To Have and to Hold: A Returning Home Novel

by Serena Bell

  She wasn’t.

  She really, really wasn’t.

  Even if she was dying to touch him.

  She should say no. There was no way she could go to Lakeshore Park and not think of how it had been the last time around. Tension shimmering in the air between them, nearly from the moment she’d taken off her cover-up and his eyes had looked everywhere except at her skimpy bathing suit.

  “I think it would be fun.”

  Those were not the words she was supposed to have said. Nor was she supposed to be beaming at him. But he was smiling back at her, and God, he hadn’t smiled like that since—before. All white teeth and eye crinkles and that almost-dimple and just the sheer ridiculous glow of him.

  She remembered the first time he’d smiled at her like that. The day they’d gone to Lakeshore.

  Even though she knew what mistakes she wasn’t supposed to make again, she kept wanting to make them.

  “Do you want to go somewhere other than Lakeshore? Because we’ve already done that?”

  She shook her head. Apparently she was going to undermine all her own best intentions today.

  “It’s a little frustrating,” he admitted. “I have a brilliant idea, and it’s already old and busted.” He wet his hand under the tap and flicked a few drops of water into the skillet, where they sizzled. He poured the eggs in and didn’t make eye contact.

  “It’s different this time, anyway,” she said. “Everything’s different.”

  And she didn’t just mean in the bad ways. She didn’t just mean what he’d forgotten and what she’d lost. She meant it in good ways, too. After spending five days working with him on the tree house, she didn’t see him quite the same way anymore. He wasn’t just the same Hunter she’d left behind, only minus his memories of her. He was—he was different. Harder, with something defensive in the set of his jaw. But also softer. The builder, the creator, a different, more vulnerable man than he’d let her see before.

  The man who’d given himself up so thoroughly in those moments in the dark…

  No, this visit to Lakeshore would in many ways bear no resemblance to their first. It was impossible, now, for her to look at him and see the same remote, self-contained man—Clara’s father—she’d once seen. She knew him too well, knew all the soft and tender spots under his strong and leathery surface.

  It was harder for her to protect herself from this man.

  —

  It didn’t occur to him immediately that this outing would involve Trina in a bathing suit. He’d asked her totally spontaneously, because he needed a day’s break from tree-house work, because the sun was shining brightly outside, because he didn’t want his and Clara’s time with her to just end, without fanfare. He wanted to create an experience they’d remember distinctly.

  If he were honest with himself, he’d say he wanted to create an experience Trina would remember, too.

  But the bathing suit wasn’t on his mind.

  They’d finished eating the scrambled eggs and fucking awesome granola and were doing the dishes, bumping elbows and accidentally twining soapy fingers under the water, when he suddenly realized that he’d just arranged for himself to spend an entire day in the presence of her mostly naked abundance. And that it might be a form of beautiful torture.

  Not an hour went by that he didn’t think about the night he’d woken in the middle of kissing her, or that other encounter, the one he might or might not have dreamt. And working side by side with her this week, leaning closer to show her a technique, or squatting beside her to examine one of the treasures she’d scavenged, it had been increasingly difficult to keep his hands off her. But he’d successfully suffocated his cravings in hard work. He’d kept his hands to himself and the thoughts in the dark quiet of his own mind. Because he would not do to her what he’d done to Dee. He wouldn’t let lust lead them both into a trap. If there was no way, now, to fix what had gone wrong with Dee, he would make sure Trina didn’t make the same mistake with him.

  After breakfast, he’d gone upstairs to shower and change, and it had been then, standing under the water, running his soapy palm across his chest, that it occurred to him to wonder where his bathing suit was.

  They would wear bathing suits, of course.

  She would wear a bathing suit.

  Trina. Bathing suit.

  Damn.

  His skin buzzed with a low-level anticipation that wouldn’t rinse away.

