Silk

by Heidi McLaughlin

  I didn’t answer him. I didn’t even look at him. I was in my own personal hell, and I didn’t need him in it, too. I stomped up the trail, putting as much space as I could between Allie and me.

  ***

  I didn’t stop until I got to a clearing. The sun was straight overhead now so I knew I’d been walking for more than four hours. It was hot. During my tantrum, I hadn’t thought to stop and grab a bottle of water. I hadn’t bothered with socks either, and the blisters on my feet were demanding my attention.

  I sat on a rock to give my feet a rest and listened to nature around me. The trickling of a stream nearby gave me hope that if I followed it, I’d find some water. Leaving the path wasn’t ideal, but I’d hiked these trails for several years. I would find my way back.

  When I got to the stream, I sat down on the pebbly ground and removed my shoes. I surveyed the bloody mess and then stuck my feet into the cold water. It had a chilling effect on my anger though my head was still a fucked up mess.

  I was having trouble sorting through it all. For so many years, I’d hated her. And then recently I’d begun to think that, despite it all, I might actually love her. Now, I didn’t know what I felt.

  She didn’t know about Joy. It was clear to me now that she had no memory of her at all.

  Our precious Joy had been the tie that bound our family. Our saving grace. It had all been falling apart, and then she’d come along and pulled us back together. Her laugh had filled our hearts. Her smile had saved our souls. And then she was gone ... unfairly taken from us. And everything we’d built around her fell apart all over again.

  It had been more than just Allie’s life that had been irreversibly changed that day.

  But she didn’t know that. Failed memory aside, how was it possible that no one had told her?

  This was her father’s doing. Her controlling, domineering, know-better-than-everyone-else father.

  Even though I’d just recently laid eyes on him for the first time, I’d known him for years. His people had whisked in and cleaned up the mess. I knew it was his words on the documents that my parents had signed. It was his money that had tried to buy back our happiness. It had taken years for me to be able to walk into that apartment without feeling his presence there. For the first six years, I’d lived there because I had no other choice. For the last four, I’d stayed because I was dead inside, and it just didn’t matter any more.

  But was I dead inside? I didn’t think so. Not any more. Allie had taught me that. She’d taught me that things are not always what they seem. That nothing is black and white. Without either of us even knowing it, she’d taught me to forgive.

  Forgiving was not forgetting, and I’d never be able to forget. I’d never want to, but I knew now that I wanted to move on. And, oddest of all, I wanted to move on with her. I just didn’t know where to go next or how to get us there.

  Her father clearly felt that Allie should live a lie. As infuriating as it was for me to think about, I wondered, Was he wrong?

  I didn’t know. I just didn’t fucking know.

  All this time, I’d thought she’d come out of the accident unscathed. I was wrong. None of us were unscathed.

  And she was fragile. I knew that now. But that notion was so contrary to where my head had been when this had all started. That first night in the bar, I’d watched how she carried herself in her designer clothes and how easily she laughed with her friends. I’d made assumptions. I’d assumed she was a callous, confident, selfish woman with no appreciation for the consequences of her actions. But now I knew better. She wasn’t any of those things. I’d spent the last four months getting to know her. She wasn’t selfish or callous. I’d seen her with Lizzie. I knew how much she cared for and worried about that girl. Oh, hell. Lizzie’s pregnant. I’d watched Allie stand by her side, taking her to doctor’s appointments for a baby that Lizzie didn’t want and Allie could never have.

  No, Allie definitely wasn’t selfish. It was clear to me now that it wasn’t that Allie didn’t appreciate the consequences of her actions. It was that she didn’t know the consequences of her actions.

  She’d been afraid that I would leave her when I learned the truth. Now I was the one afraid. Our entire relationship was based on lies and half-truths. I’d sabotaged her career, her life. I’d set out to purposefully hurt her. My sole mission had been to wreak havoc on her perfect life. Burke had been right. Sometimes there were no take-backs. If she learned the truth about what I’d done, she would walk away. I knew without her telling me that she loved me. But if she knew everything I’d done, there was no way she’d be able to love me anymore.

