Ticket Home: Strangers on a Train Read online

  “You owe me,” said Brooklyn guy. “You bring your reality show on the train, you can’t just take it off the air whenever you want. I need to know what happens.”

  He was older than she’d guessed, maybe fifty, with a heavy, jowly face that looked Italian in origin, with its first-thing-in-the-morning shadow. He had kind eyes. There was a gentle curiosity on his face, and she felt a pressure in her chest that she understood was her need to talk to someone, anyone, about how much Jeff had hurt her.

  “What happens,” she said slowly, “is that the guy is a workaholic, and when some crisis happens at work, he runs off to fix it and the girl remembers why she couldn’t live with him to begin with.”

  “Huh. So, like, he just left?”

  “You know I don’t really owe you anything, right?” she asked, more for her own benefit than his. “I don’t have to tell you.”

  He nodded. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I know.” Yet it was comforting, this total stranger who somehow, mysteriously, had become their—she’d been about to think godfather, but she decided that was vaguely discriminatory and settled on guardian angel instead.

  “So he just left,” Brooklyn repeated.

  She nodded.

  “And you—just let him go?”

  “Well, what the hell else was I supposed to do? This is what he does. He makes promises he can’t keep. He spends most of his time working. He thinks the job is that important.”

  “You could tell him he’s wrong.”

  “I have told him—”

  She stopped. She thought back to the ringing of the phone, their intimacy cooling rapidly as the familiar sound floated in the air. To the train ride two days ago when she’d first fled from his endless conversation with his admin. To a hundred, maybe a thousand other phone calls. All the times she’d let him put her aside. Let him put work first.

  She was well trained. The phone rang, and she melted obligingly into the shadows. You want to abandon me? Again? Sure! Let me just get myself out of the way here.

  She had told him yesterday that she’d asked him a million and one times to work less, that she’d gotten sick of the sound of her own voice, but now that she thought about it, she knew the truth. That voice had been in her head. Rattling around, a shout, a scream. When it had come down to it, she had squelched her complaints and let things go rather than rock the boat.

  She hadn’t seen the connection because she hadn’t associated each minor instance of Jeff’s departure, his mini acts of abandonment, with her father’s many goings. But that’s what it was, right? As hard as she had tried not to be her mother, she’d missed the big picture. Every time he left and she gave him permission, every time he tuned her out and she complied, she made it a little easier for him to think he could keep going like this forever.

  What would have happened if she’d stopped acquiescing? What would have happened if she’d stopped playing nice? If just once, instead of disappearing into her own head and letting him have the conversation, she’d wrenched the phone out of his hand and hung up the call?

  She’d never know now, would she?

  Unless—

  Unless it was not, in fact, too late.

  She looked at her watch as if it would shed some light on the larger issue of whether this revelation had come in time.

  She could get off at the next stop, call in sick to work, get a GO Shuttle, and head to the airport. Find him. Tell him. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything, but at least she would know.

  The train was approaching White Plains. She stood up, lurching forward into the seat, nearly smacking Brooklyn in the face with her shoulder.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded. “Don’t go. I’ll shut up. I promise. I was just trying to help.”

  She smiled at him, her stranger on a train, her guardian angel. “You helped.”

  “So where are you going?”

  She stepped into the aisle.

  “Home.”

  Chapter Eight

  She hung on to Brooklyn’s seat as the train swayed and pulled into the station, and then she heard it again.

  Jeff’s phone. Behind her.

  What?

  “I like happily-ever-after endings, myself,” said Brooklyn to no one in particular. “I like romantic comedies. Not those dark little dramas at the Sunshine Cinemas, where someone has to end up dead to teach everyone a lesson about pride going before a fall.”

  Riiiing.

  “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “That sound. The phone ringing.”

  Brooklyn was grinning like mad at her. Maybe because she was mad as a hatter herself.

  People were climbing onto the train and making their way into her car. She shrank back into her seat. Even over the sound of footsteps and people settling themselves in, the ringing was clear.

  It was getting closer, unless she really was hallucinating. Unless she really had lost her mind. She turned slowly.

  “Mind if I sit here?”

  That was Jeff’s voice, and it was attached to Jeff. Her noodle legs gave out, and she collapsed back into the seat.

  Jeff looked exhausted. There were circles under his eyes and a generous scruff along his chin and jaw. And there was something in his face. Contrition and determination and, wow, she had never seen him look that nervous. Not when he’d first approached her in a Peet’s Coffee, cockier than she usually went for. Not when he’d asked her to move in with him, a genuine question but one he hadn’t ever doubted her answer to. Not even when he’d shown up on the train on Tuesday morning, half apology and half certified-Jeff surety.

  Now he looked green with anxiety. He looked the way she felt.

  He leaned down, and when he spoke in her ear, his voice was rough from whatever combination of fatigue and nerves he was packing. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Is this seat taken?”

  She managed to get enough of her muscles and nerves to cooperate that she could slide over and make room for him. Brooklyn had disappeared. She couldn’t see the top of his head. He might not be tactful, but apparently he was discreet.