  He wondered if this was old territory. If after he’d texted her and invited her to the base’s lakefront park the first time, he’d pondered—with a little too much anticipation and a suspicious dryness of the mouth—just exactly what she’d look like, blond hair streaming and shining in the sun, skin bared.

  He had the sharpest urge to burnish the shine off that fantasy image of her with the grip of fist over flesh.

  He reminded his body that all they were doing was driving to a pretty spot for a picnic and some swimming, but that didn’t seem to help with how tight he was strung.

  So he made himself think of a fight he’d had once with Dee. She’d had a new bathing suit and he hadn’t even noticed. She’d cried and said he didn’t see her anymore, not like that. And he’d denied and soothed, but when she’d stopped crying and they’d moved on to other things, he’d felt dirty, like he’d lied. Because the truth was, he knew exactly what she meant and she was right. He didn’t see her anymore, not like that.

  That was the flip side of this moment. If he let his mind run away with fantasies about Trina—if he acted on his impulses where she was concerned—they would end up like that. Hurt. Bitter. Dirty.

  His head and chest ached. But the truth was, using thoughts of Dee to push away his feelings for Trina just wasn’t working as well as it had.

  Sometimes it felt like the old Hunter, the one who’d been reckless enough to let himself go with Trina, was trying to break free, and the new Hunter, the cautious, sensible one who wanted to keep her out of harm’s way, was losing the battle.

  He flung the curtain aside, toweled himself off hard, and rushed himself through dressing, so the fantasies wouldn’t have time to re-gather.

  Or the memories, if that’s what they were.

  In the car, the girls were chatty and lighthearted, Trina laughing at their jokes, and it was impossible not to be drawn in. The girls helped, without being asked, to trek the chairs and towels and inflatables they’d picked up at Walmart en route to the beach, and then they flung their cover-ups off and ran pell-mell for the sparkle of the lake.

  He tried not to watch out of the corner of his eye as Trina shed her flirty pink cover-up. That stupid barely-there garment had really only made things worse by clinging to her curves and hinting at everything underneath it. Or—well, that was what he’d thought until she took it off.

  “Race you to the middle!”

  She took off on the inflatable raft, paddling with her hands, and he launched his raft and followed.

  Sure. Good idea. You paddle, and I’ll try not to ogle you. It took superhuman effort. When he was behind her, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the dimples at the base of her spine, or the beginnings of the thoroughly squeezable ass that disappeared into her bikini bottom. And it only got worse when he paddled harder and caught up, because then he had to try really hard to drag his eyes away from the juicy fullness of her breasts spilling over the not-even-particularly-tiny bikini top.

  Now here they were, floating in the middle of the lake, and he kept sneaking looks at her in that red bikini and then wishing he hadn’t. The long, smooth slope of her belly, the dip of her navel, the porcelain of her skin. The squeezable, edible, oh-so-fucking-soft-looking thighs…His swim trunks were doing a lousy job of masking his interest.

  Not for you, dude.

  His body didn’t give a shit about that kind of logic.

  He cast another sideways look at her, her eyes closed against the brilliant sun overhead. She looked—peaceful. Happy. For the first time since he’d come home.

>   And the thirteen-year-old boy in him—or maybe the old Hunter—just had to do it. Had to grab the edge of her float, tip her up, and dump her in the water.

  She emerged choking and sputtering from the water, her hair plastered to her face. “Bastard!”

  She threw herself on him—which of course must have been his subconscious intention all along. He recognized that as soon as her skin—cool on the surface, but he could feel the heat underneath—slipped along his, satiny and wet. Her breasts were alluringly close to his face; if he sat up and dipped his head, he could have that smooth, wet skin against his lips.

  But suddenly he was frozen by a question.

  “Did I tip you? Last time we came here?”

  He said it low, close to her ear. He didn’t want the girls to hear, because even though they’d paddled off a good distance now, the water carried sound across its surface. They’d taken the news of his lost memory pretty well in stride. You don’t remember anything? they’d demanded, and Will it come back? but even Clara hadn’t freaked out too badly. He’d never reveal to her how scared he was by the crevasses in his mind.