  And that wasn’t even my biggest fear. I was more afraid of what would happen if she learned the truth about that day. If she learned who I really was ... if she learned about Joy ... could she handle it? Ten years ago, I watched a woman I loved fall apart at the seams because she lost Joy. Would I have to watch it again if Allie remembered Joy? It was hard to believe that it had come to this, but maybe her father wasn’t wrong for lying to her all of these years.

  No. I didn’t believe that. If he’d told her the truth 10 years ago, we wouldn’t be in this position now. But where would we be? Where would she be? Would she have been able to accept the truth then? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I didn’t want to see her hurt any more.

  Maybe I should be the one to walk away. Maybe if I left her alone, she’d never figure it all out. But if I left her now, that would hurt her, too. And, it was selfish, but I had a feeling that there would never be anyone else like her for me. If I let her go, I’d spend the rest of my life looking for her just to see if it had been worth it.

  It was settled then. I knew what I had to do even if it meant becoming just like the man who I’d spent a decade hating.

  CHAPTER 22

  Alexis

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lying here. All day, I think. It had to be getting late now. Carly had come to check on me a few times, but I’d told her that I had a migraine and just needed to sleep it off.

  He hadn’t come back. I’d been listening for his voice, waiting for him to come tell me that it was over. The next 24 hours were going to be excruciating. I just wanted to go home, but he was my ride out of here.

  I bounced on the air mattress a little, and then strong arms wrapped around me. He pulled me in close, and I closed my eyes and let relief wash over me. He smelled good; different, but good. I didn’t care. I was just glad he was back. And, with his arms around me, I had hope that my dark predictions were wrong.

  “You told him, didn’t you?” Ethan asked.

  I started sobbing again.

  “Shhhh,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve told you over and over again that this isn’t that big of a deal. It really isn’t. Not to a guy who cares about you, Alexis. You are smart and sweet and beautiful. And funny. You’re the real deal Holyfield, the whole enchilada. You’re all that and a bag of chips. The cat’s meow.”

  He squeezed me tighter. “Seriously, Alexis. This will not be a big deal to him. And, if it is, he doesn’t deserve you.”

  Those were just words. Adam had been gone for more than eight hours. It was clearly a big deal.

  Adam

  Even though I’d hiked straight back, it was nearly nightfall when I reached the campsite. I must have spent hours sitting by that stream. Even though the sun hadn’t set, Burke already had the campfire roaring. He was poking at it with a stick, looking as morose as I felt. The rest of the group didn’t look much better. Boy, I really knew how to kill a party.

  Carly spotted me first and came at me like a fire-breathing dragon. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed that her short legs could carry her that fast. Burke shook his head and followed.

  “What the hell, Adam? Where have you been? We have been looking for you all day. Alexis is sick. I think you may need to take her home. She hasn’t left your tent all day.” The words tumbled out of her so fast that I couldn’t have answ
ered her questions if I wanted to ... which I didn’t. All I wanted to do was talk to Allie.

  “I got this, Carl,” Burke said. “Let me talk to him.”

  “But he needs to go take care of her. There’s something wrong.”

  “I know. And I got this,” Burke said sternly.

  He didn’t dismiss Carly very often, and she looked at him like he’d struck her. She turned on her heel and headed back to the fire.

  “Jesus, Adam,” Burke said under his breath. “You are getting me into all kinds of shit with her, you know.”

  I looked toward my tent and tried to push past Burke, but he got right in my face. I wasn’t sure why they were making this about them. It had nothing to do with them. “I need to go check on Allie.”

  “What’s going on, man?” Burke started. “Did you tell her everything? I thought we agreed that honesty was not the best policy.”

  “No. I didn’t tell her anything. That’s not what this is about.”

  Burke looked relieved. “So she doesn’t know?”

