by Alicia Best
Either way, my reasons for this little plan of mine have become more clear. This isn’t just about helping Everett or trying to figure out Spencer, it’s about being around the librarian. Even though he’s serious and grave and troubled, my thoughts and my heart feel pulled towards him, like there’s some sort of magnetic draw between us.
I thank the grocer, stuffing the card carefully into my pocket and handing over a wad of cash to cover the items I’ve selected, and then head back out into the blustery evening wind.
The weather is cooling down more and more every day, and, though we aren't cold enough for snow yet, the salty breeze billowing in from the ocean is chilly.
When I reach the darkened windows of the library, I can’t feel my nose or my fingers. With a huff, I inspect my hand quickly, dramatically expecting to find blackened nubs where my fingers once were. But they’re still there, albeit a little paler than normal. I’d never liked the cold, not even in New York.
Shaking my head, I pace gingerly towards the library doors.
Though the automatic doors typically glide right open when I approach, today they sit still and stony. Only a single light shines from deep within the back offices of the building.
I jostle the bag of my groceries from one hip to the other, pounding my palm against the thick glass of the door and hopping up and down a little to bring some warmth into my body. Though the extended roof of the library protects me somewhat from the chilly weather, I can feel the cold creeping up my body.
When there’s no movement in the library, I pound on the doors again. As stubborn as Everett is, I’m even more so, and I know he’s hiding away.
This time, a shadow flickers from inside as Everett emerges from his office, making his way slowly towards the front.
He pauses when he sees me, a strange look passing over his face as he freezes in his spot. I’m not sure what the look is, but it’s half apprehension and half surprise, with just a hint of something else, something almost pleased, that makes my breath catch.
When he doesn’t move for a long moment, I knock my fingers again on the door, much more gently this time. He crosses towards me in two long strides, unlocking the door so that it slides across.
“Holly,” he says, shaking the surprise off his face. “What are you doing here?”
“Come over to my place. Let me cook you dinner.”
No point in mincing words. Might as well get right down to business. Plus, my heart was leaping nervously up into my throat now, and I could barely breathe.
Just me and Everett, alone.
“Why?” he asks incredulously, his arms slowly crossing over his chest. His dark eyes narrow on me suspiciously, searching my face for something that I’m not sure of yet.
“I met Spencer Tate today,” I explain softly, adjusting the paper grocery bag again. As I do, it slips a little in my arms, spilling out some of the potatoes. “Maybe we could talk about that? What he said really worried me, and it was about you.”
Everett bends down before I can to scoop up the potatoes. Without a word, he reaches over and takes the bag from me.
“Is that a yes?” I ask, eyebrows shooting in surprise towards my hairline. “You’ll come over?”
He stares at me silently, his arms wrapped securely around our dinner. “I don’t cook much. I never have. I basically live off takeout… but I do love sweet potatoes.”
“Come on. Let me make you a meal.” I grin, uttering a silent thanks to the grocer.
He hesitates again before finally giving a gruff nod, locking the library behind us as we leave. Though he’s typically quiet, today the silence seems especially heavy. I feel him glancing over every now and then, his face contorted.
He’s nervous, I realize. Nervous to be around me. I’m nervous too. Butterflies are flurrying up like crazy inside of me, making my stomach twist into uncomfortable knots.
Our shadows sway in front of us on the sidewalk, his dwarfing my own.
When we reach my apartment, I unlock the door and push it open, gesturing at him to enter. Instead, he sets down the bag of groceries in the doorway and gives a faint sigh.
“What is this, Holly?” he asks quietly. “What is this really about? We could talk about Spencer back at the library.”
I take a moment to think about what I am going to say so I don't just start rambling. I smooth my hair back from my face and suck in a breath. “I only moved back to town a year ago, and I don’t know very many people. Honestly, I’m real lonely here, Everett, and you’re as close to another friend as I’ve got.”
It’s not actually true—I have Charlotte—but as I hoped, his face softens slowly, and his arms uncross from where they’re folded over his broad, muscular chest.
“I know how it feels to be lonely,” he murmurs sagely, cracking one of those faint half-smiles that make my heart throb. “I suppose one home-cooked meal will be nice for a change.”
There’s still an amount of uncertainty and hesitation in his voice, but I’m all too glad to look past it for now. I step back, pushing the door open wider, and slowly Everett steps inside. He looks around silently as I gesture to the couch.
“Have a seat. I’ll just get this started, and then we can talk about what Spencer said today. There’s something weird about that guy, Everett. Have you noticed? How’d he even get voted in as mayor?”
He gives a dry chuckle, pausing at my bookcase to skim through my collection. “Oh, believe me, you haven’t seen anything yet. That guy has been one taco short of a combo meal since…”
Abruptly, Everett stops moving, his voice trailing off into silence.
His fingers brush over the face of a small doll on the counter. It’s a child’s doll, swathed in a lacy dress with ribbon curls on her tiny shoulders. She has tiny fingers and tiny toes and a tiny nose.
