Happily Ever After: A Romance Collection

by Amelia Wilde

  "So Kayleigh is a little drama queen," Ruby was saying, babbling. "And she goes whining to her mother who's a kindergarten teacher too, saying that Brandon had shown her his butt when the poor kid's pants just fell down..."

  I chuckled. "That's great baby." The tips of my fingers throbbed and I shoved them into my pockets, cursing myself for wearing a leather jacket instead of something warmer. Then I remembered that if I had my hands in my pockets I couldn't hold on to Ruby, so I reached out and grabbed her. "Here, we're just going to walk now, okay? Just a walk?"

  Stumbling, blinded by the snow and wind, we walked, holding each other and I tried not to dwell on morbid thoughts like, "I'm really glad I told her I loved her before we died." "What if I made the wrong call? We should have stayed with the car?" "Are we going to die because I wanted to play for an audience again? Am I really the way that Gabe has always claimed I was?

  My thoughts swirled like the snow. Ruby's babble had died away and I could hear her teeth chattering violently now. "Come closer," I told her, slinging my arm over her and pulling her close. The tip of my pinky was really starting to hurt now. "I see, I think I see a stop sign, right? That's the intersection, we're not too far baby."

  Ruby mumbled something like she was trying to talk but her teeth were chattering too much. Blank fear took over my body. "Okay baby, I'm going to carry you now, ready?" She made no response, so I slung her into a fireman's carry and started to run, my heart pounding out of my chest. I was running blind past the stop sign, when I saw a fuzzy light, snow dancing viciously around it.

  "Look baby. Look it's the house. We did it. You did it. Just hold on, not long now. Help!" I shouted. "Someone help!

  39

  Ruby

  The farmhouse with the blown down tree was owned by a man named Don Raw. Turns out he'd known my father and was very surprised to find Joe Riley's daughter half frozen on his doorstep at three in the morning. He'd woken up to check on his animals and ended up saving us instead.

  Now I sat at the edge of a hospital bed with a blanket over my shoulders, sipping microwaved hot chocolate and listening to the mysterious beeping sounds that pinged all around me, but my whole body was on edge. "Excuse me?" I called to a nurse who was hurrying past. "I'm looking for information on the man I came in here with?"

  She immediately came over and checked my pulse. "You two really went through something tonight," she said as she counted the beats.

  I pressed my lips together. "He saved my life," I agreed.

  She glanced up my eyes. "You really love him, don't you?"

  I nodded, suddenly unable to speak. The weight of what we'd just gone through - how Jonah had risked his own life to save mine, how he'd pushed himself to the limit to carry me to safety - made my breath catch in my throat. "I really do," I said.

  She nodded and then gave a conspiratorial grin. "Come on. There's no reason why you can't finish warming up in his room."

  I slipped off the bed and followed after her. Strange feelings of numbness were still present in my limbs, like little localized shots of Novocain, but the doctor had said that would subside. I'd escaped the worse of the hypothermia by staying close to Jonah's body heat.

  The way I figured it, staying close to Jonah was a good strategy overall. I was already smiling when I pushed the door open to see him, but my smile fell immediately when I saw him sitting there with heavy bandages on both of his hands.

  He lifted his head and smiled softly when I came in. "Boy am I glad to see you," he said. "How are you doing?"

  "I'm totally fine," I said, perching at the edge of his bed. But my heart was sinking rapidly. "You're not though," I said, gesturing to his hands. "Frostbite?"

  "Well they didn't turn black and fall off." He shifted in the bed and grinned at me. "Finn told me I had the lamest version of frostbite ever. Just some blisters.

  "On your fingertips?"

  He nodded and kept the smile on his face but I could see a shadow of pain cross it, and instantly knew what he was thinking because I was thinking it too.

  His fingertips. That he used to play guitar.

  Waves of guilt crashed up against waves of love until I felt like I was being sucked down into a whirlpool. "If you hadn't been there - ." I started to say and then stopped.

