by A. M. Myers
I turn and look at the sun peeking over the ocean, pastel pinks coloring the few clouds dotting the expansive sky before turning back to her. I can’t help but think she looks better than any damn sunrise I’ve ever seen and I smile as she peeks over at me, waiting for my answer. I nod.
“Yeah, you sure are.”
She rolls her eyes but she can’t hide the faint color staining her cheeks as she fights back a smile. “God, you’re so cheesy.”
Yeah, but you love me anyway…
As the thought flicks through my mind, I realize that we haven’t actually said those words to each other yet even though there is no doubt in my mind we both feel the same and it reminds me of the talk we need to have. Setting my muffin down, I grab her hand and look down at it, scowling when I see her bare ring finger. I rub my thumb over the spot where her rings used to be.
“Hey, do you still have your rings?”
Three months before we graduated from high school, I realized that I wanted to ask her to marry me so I started picking up more shifts at the garage where I worked part-time and putting away every cent that I could spare. I started telling Piper that we couldn’t go out as much because I was saving for college but I’m pretty sure she thought I was getting ready to end things with her. A week before graduation, I finally saved enough money to go to the jewelry store in the mall and buy her solitaire diamond ring with a braided gold band as well as the matching wedding band.
Smiling, I shake my head.
God, I was such a cocky little shit but it never even occurred to me that she might say no. We were Wyatt and Piper and everyone knew we were going to end up together. There was no other option.
“Yeah, they’re in my jewelry box at home,” she says, glancing down at my thumb as I stroke over her finger again and I nod.
“You gonna put it back on?” My stomach flips as the question leaves my lips and my heart pounds as I wait for her answer. She sighs and meets my eyes as her teeth sink into her bottom lip.
Oh, fuck…
“I don’t know, Wyatt. I don’t want to rush into this… or make the same mistakes that I did last time.”
Punching me in the gut would have been kinder and I struggle to swallow down the lump in my throat as I nod, my chest aching. It makes sense why she would want to be cautious after what happened the last time we were together but that doesn’t make the pain fade away.
“Right.”
“Please don’t be upset, baby,” she whispers, pulling her hand from my grasp and turning to me to cup my face between her hands. I meet her eyes and they beg me to understand and as much as my mind gets where she’s coming from, I can’t help but feel like I just got rejected. “The way I feel about you hasn’t changed, at all. I just don’t want to go back to that place where I can’t stand on my own two feet.”
“How do you feel about me? Because you haven’t said the words.”
Jesus Christ.
I sound like a goddamn girl right now.
She scowls and shakes her head, staring up at me like I’ve lost my mind. Then again, maybe I have.
“Well, you haven’t said it either.”
She’s got a point.
“Besides, you and I… it’s always been more than three little words could sum up. You know that but if you need to hear me say it, I will.”
I shake my head and blow out a breath as I drop my gaze to my lap. She’s right. Our connection has always been something special and if the fact that we’re back together again after ten years apart doesn’t tell me how she feels then I don’t know what will. She sighs and I lift my gaze to hers as she reaches down and grabs my hand, pressing it against her chest.
“You feel that?”
I nod.
“It’s always been yours, Wyatt. Always. Even when we were apart and trying to move on with our lives without each other, my heart still belonged to you.”
Slipping my other hand into her hair, I claim her lips, desperate to feel her and she moans as she climbs off of her chair and straddles my lap, never once breaking our connection and when she finally does pull away, she smiles down at me. The sun shines around her, illuminating her like an angel and I brush my thumb over her cheek, wondering how I got lucky enough to not only get her once but twice.
“I love you,” I tell her and her eyes shine as she leans down and steals another kiss, something between a sigh and a moan slipping between us and I wrap my arms around her body, pulling her closer. When she pulls away this time, her smile is brighter.
“I love you, too.” She cuddles into me, tucking her face into my neck and I take a deep breath as I stare out at the ocean and rub my hand down her back.
“You think we could talk about something else?”
She jerks up and meets my gaze again. “It’s about when I left, isn’t it?”
I nod and she chews on her bottom lip for a second before repeating the gesture. The last thing I want is to put that apprehensive look in her eyes and I understand why she hates talking about this stuff but we need to in order to move forward.
“Why did you write me that email?”
She deflates for a second before straightening her shoulders with a nod and that strength I’m quickly becoming very fond of flashes in her eyes. “Honestly… I don’t know. I remember thinking the man who killed my parents was after me and that I had to get away… Maybe I thought I was protecting you by making sure you didn’t follow me…” She shrugs. “Like I said, everything around that time is super fuzzy and I can’t tell you what was real and what wasn’t.”
“Okay,” I whisper with a nod. That makes sense, I suppose. If she thought she was trying to protect me, I don’t think there is any length Piper wouldn’t go to. I remember her saying she would see my dead body in the house and I scowl up at her. “Why would you need to protect me if you already thought I was dead?”
