by Jamie Pope
Disappointed. That word hit her hard.
“How the hell can you know how he would have felt?” She found her voice. She found her anger. She found it was still in her to yell at him. “You left. Remember? You left him and you left me. And you never came back. So don’t you tell me how my husband would feel.”
He looked at her for a long moment. There was sorrow in his eyes. She knew it because that’s what she felt every single moment of every single day.
“I left.” He nodded, his anger seeming to evaporate. “I left, but I loved him. He was my best friend too. He was my brother. We were closer than you’ll ever know. And if you think that your grief is any less than mine, you’re kidding yourself.”
* * *
Wylie stepped out of the shower and its icy spray and stared at Cass as the water pelted her. Her hair was plastered to her face. Her dress was stuck to her body.
But she was alive. It was past time she realized it.
He turned the hot water on and stepped closer to her so that he could peel her clothes from her body. He had undressed her before. He had seen her naked body so many times during their secret relationship, but none of those times compared to this. She was skinny and her ribs poked out from her body. Her hip bones jutted out. Her skin almost hung from her bones. She didn’t look like the beautiful girl he used to be in love with. Still, he found himself aroused at her nudity. Because he still had vivid memories of the girl she used to be, and he knew that deep down that girl was still there.
He climbed back into the warm water with her, reaching for the shampoo. “Close your eyes,” he ordered as he squirted a handful into her hair. He tried to distract himself as he washed her hair. He was beginning to feel panic gnaw at him again. He had taken her away without thinking. Without a plan. He had acted on feeling. He had only done that a few times in his life and knew from experience that never ended well.
He rinsed her hair and she opened her eyes to look up at him. She said nothing, making him wonder what she was thinking. Did she understand how much he loved Terrance, or would she always hate him for walking away?
He grabbed his soap. It wasn’t the pretty floral scent that he was used to smelling on her. He was going to have to go shopping for her. No—he was going to make her go shopping with him, to get things she needed, to make her stay here as comfortable as possible.
He soaped her neck and shoulders without thinking about what he was doing, but as his hands moved down her chest, his mind focused on his task. He was touching her, washing her. Memories of the last time they bathed together entered his mind. He could still remember the way her thighs felt wrapped around him, still remember how he felt buried so deep inside her. And how his name sounded on her lips when she moaned it. And her smell. And how she tasted. And felt.
His heart pounded harder, his breathing grew a little sharper, and it snapped him from those memories. He wasn’t with the girl he spent hours making love to. He was with a woman who had married another man. Who had married his best friend and broke Wylie’s heart.
And he was soaping her breasts. Her nipples had hardened to little milk chocolate brown beads. He wasn’t sure what came over him, but he ran his thumbs over them. She shivered. She shivered despite the heat of the shower. He went completely hard in that moment. In the ten years since he had walked away, he never wanted another woman as bad as he wanted this one right now. It didn’t matter that she was skinny and depressed and the widow of his best friend.
He took his hands off her breasts, moving to clean the rest of her body. His hands came to her belly. His thumb hit her scars. A circular one from where the bullet hit her. A long, thin one from where the doctors had to operate to save her.
He stroked those scars, the physical reminders of the day that would never leave her. She jumped at his touch. She put her hands over his, trying to push him away, but he wouldn’t let her. He got down on his knees and kissed her there. He pressed his lips along the length of her scar and kissed, silently sending a prayer of thanks to God for saving her.
She let out a choked sound. For a moment he thought she was going to cry, but she held it in, forced it down. Crying would be a good thing. Crying would prove she wasn’t so dead inside. Miss Cora said she hadn’t cried once since she had woken up from her coma from the hospital nine months ago. She hadn’t cried since they told her they buried Terrance without her being there.
He stood up, looking her in the eyes, knowing this process would take a long time, knowing from experience that wounds like hers couldn’t be healed in a few days. “I want you to get up every morning. I want you to get out of bed and get dressed. If you don’t, we’ll do this every day. I’ll come after you every day.”
She blinked at him and he wasn’t sure he reached her until he touched her belly again.
“Okay,” she finally said.
“Good.” He shut off the water and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.
It was a start.
Chapter 5
Cassandra felt . . . Better wasn’t the right word, maybe different was a better choice. She felt different. She didn’t remember feeling dirty or so weighed down, but as she sat at Wylie’s little wooden kitchen table, she realized that she felt the opposite of those things. She was clean. Her hair had air-dried to its naturally curly state. She smelled like Wylie, like his lightly scented spicy soap. She felt lighter, and—for the first time in a long time—the urge to crawl back into bed and sleep until her thoughts disappeared didn’t overwhelm her.
“How do you like your eggs?”
She heard the question, but it took a while for her to process it. She was with Wylie James. She had just been in the shower with him. He had run his hands all over her body. He washed her. Yelled at her. He cursed. He threatened. He had kissed her scars. It didn’t seem real. He’d left without saying good-bye. Without saying a word. She never thought she would see him again, but she was in his kitchen watching him as he cooked.