  Jeff sat, bringing his heat with him. Lack of sleep had chilled her to the bone, and she wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and beg him to hold her.

  “I came back,” he said.

  Noise rushed in her ears, like wind on a ski slope or a train passing through a valley. She had to lean her hot cheek against her cool hand to collect herself. This was what she had wanted, but the reality of it was overwhelming. “Yeah.” It was the best she could manage.

  He ran both hands through his hair, standing it on end. “I’ve been a crazy idiot,” he said, a pileup of words. “I’ve done everything wrong. I’ve put the job first and you last and— Look. I know I don’t deserve a third chance. Hell, I probably didn’t deserve a second chance.”

  Slowly, dumbly, she was making sense out of the shock of the last few minutes. He had come back. He was here.

  “I came back because I need you to give me another chance. When I climbed on this train two days ago, I was going nowhere. In a big fat fucking hurry. And then I sat down next to you and—and all of a sudden, even though I was riding in circles, everything made so much sense.”

  He reached out and took her hand, his fingertips painting teasing lines on her palm. Waking her up out of her stupor. “These last few days, riding the train with you, I’ve been alive. I’ve been grateful. I’ve laughed more and cared more, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like I was moving forward, instead of being carried backward, away from some goal I can’t see. And I realized: This is my reason for being. This is what I want to do. I want to be with you. Really be with you.”

  The frozen parts of her were thawing, and the import of his words, not only their literal meaning, was starting to penetrate her core.

  “I’m going to take some time off. When I get back, we’re going to hire a management team a
t Streamline. The bulk of the work, the worst of the every day—it won’t be my problem anymore. There will be slack. I’ll be able to walk away. Ignore the phone.”

  She felt a flash of elation and then a suffocating wash of terror, like someone had dumped cold water over her. Would he be able to walk away? Could he ignore the phone? What if she wasn’t enough for him and, having given part of Streamline away, he resented the hell out of her?

  “I love you, Amy. I know it isn’t easy for you, but I really, really need you to give me another chance. I don’t know what number we’re on now, maybe it’s way more than three, but whatever it is, I need you to give me one.”

  There were tears in her eyes, emotion choking her, as she said, “I don’t want you to give up Streamline. You love that company—”

  “No. I love you. And I’m not giving it up. I’m pruning it back, bringing it in line. I’m making it what it should be—a job, not the center of my universe. And—” He took a deep breath and squeezed her hand. “I’m asking you to sacrifice too. Because believe me, I know what it’s like to have a job that’s really important to you. I know how much courage it must have taken you to come out here, and I want you to know, I’m not telling you, I’m asking you—like really asking—how you’d feel about—”

  She’d never heard him that hesitant. A tiny smile bloomed in her chest, grew into a grin and a laugh of pleasure. “I’m coming home. I’d already made up my mind.”

  She saw from the widening of his eyes that he hadn’t known, hadn’t been at all sure of his reception. He looked past her for a moment, out the window, and she realized he was trying to steady himself, to collect himself. Her Jeff, her bossy medieval guy, hadn’t been sure.

  “We could get on one of those cross-country trains.” Strength gathered in his voice. “We could do some leisurely exploring. I don’t want this to end yet.” He gestured around them, and she knew he meant more than just the train ride. He meant the small secret world of the two of them.

  She couldn’t talk. He seemed to understand, because he took her hands and held them tight in his. Then he let go with one and reached into his pocket, and she knew, absolutely knew what was going to be in his hand when he pulled it out—

  Only instead of a ring box, it was his cell phone.

  He held it out. Put it in her palm. “Would you do the honors?”

  She looked from the phone to him, puzzled.

  “Come with me,” he said, rising. She tottered down the aisle after him. He pulled the door open, and they walked into the swaying vestibule between cars.

  “You could get in trouble for this,” she warned him.

  “The MTA already thinks I’m a terrorist. This can hardly lower their opinion of me.”

  “You want me to throw your phone out there? I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can.”

  She took a deep breath. All this time, she’d been afraid that if she asked anything of him, demanded anything of him, she might turn out not to have been worth his sacrifice. That she’d wake to find he’d left and taken breakfast with him.

  I want to be with you. Really be with you.

  She clutched his arm with the hand that didn’t hold the phone. Looked up into his smiling face, his eyes filled with love and conviction. There was no doubt, no hesitation there. Nor was there any in her voice or her heart when she spoke. “I love the idea of a cross-country train ride.”

  “I know you love your job.”

  She shrugged. “I like my job. I love you. And I want to be with you too. Really be with you. I should have been clearer about that. I never said it. I thought I said it, and maybe I did once or twice, but I never told you to hang up the phone or come home or pay more attention. I was afraid. That you’d—” Her voice broke. “I was afraid you’d say no.”

  “I wouldn’t have.” His voice was ragged.

  “I know. I know now. I should have had the courage to tell you I needed you. More of you.” She shook the phone for emphasis. “I need more of you.” She made herself meet his gaze. “All of you.”