  Trina paused in her efforts. “No. You were apparently far less of an asshole before.”

  But she was grinning, and she resumed her project of trying to get more of her body on his raft, more of her weight onto him, and it felt so unfuckingbelievably hot, the contact with her skin, the slip and slide of it, the jiggle and bounce of her, that when she called out, “Girls! I need some help here!” he had to flip himself off the raft and into the water before they could come to her aid, because he wasn’t decent viewing with his trunks waving at the sky.

  He felt the flit of her body against his in the water, like a lake creature brushing by in the depths. Just the silk of her leg against his, and then she was gone, but he knew it would be awhile before he could haul himself back onto the raft.

  She pulled herself out of the water, glistening all over.

  The cold water had done its work and he was able to dredge himself out of the lake and settle on the raft again.

  She reached a hand out and indicated the angry, red scar that marred his torso on the right side. Her fingers didn’t even brush him, but he felt the air move over his wet skin, and his whole body tightened. God.

  “Ugly, huh?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not ugly. It’s a sign that you lived. It could never be ugly to me.”

  He was not a sentimental man—or at least he never had been, before. The self he remembered would have shrugged something like that off, like a pitcher shaking off a catcher’s signals. But he knew—with the part of him that seemed to still know everything worth knowing—that she meant it. That it was said without calculation, without manipulation, without any intention at all other than to tell the truth. And that same part of him needed to hear it, and needed it to be true. So when she reached out her hand again, her fingertips floating over the evidence of his survival, he squeezed it briefly before he let it go.

  Chapter 13

  They grabbed Red Robin burgers on the way home, made the girls take showers, and tucked them, fragrant with shampoo and dopey from the sun and activity, into bed.

  Since Hunter’s return home, they’d been taking turns saying good night to the girls—Trina first, and then Hunter. But tonight, he didn’t wait for her to be finished before he came in. While she was sitting on the lower bunk, reminding Phoebe in a low voice how proud she was of her, how lucky she felt to be her mother, Hunter climbed the ladder so his head poked over the upper railing, and she heard his low voice murmuring similarly to Clara.

  She shouldn’t read anything into it. He’d just chosen to streamline the process tonight.

  But it felt cozy. Homey.

  It felt like something she’d imagined during his absence, something she’d dreamt up before her hopes and expectations had gotten dashed.

  Like the squeeze of his hand over hers this afternoon. Like the flashes of heat in his eyes, the all-too-familiar way his gaze had settled, heavy, on her half-bare breasts.

  Hope had bloomed, even unwanted, amid all that.

  “That was a fun day,” Phoebe whispered.

  Trina loved bedtime. Because no matter how much of an adolescent her daughter had become during the day, at bedtime she was a child again, trusting, innocent, confiding. “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “Do you think we’ll do stuff like that with Daddy?”

  Would they? She didn’t know. If Stefan took an interest in them that was more than a passing fancy. If he didn’t find that they cramped his style.

  Her stomach hurt a little bit at the thought. Because she could hold her own feelings in check and keep herself from getting hurt again, but the idea of Phoebe’s disappointment was more than she could bear.

  “I don’t know, hon’,” she said. “I hope so. I think so. But Daddy—he’s very busy. So we’ll see. But I’ll do cool things with you.” She leaned down and touched her lips to her daughter’s smooth forehead. “I love you, Phoebs.”

  “How much?”

  “A bazillion, two gigahertz, and a partridge in a pear tree.”

  “I love you a bazillion, two gigahertz, and two partridges in a pear tree.”

  Hunter, who had descended the ladder, crossed behind her. His body didn’t touch hers, but she could feel the energy and heat of it, and her body hummed in response; she wondered if he could feel it. She wondered whether he’d meant any of it—her hand in his, the way he’d heated her skin with a glance.