He wore a gray T-shirt, low-slung cargo pants and work boots. The last traces of innocence she saw in him ten years ago had faded away. He looked like a U.S. Marine now, even out of uniform. She could see it in him. She had been scared for him when he first told her he wanted to enlist. She didn’t want him to; she had asked him to wait. Marines went to war. Marines died in combat. But he told her that he wasn’t Terrance. He couldn’t see himself sitting in a classroom, or working at a desk for the rest of his life. He was right.
It was funny how Terrance, who went to school, who always took the safe route, died by a bullet, and Wylie was still alive and well.
“Did you go into the Marines after you left?”
He looked over at her, seeming surprised by the question. “Yes, I did. The very next day.”
“Are you still a Marine?”
“No, ma’am.” He paused for a moment and glanced at her. “I got out after my last deployment. How do you want your eggs?”
His accent was still strong. He had moved from Alabama nearly twenty years ago, but she still heard it in his voice. She was glad it was still there. He wouldn’t be Wylie without his deep Southern inflection.
“Where . . .” Her mind was a little sluggish. Her mouth was unable to keep up with the questions her brain produced. “Where were you deployed?”
“I’ve been to lots of places. Most recently Iraq and Afghanistan.” He turned away from the stove and looked at her. “I’m making my eggs over easy, Cass. How would you like yours?”
“With yolks,” she said without thinking. “I like the yolks. Terrance only ate egg whites.”
“Do you miss him, Cass?”
“It feels like my whole left side is missing.” She looked into Wylie’s eyes. “Does that make sense?”
“It does.” He nodded.
“He was always there. Too much sometimes and I got annoyed with him for it.” She paused. “And now he’s gone. I never thought he’d be gone. I took him for granted and I hate myself for it.”
“It’s
okay to talk about him with me,” Wylie said softly.
She hadn’t talked about him since he died. It was too much. There was so much she couldn’t say. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore right now. Can I have my eggs sunny-side up?”
“Anything you want, Cass.” He turned away from her briefly to put bread in the toaster. She looked around his kitchen, around the parts of the house she could see from her spot at the table. She would have never pictured him here, in this seaside house that was little more than a cottage. She could tell he had been renovating it, for there were little touches of Wylie in the woodwork. But there were no decorations to speak of, no personal effects, nothing to suggest that this place was his home. But then again, as long as she had known Wylie, he had never had a real home. His room was sparse at the Millers’. The tiny attic apartment he lived in was bare. He had been deployed all over the world. He hadn’t had a home since his father died.
“You like fruit in your oatmeal?” He slid a bowl in front of her. The smell of butter and brown sugar hit her nose. Her stomach spoke, causing her to jump. Hunger. She hadn’t felt hungry since . . . She didn’t remember. Lately she had been eating only when her mother forced her.
“There are apples, cranberries and raisins on there. Eat up now.” He handed her a spoon and slid a large glass of orange juice in front of her. “Eggs will be ready in a minute.”
She lifted the spoon to her mouth. The oatmeal was hot, thick and sweet. The cranberries were sour, and the apples crisp. She put another spoonful in her mouth, and then another. Just as her spoon was scraping the bottom of the bowl, Wylie placed two eggs and what looked like an English muffin before her.
“These are Portuguese sweet muffins,” he told her, reading her mind. He sat across from her with his own plate. “They are like English muffins, but they’re doughier and they don’t have any of those nooks and crannies. They’re popular here on the island.” He took one off her plate and slathered it with butter and strawberry jam before handing it back to her. “Go on.”
She bit into it. Chewed it. Tasted the yeast and melted butter and the sweetness of the jam. Bread. She remembered loving bread, warm French bread with butter. Croissants from the local bakery. Bagels from the bagel shop on Main Street. Terrance had brought her a bagel that morning. He brought it to her classroom, scolding her because she didn’t eat before she left the house. Reminding her that she had to take care of their growing baby. She remembered being annoyed with him that morning. But that bagel was his last sweet gesture and she hadn’t even thanked him for it.
The muffin slipped out of her hand, dropping onto her plate, into her still-warm eggs.
Wylie reached for her, grabbing her arm, keeping her upright. She felt dizzy. She felt dizzy and guilty, and nauseous. She missed the numbness that had been her constant companion for the past few months. She’d rather have that any day.
“What is it?”
“I don’t feel well. I want to go back to bed.”
“No,” he said softly. “I can’t let you do that.”
“I want to! I need to!”
“No,” he said again, and she knew he wasn’t going to let her have what she wanted. And in that moment she hated him for it.