  There was so much she didn’t know. “No, she doesn’t know anything. Now get out of my way,” I said. “Go roast some hotdogs or something. Make yourself useful. I’m starving.”

  “I need a cigarette first,” he said, stomping off. “And then I’ll roast your wiener. I thought Carly was going to have my wiener on a spit tonight.” Some people thrive on drama. Burke was one of them.

  I wasn’t kidding about being starving, but I needed to talk to Allie first. I opened the flap of the tent and nearly lost my shit. I was like a gorilla beating his chest; my reaction was so primal.

  Allie had her back to me. Ethan was lying next to her with his arms wrapped protectively around her. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to her, but it might have been because the pounding in my ears drowned everything else out ... including my common sense.

  “Get your hands off my girl,” I growled.

  Both of their heads whipped around. “Adam,” Allie whispered.

  Ethan’s expression wasn’t what I expected. There was no smugness, no ‘I-told-you-so’ written on his face. If anything he looked relieved. As odd as it was, I couldn’t dwell on it. The tears falling down Allie’s face were demanding my immediate attention.

  Ethan let her go and stood up. He walked straight at me until we were nose to nose. “It’s about time,” he said in a voice low enough that Allie wouldn’t hear. “This will never happen again. You will never hurt her like this again. Are we clear?”

  I matched his gaze, but didn’t answer him. I hoped he was right. I hoped I never hurt her again.

  “Alexis, I’ll be just outside if you need me,” Ethan said as he left.

  Alexis watched me warily. There was a mixture of fear and resolve in her eyes that I didn’t like. I listened to Ethan’s fading footsteps. When I couldn’t hear him anymore, I finally sat down beside her on the air mattress.

  She was a total mess. Her hair actually looked like rats might have nested in it. Her eyes were puffy, and there were tearstains on her cheeks. I’d done this to her.

  “Adam,” she started.

  I placed a finger across her lips. “No, just let me talk, okay? Whatever you are thinking right now ... it couldn’t be further from the truth. I know that you think that you are broken and that I don’t want you. But I do. I’ve never wanted anything ... anyone ... more in my life.”

  “But ...”

  I shook my head. “No, just listen. Let me say what I need to say. You did all the talking this morning, and that is my fault. I shouldn’t have left the way I did. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I left you alone all day, but I needed to sort some things out.”

  She looked back at me like she couldn’t believe that I was apologizing. I was just glad that she didn’t think I needed to. Even after an entire day of coming to terms with things, I knew I couldn’t talk about the accident. I wouldn’t be able to get through it without giving myself away, but there were things that I could say.

  “Allie, I’m sorry about what you’ve been through,” I started. “I’m sorry that you’ve spent even one second worrying that it would change the way I feel about you. Because the thing is, it really doesn’t ...”

  “Holy hell!” a male voice interrupted my train of thought. It had come from near the campfire.

  “Oh, my God! Burke’s in there!” a familiar voice screamed. I knew that voice. It was Carly, and she sounded scared.

  I jumped up off the mattress and pushed my way through the unzipped flap. I jogged toward the campfire, but then redirected myself toward the crowd gathered around Burke and Carly’s tent. The synthetic smell of burnt nylon permeated the air. A small, but growing, fire was licking its way up the front side of their tent. Everyone was moving frantically around, looking for water to put it out. Carly was the exception. She stood rooted in place, watching with a horrified expression on her face as the front wall of the tent became liquid and then slid toward the ground.

  I ran around the tent to the back side, but there was no zipper on that side. I turned to look for something that I could use to rip open the tent. I knew Burke had a filet knife somewhere, but I had no idea where. All I could find was a coat hanger that we’d used for roasting marshmallows. As I made the first jab at the tent, a knife blade poked through the fabric and then ripped down the length of the wall. Burke stepped through the new door that he’d just created.

  “Holy shit! Did you see that!” he asked excitedly, with a stupid ass grin slapped across his face. A still lit cigarette was hanging from his mouth. “Wouldn’t you think that these things would be flame retardant? I definitely want my money back.”

