“Lo,” Willow mutters, “we don’t get to see each other that much.” Translation: we never usually get to have sex.
Lo cringes like Willow said the untranslated version. “Fine,” he concedes sharply.
“We’ll be quiet,” I tell him. But he’s already waving me off with a hand and walking into the house.
Willow and I exchange a look before breaking into laughter. It’s cut short when Ryke ascends the stairs, reaching the deck with Coconut jumping excitedly beside him.
His eyes hit Willow. “Dad was just on the phone. He said he’s been trying to call you.”
The air deadens, and the wind suddenly picks up.
Ryke’s brown eyes carry confusion. “Why is he fucking calling you so much?”
Willow shrugs. “We talk every week about school.”
I guess that’s not a lie. Shit, I hate that she has to lie to them. But I am glad that she’s not alone in this secret. She has me.
Ryke rubs his lips. No gloves on. But he hardly looks cold. “You need to be careful, Willow.”
She nods. “I know.”
His warning stays with me, even after he leaves.
15 PRESENT DAY – December
Smoky Mountains
WILLOW HALE
Age 21
Sitting against the frosted windowpane, I read a hefty Fundamental Accounting Principles textbook. The next semester starts in January, and I want to get a head start on the reading material. Last semester was tough enough, and my housing issues only makes studying harder.
I spend most days in the student center “quiet zones” and rarely go home. According to upperclassmen, the business courses only get more difficult from here.
Fire roars in the warm, spacious living room. The lake house feels as big as a lodge with vaulted ceilings and balconies that overlook robust leather furniture, wooly rugs, and the stone fireplace.
In the corner, wrapped gifts sit beneath a real fir tree, recently chopped. No ornaments hang on the branches because no one bothered to redecorate. The first fully glammed-out Christmas tree had a hidden nest of spiders.
It was a whole holiday fiasco.
I flip a page and hear the distant cries of a baby.
Must be Luna Hale or Eliot Cobalt, both newborns. The media is rampant with “baby fever” articles about Rose and Lily. Mostly, I think they’re trying to determine how many children Rose and Connor will have.
The Cobalts want an empire, and right now Rose is pregnant with baby number five. But truthfully, I don’t know what constitutes an empire. Five? Six? Fifteen?
I mean…I can’t imagine fifteen Cobalt babies. That’s…a lot.
Cries grow louder.
From the other side of the window nook, Garrison lifts his head from his laptop. He glances up at the tier of balconies. Hearing the baby wails too. When he drops his head, his eyes meet mine, and his feet rub against my feet. His black wool socks caressing my mustard-yellow ones.
My lips slowly rise. Not much can beat these quiet moments with Garrison Abbey. Sharing company and doing normal everyday things together.
“Do you ever think about babies?” Garrison asks suddenly and abruptly.
“Uh…babies…like the small kind?” Oh God…
What other kind are there, Willow?
Garrison licks his lips, a smile forming. “I mean, we can talk about the big babies in the house, but I think Lo has already taken a lot of our time this trip.”
I match his smile. “Sorry…I think all functions shutdown at the word babies when referring to my life. I’m rebooted now.”
“And?” he asks.
“And…” I take a deep breath and nudge my glasses. “I never thought much about them before. I’ve just been focused on getting into college, paying for college, and now trying to survive college.” I close my book and hug the hard binding to my chest, thinking. “But I want the traditional route, I guess. Marriage. Then maybe a baby.”
“A baby.” Garrison emphasizes the singularity of the sentence.
I shrug. “One seems like a good start…or end…or I don’t know. What do you think about babies?” Our eyes search each other deeply and eagerly, but my body roasts from head to toe. We rarely discuss after I graduate and what lies beyond our early twenties. I still have five semesters left in college, and those upcoming years seem like a millennium.
“Marriage first,” he says into a nod. “Then a baby, maybe.”
“A baby,” I repeat his emphasis.
“One,” he says, definitive. “Siblings are…” His Adam’s apple bobs, swallowing hard.
His brothers.
He’s cut all three of them completely out of his life. He never talks to them. Rarely talks about them. They’re just gone, erased from his world. For good reason. But so much pain remains. Scars on bone buried under muscle and skin.
He lost his brothers.
I found mine.
But I did lose someone, too. “My sister,” I say softly, remembering. “I tried calling her this morning.” Back in Maine, my family still has a landline home phone.
Garrison frowns. “I thought you were done trying.”
I squeeze the textbook harder to my chest. “I guess, now I am,” I mutter. “She picked up and told me not to call. She said the holidays are for family and I’m not a part of hers. That if I wanted to talk to our mom, I should call her directly.”
But I wanted to talk to Ellie.
My ten-year-old sister.
I’ve invited her to the lake house for holidays. Lo is her half-brother, but she has no interest in ever knowing him or accepting the olive branches I’ve held out. Ellie blocked me on social media, and every time I dial my mom, she’s short with me. After I say I love you at the end of the call, I wait with bated breath just to hear my mom say it back. Sometimes she does.
So there’s that.
“Damn,” Garrison breathes out, gaze flashing hot. He strokes the side of his foot against mine in comfort. “Your sister still sounds like a brat.”