  “Hey, Phoebe. I had a good time with you today. I’m sorry I don’t remember the last time we hung out, but I’m glad we got another chance.”

  Trina’s heart squeezed. Today—as he’d always been—Hunter had been easygoing with Phoebe, funny and noncommittal, and her usually shy daughter had opened up to him. There had been only a few moments—and if she didn’t know him so well, she might not even have noted them—when she saw him fall, for just a split second, into the darkness of forgetting.

  In one of those moments, he’d looked to Trina and she’d smiled to tell him it was okay, and she’d seen relief overcome panic. And been absurdly touched by the fact that her presence soothed him. Before she’d remembered that it didn’t, couldn’t, matter.

  “Me, too.” Phoebe’s voice was small but pleased.

  “Good night, kiddo.”

  He hesitated in the doorway, and his eyes snagged hers, dark and serious. “Good night, Trina.” Something in the weave of his gaze and voice left her breathless.

  “Good night, Hunter.”

  He went out, his fingers wrapping the edge of the doorframe, and whether the gesture was deliberate or not, she felt as if he’d let that lingering hand drift over her skin.

  Oh, you fool, she told herself, as if that would help. As if it would make the way she felt go away, when nothing would, except time and distance and, eventually, forgetting.

  She was envious of his forgetting, she realized.

  She climbed the bunk ladder and peeked over the top at Clara, who had drawn her quilt up to her chin.

  “Did it work okay?” she whispered. “With the tampons today?”

  They’d had an awkward but fruitful lesson on the topic earlier; a tearful Clara had declared that she would never, ever, ever get it to work, but ultimately emerged triumphant from the bathroom and thrown her arms around Trina, whose chest had felt full to overflowing.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Clara murmured.

  “Good. ’Night, Clara.” She settled a kiss on the girl’s forehead, just as she had done to her own daughter. “I love you, hon’.”

  But before she could retreat down the ladder, Clara reached out and grasped Trina’s wrist. “Wait. Don’t go.”

  Trina leaned in close, thinking Clara had something she wanted to ask. Or say. But Clara only held on tight to Trina’s wrist, and tears filled Trina’s eyes as she realized what Clara was saying. Don’t go. Don’t go away. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us.

  “Sweetie. I have a
couple more days. And we’ll visit.”

  But as she said it, she knew it was not nearly enough, not with all Clara had lost.

  “It’s not the same. It’s not the same. Don’t go.”

  “Oh, baby,” Trina said, and rested her head beside Clara’s on the pillow. “I love you. I wish I could stay.” It felt like her chest was bursting open, like her heart was breaking into a million pieces. For herself, and for Clara, who had lost a mother and was losing another.

  What a muddle.

  She blinked back tears.

  Clara’s lids were heavy, and her grip on Trina’s wrist had begun to slacken. But the vise around Trina’s heart had only tightened.

  This. This is what I want, she thought, watching as Clara’s last long blink turned to a sigh and sleep.

  I’m sorry.

  It was Hunter’s voice, when he’d told her he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—try to find his way back to her.

  It was her own voice, telling Clara she would never have let her love her like a mother if she’d known it wasn’t for keeps.

  It was the whole damn world, weeping for what couldn’t be.

  This. This is what you get for wanting.

  Chapter 14

  She lay in bed, unable to sleep.

  She couldn’t stop thinking—of these last few days and how good they’d been, the rhythms of being with the girls, watching Hunter in his element, strong and fierce, the four of them working on a project as a—

  Not a family!

  What was she supposed to think? Today had been—it had been unmistakably something. Some progress toward—

  Toward what, exactly? She was leaving Saturday. And thank God she was, because she didn’t seem to have the slightest ability to keep her head on straight where Hunter was concerned. She kept getting mushy and flirty and hopeful, and she could only be headed toward a fall.

  It had probably been a terrible mistake to offer to stay because of Clara’s period. She should have just—