  “Oh, my God,” Carly yelled for about the 30th time in 90 seconds. “You could have died, you idiot!” She slapped him hard in the chest and then continued to keep smacking him.

  “Were you smoking in there?” I asked incredulously.

  “Well, yeah. I was just going to grab something, and then I was going to make some dogs,” Burke answered. “It’s a good thing that I had my filet knife strapped to my ankle, right? Or I would be roasted like a marshmallow right now.”

  I felt like taking my turn punching him. What an idiot.

  A 200-pound ram called Barnacle raced up to the tent and threw the contents of one of our ice chests on it. Beer bottles littered the now sizzling wreckage.

  “Dude! That’s our beer!” Burke said, picking up a bottle that had rolled off to the side. He popped the cap off it as I turned to go back to Allie. She’d left the tent and was standing right behind me, surveying the damage. She was still a complete mess, but now she was smiling at the idiot beside me.

  I wanted to talk to her some more, but my adrenaline was still pumping. I needed to come way down if I was actually going to use the “L” word. Besides, if this was really her first time out of the tent all day, I didn’t want her going back inside so soon.

  I reached down and grabbed two more of the stray bottles. I popped the tops off and handed one to Allie. “Come on,” I said, pulling her toward the real campfire. We sat down in two chairs. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “We’ll talk some more later, okay? I need some food.” When she nodded, I pulled the top of her hand to my lips and gave it a light kiss.

  “Hey, I like your shirt,” she said. I looked down at the big print across my chest claiming that I had ‘More skills than Bear Grylls.’

  I liked that she liked it. I liked everything about her.

  ***

  We spent the next few hours around the campfire. Fortunately, Burke’s little fire took the heat off me. The conversation revolved around Burke’s stupidity rather than my absence all day. At some point, the topic of alternative sleeping arrangements was brought up.

  “Carl and I’ll just sleep with Barnacle and Dirk,” Burke said.

  “The hell?” Barnacle said. “Tonight’s my night in the tent. I’ve got a date. Go sleep in the van.”

  “Fine by me,” Burke responded.

  “I
am not sleeping in that nasty van,” Carly huffed. “God only knows what is on those seats. And what about Mr. Big? He’ll get claustrophobic in there.”

  “You weren’t complaining on the way up here,” Barnacle muttered.

  “Well, no. Because I sat on a trashbag.”

  Thus far, I’d remained silent. Mostly because I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that Allie and I still had a tent. However, eventually the thought occurred to Burke.

  “That settles it,” he said. “I’ll bunk with Adam and Allie in their tent, and, Carly, you and Mr. Big can sleep with Jillian and Ethan.

  Ethan wiggled his eyebrows at Burke. “Those sounds like pretty good odds to me.”

  Burke threw an empty at him. “Scratch that. Carly and Mr. Big can sleep with Jillian, and Ethan can sleep in the van.”

  “No way,” Ethan said. “I will not be punished for your stupidity.”

  Burke gave him a severe look. “Fine. But you touch my woman, and I will break your face.”

  Then he turned toward us. “It’s cool if I sleep with you guys, right?”

  It wasn’t cool ... not cool at all ... but I looked over at Allie questioningly. She nodded and smiled weakly. “Yeah, all right, but you’re sleeping on the ground.”

  It seemed pretty late at this point, and I was tired from my all-day adventure in the woods. I also wanted to get a few more minutes of alone time with Allie before Burke joined us. “You ready?” I quietly asked Allie. Again, she nodded.

  I stood up and took her hand. “All right. Well, we’re turning in. We’ll see you guys in the morning,” I said.

  Burke stood up, too. “I’m right there with ya, bro. Playing firefighter is exhausting. Night, Carl.”

  “Do you mind?” I asked him.

  “Oh, right. I’ll give you five minutes,” he said, turning and jogging toward Carly’s retreating back.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Carly, I’ve got five minutes. Let’s go check out the bathhouse,” he said.