I shake my head. “I deserve it.”
“You don’t,” he says, no hesitation.
I force down the giant lump in my throat, eyes burning. “From Ellie’s vantage, I chose a famous brother over her.” I blink back raw sentiments. “From anyone’s vantage, I chose Lo.”
“That’s straight bullshit, Willow,” Garrison refutes, his heated gaze sinking into mine. He wears his conviction like another tattoo, ink seeping indelibly. “You chose answers that your mom wasn’t giving you. You chose to reconnect with a brother she kept from you.” He leans forward, forearms on his bent knees. “You weren’t making a choice between Ellie and Lo. And your mom should be explaining that to your little sister—who’s eleven-years younger than you. But she won’t, and that’s fucked up.”
I bite my bottom lip, thinking this over. I’m not sure I can release the guilt I feel. I’m not sure I ever will.
Is my mom painting me as a villain to my little sister, so Ellie won’t follow after me and leave her all alone in Caribou? Or is my mom just taking a backseat and not helping mend the burnt bridges between her daughters?
It’s not my mom’s job to heal the pain I’ve caused by leaving, is it?
That’s my burden and my remorse to bear.
Garrison studies my face. “I get it,” he says. “There are times during the day that I think maybe it’s my fault I didn’t try harder for a better relationship with my brothers. Because it’s easier thinking you had some control in the situation. When in reality, there’s nothing you or I could do to repair what was already fucking gone. They’re gone, Willow. And we have to be okay with that.”
My eyes redden, emotions battling to surface.
Garrison places his computer on the floorboards, and I set the textbook behind me. We scoot closer, my left leg dangling off the nook’s seat. His right leg does the same, and we bend our other knees. Squeezing close. Only a sliver of space between us.
I rest my chin on my knee, a
nd I whisper, “She’s alive, but sometimes it feels like I’m mourning someone who died.”
He presses a kiss to the top of my head and murmurs, “I know.”
“No siblings,” I say, agreeing with him from before.
His aquamarine eyes fill me up and he nods silently. “But our kid will have plenty of cousins.”
Our kid. Hearing him say that pulls a smile out of me. “And they’ll be her or his best friends.”
“For sure,” Garrison nods.
We look around the lake house and listen to the softened baby cries. Those children will be the cousins to our faraway future child.
As our gazes meet, his fingers dip under my soft sweater. His hands slowly skim the bare flesh of my hips. I tingle and light up from the affectionate touch, but this conversation races my pulse.
Wading into new waters with Garrison is like taking a broken flashlight into a cave. It’s terrifying, but I trust in both of us to walk in the right direction.
“If you want a baby in your future,” Garrison says, “does that mean you want to get married…eventually?”
Marriage…
I elbow up my glasses and hold onto my bent leg, my pulse hammering. I’m afraid we won’t be on the same page for this.
“Eventually,” I say, and then I blurt out something, wanting to be as honest as humanly possible with Garrison. “Or soon.”
He solidifies.
I pale. “I mean, not soon soon.”
“You said soon,” he rebuts. “You meant soon.”
“I meant soon-ish.”
He doesn’t remove his hands off my bare hips. It’s a good sign that I haven’t completely scared him off. “What’s soon-ish?” he wonders. “Before you’re twenty-three?”
Twenty-two is already fast approaching. A little over two months away. And maybe I’ll grow older and think that’s such a young age to be contemplating marriage and babies.
But I left home at seventeen.
I moved across the world at twenty.
My life has been a series of big challenges, and I’ve begun to realize that I might not be as adventurous as Daisy Calloway. I might not jump off literal bridges, but I have my own adventures. My own big metaphorical plunges into the unknown.
I, Willow Hale, am a risk-taker. A challenge seeker. I see that now. I feel it deep in my bones.
And I want someone with me, always, to face risks together.
I want Garrison. For as long as I can have him.
Forever, I hope.
But I’m not sure he wants those same things: Me. Forever.
Ever since I left Philly, he’s opened an escape-door, something to jump out of in case our relationship goes sour. I don’t blame him for that, but it’s harder to know exactly where his head is at.
“Maybe not before I’m twenty-three,” I answer Garrison. “I’d still be in school.”
He glances at the textbook I set behind me.
I just ask, “Have you thought about marriage before today?”
He shakes his head, and I don’t know why but that sends pain rippling down my chest.
Have I dreamed about walking down the aisle towards Garrison? Maybe once or twice lying awake in my dorm with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. They were just thoughts though—I never went so far as to torture myself by looking up wedding dresses or rings on Pinterest. I’m not such a fool.
Garrison watches me crumple into myself. Head down, fingers grazing the threads of my mustard-yellow sock. “Willow…” My name sounds different in his voice. Almost choked. “Hey, it’s not that I don’t want to get married. It’s just that with everything—I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“I understand,” I say softly.
It’s not like I ever thought about babies with him before now. Or rather, a baby.
His hands rise from my hips to my ribs, as though trying to reach my heart. “I thought you’d break up with me by now,” he admits. “And maybe if I was a stronger person, I’d just have broken up with you last December. You deserve someone else who—”
“I deserve you,” I snap at him. Pain in my chest radiates everywhere, clawing down my skin, but I’m holding onto his waist now, not letting go. “When will you start believing that?”