  The car had gone off into a steep embankment alongside the road. In the blinding white and pitch dark, it was like it was invisible. If I had been alone, and stayed there, the snow would have covered the car until it was one more indistinct lump in the snow. Maybe no one would have even come until the day time, at which point who knows what would have happened. "It was crazy to leave the car and go blundering through the storm," I said. "But doing the crazy thing probably saved both our lives."

  He nodded tightly. "I have another crazy thing I'm thinking of doing."

  I gingerly took his bandaged hand and rested it in my lap, stroking his arm up and down. "You're going to join Gabe on his TV show?" I teased.

  His mouth twisted up in that natural smile I was seeing more and more often. "I mean he is leaving this week to go start shooting. Now is my chance."

  I must have looked furious because he burst out laughing. "No, are you kidding me? First off, Gabe would kick my ass for trying to steal his spotlight. Second, I don't even want his spotlight. He literally just got his arm out of a splint, and now he'd going to go try and bust himself up again. I don't get it."

  "I think you do. He feels alive when he's risking something. You feel alive when the spotlight is on you."

  He shook his head firmly. "I feel alive when I'm with you."

  I leaned into him. "Especially when we almost die?"

  He chuckled and scratched his fingers along the back of my hair, making me want to purr. "I think I can forego almost dying for a while and just be with you."

  I sighed happily as his words hung there in the air. With each heartbeat, the meaning of what he'd just said got clearer and clearer. Holding my breath, I turned to face him to see that he was watching expectantly. "Ah, there it is," he said with a grin. "I was wondering if you'd heard me."

  "You're staying?" I breathed.

  "I want to be with you," he said, pulling me closer. "And you're here. So I'm here too." He looked down and brushed my face with his bandaged hand. "Simple as that."

  40

  Jonah

  Nearly freezing your fucking hands off really puts a damper on your guitar playing prowess. For the first two days after the accident, my fingers throbbed and ached so badly that I could barely sleep. The only thing that got me through the pain was Ruby distracting me as best she could.

  She was really good at distracting me.

  But after the initial pain wore off, the bandages were just annoying. I couldn't get them wet. It was a pain in the ass to go to the bathroom. And the white cloth covering my hands seemed to make them even more enticing for Ginger's kamikaze attacks.

  But the one positive thing about not being able to use my hands was that it gave me a lot of time to think. And some of the thoughts I was thinking about my plan were not all that proud.

  On the fifth day after the accident, Gabe stopped by with some gadget he'd seen on TV that was supposed to help people grip stuff. "Look, it's like you have a bionic arm," he crowed, looking quite pleased with himself.

  I grinned. "This is actually kind of cool," I said. "Wish I could play the guitar with it, but..."

  "That'll come back, dude," he said, and his voice was choked with more emotion than I'd heard from my brother in a long while.

  I swallowed. "Hey man, I need to tell you something. It was supposed to be a big surprise and shit, but I got a rather massive sign from above that that was the wrong way to go about it," I said, lifting my bandaged hands.

  Gabe furrowed his brow. His arm was in a soft cast now and the two of us with our bandages looked more similar than we every had before. "So what do you want to tell me?" he asked,

  "Well, more show you." I gestured for him to follow me to my room w
here I got down on my knees and clumsily pulled the box out from under my bed.

  "That's the box," he said immediately. "The one Ruby brought over and you wouldn't tell me what it was."

  "I always knew you're smarter than you looked," I teased.

  He leaned over and peered inside. "Tapes?"

  "Yeah. Pop one in to the player there. I'd do it myself but..." I waved my hands.

  His curiosity was killing him, I could tell. He grabbed a tape at random and slid it into the tape deck, then pressed play.

  We both sat back on our heels as the sound of Gid's guitar filled the room. "Is that - ?"

  "Yeah."

  He listened, his eyes strangely bright as Gid's voice rang out. I hummed along without thinking.

