.

“Thanks.” Jake set down his mug. “Is that what you came over to tell me?”

“No, I thought you might need to talk,” his brother said calmly as he finished off the last bite of his breakfast.

Jake’s eyebrows rose as he shook his head. “Nope. I’m good.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” Jake confirmed with a nod of his head.

Truth was he was confused as shit and furious at himself for still wanting Tessa as much as he did. Last night in his truck, he’d been seconds away from stripping her out of her clothes and burying himself inside of her in the driveway of the home that he owned and did not live in.

Then when he’d gotten home, he’d been so tempted to drive back over to her that he kept having to stop himself from grabbing his keys. So in an attempt to just go numb, he’d started drinking. It had started with a glass of whiskey, but if memory served, he’d finished off the entire bottle and then some.

“Rough night?” Eric asked, his gaze falling on the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s tipped over on its side and about a dozen empty beer cans sitting on Jake’s granite countertops.

Jake didn’t feel like justifying his bender to his big brother, and it pissed him off to be questioned about it. Eric had no idea what the hell was going on in his life.

“Eric, if you have something to say to me, say it.”

“Actually it was
you,
little brother, who had a lot to say last night—or this morning. Why don’t I let you do the talking?” Eric picked his phone up off the table and pressed on the screen then turned it around.

Jake was stunned to hear his own drunken voice coming from the small device. At the beginning of the message, he sounded mad and wasn’t making much sense. He was rambling, speaking in broken sentences, talking about love and how unfair life was. And then, when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, he heard himself slurring, “…
she lost the baby and just left. Who does that?! How could she leave me after that?”

Jake reached across the table, pulled the phone out of his brother’s grasp, and pressed delete.

“She was pregnant?” Eric asked, but it was more of a statement than a question.

Jake didn’t look up at his brother. His gaze was focused on his fingers that were wrapped tightly around Eric’s phone. Jake nodded.

“And she lost the baby?”

Jake nodded again.

“And then she left,” Eric concluded.

Sighing, Jake figured that since his brother knew this much—thanks to his own dumbass drunk-dialing!—he might as well tell him the whole story.

Taking a deep breath, he just started talking. “About a month after high school graduation, we went to The Train Museum in Sacramento. We’d been there about an hour when Tessa started complaining of stomach cramps. I was barely able to get her to the car in the parking lot before she started crying and I saw blood between her legs. I remember how bright red it looked against the pale blue shorts she was wearing. I got her in the car and then I raced towards the hospital I’d seen from the freeway on the way to the museum. I ran red lights and was doing about seventy. When I finally got her there, everything happened so fast. They took her out of my arms and rushed her back into the ER. They wouldn’t let me go back with her because I wasn’t family.”

Jake set the phone down on the table and took a deep breath. A knot formed in his throat and his hands fisted, remembering the fear that had rushed through him and how completely powerless he’d felt when there had been nothing he could do to help her. Clearing his throat, he continued. “She was so scared when they wheeled her away. She was reaching out her hand, begging me to go with her. Not to leave her.

“I didn’t know what to do. I called Adeline. I don’t even remember how long it took her to get there, but the next thing I knew, she was sitting beside me in the waiting room, telling me everything was going to be okay. She kept going up to the front and asking to see Tessa, but they told her she was in surgery. It was dark outside before they came out and told us that Adeline could go back and see her. She tried to convince them to let me go too, but they wouldn’t.

“From the moment Adeline walked through the sliding glass door until she appeared again, I just paced. Back and forth. I felt like I was coming out of my skin. I didn’t know what to do with myself. She just
had
to be okay. I remember the look on Adeline’s face as she came out of the doors. Everything stopped. I tried to ask if she was okay but I couldn’t speak. She assured me that Tessa was resting comfortably and was going to be all right as she ushered us into a small waiting area off the hall. After we sat down, she told me that Tessa would be okay but that she’d lost a lot of blood and that she’d lost the baby.”

Jake looked up at his brother, who was staring back at him with a blank expression. “I had no idea what she was talking about. Adeline must have seen it on my face because she said, ‘You didn’t know, did you?’ I told her I didn’t. She said that she didn’t think Tessa had known either because if she’d had any idea she was pregnant she would have told one of us.”

“Do Mom and Dad know?” Eric asked.

“No.” Jake shook his head. “Just me, Adeline, and Tessa know about it. Her parents were still in Germany, and I told Mom and Dad that I was on a camping trip.

“She was placed in ICU and I wasn’t allowed access to her until that Monday. I didn’t leave the hospital all weekend. I just stayed there waiting to see her. Adeline kept coming out and giving me updates. When she was moved to a regular room, they finally let me go back.

“I remember how small and pale she looked lying in the bed. I was so relieved to finally see her, but when I saw the look in her eye, I knew something was wrong. I moved beside her and leaned over to kiss her forehead but she moved away from me. When I sat down, I tried to hold her hand but she pulled it away from me.

“I told I loved her and how sorry I was for what she went through. I told her she was going to be okay now, that we would be okay. She wouldn’t even look at me at first. She just stared out the window and told me that this whole thing made her realize what she really wanted and that it wasn’t to be married and have kids. She said that she didn’t want to be tied down. She said that when she left the hospital she wasn’t going back to Hope Falls. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going. She just said that she didn’t want to be with me anymore and that we should both move on with our lives.”

Jake stared down at his coffee cup sitting on his kitchen table and wrapped his fingers around the warm ceramic. “I tried to reason with her and tell her that she’d been through a lot and she might feel like that right now but that we could work it out. She wouldn’t listen. Finally, she did look at me. She screamed at me to get out of her room and leave her alone. Nurses came and escorted me out of the room. Adeline was in the hall and she said it would be best to give her some time. She told me to go home, get some sleep, take a shower and come back and see her the next day. She promised she’d talk to her and call me with any updates.

“I hadn’t slept or showered or eaten in days, and I felt so lost. So I listened to her. I went home took a shower, ate, and slept for twelve hours. As soon as I woke up, I got in my car and drove back to the hospital in Sacramento. I got there at noon but she wasn’t there. She’d been released earlier that morning. So I headed back to Hope Falls thinking that I must have missed the call from Adeline, but when I got to her house, Adeline told me that Tessa wasn’t there and she wouldn’t tell me where she was. I freaked out. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I searched the whole house. She was gone.”