Page 1 of Unsaid Things

Chapter One

Bras, yes. Underwear, yes. Jeans and T-shirts for six days, yes, plus a couple of nice outfits just in case. Okay. Big toiletries in the suitcase, deodorant, toothbrush, travel toothpaste, and birth control pills in my carry-on.

“You ready, Abby?” Lance’s voice carried from the living room where he packed up their electronics and chargers.

“Yeah! Be right there!” Abby zipped her suitcase closed, pulled it off the bed, and locked the handle in place to roll it out to the living room. Lance appeared in the doorway, a smile on his stubble-roughened face despite his tired eyes. Four a.m. was way too early to wake up, and Abby knew she looked just as sleep deprived.

He stepped into the room, dropping a quick kiss on her lips before snagging her suitcase from her hand. “Let me get that for you.”

Following him into the living room, she had to clarify one more time. “I can get my own suitcase, Lance. It rolls. It’s not that hard.”

He didn’t bother to answer except to laugh and pull on his favorite Dallas Cowboys hat, the worn and dingy fabric covering his dark brown hair. When he looked at her, his chocolate brown eyes held warmth and affection. “You say that every time I do something for you. And my answer is still the same. I know you can. I want to anyway.” Pocketing his keys, he tugged the backpack strap off her shoulder, dropping it on the floor, and wrapped his arms around her. “I like doing things for you, Abby. That hasn’t changed in the last six months, and it isn’t going to. You might as well get used to it.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but he covered it with his own, kissing her deeply, his favorite way to forestall anything he didn’t want to hear her say. When he pulled back she narrowed her eyes at him, and he gave her a big grin, taking the first suitcase out to the car. She let him load the car without protest, instead helping by putting the next suitcase and his backpack by the door, not wanting to start their trip with a stupid argument that she wouldn’t win, and would end with them both pissy the whole way to Texas.

And she definitely didn’t want to meet his family for the first time right after having a stupid fight with him.

Lance made the small concession of letting her carry her own backpack. She knew he saw it as a concession from the slight tightening of his mouth when he looked over his shoulder at her following him to the car. But he let it go, taking her backpack to put in the trunk while she climbed into the running car, glad to get out of the cold December air. Lance had already scraped most of the frost off the car windows when he brought out the first suitcase, and the defrost blew full blast, warming up the car and melting the remnants left at the edges.

A gust of cold air followed Lance into the car, and Abby shivered. They both wore sweatshirts, not wanting to deal with heavy coats since they wouldn’t need them in Dallas. There’d be no white Christmas for them this year. The forecast for Dallas predicted highs in the fifties and sixties the whole time. She had a couple of other sweaters in her suitcase, but she didn’t need her warm coat with those temperatures. But getting to and from the airport in Spokane before dawn this time of year meant shivering until the car warmed up all the way.

Lance backed out of the parking spot. “Let’s get coffee on the way. I don’t want to wait until we get through security. Hell, the way I’m feeling, I might need more by then.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Abby rubbed her arms as they drove. She’d talked to Lance’s mom, Elizabeth, a few times during their weekly phone conversations, and she seemed cool. Excited that they were coming for Christmas. Lance’s sister Gabby said she couldn’t wait for them to get there. Abby envied their relationship. She hadn’t heard from her own brother, Aaron, in over a year. She had no idea where he was or what he’d been doing in that time. As far as she knew, her mom hadn’t heard anything from him earlier. They never talked about him. So to witness how well Lance got along with his mom and sisters, though he didn’t talk to his older sister Marissa as much as Gabby, made Abby’s heart ache with longing.

She would never have that kind of relationship with her family—her mom more of a dependent than a parent, her brother incommunicado, and her sperm donor long gone. She used to wish that her dad would contact her, send her a letter, call her on the phone, or better yet, come back. But he never had. And over the years she stopped thinking of him as her dad, instead thinking of him just as a biological contributor to her existence. He’d left before she turned three, and she had no memory of him except for some faded photos her mom still kept around for some reason. Abby used to get them out and look at them when she was a little kid, when she still hoped he’d come back. She wanted to be able to recognize him when he did. But that hope had faded somewhere between her eighth or ninth birthday, when Aaron had grown tired of her talking about their dad and told her that he would never come back, so she should just forget about him. Aaron had never lied to her, so she believed him. She stopped talking about their dad, stopped looking at his pictures, and soon stopped thinking about him except for when she had to answer questions about her parents.

Lance pulled up to their favorite coffee stand, no line this early in the morning. He glanced at her as he rolled down the window, letting in more frigid air. “Your usual?”

She nodded. “Make it a large.”

He grinned, turning to the barista who seemed far too upbeat for this godawful time of day, and gave him their order. Lance passed Abby her coffee, setting his own in the cupholder next to him, and pulled back onto the road, heading for the airport. “You’re quiet this morning.”

“I’m just tired.” She took a sip of her coffee, closing her eyes as the rich mixture of caramel and espresso washed over her tongue. Mmm.

“Keep making noises like that, Abby, and we might miss our flight.”

She opened her eyes, grinning at Lance with his heated brown eyes, and a naughty smirk pulling at his lips. “I think your mom would kill you if that happened.”

He grunted, his eyes going back to the road, and shifted in his seat. “No more moaning about your coffee. It makes me jealous.”

She laughed, and he smiled.

“Good. Now tell me what’s going through your head.”

She smiled to herself and shook her head once. Lance knew her too well, seeing through her flimsy excuse. “Well, I am tired. But I’m nervous too. I’ve never done the whole meet-the-family thing before, and we’re going halfway across the country to do it. What if your parents hate me?”

His hand fell to her knee, squeezing and stroking, the gesture every bit as comforting as he meant it to be. “They’ll love you, Abby. You have nothing to worry about.”

She shrugged. “So you say. It doesn’t make me less nervous though.”

He squeezed her knee again before returning his hand to the steering wheel, needing more control on the icy roads. “It’ll be okay.”

She knew he wanted to be reassuring, but it didn’t do anything to help the nervous churning in her belly. And that made her not want her coffee, which was a treat she didn’t splurge on often, so she pushed aside thoughts of meeting Lance’s family and decided to focus on something more exciting. “So, can I guess what you got me for Christmas?”

Lance’s low chuckle warmed her, and did more to dispel her nerves than any reassurance he could offer. “Sweetheart, I’m not going to give it away. Don’t you want to be surprised?”

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