  "Where'd these come from?" Gabe said, pressing stop and reaching into the box to find another one.

  "Gideon gave them to Ruby for safekeeping," I told him. "They were very close, actually."

  Gabe blinked. "I don't think I knew that."

  I nodded. "There were a lot of things I didn't know about Gid. I thought he was like...mine, you know? I treated him like some kind of human crutch to prop me up, but now that he's gone I realized I never really got around to finding out who he really is. Was." I swallowed. "Like I'll never know why he gave this box to Ruby instead of a family member, or geez, why he even thought he had to give it away at all. Why didn't he want to make a record, hell he had four nephews with insane industry connections. We could have done something with this."

  Gabe was listening, tracing the outline of the box. "Sometimes people do things that don't make sense," he said, and I got the feeling he was repeating something that had been said to him a million times before.

  "I re-recorded them," I blurted.

  He turned to glare at me. "What?"

  I nodded, shame filling my chest. "I thought I knew what Gid should have done, so I went ahead and did it."

  His face clouded. "Jonah, what the fuck?"

  "I know. I arranged a show and everything. That's where Ruby and I were headed last Saturday night. But right before we were set to go, I started feeling really hesitant, and you know me, I never hesitate about anything." He nodded so fast it was a wonder he didn't get whiplash. "So that's when I started to wonder if I was making a mistake thinking I should make money off this, even if I was calling it a tribute record. Because it wasn't really about Gid, was it?"

  Gabe blinked slowly. "Geez dude," he finally said. "I'm honestly kind of impressed."

  "Fuck you," I said with a grin.

  "Maybe Ruby is good for you."

  "She is," I agreed.

  He looked at the box again. "I think you're right about not selling these songs. But I don't think that means you can't play them."

  I was confused. "What do you mean?"

  The corner of his mouth tugged up. "You're getting there, Jonah. We're gonna make a non-asshole out of you yet. I know you look at music like it's your job, but there are other reasons for playing than just making money, you know. You can make it about Gid instead." He stood up and patted my shoulder. "I have faith in you."

  I looked at my brother. "I think that's the first time you've ever said something like that to me."

  He shrugged. "Yeah, well, don't make me feel like a jackass for saying it, okay?"

  41

  Ruby

  Christmas was in two days. The kids had been dismissed early from school today, which gave me plenty of time to get ready - making sure I dressed very warmly out of some residual fear - and head down to the Crown Tavern.

  Closed for Private Event read the handwritten sign on the door and I grinned at Jonah's barely legible chicken scratch. I needed to have a word with his kindergarten teacher about that.

  Inside, the bar was decorated with a few bundles of evergreen boughs tied off with bows made out of Christmas camouflage. I hadn't even known that existed, but it made perfect sense for this town.

  There was also a small circle of beat up folding chairs. I looked around for a second and then had to remind myself that Gabe had left four days ago, heading out to start shooting season two of King of Pain. But I did see Mr. King and Mrs. King, Beau, Finn, and Claire, Sadie and Willa. Dee had come and was waving at me to come sit by her, and there, in the corner like a wispy shadow, was Isobel Tanner. That was it. It really was a very private event.

  After a moment, Jonah walked out with a guitar held in his hands. He didn't wait for applause, just sat down at the mic and set the guitar across his lap.

  I waggled my fingers at him. He grinned and waggled his back, showing me that they worked just fine. "Thanks for coming," he said into the mic. "I wanted to think of tonight as a kind of memorial service." I hid my smile behind my hand. "Since I missed the first one, and all," he said pointedly to me. "Let's call this my way of making up for that."

  He strummed. And then slowly, stiffly, he started to play.

  I'd seen Jonah naked by now. This was a different kind of naked. Stripped. Open. Honest.

  He sang with his eyes closed, not watching for our reactions, not gauging whether we loved him the way we should. And that made me love him even more.