“I’ve had it since I was born,” I say shyly, crossing the room with two glasses of water. “Isn’t it cute? When I have kids, I’ll pass it on to them someday.”
He jerks his hand away from the doll-like its chubby pink cheeks have stabbed his fingertips, sucking in a shuddering breath and stumbling back a step.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” I hastily set down our cups and grab at his hand, expecting to see a sliver of glass or a pucker of blood on his fingers, but the flesh is warm and clean and intact.
His palm turns slightly in mine, grasping at my fingers and enveloping my hand in his own.
His nostrils flare as he looks at the doll and then tears his eyes away again, like it’s mocking him or yelling at him… like he’s scared of it.
“Everett?” I ask quietly, squeezing his hand again.
He’s standing right in front of me, but he feels ten thousand miles away.
“I saw you,” he finally grunts, “in the magazine.”
Confused, I can only stare at him and wait.
“I know what happened in New York, Holly.”
Chapter 10
Everett
“Oh,” Holly mutters, dropping my hand like a hot potato and taking a step back. “We’re going to need some wine.”
When she turns to head back to the kitchen, I grab the little doll and push it out of sight behind one of the framed photos of her smiling with the redheaded waitress from the restaurant on the pier.
I hadn’t meant to bring up what I saw in the magazine about her, but I had to change the subject. I just couldn’t handle talking about what was really racing through my mind, searing through my veins, making my heart throb so painfully that I wanted to collapse in a heap on the carpet.
It’d been so long since I thought about it, that secret which I’d never told anyone. That knowledge which had made the pain of Sarah’s passing even more impossible to bear.
Clearing my throat, I ease down onto Holly’s couch, staring blankly down at my laced fingers. She comes back with two glasses of white wine filled practically to the brim and pushes one into my hand. Silently, she settles onto the couch beside me, then proceeds to tilt h
er head back and take a long draw from her glass.
Less enthusiastically, I take a small sip of my drink, letting the sharp, fruity wine sting along my tongue before swallowing. I’m not much of a wine drinker, especially whites.
“I’m not sure how much you know, so I’ll just start at the beginning.” She sighs, gazing down into her half-empty glass like she could find all her answers there.
“Michael Brock is running for a Senate seat in New York. We'd been dating for just a little while when he decided to run.”
Holly is the type of woman who wears her heart on her sleeve. I’d seen a dozen different emotions flicker across her face in the last five minutes alone. There’d been horror, contempt, humiliation… and now there was something else, something that I recognized with raw understanding.
She’s in pain. Her pretty face puckers up, teeth grazing over her full lower lip, and she takes another long sip of wine.
“At first it was great. I’m not going to lie. I loved being his girlfriend, being on his arm. There were cameras following us everywhere, gossip magazines trying to pin down when we would get married. I loved the attention, frankly.”
“Did you love Michael?” I had to ask; I couldn’t help it.
She pauses, holding her breath, then slowly lets it breeze out through her nostrils with a faint shake of her head. Her shoulders sag, fingernails drumming on the edge of her swiftly emptying glass.
“No. I didn’t. I was in love with the idea of being with someone so powerful and respected. He could tell, of course. It was obvious enough that I wasn’t into him as much as I was into the idea of him.” She pauses, grimacing. “It’s so humiliating to think of now. I didn’t even realize then how I was treating him, what a mistake I was making.”
“So how did it all go down?” I lean back against the couch, setting aside my glass of wine.
With a groan, she empties her glass and rests her elbow on the back of the couch, propping up her head like it was a lead weight.
“We were at a campaign party, and the investors were on fire. It was some kind of auction that the local museum had put together in support of Michael. They were throwing around money like I’ve never seen before. Long story short, I was getting bored, and I’d had too much to drink. I was getting messy. Michael told me to leave; I told him to shove it. We got into a fight…”
Her speech is picking up pace, words spilling faster and faster, like she can’t wait to get the whole story done with.
“Should I get more wine?” she asks, trying to change the subject.
I just cross my arms, lifting patient brows.
“When he tried to get me to leave, he grabbed me. It wasn’t like he hurt me or anything, but when I yanked away from him, I knocked over one of the expensive vases that was on a pedestal… which knocked over the nearly priceless painting right beside it… which landed on another vase, which was especially rare—and irreplaceable.” She groans, hugging her stomach. “All in all, I did a few million dollars worth of damage, Everett.
“Millions.”
She hugs herself tighter, tears prickling in her eyes.
“All of the money the investors had bid on the artifacts I broke went up in smoke. It was all insured, fortunately for the museum because I would never be able to pay them back a fraction of the cost, but Michael was humiliated and almost lost all of the respect he’d earned… and me….” She starts to laugh, though it is a quiet, tense little laugh with zero actual mirth. “I had to leave town. It’s not like I could stay. I packed up and left that night. I was lucky the museum didn’t try to sue me. Michael and I weren’t living together, but Noodle was at his place in the city as I’d been out of town on business. I figured Michael would just send her back to me. I tried a thousand times to call and apologize, to ask what I could do to fix it and how I could get my cat. He hasn’t spoken to me once.”
