“Before you start something you can’t finish, Walker, you'd better go bolt that front door.” She removes the shirt from her shoulders, and seeing her standing in my kitchen naked, I can admire her in the light now. She has whisker burns on both breasts. My finger touches them lightly, and she shivers.
“I like this.” I trace the little spot. “My mark on you. I’ve never had the urge to claim someone, for everyone to know that person was mine, but with you, with you”—I shake my head, not sure I can even explain—“I want that. I want everyone to know when you walk down the street that you are Walker’s girl.”
“Well, unless I walk down Main Street naked, they are going to have to be okay with you kissing and holding my hand in public.” She laughs, turning around and walking to my bedroom. “But in the meantime, how about you mark me from behind?” Turning to walk into my room with me following her, by the time we are done, four hours later, we are both out of breath, her ass is pink from my handprint, and my teeth have marked her shoulder. “We need a break.”
She looks over. “Where are your t-shirts?”
I point at the closet. “In the closet in the second drawer.” My hand on my chest as I try to get my breathing back to normal. That is the best sex I’ve had in my life. I’ve had two partners my whole life, Julia and now Hailey, who hands down is the best sex I will ever have. Fuck, she ruined me. “Why?”
“Because I need to sleep, and me naked is too much for you to handle, so I’m going to cover myself.” She goes to the closet and comes out wearing one of my t-shirts with my name across it.
I rise to my elbows. “If you think having a shirt on is going to stop me from wanting you”—I laugh—“you are sadly mistaken, especially when you’re wearing my shirt.”
“Fine, I’ll go home,” she counters, and my laugh turns into a scowl.
“I’ll drag you back here,” I tell her, “kicking and screaming. I don’t give a shit. Now get in bed so we can nap.” I pull the covers off so she can climb in.
She puts her knee on the bed. “Pinky promise you will let me sleep?” Her pinky comes out, and I wrap my pinky around hers.
“Fine.” She gets into bed and lies on her stomach. I settle behind her, my legs entwining with hers. “I crossed my fingers.” I laugh, my hand roaming up her shirt to hold her breast. “I will still let you sleep.”
She wiggles her ass, getting comfortable, and we actually sleep until way after the sun has gone down. Later that night, with her in just my t-shirt, we sit at the island eating frozen pizza with not a care in the world. We spend the night together again, and this time, I wake up to her sucking my cock and taking what she wants. She climbs on me, and as she sinks down, we both groan. By the time we actually get up, we are late.
“What time is lunch again?” She gets on her hands and knees, looking for her other shoe somewhere in the room.
“My grandmother said to be there at noon.” I button up my shirt, coming out of the closet and seeing her jean covered ass. “Fuck.” Her head turns my way.
“No. No sex. Found it.” She grabs the shoe sitting on the bed and slides it on. “We are on a break from sex.”
My eyebrows pinch together. “Who is? I didn’t agree to this break.” Her head leans back when I stop next to her for a kiss.
“I have to go home and change.” She pushes me away, getting up. “Let’s go.” She walks out of the room to the front door. We get to her house in seconds. Jumping out of the car, she dashes into the house, and I follow her in just as the laughing starts.
“I’m surprised she can walk.” Crystal laughs as she stands by the sink in a flowered long-sleeved sundress. “Morning, Romeo.” I shake my head, going to fridge and grabbing a water bottle.
“So did you score?” Crystal folds her lips together, looking down the hall to Hailey’s bedroom. “If you hurt her, I will fuck you up,” she whispers, coming closer to me. “I’m a nurse, so I not only know exactly where to stab you so you bleed out fast, but also where it would hurt the most.” I don’t say anything because she continues, “That fucktard is lucky he died because if he was alive”—she shakes her head—“he would wish he was dead.”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” I tell her.
“I know you’re not because you love her.” She tells me, and I stand there, my mouth suddenly dry, my neck starting to burn. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell her.” She turns to walk away from me. “I’m leaving,” she yells. “See you there.” The door slams behind her, leaving me looking around.
I love her. I do, completely and utterly love her. I don’t know when it happened—fuck that, I know exactly when it happened. When I saw her sitting on the cold beach watching the water, day in and day out. I would take walks, see her, and turn around, then I would spot her sitting and watch her. Watching the same water she watched. Seeing the waves crash into shore, I would gaze ahead at the water, but my mind watched her. I let go of my hatred. I let go of my anger, and I let my guard down.
The night I sat with her, I let go of Julia, and I let go of the future I thought we would have. I let go of the promises I made her … I let go of that part of me. Except with Hailey, that part turned over twice, and it made me see that sometimes no matter how you plan things, how you map it out, life has twists and turns. Sometimes what you think you want isn’t what you deserve.
I deserve a woman who will love me and only me. I deserve a woman who wants a life with me, who craves a life with me. Who will put me before her. That is what I deserve. I deserve that perfect love story.
“Ready.” I hear Hailey’s voice as she walks into the room from her bedroom. Her flowered skirt flows around her legs; her short sleeved white silk shirt tucked in. She is wearing another pair of high heels, but my eyes go to her face.