  As the slow song of yearning rang from his guitar, I could barely keep my eyes off him. Every movement was tight with a private grief but also huge with catharsis. With acceptance, with letting go not only of his uncle but of so many things I wasn't sure I'd ever truly know about him but I was more than ready to spend all the time I could finding them out.

  I snuck a peek at the private audience. Izzy was openly weeping, her grief wild and uninhibited. Mrs. King was rubbing her back in rhythmic circles as she dabbed her own eyes with a tissue. Foster King was sitting straight backed, his eyes glittering.

  It was an echo of Gid's funeral, except instead of saying goodbye, it was like we'd all come by to say hi, to visit and share our memories, some sad of course but most happy and freeing. Dee laughed out loud when Jonah sang Gid's more ribald lyrics, shaking her head.

  Behind me, Taylor was wiping the bar, the same spot over and over. He wanted to seem like he wasn't intently listening, but he clearly was. I pressed my lips together and lifted my chin towards him. "Yeah," I tried to say with my face. "You see him now?He's the real fucking deal, so show some respect."

  When it was all over, Jonah just looked down at his guitar for a moment. Then he leaned into the mic. "Okay, well I don't know about you guys, but I need a drink."

  We laughed and the heavy weight of grief was lifted, and we turned this memorial into a celebration.

  Before long, the party was getting louder, with Taylor helping it along by pouring very generous drinks. Dee was holding court, telling everyone who would listen about the time Gid went toe to toe with the school board and walked away with the biggest budget Crown Creek Elementary had ever spent on a musical. "I was on his side but I was scared of him. The man was a legend. I think if he had asked them to build an entire new wing on the school just for the arts program they would have listened to him."

  "He almost did," Izzy piped up. Tears were still leaking from her eyes and she tightly hugged the MP3 player Jonah has given her, with all of Gid's demos and tapes burned onto it. He was going to give her a copy of tonight's performance too. The only one that would ever be made.

  I looked at his brothers who were laughing with Claire over something.

  And then I looked again to see Jonah standing alone. He'd been the performer tonight, but it was Gid we were all talking about. Pride made my chest feel like it was going to burst. I went to him immediately. "What's wrong?"

  He shook his head and slung his arm over my shoulder. "Nothing."

  "You're the worst liar in the world and you should never play poker. Ever."

  He gave me a rueful grin. "No it's just," he pulled out his phone. "I called Gabe, thinking he might want to Skype in or maybe listen over speaker or something, but he never got back to me. Hope he's okay."

  "I'm sure he's fine," I said. Jonah sighed and nodd
ed, pulling me close and scratching the back of my head. I pulled back immediately and grabbed his hand. "Your fingers?"

  "They work," he said, with a touch of pride.

  "Can you feel everything?" I asked, pressing them to my lips.

  His eyes darkened. "I feel that."

  Heat rushed through my belly and then down to my core. "Don't you want to stay here? You're the man of the hour, aren't you?"

  He shook his head. "No. Gid is." He glanced at the laughing knots of people. None of them were even paying us a bit of attention. "Let's get out of here. My fingers have healed enough to play guitar. Now I just need to make sure they can still make you come all over them."

  Spoiler alert: They could.

  42

  Ruby

  "Happy New Year, baby," he groaned as my bones turned to jelly. I buried my face in his neck to muffle my scream of pleasure. He was right there with me and then we were falling together, our own private fireworks on New Year's Eve.

  I fell back on the bed with a contented sigh, then laughed when I saw Ginger's paw sliding under the door. "She knows what we're doing in here."

  I expected Jonah to laugh, but when I looked up at him, he was watching me with a strange expression on his face. "What's up?

  He looked like he was mulling something over, and then all at once came to his decision. "I need to do something now," he announced, standing back up again.

  His stuff was scattered all over my house, including the guitar he'd played the night of the memorial concert. He told me later that it had been Gid's guitar, a little tidbit that had made me weep openly and then attack him all over again.