by Piper Rayne
“I honestly think you should talk to your father.” Adrian follows me.
I place the box on the kitchen table and rush upstairs to see what else my dad has done to the house. All the pictures that my mom perfectly placed up the stairs—my birth to ten, the first day of school, our first family photo, my first visit with Santa—every framed picture has been stripped from the wall. There’s not even a sign of them. No rectangular patch to show how many years it was there because… wait.
I flip on the light switch on the stairs. Sure enough, he painted my room too.
“Ugh!” I scream, my feet unable to move fast enough for me.
I open my dad’s bedroom door, and there’s all the proof I need that he’s erased her from his life. Their wedding picture no longer stands on the corner of the dresser. Her jewelry box that held her wedding ring that she didn’t want to wear into combat and all the heirlooms of her family gone. Packed away somewhere as though they’re meaningless.
“Hey.” Adrian’s hand runs down the length of my arm.
My throat tightens the more I realize that it no longer feels like my mother in this room. And all I can think about is how she sleeps here. Fae. The fake-blonde I’m beginning to hate.
Tearing away from Adrian and the room that holds good and bad memories, I head into my old room. He’s vanquished any sign of my life in this house as well. My purple bedspread has been replaced with a gray one. My track medals no longer hang next to my dresser. Pulling open the closet door, I see that my Girl Scout uniform no longer hangs on the rack with my prom dress and other memories. There are boxes labeled “Sierra’s room” stuffed in the corner of the closet, so I sit down and pry one open.
“Sierra,” Adrian says.
I know he doesn’t understand my reaction. He ran away from his family. I did too, all those years ago. I abandoned my dad as soon as I was old enough, but I never thought he’d do this without talking to me.
I look up and Adrian’s standing in the doorway of my walk-in closet, sadness in his eyes. I hate that look and everything it represents.
“You know what? I’m sorry, I’m gonna stay here. You should probably go.” I stand and walk out of the room, knowing he’ll probably follow me.
“What? I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“There’s no reason for you to stay. I’m just going to figure this all out and I’ll probably move this stuff somewhere, a storage locker or something. I’ll see you back at the apartment, okay?” I open the front door, but he stands in my dad’s new living room.
“Sierra?”
“I’m fine.”
He inhales a deep breath and his gaze bores into mine.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re hurting.”
“I just need to handle this. Please go home.”
“No.” He shakes his head and sits in a chair I don’t recognize.
“Adrian.”
He raises his eyebrows from the bite of my tone. “I’m not five and you’re not my mother. You can’t force me to do something I don’t want to do.” He crosses his leg, his ankle resting on his knee. Relaxed as though he’s waiting for a drink to be delivered so he can have a long conversation with an old friend.
“This isn’t your business.” I swallow the lump forming in my throat. Will he leave so I can do this by myself and break down alone?
“Kind of is.”
“How do you figure?” I ask.
A couple walks by the house, looks through the open front door, and continues on down the street. I used to know everyone who lived on this block.
“I’m your friend. It’s a friend’s duty to make their friend feel better when said friend is upset.”
I almost laugh at his absurd way of bringing up this topic up now. “Friends know when friends need space.”
“Friends give hugs when said friend is about to cry.” He slides up to the edge of the cushion and holds out his arms.
“Said friend needs to go home so the other friend can deal with her family.”
He shakes his head. “Said friend wants to help the other friend.”
I hold up my hand. “Please stop with the friend talk.”
“So friend stays?” he asks.
“No.” I stomp my foot like a toddler.
He leans back in the chair again, exuding patience. “Yes, said friend is gonna stay until the other friend is honest.”
I slam the front door, my amusement morphing to anger that he won’t leave me be. Let me grieve, let me be angry without an audience. “Said friend is annoying the other friend.”
“Said friend is sorry.” His smirk says he’s not going to go anywhere.
I move my hand to where my dad always keeps the remote—in the basket on the end table—but it’s not there. Looking down, all I find is a folded up piece of paper. I open it to find the itinerary of a trip.
“You’re shittin’ me,” I say, reading how Dad and Fae are on vacation in Tahiti right now.
I drop the paper and scour for the remote, finding it on the other end table. It’s not even positioned in my dad’s military OCD, pointed in the direction of the television. It’s all cockeyed.
Picking it up, I press the power button and toss the remote to Adrian. “Said friend can watch television while the other friend handles things upstairs.”
Without waiting for his answer, I run upstairs, refusing to look at the now-blank stairway wall. Sitting on the floor of my closet, I open a box and find my mom’s jewelry box.
When did this become mine and not his?
I slide both hands along the edge of the jewelry box, my knuckles running along the rough cardboard as it easily slides out of the box. I place the jewelry box on the floor and brush my fingertips along the inscription.
* * *
Nothing in here is as beautiful as you.
* * *
My hands shake as I open the box. Tears overflow, seeing her wedding ring in the slot next to her high school class ring and the emerald ring my dad gave her on their anniversary.