She trails off, staring at me with vacant and miserable eyes.
“Goodness.” I whistle, shaking my head slowly, trying to keep the hair out of my eyes.
She stares at me, face still pinched up, cheeks going red as a lobster. “I know. You probably think I’m a mess now.”
“I’ve thought that since I met you,” I retort, with a shake of my head and a wry little smile.
Holly gives a faint laugh that ends in a sigh. “So, that’s it. That’s how I ended up back here. I’d do anything to take it all back and try it again. Not my relationship with Michael: that was dead in the water. But everything else… I’ve always been the type to think that everything happens for a reason, and I just can’t seem to figure out the reason for this.”
“Some things don’t have a reason,” I answer honestly, tone grave. I pause, brooding on my words. “But I think there was a reason for what happened with you, Holly.”
She perks up slightly, curiosity gleaming faintly in her crystal blue eyes. “Oh?”
“I think it was a sign. Maybe something in your life had to change.”
A few seconds pass while she regards me flatly, trying to determine if I’d insulted her. In the end, she seems to agree and bobs her chin once.
“I suppose so,” she muses. “And, I wound up here.”
She gestures at the couch where both of us sit and then finally looks at me. The way her eyes focus on me now make me feel like she can truly see me, all of me, down to the scars on my aching heart. For once, it feels good to be looked at this way.
Maybe it’s the wine.
“Everett, that doll,” she says abruptly, making my blood run cold as ice. “What was that about?”
My whole body goes still, my shoulders pulling back so rigidly that it jerks at my spine. She blinks in surprise, one of her hands reaching towards me. Her palm presses into my knee, her worried eyes gazing into mine.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she assures me, but her hand is so warm on my leg that I can’t imagine not telling her.
Holly has that effect on me. She makes me talk. She makes the twisted thoughts in my brain form into actual words on my lips. I feel compelled to share things with this woman that I never would’ve shared with anyone else, even my wife.
She settles in closer, the scent of the jasmine wafting over me, wrapping around me like a blanket that is warm and comforting and as fragrant as the wine we were drinking.
One of my hands moves instinctively, brushing hair away from her jeweled eyes. Her face leans gently into my hand, gaze never drifting.
“Sarah was pregnant,” I croak, trying to force the words through the pain in my chest. “She was pregnant when she died. I had no idea until I found her diary months afterward. I’ve never… I’ve never told anyone that.”
For so long, that had been my own burden to bear; it’d been my own painful secret of my awful loss. I’d dreamt about the child I would never hold, I’d grieved the child I would never touch, and I had never spoken a single word of its brief existence.
My chin drops to my chest, tears that I have long fought blurring my vision as Holly leaps up onto her knees upon the couch, her arms circling my bowed head, dragging me into a hug that I all too gladly return.
I cling to Holly like I’ve never clung to anyone, like she is a lifeboat in the middle of a rough and dark sea.
When I close my eyes, she’s a beacon of light in an endless, dismal night.
Chapter 11
Holly
A distant, shrill screaming jerks me abruptly awake.
I lurch to the side, unable to see through bleary eyes, before tumbling off the couch. The quilt that had apparently been gently wrapped around me has twisted up around my legs, leaving me trapped in a serpent of wool.
“What the heck. . .” I groan, rubbing at my drowsy eyes and staring around me in surprise.
Oh. That’s right. I remember now.
Everett and I talked so late into the night that I must’ve eventually fallen asleep. It had been so nice to talk about what happened in New York. I’d been waiting for him
to judge me, to be disgusted with my behavior, but there’d been none of that, none at all.
Deep down, that’s what Everett is at his core. Just plain gentle. Underneath all that stubbornness and all that sadness, there is a warm and sensitive man. It just takes some unearthing to find it.
Abruptly, something shrieks again, making me yelp and shoot back to my feet, only to realize that it’s just my cellphone ringing. With a shake of my head, I scoop it up, expecting to see Charlotte’s number. I can’t remember the last time anyone who wasn’t her called me.
Except it’s not my friend. It’s Michael’s number that flashes across the screen.
My stomach drops instantly to my feet, making my toes curl with nervousness. It’d been almost a year since we spoke. I wasn’t even sure what to say to him now. I’d spent so long trying to speak to him through his smart-mouthed secretary that I wasn’t even sure how to start a conversation with him.
Sucking in a worried breath, I close my eyes and hit the answer button.
“Holly.” Michael’s stern, deep voice crackles into my ear. “You still haven’t signed the cease and desist order. What is taking you so long?”
“I just want my cat,” I answer hurriedly, tripping over my words. I know I won’t have long to speak before he hangs up on me. “I’m sorry for what I did and how I acted, and I’ll sign anything you want if you just give me Noodle back—”
“You’re dragging your heels over a stupid cat? If you sign it for me, I’ll have him shipped out tomorrow.”
“Noodle is a girl, Michael! And I don’t believe you! I’ve been begging for my cat to be returned to me since I left. That’s why I called you all those times. Once I sign that form, I’ll never be able to contact you again about Noodle.”