  His eyes shone. “You have me. All of me.” He reached for her with both arms, but she held back a moment.

  She reached out and touched his cheek, rough from a day and a half’s neglect. She drew her thumb across his cheekbone, and he leaned his head into her touch. He closed his eyes, his lashes casting long shadows, darker than the shadows under his eyes. Then he opened them and looked at her, but he seemed to be looking through her, at something in his own head. “I don’t know when I decided that I was the only thing standing between Streamline and disaster,” he said quietly. “But when I told Porter I wanted to bring in a management team, it felt like the weight of the world got lifted off me. I didn’t realize what I’d been carrying around.”

  She let her hand touch his shoulder before resting it on the hard muscle of his arm. “I did. I just didn’t realize I could ask you to put it down.”

  He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. “Amy.” That was it, just her name. And he rested there for a moment, his breath brushing her face, mint and Jeff. She wrapped her arms around him and dragged him closer, bringing the hard wall of his torso against hers with a jolt that she felt to her toes. They stood there for a long time, swaying with the motion of the train.

  Then he straightened and pulled away. He drew the exterior door of the train open and they looked out together at the embankment, flying past, a blur of dirt and scrub and litter. He reached out his hand, and she laid the phone in his palm. With one smooth motion, an abbreviated baseball windup, he hurled it out the door. It bounced out of their vision immediately, gone, just like that.

  “The leave of absence has officially begun,” he said.

  “All your data, though? What if someone finds it?”

  “I can wipe it remotely,” he confessed. “Does that ruin the gesture?”

  She was laughing and crying. “No. Not in the slightest.”

  He pulled the door shut and took her in his arms and kissed her, hard and fierce. “You come first with me. Always. Okay?”

  He led her back to their seats, the two of them wobbling all the way and dodging the odd passenger who had stood to claim an overhead item. She sat, but before he did, he reached into his other pocket, and there it was in his palm, a black velvet box, and he snapped it open and said, “Amy, will you be my seat mate for the rest of my life?”

  The rest of my life. He was serious. He had thrown away his phone and was hiring new people to run his company, and he wanted her to spend the rest of her life with him.

  “Oh, Jeff… Oh, Jeff!”

  “Holy Mother of God,” said a gruff, Brooklyn-accented voice from the seat in front of them. “If you don’t say yes, I will personally reach over the seat and strangle you both. I can’t take any more.”

  There was laughter from the seats around them, and Amy laughed too, through her tears, and nodded her head as hard as she could, while Jeff removed the ring from the box and slid it onto her finger. It was too big, but she wouldn’t let him take it off, just clung to it, and then clung to him while he kissed her and kissed her and the train pulled into the station with a squeal that might’ve been her own squeal of delight.

  Jeff took her hand.

  They watched out the window together as passengers disembarked and new passengers climbed aboard, their ebb and flow part of the train’s pulse. The train pulled out of the station, and she turned to him, smiling, and he smiled back, and squeezed her hand.

  The train gathered speed, a purr of contentment, a race of excitement, the beginning of the rest of their travels together.

  About the Author

  Serena Bell writes stories about how sex messes with your head, why smart people do stupid things sometimes, and how love can make it all better.

  Bell wrote her first steamy romance before she was old enough to understand what all the words meant and has been perfecting the art of hiding pages and screens from curious eyes ever since—a skill t
hat’s particularly useful now that she’s the mother of two school-aged children.

  For a while, Bell took a break from penning love stories to explore the world as a journalist, where she spent time shadowing and writing about a cast of fascinating real-life characters, including a midwife and home-birth advocate, one of President Obama’s key advisers on health care reform, and a U.S. Senator with a pivotal role in the 2010 mid-term elections.

  When she’s not writing or getting her butt kicked at Scrabble by a six-year-old, she’s practicing modern dance improv in the kitchen, swimming laps, talking a long walk, or reading on one of her large collection of electronic devices. You can find her at www.serenabell.com, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @serenabellbooks.

  Two hearts converge…until fear runs love off the rails.

  Tight Quarters

  © 2013 Samantha Hunter

  A Strangers on a Train Story

  In the years since a horrific car accident left her with a long list of phobias, Brenna Burke has overcome them all except one. Crippling claustrophobia—not a good trait for an aspiring travel writer.

  With an interview for her dream job looming, Brenna forces herself to board a train for a weekend tour through New York State…only to find her berth has been double booked.

  Retired NYPD detective Reid Cooper isn’t happy about the mix-up, or his attraction to his petite, sexy roommate. But as their up-close-and-personal weekend progresses, something remarkable happens. Being with Reid makes Brenna feel normal, unafraid of anything.

  After one passionate night, both are thinking beyond a mere weekend fling. But when Brenna’s last phobia pounces at the worst possible time, she could miss the last boarding call for happily ever after.

  Warning: This book contains a hot-to-the-touch hero and sizzling sex at high speeds.

  The last train of the night might just be the start of something good.

  Thank You for Riding

  © 2013 Meg Maguire

  A Strangers on a Train Story