I sort through her earrings and necklaces, some heirlooms from her grandmothers, and other pieces she bought on her own—some expensive, some cheap. The small round hoops she wore on a daily basis except for the weekends she had to go to the Army Reserve.
Lifting the first tray, I gently place it on the carpet. The bottom is filled with jewelry boxes. Boxes I don’t remember from when I was younger and would sneak a look at her jewelry as she got ready for dates with my dad.
I open the dark boxes one by one, finding medal after medal, ribbon after ribbon. Everything she earned during her time in the Army Reserve. The last box I pick up is more worn than the previous ones, as though it’s been opened more than the others.
My heart hammers, knowing this is something important, something he looked at often. Because it’s with the rest of her military accolades, I’m not surprised when her dog tags lay on the cotton in the box. The last time I saw them, they were clenched in my dad’s fists after he’d passed out.
I pick them up, reading the hammered out lettering, my thumb running along the length.
* * *
Sanders
Abigail M
134 50 8920
O Positive
Catholic
* * *
He’s ready to let her go and leave all her memories, all of our family memories to me? How could he do that? How can he forget her? Is Fae that great of a lay that’s she stripped the deep love my father had for my mother? The love that made him lay in that bed day after day? The love that paralyzed him from being the father he was for the first ten years of my life?
One tear tumbles down, catching another tear until streaks form down both cheeks. I pound my fist on the floor, clutching her dog tags and falling forward as I hold them as close as I can to my chest.
“Help me remember her. Don’t ever let me forget her. Don’t ever let me do what my dad is doing and let her rot in a box,” I murmur, hoping the universe
or God is listening.
My breath is labored as reality sets in like it did when I was ten and realized she was never returning. Somehow, the fact that my dad is stripping her from his life makes me feel as though I’m losing her all over again.
As if someone is listening to me, two strong arms pick me up off the floor and carry me to the bed.
A memory floats up from the back of my mind of a time I was in a different set of arms. There was a storm and I sneaked into my parents’ room, but my mom walked me back, saying Daddy had an early morning. I was terrified she was going to tuck me in and say it was just a storm and I’d be fine, but after she laid me down, she slid into my twin-size bed and held me until dawn.
I feel as safe in these arms as I did then.
Chapter Eighteen
Adrian
* * *
I’m partly responsible for the fact that Sierra’s tears are staining my shirt. I forced her to talk to me, to get everything out in the open. Never did I think we’d uncover all this.
I tried to let her sort through her things upstairs. I tried to concentrate on some reality show drama where people were arguing about stupid shit and forget that whatever she was doing, she was hurting. But I couldn’t. She needed to know I’m here for her.
As night went on, she fell into a deeper sleep, nestled into my side with her arm draped over my stomach. I can’t remember the last time I slept with a woman. Clothed, that is.
Being a prince, I never tried to have a long-term relationship, mostly because I never knew what a woman’s intentions were. It’s hard to trust anyone when people view you as a means to an end. The title of queen being the ultimate end.
Now that dawn sneaks in through her open curtains and lights her childhood bedroom, the aftermath of her tears and her heartbreak are more visible on her sleeping face.
An overwhelming sense of admiration hits me square in the heart. She’s so fierce and feisty, but under all that hides a little girl who lost her mom. Those wounds aren’t healed. The fact her father told her nothing of the sale of the house says her relationship with him is strained at best.
Earlier, I picked up the piece of paper that says her father is in Tahiti until next week sometime. I didn’t get the impression Sierra knew anything about that either.
She stirs, stopping all my rambling thoughts. I brush back her beautiful red hair, and she tries to slyly wipe the drool that fell from her mouth. I laugh and she looks at me, her cheeks turning my favorite shade of pink. I love to make that blush appear. If she was ever mine, I’d have fun making her blush all the time and discovering new ways to do so.
“I’m sorry.” She sits up and my hand lazily runs circles on her back.
“Why?”
“Because. Look at me. You had to lie in bed with me all night. I swear this isn’t me.” She pulls the blankets off herself, but I lock my arm around her waist and force her back down. “What are you doing?”
“I’m enjoying this. It’s okay to be vulnerable with me.”
“What are you talking about? This all just took me by surprise.” She looks off in the distance instead of at me.
I use my finger along her chin to bring her eyes back to me. “I understand how you feel.”
She scoffs.
Her reaction takes me by surprise.
“I hate when people say that. People who have both parents still.”
I nod. “True. You’re right. Maybe I don’t understand exactly how you feel, but hiding your grief isn’t going to make it disappear.”
She gnaws at her cheek, pulling her legs up to her chest and locking her arms around them. “I’m not hiding it. It was seventeen years ago.”
“But yet, you’re mad at your dad for moving on with his life.”
Her head whips in my direction. “You don’t know anything about it.” She unhooks her arms from her legs and stands from the bed. “I’ll pack these things and come back later before he returns.”