“Oh… no. The two delusions never existed together. I either saw him or I saw you but never saw both of you in the same room. I think at one point, I thought he had been the one to kill you and I felt this overwhelming hopelessness because he had taken my whole world from me again and I started thinking what was the point of even living anymore.”
My heart jumps into my throat as my eyes widen. “Please tell me you didn’t try to…”
“No,” she says, cutting me off. “Never. I might have briefly considered the idea but by the next morning, I was seeing him again and I thought you were alive. Or, at least, I think I did. My memories are not a good indicator of the truth.”
I nod, squeezing my eyes shut as I try to banish the thought from my mind. What the fuck would I do without her? My mind drifts back to the man I was just three weeks ago, before she walked back into my life and it feels like an entirely different person. I need her so I don’t even want to consider the possibility that she could have ended it all...
“Why didn’t you come back after you were better?” I ask, shifting gears and she chews on her bottom lip, staring down at her fingers as she twists them together.
“I did.”
“What?” I nudge under her chin with my finger and force her gaze to mine. Tears swim in her eyes and she sucks in a breath. It breaks my fucking heart.
“After I got out of the hospital, I got my own apartment and started the business with Eden. When I finally felt like I was secure and I was confident that I could handle everything, I wanted to find you. I looked you up on Facebook and saw that you had joined the Devils so I went to the clubhouse to find you. When I got there, you guys were having a barbecue and there was this woman sitting in your lap. You looked happy and I…”
The tears spill down her cheeks and she clamps her mouth shut as she drops her gaze to her lap again.
“What girl, baby?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. She had blue hair and tattoos all over her body.”
“Cleo,” I whisper, closing my eyes and shaking my head. Jesus, what would have happened if she had talked to me that day? Where would we be no
w? Would I have even listened to her? I can’t believe she was so close and I never even knew because I was focused on Cleo. I knew that was a bad idea from the start.
Goddamn it.
“I thought about going to talk to you but I was already nervous and when I saw you with her… I thought you were moving on with your life and I should try and do the same.”
I nod, everything coming together in my head. “So you sent the divorce papers?”
“Yes.”
“Pip, baby,” I breathe as I grab her face and press a quick, demanding kiss to her lips before pulling back. “That girl was no one. We hooked up sometimes and she just started bartending for the club but she and I were never together. I was never able to move on from you.”
She nods. “I know that now but back then, I thought I was doing the right thing. I loved you and I wanted you to be happy after everything I had put you through. You know, that whole ‘if you love someone, set them free’ thing.”
“For the record,” I tell her, stealing another kiss. “Don’t set me free again. Ever.”
“Okay,” she whispers, a soft sob slipping out of her lips as the tears fall down her cheeks. I brush them away and pull her to me again, determined to kiss away the pain of our past. She melts into me, clinging to my shirt as she kisses me back with the same desperation I feel coursing through my veins. I want to wash it all away, make the past ten years disappear because the ache I feel thinking about everything we could have had if things had gone just a little bit differently makes my stomach turn.
I know I can’t do a damn thing about the past but I will do whatever it takes to make sure the rest of our lives together are so magical that when we tell the story of our love to our grandkids, the part about when we were apart won’t even matter.
Chapter Nineteen
Piper
My feet sink into the cool sand with each step and a brisk morning breeze blows through my hair, making me pull my sweater tighter around my body as I walk along the beach, thinking over the past few days of our trip. Yesterday, after our little talk, Wyatt and I spent a hour lost in each other, which is quickly becoming a common theme for us, before we went to downtown Charleston to explore. Bill, the man who owns the bakery where I grabbed breakfast yesterday, recommended we check out the market so we walked through the open sheds and browsed all the vendors selling everything from soap to sweetgrass baskets to jewelry to art before we went on a horse drawn carriage ride around the city. Charleston is absolutely gorgeous and if I wasn’t “oohing” and “aching” over the scenery then I was gushing over the architecture and history. I was entranced and I really hope we can come back here often.
The sun isn’t up yet and the light is soft, making everything look and feel more peaceful but my belly flips as the nerves crash over me. I wish we didn’t have to say good-bye to this beautiful place but as soon as Wyatt wakes up, we will pack everything up and drive back to Baton Rouge to go back to our regular lives. We have been in this perfect little bubble for the past three days and I hate not knowing what is going to happen when we go back. Here, it is so easy to just be us without all the pain and drama of the past and as much as I hope that will carry over to our everyday lives, I just don’t know. Shit. I don’t even really know where he and I stand.
Are we back together officially?
Are we taking things slow and feeling it out?
Even after our talk yesterday and me telling him I wanted to take things slow, I still got the feeling that he was trying to push the issue as we were walking around yesterday. He kept picking up various decorations and asking me if I liked them. If I said yes, he would immediately buy it so I learned pretty quick to just shrug and move along. That makes me sound cold but it’s not even that I didn’t want him to buy me anything, it’s just that I don’t know what any of it means. He would show me a piece of art and I would wonder if he was asking because he wants us to live together now or he would ask if I liked a gorgeous necklace and I would wonder if he was trying to win me over to his side.