* * *
Wylie looked over at Cass for what must have been the thousandth time that day. He made her sit outside while he worked on fixing the porch railing so he could keep an eye on her. But he spent more time paying attention to her than the task at hand. It was still surreal to him that she was there, that she was with him again. But it wasn’t a dream. She was there, curled up on his porch swing, a blanket wrapped tightly around her, despite the seventy-five-degree weather.
He almost wished he had let her go back to bed that morning. It was hard to see her like this. So hurt. But seeing her hurt was better than seeing her near lifeless, and he knew if he let her crawl back into bed, she would never want to get out. He knew because there had been a time in his life when he felt the same way. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the doctors called it. He was diagnosed with it after he survived the rocket attack that had killed nearly his entire unit. Friends that had become like family had died. Men he’d served with for years were disfigured beyond recognition and yet he had walked away unhurt. Physically. There were times when he thought he was back there, when he heard a car backfire or when he smelled fire or felt intense heat on his face.
But he came here to Martha’s Vineyard to work and met the little boy, the family that he hadn’t known about. And things got better.
He needed to see Teo again. He hadn’t gone more than a day without being with him since he found out about his existence. The boy reminded him that there was always something to look forward to, that there was always going to be someone there who loved him no matter what.
“You keep looking at me,” Cass said softly, surprising him. “I won’t disappear.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “No. Not today.”
He put down his saw and abandoned the piece of wood he had been cutting. He sat next to her on the porch swing. “You promise?”
She didn’t answer him, instead she looked toward the ocean in the distance, toward the lighthouse that he had never been to. He couldn’t accept her silence. He touched her wild curls, pushing them away from her eyes so he could see her face.
She looked at him, her eyes less hollow than before. So much better than yesterday, better than that half-dead woman he saw when she woke up this morning. But she didn’t look like Cass. Not yet. He wouldn’t let up until she did.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.” He jumped to his feet, slipping his hand into hers. Her eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t question him. She just rose to her feet and followed him down the path.
“There’s a little beach here,” he told her, not knowing why getting her to move in that moment was so important. “Just enough sand to put a few chairs on. Sometimes the local kids ride their bikes here to go swimming, but nobody else comes. This is my little beach. Deeded to me with the house. I grew up so poor, Cass. Even when I lived with the Millers, I never had nothing. But I’ve got a house now, and this little beach to call my own. Sometimes I just come here to think. You can come here too, if you want.”
He looked back at her to see if she was listening to him babble. He just wanted to reach her.
He must have, because she was staring at him with interest as they crossed the sandy path to the ocean.
“You can come here anytime you want, Cass. Just as long as—”
“I promise not to drown myself?”
Her words jarred him. They reminded him of his darkest days after the rocket attack, when he wondered if things would be better if he were dead.
“No.” He pulled her close to him, feeling her too-thin body as it pressed against his. “I was going to tell you to clean up before you go. There’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for littering.”
She wasn’t expecting his words. Confusion passed through her eyes. He let her go, set her away from him, as he sat on the sand to take off his boots and socks.
“Just before dusk is the best time to come. The sand is cool and damp. Feels good on your toes.”
“Wylie . . .” She looked lost. Lord knew, he felt lost. He had no idea if he was doing the right thing with her, but he had to try.
“Take off your shoes, Cass. You always liked the beach. Remember when we used to go to the lake? Remember how you used to bury your feet in the sand?” He reached for her leg, grabbing her foot to pull her sandal off. “Feel that?” He pressed her foot into the cool sand. “Doesn’t that feel nice? Little things can be nice, Cass. Little things can bring us happiness. You need to remember that.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she started to tremble. He reached for her, pulled her into his lap and held her. “I’m not going to tell you not to end things, because I know that won’t make one lick of difference. All I’m asking you to do is remember how it feels to live. The girl
I knew loved life.”
“I’m just so tired.”
“I know, baby. But you can’t sleep anymore.”
* * *
Cassandra gasped, clawing the heavy blankets away from her body as she tried to escape another dream. For once, she didn’t dream about the event, but she did dream about her husband’s killer, about his daughter and about how she got those bruises on her little body. It wasn’t the first time she dreamed this dream, but it was the first time she hadn’t woken up alone.
Wylie was there. He pulled the blankets from her body, laid her back down on the bed and fanned her overheated skin, just like he had done every night for the past three nights.
“It’s okay, honey.” He spoke into her ear, crooning in that still-thick Alabama accent. “You’re not there anymore. You’ll never be back there again.”
She listened to his soothing words, inching her body closer to his, wanting to feel his warmth, wanting his hard body to serve as a constant reminder that she wasn’t in Harmony Falls anymore. That she wasn’t in the house she was sharing with Terrance, which was slowly becoming her tomb.
He must have known that, because he pulled the blankets around them and gathered her closer. Her head on his chest, she heard his heart beating. They used to fall asleep like this. Years ago, during those few stolen nights when they got to be totally alone. She didn’t want to think about why he was back in her life now, after ten years. She didn’t want to think about her past. She just wanted to get through this moment.