Her hair pinned back at the side; her eyes shine. There is no sadness there, no emptiness like before. Gone is that girl who first sat on the beach watching the water with all the questions and no answers, and in its place is a woman who is so breathtakingly beautiful my heart skips a beat when she walks into the room. A woman who got her heart ripped out yet is still standing here.
“What’s the matter?” she asks me, coming closer to me, her hands going to my waist. “You okay?”
I push her hair from her shoulder to the back, so I can kiss her neck. “I’m fine,” I say, and it’s not a lie. “I used to watch you.”
Her eyes look at me confused. “When you would sit outside, at night, during the day. I used to walk down the beach, see you, and stop.” My thumb rubs her pink cheek. “I used to sit and watch the water with you, watch you as you worked through your storm inside.”
“I,” she says softly, my finger stopping her from talking.
“The first time I saw you, I thought you were so beautiful. But you looked broken; your eyes looked dim, the light gone.”
I can’t go on without kissing her, so I lean in and kiss her lightly. Her lip gloss stays on my lips. “But each time you left that beach, you got more beautiful, which, to be honest, I didn’t think could happen.”
Her thumb comes up to wipe my lips. “I was broken.” She starts to talk. “I was empty; there was nothing left to me.”
“I know, and the sad thing is so was I.” I shake my head. “I had the best kid you could ever hope for, I had a successful business, I had a family who loved and supported me, but I was empty.”
I smile at her. “I was. I’m not anymore.”
“What do you mean?” She looks at me.
“You … you made me whole again. This thing with us, it started with me wanting to be your friend, it started with two broken people on the beach asking for answers we weren’t going to get.” I kiss her. “Or we were each other’s answers. We were the answers to each other’s questions.”
“Jensen.” A tear rolls down her cheek.
“I love you,” I finally tell her, causing her breath to hitch. “I love you.” Another tear falls from her eyes. “More than I thought I could love anyone
else besides Mila.” I smile as the heaviness from before vanishes.
“I don’t …” she starts saying.
“You don’t have to say anything.” I lean in to kiss her lips. “I just wanted to tell you. Now, let’s go because we are going to be really, really late,” I joke.
“You’d better call and tell them we will be by later.” She turns to walk away from me as I stare at her. “I love you.” I stand and am about to say something when she holds her hand up. “You had your time; this is mine.”
I cross my arms over my chest, watching her look at me. “Okay.”
“The worst day of my life was when my husband died because I thought I would die with him. It was a pain that seared through me to my soul. I collapsed in the middle of the hospital to my knees. I asked God to take me too. To take me so I could be with him.” She wipes a tear away as anger and fear fills me at the thought of her not being here. “Then the second worst day of my life was finding out that my life was a lie. That everything I thought was real wasn’t but a mirage of what life was supposed to be like.”
“He was a fool.” The words come out.
“For one month, I couldn’t sleep until I passed out drunk.” She wrings her hands together. “That is how weak I was. I got drunk so I could stop the thoughts, so the memories of us were too blurry for me to remember.” Her hand goes to her stomach. “Just thinking back, it makes me sick that I gave him that much more power over me.”
“You did what you needed to do to survive,” I tell her as she blinks. The tears falling now, one after another.
“My grandmother came to visit me, showing me a picture of this house. It was the day my life started again. The swings in the front and the back pulled me here.” She laughs. “The picture was a bit deceiving since the house was falling apart when I got here, but the minute I stepped out of the car, I started to breathe again. The weight that had crushed my chest for so long was lifting, slowly. I would sit on that swing in the back at night when I couldn’t sleep at the beginning, watching the ocean fight its own storm. Seeing the contrast of the calm water out on the horizon and then hearing the waves crash onto the shore. It was my life.”
“You are stronger than you think you are,” I tell her, making sure she knows.
“I am, and I know that now. I know that because I had to have the two worst days of my life to have the best days of my life to come.” Her body goes tall. “I sat on that beach every single day looking for answers, asking questions that no one would be able to answer, because the one person in the world who could answer them wasn’t here.” She looks down and then up. “Then the answer came to me, you.” She sobs. “You, you were the answer all along.”
I rush to her, grabbing her face and crushing her lips with mine to swallow the sobs as I hold her. Her hand grips my shirt, holding me as much as I’m holding her. She starts unbuttoning my shirt, and my hands pull her shirt over her head. “I love you,” I tell her as I kiss the middle of her chest and feel her heart beating under my lips. “With everything that I am, I love you.”
I look up as the tears dry, her eyes sparkling. “I love you more,” she whispers. “You, Jensen Walker, are my perfect love story.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hailey
Six months later.
It’s going to be a hot one today, I think to myself as I make my way out to the water. My feet sting from the burning sand as I walk closer to the water. It’s going to be a good day. I look at the sun, the heat hitting me right away.