I reach the edge of the water and sigh as the water rushes around my feet before retreating back down the beach. Backing up a few steps, I sit down and stretch my feet out until the water just barely kisses them as I stare out at the horizon. Warring emotions rip through me and I shake my head. I don’t even know what I want when we get back so it is impossible to convey that to Wyatt. He wants us to be all in, I know that and there are moments when that is all I want, too, but I feel like I need to be responsible. The last thing I want is to jump in too quickly and put us in a bad place again just because I couldn’t be patient. Then again, the thought of going back to my apartment alone sounds just as bad. There is no middle ground here. I either have to risk it all or tell Wyatt to wait for me and neither of those options sound ideal if I’m being honest. My heart, the always wild and unpredictable part of me, tells me to jump in, to stop wasting time when I’ve already wasted ten years of our lives but my head reminds me of that dark awful place I was when I left last time. I shudder as the memories flood into my mind and shake my head.
I remember walking out of the house we shared on base so clearly, like I was in my right mind but I know I wasn’t because I was convinced that the man who killed my parents was coming for me and I had to run. The next thing that I can recall is pulling into Baton Rouge but I don’t remember any of the fourteen hour drive from North Carolina. All I know is that I was sure Clinton Woods was right behind me, ready to finish the job he started when he killed my parents. The next year passed in a blur. I was in survival mode, both in my head and in reality, and as more of the real world slipped away from me, the more I deteriorated. By the time Dr. Brewer found me, sleeping on a park bench during her morning run, I had lost thirty-five pounds and I hadn’t bathed in months.
Tears fill my eyes as I remember waking up in that hospital and being able to think clearly for the first time in over a year but that was soon taken over by fear. I had no idea where I was and all I wanted was Wyatt. Closing my eyes, I can still hear my echoed sobs as they bounced off the walls of my room late at night and the way my chest ached with the pain of his absence as I tried to deal with the trauma from my childhood. I suck in a stuttered breath, trying not to cry as my first session with Dr. Brewer comes back to me. She urged me to open up about what had happened to me but I just sat in silence, staring at the floor and wishing I could find a phone to call my husband. It was only when she told me that I needed to learn to talk about what happened and deal with the emotions associated with it before I could go back to him that I started to do the work I needed to do to get better.
“Piper?!” Wyatt’s panicked voice yells from behind me and I whip my head around as I frantically wipe the tears from my face. I can’t see him so he must still be back at the house, behind the dunes and I wave my hand in the air as I clear my throat.
“Over here.”
I hear him before I see him, his feet slapping against the wooden walkway to the beach as he runs at full speed in my direction. He appears over the dunes in his mesh shorts and a t-shirt and as soon as his gaze lands on me, his worried expression falls away and he stops, planting his hands on his legs as he bends over and lets out a breath. Once he has recovered enough to move, he walks over to me and plops down in the sand next to me, dropping his head into his hands.
“Jesus Christ. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
I arch a brow. “Do what?”
“Disappear,” he breathes, running his hand through his hair and my heart seizes in my chest. Reaching over, I grab his hand and wrap his arm around my shoulders as I cuddle into him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to scare you.”
Shaking his head, he hooks his arm around my neck and pulls me closer as he presses his lips to my head. “I thought you left me…”
“Wyatt,” I whisper, trying to pull away but he doesn’t let me go anywhere so I cuddle back into him and hope my presence is enough to calm his racing heart. We sit in sil
ence for a few seconds before he reaches over and pulls me into his lap. I brace my hands on his shoulders as I straddle him and he presses his forehead to my chest as he takes another deep breath. Running my fingers through his hair, I try to get him to look at me but he just shakes his head. “Are you okay?”
He finally meets my gaze. “No, I’m not okay, Piper. I couldn’t fucking find you anywhere and all of my worst fucking fears were realized.”
“Baby… I’m sorry…”
He wraps both arms around me and pulls me closer as he sighs. “Just let me hold you for a minute.”
“Okay.”
“Why are you down here anyway?” he asks, his voice muffled by the fabric of my sweater. He pulls back to look up at me and he scowls when he gets a good look at my face. “Why have you been crying?”
I shake my head. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?” He reaches up and brushes his thumb over my cheek, concern filling his hazel eyes and I can feel his love surrounding me as I take a deep breath.
“The year I was homeless.”
Pain flicks across his face as he nods. “Will you tell me about it?”
My teeth sink into my bottom lip and I study him for a second before nodding. As I launch into the whole story, telling him about coming back to Baton Rouge and scrounging for every ounce of food I had. I tell him about sneaking into gas stations or restaurants to try and clean myself up before I got caught and I tell him about constantly moving so the man who killed my parents wouldn’t find me before explaining how bad it was when Dr. Brewer found me. His eyes are wide as he stares up at me and blows out a breath.
“God, Pip… I hate myself for not being there for you. I never should have left…”
Shaking my head, I press my hand to his cheek. “No. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just was and yeah, it sucked but the only person we can blame is already rotting away in a jail cell.”