“You gotta stop running. You have to face this.” I sit up in her bed, leaning forward and resting my forearms on my thighs.
She turns and looks at me over her shoulder from the floor of her closet, tucking her mom’s dog tags in a box as though they weren’t what broke her last night. How many layers of denial are packed over that raw open wound of hers?
“Why do you care?”
She has the right to ask the question. I laid up most of the night asking myself the same thing. Most of the time, the minute things get more than fun with a woman, I remove myself from the situation. I have no idea if it’s what’s going on with my own family or the fact that she let me move in with her, but I do care.
“How come you let me move into your apartment? Was it because you were infatuated with me?”
Small wrinkles form on her forehead. “I wasn’t and I’m not currently infatuated with you.”
I shrug. “I saw the magazines, and you were able to answer all those questions to win the dating contest.”
Her scowl increases for a second, but she forces it down. “Infatuated is not the same as intrigued.”
I shrug. “Okay, however you want to describe it, but how come?”
“I wanted the interview.”
I stare at her long and hard, hoping my glare is enough to crack her.
“The sex then.”
I raise my eyebrows. “And yet you played the friends card immediately?”
She huffs, her attention shifting to the box, putting the jewelry box back in the cardboard box and crisscrossing the edges to close it.
“What do you want from me?” Her voice is strained and tired and angry.
I wish I could figure out why I’m forcing this. Why I want to make sure that when I leave here in five weeks, she’s whole so she can find someone to love her. As much as the thought of another man’s hands on her spurs a bout of Hulk-like anger, I want her to be happy.
“I want you to admit that you’re hurting. It’s only the two of us here. No one else will witness it. Just be straight with me.”
She stands and heads toward the door, but I beat her there to stop her.
“Adrian,” she says as though she’s warning me.
“No, Sierra, admit it.”
“What?”
“Admit how scared you are. Admit how much you miss your mom. Admit whatever you want but hiding the wounds won’t make those feelings go away.”
She tries to slide around me, but I grip her arms and bring her back in front of me.
“I’m going to kick you in the nuts.”
“Fine, but you’re ruining your chance at having kids then.”
She pauses. “Will you stop saying things like that?”
“Like what?”
She steps back. “Like there’s a chance for us. Acting like you want me. You’re here for another month and then you’ll go back home. Stop trying to act like we could be together.”
I step toward her and she steps backward until her bum hits the dresser. “Maybe we could.”
Fuck. What am I saying?
Stop talking. You know you can’t make these promises.
My hands grip her waist. “But first I want you to be real with me.”
She turns away like an indignant child, purposely avoiding eye contact. “And then you’ll stop this whole us being together bullshit?”
I nod, fully aware that I’m probably lying.
“I already told you. My mom died. My dad fell into a depression. Most of my teenage years I spent at friends’ houses. Now he’s packed her up in boxes like she’s an old sweater he doesn’t want anymore.” She looks me square in the eye, no sign of tears, her back ramrod-straight.
“Those are facts,” I say. She places both hands on my chest and pushes me, but I grip her wrists in my hands. “Tell me how you feel.”
“There’s nothin—”
“Just tell me,” I persist.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She wiggles and I release my grip, wanting her to be willi
ng to open up and let me in.
“Tell me. You can trust me.”
She stops fighting to get away and closes her eyes with a ragged sigh. “I miss her. I’m scared every day that I’m forgetting her. Every day after her death when I’d walk into this house, I felt her. Like she could be in the kitchen waiting for me. Or in the basement packing up her gear. She used to be here, and last night I didn’t feel her anymore.” A tear runs down her cheek. “He packed her up and now she’s really gone.”
I pull her into my arms as tightly as I can, holding her head in the crook of my neck. She sobs, her back vibrating as tears coat my skin.
“I wish I could take this pain from you,” I whisper, meaning my words right down to my soul.
I care for her. More than a friendship. I thought it was just sexual, that we could sleep together and say goodbye to one another in five weeks, which is why I keep bringing up the friend zone she’s so aptly assigned me to. I’d leave and marry Princess Adelaide like my parents want and she’d find some guy that who’d give her a happy life.
Right now, I want to take her pain so that it spares her. So I can see that smile that spurs my own. I want her to joke around with me, so I have an excuse to tickle her, because her squirming in my arms is better than not being able to touch her.
The weight of her body falls deeper into my own.
“Hey,” I whisper, brushing her hair out of her face.
She draws back, not apologizing for breaking down and not trying to free herself from my arms. Have I finally gotten her to admit to herself that she’s hurting?
“I promise everything will be okay.”
A small smile creases her lips. “I’m not your responsibility but thank you for staying last night.”
Her vulnerability feels like a nail piercing my heart.
“You are,” I say.
Confusion fills her eyes.
“I know things with us are complicated and right now is a shitty time for me to tell you this, but I really like you.”