I watch the water wash up the shore, sitting right where the sand gets dark. The beach is still empty because it’s just after eight a.m. I look at my tanned legs, thinking about how fast the summer is going to be over. We spend all our time outside. In the pool, in the ocean, my uniform this summer was bikini after bikini. Jensen would groan each time I would buy a new one. He actually bought me twenty one-piece swimsuits. They are sitting in the boxes next to the door with the rest of the boxes of my things. My share of the lease expires today, and in twenty minutes, Jensen will be here to load up my stuff to move me in with him.
We took our time. Well, I took my time. If it was up to Jensen, I would have moved in with him the day he told me he loved me. The day I told him I loved him. The day that turned out to be the best day of my life, but well, since then, there have been many best days, just not as special as that one. I was the one dragging my feet only because I didn’t want to just jump. I wanted to ease Mila into it also, but one day when I wasn’t there, and she set the table for the three of us, he called to let me know. I did what anyone would do; I hightailed it over there, and we ate dinner together.
“I set the table for us. Silly families always eat together” Mila said as soon as I walked through the door, half out of breath from running down the beach through the sand.
“Thank you for being so helpful,” I told her, leaning down to kiss her head. “Hi there.” I looked over at Jensen, who is taking something out of the oven. I walked into the kitchen; he placed the tray down and approached me.
“Glad you could make it.” He kissed me, so naturally, with my hands around his waist.
“I’m going to put some juice boxes on the table,” Mila said coming into the room, not even blinking at me hugging her father and us kissing. She didn’t bat an eye when she woke up in the middle of the night and climbed into bed with us before I snuck out in the morning.
So now, I sit on the sand, the letter in my back pocket crinkling once I sit. I lean forward and take the letter out of my pocket, looking at the folded white envelope.
I had forgotten about the letter, finding it only when I started packing my boxes. I look down at the envelope, still not sure I want to open it.
I look at the water, seeing the calmness in it, the waves crashing softly today, nothing like when I got here.
I turn the letter over in my hand, my finger sliding under the flap to open it. I pull out the folded white letter and open it up.
Eric’s writing gets me right away. Messy, always messy, and printed.
My dear, dear sweet Hailey,
If you are reading this, it means that I didn’t have the courage to do this while I was still alive.
I know what you’re thinking. Fuck, I don’t even know what I’m thinking half the time. But I would like to explain.
The first time I saw you, it was like my world stopped or got knocked around. You are the most beautiful person I have ever met, inside and out.
I know you are probably wondering why I did what I did, and I wish I had the answer, but I don’t. The only thing I know is that I couldn’t stay away from you.
I fell in love with two women, and I couldn’t walk away from either of you. I was that selfish bastard you used to always bitch about. Every single time I came home, I told myself I would tell you the truth, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t let you go. When I was with you, I felt alive so alive.
I’m sorry for lying to you. I’m sorry for not having the balls to be man enough and deal with whatever it is that would have happened. I’m sorry that in the end you won’t remember me with the love and respect you gave me, but with hurt and sadness.
I’m sorry I’m not there with the answers, and I’m even more sorry you have to find out with this letter. But I want you to know that I loved you. Fuck, I love you with everything I am.
Eric
I wipe the tear from my eye as I fold the letter and put it back in its envelope when I feel him behind me. My strength. “Hi,” I say softly as I feel his arms go around me. I lean back into him and move to the side. Laying my head on his shoulder, I feel him rest his chin on my shoulder.
“You read it?” he asks, looking down at the letter in my hand.
“I did,” I answer, looking at the water.
“You okay?” The way he asks makes me love him even more. For not asking what it contained, but instead, if I was okay. Me.
“More than okay.” Turning my head, I kiss his cheek. He turns his f
ace, looking into my eyes, and leans forward to kiss my lips. “I love you,” I whisper, turning to look at the water for a couple of more minutes. I get up, putting my hand out to him. “Let’s get me moved out of here.” He takes my hand, getting up.
“I think we should have a special sleepover party tonight.” He holds my hand as we walk up to the house.
“Is that so, and what type of party is this?”
“Well, I think it should be whip cream, chocolate sauce, and definitely naked.” He pulls me to him while I throw my head back and laugh.
“I think we sort of had this party last month. Do you remember Mila asking why you had chocolate syrup in your room by the bed?”
He laughs now. “That was your fault. You wore me out, and I couldn’t walk.”
I push away from him. “I was sticky the whole day.”
We open the back door to the porch, walking into the house. “Happy get out of my house day,” Crystal yells from the kitchen. We both laugh, walking through my room, or what will be her room as soon as we walk out.
Crystal decided she isn’t leaving this house, so she renewed the lease. “Good morning.” I look into the kitchen, seeing her drinking coffee standing there. “Are you going to help us move?”
“Will that make you get out of the house faster?” she asks while I nod my yes with a smile. “Then let’s get this shit in the car.”
“What time is your roommate moving in?” I hide my smile as she turns and glares at me.
“I can’t believe you sold him your share of the lease.” Her eyes narrow.
“What did you expect me to do? His house just burned to the ground.”
“If Gabe pissed off someone enough that they torched his house, explain to me why it’s safe for him to live with me?” she asks, and I shrug my shoulders.
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