Page 64 of Save the Last Dance
I don’t blame anyone anymore.
“You blamed me.” It wasn’t a revelation, exactly. Plenty of other people had.
But still…
“I blamed myself, mostly. I blamed the senior class for having that party. Jenny for not hanging out with him more that night so he wouldn’t have hit on you. And yeah, I blamed you for speaking your mind and telling him he was being a loser. Looking back, the thoughts were juvenile, but we were so damn young then.”
Hearing her words—the exact words she’d said to Vince that night—still cut deep. She didn’t even speak that word,loser,anymore since it held a power like none other in her vocabulary after what had happened. But she didn’t let Mack’s use of it now wind her up. She wouldn’t go back to living in old shadows.
“I wish you would have told me.” She sat up enough to pull the quilt out from under her and lay it over her lap. “It must have been hard keeping all that blame to yourself.”
“It was tougher being mad at you when I still cared about you so much.” He turned the phone square to his face again so she could see him clearly. “And it occurred to me while I was driving Ally to the hospital that I did the same thing earlier tonight—I let my own issues get in the way of caring about you.”
She gripped her phone tighter, accidentally hitting the volume button.
“I never thought we’d overcome any of it, so this is a bonus.” Taking a deep breath, she traced his jawline on the screen, remembering what it was like to touch him for real.
“Thanks for picking up when I called. After the way we left things earlier, I wasn’t all the certain you would answer.”
For a man as stoic as Mack, that comment represented a lot of emotion. She smiled to think how differentthey were in that regard. She with her drama and passion for life. Him with his quiet, even response to it. But in the end, they were a good balance for each other.
“I can come over there,” she offered. “If you don’t want to be alone?—”
“I’ll be okay. I’m going to get some sleep and then try to talk to my brother. He and Bethany are… She kicked him out.”
Remembering Bethany’s hopefulness when she’d left the fairgrounds earlier today, Nina was confused.
“She was going to try to get him to go away with her last night. I wonder what happened.”
“Someone needs to tell Scott to get his head out of his—” Mack scrambled to his feet and started walking, his image on the phone doing a bouncy vertigo sort of thing as he moved. “Nina, I know things seem to have fallen apart, but I’m not ready to give up on us yet. Will you…meet me at the fairgrounds tomorrow night, technically tonight, I guess? My sense of time is all mixed up. But I know I’d have to see you before I go back home.”
Her defenses—the same ones she’d ratcheted up high when he dropped her off tonight—crumbled away at the reminder that the was leaving. They only had one weekend left together.
“I can do that.” How much more damage could she and Mack do to one another’s hearts at this point? Besides, the thought of him sitting alone out there tonight by Vince’s grave squeezed any resistance out of her. Truth be told, she wanted to hold him after what he’d been through tonight. She cleared her throat and wished she could settle her emotions as easily. “I’ll be over there by four o’clock, right after my appointment with a realtor.”
“You’re getting a place of your own?” He frowned and she wondered if it made the scratches on his face hurt.
Her fingers itched to smooth over them. More than that, she wished she could kiss them and hold him while he fell asleep. No doubt about it, she was falling for Mack again even though it made no sense. Even though he’d never stay here with her. Never build a family with her.
“I’m not looking for places to live. This is for a place to work.” She’d been thinking about her career off and on ever since she’d realized she wanted to stay in Heartache. “If I’m going to really put down roots here, I need to start thinking about a business of my own.”
And she’d also need to make her peace with Mack’s mom. The older woman no longer had the power to hurt her. Nina wished she could say the same for her son.
He was quiet for a long moment. Of course, she knew he didn’t want any part of Heartache—for either of them.
But Nina couldn’t let her grandmother down. Wouldn’t sit idly by while she was forced to leave the home she loved. So as long as Gram wanted to be here, Nina did, too. Besides, she owed it to herself to figure out how to run a business on her by herself. How to stand on her own two feet and take responsibility for her life and her happiness. No more begging Mack to be with her, like she had eight years ago. No more relying on Olivia to fund her dreams. Those were the behaviors of the old, selfish Nina, still the knee-jerk reactions of a lonely girl hoping a parent would come back to love her.
She was smarter than that now, and she was independent enough to take whatever life doled out. So she’d decided she had to begin nailing down her plans for the future, even if those plans didn’t include Mack.
Chapter Fifteen
Less than aweek after her own visit, Ally was back in the hospital.
Since shortly before dawn, she’d sat beside Rachel in surgical recovery. Rachel had asked the hospital not to contact her mother, and, being eighteen, apparently she had that right. As monitors beeped quietly and the medical staff wheeled patients in and out of the wide-open room separated only by curtains on metal tracks, Ally wondered what on earth had made the girl ask forherof all people.
Smoothing the blankets, she waited for Rachel to wake up. Part of her was scared Rachel was still mad at her. But that didn’t seem to fit. Until Ally had accused Ethan of flirting with her, she and Rachel had actually had fun outlining the straw maze. Rachel was smart and efficient, impressing Ally with how organized she was. Now that Ally looked back at the hours they’d spent together—knowing that Ethan hadn’t been hitting on Rachel—Ally realized that they would have never gotten the outline done if Rachel hadn’t called for help.
“She’s in here,” a nurse’s voice was saying just outside the curtain. “But you can’t stay long. We’re only allowed to admit one visitor at a time.”