He shakes his head, eyes bloodshot. “I don’t know.” He removes one of his hands from my body to push away the longer strands of hair that’ve fallen in his eyes. “Maybe I never will, and then what?”
“Then I’ll keep reminding you,” I say, confident about this future.
He laughs. “Every day? Sounds fucking exhausting for you.” He stares me down, straight in the eyes with this raw plea like just let me go. For your own sake.
I won’t let him push me away.
“The only thing that’s exhausting is reading this.” I reach back and lift up my textbook. “Who knew accounting could be this dull?”
“That bad, huh?” He removes the other hand off my frame as he steals the book and then flips through the pages. We draw closer, our knees knocking together.
“I’d rather listen to TV static for an hour than read another sentence,” I mutter under my breath.
His eyes flit up to me, able to hear my quiet voice.
He’d tell me if he couldn’t.
Silence strains as he focuses on the text, flipping more pages. Snowflakes flutter peacefully outside, windowpanes frosted from the cold, and soothing crackling sounds emit from the fireplace. But nothing helps stop the tension that builds around us.
Garrison doesn’t look up from the book when he finally speaks. “Maybe you don’t realize how bad of a boyfriend I am because this has been your only relationship.”
It feels like he yanked out a sword and wedged the blade into my stomach. My face crinkles. So what if my firsts have come later in life?
He’s never taken my innocence as naïveté. I’m not naïve. I understand that Garrison is my first and only relationship, but I don’t need to date other people to know that this is a complicated relationship. Not a bad one.
I can’t pull words from my lips. They’re stuck in the back of my throat.
He looks up, meeting the hurt in my eyes, but he continues anyway. “I just want to make sure that you get what you’re saying—wanting to marry me someday soon-ish.”
“I obviously don’t want to marry you, if you don’t want to marry me,” I say, those words almost a whisper under my breath, but he’s close enough to hear them.
He shakes his head. “Of course, you’re all I want, Willow, but that doesn’t change things.”
“What things?” I ask, my chest on fire.
“I’m the only guy you’ve ever kissed,” Garrison says. “I’m the only guy you’ve ever slept with. And, fuck, there’s a part of me that feels like I’m stealing you from experiencing…from doing…from…” He can’t finish. Anguish lances his face.
My hands tremble, and I don’t have the book to hold onto, so I hug my arms around myself. Holding on. Hold on.
“You’d want me to kiss other guys? To have sex with them?” The thought brings nothing but sickness and a pressure that compounds on my chest.
“Jesus, no. The thought of you kissing another guy…” He grimaces. “…I can’t even…” His face twists more, and then he reaches for my hand.
I let him take it. He doesn’t mention the trembling. He just laces our fingers together. It calms me for a second.
Garrison inhales. “All I’m saying is that I know you think I’m special because I understood that you didn’t like to be touched, and I waited…and was patient. But there are other guys who’d do the same. I’m not special. I’m not the only guy who’d fall in love with you.”
“Do you honestly believe I could fall in love with someone else?” My brows pinch, confused. So fucking confused. “You are special to me, Garrison. How can you not see that? It’s not just the touching. It’s who you are. Every part of you, even the parts you hate. I love those, too.”
He runs his thu
mb back and forth atop my hand. His eyes pin to mine, carrying more worries. “I can try to see it,” he tells me. “But I need to hear you say the other words, out loud. I just need to hear it, Willow.”
“Which ones?” I wonder.
“That you’re fine never knowing what it’ll be like to kiss another man. To have him touch you here.” He slides his free hand up my thigh, my leggings feeling thin under his palm. I breathe in, welcoming his touch, only his touch. His fingers are millimeters from my heat, but he stops short. “You’ll never know what it’s like to have another man’s fingers in you. Another man’s dick.” He says those words without shying, without breaking my gaze.
“Good,” I say in response.
“I need to hear you say it,” Garrison says. “Please.”
“I don’t want to know what someone else’s lips feel like,” I tell him. “I’m happy never knowing what another dick feels like. Looks like. Smells like—”
His lips lift with mine.
I continue, “I don’t want someone else’s fingers in me. I don’t want another set of eyes on my naked body. It literally makes my skin crawl even imagining these things. I only want you, and you’re worthy of me. Do you understand that?”
A tear slips down out of his eye, but he brushes it away as quickly as it came. “I’m sor—”
“And you can’t be sorry because I’m glad you’re making me do this. I’m glad this is happening, okay? We need to remain honest with each other. Always.”
His chest rises and falls heavily, and this is where we should reunite.
Kiss.
But tension still strains.
“What do you need from me?” Garrison asks, knowing he’s wedged an invisible force between us.
“I need you to tell me that you won’t leave me because you think you’re not good enough,” I say. “I need you to believe that you are. And maybe you can’t give me that now, but one day.”
“I won’t ever fucking leave you,” he tells me like those words are already cemented down.
But he’ll push me away, force me to be the one to leave him. I know this—it’s why the second part is so important.
Wherever You Are (Bad Reputation Duet Book 2) Page 14