“Like if I hadn’t found out Damian was cheating, I’d still be with him? Well, maybe if there wasn’t a baby.” My voice dropped off, and I shut that line of thinking down.
“Maybe. But you’re on a different branch now because you did. And maybe that other branch exists in the fictional realm of possibilities, but in this one, you’re here with me.” His gaze dropped to my lips and back. “I’m sorry that he fucked up but not sorry you know about it. You deserve better.”
“Gran never wanted me to marry him.” I shifted my weight but left us connected. “She wanted what she had with Grandpa Jameson for me. Not that she didn’t love Grandpa Brian, because she did.”
“It took her forty years to move on. Was she finally happy?”
I nodded. “She really was, from what she’s said. I never really pushed her to talk about it, though. It always seemed too painful. Damian did once or twice, but he was always a nosy ass. Still, even while she was married to Grandpa Brian, she wrote out here, like she was still waiting for Jameson all those years later.”
“She was the ultimate romantic. Look at this place…” He studied the gazebo. “Can’t you feel them here? Can’t you see them happy in some other fictional realm of possibility? Some other branch where the war doesn’t rip them to shreds?”
I swallowed, thinking of Gran—not the way I remembered her, but the way she looked in the photograph, wildly, recklessly in love.
“I can,” Noah went on. “I see them cutting a little landing strip into the meadow so he could fly, and I see them with half a dozen kids. I see the way he looks at her, like she’s the reason the seasons change and the sun rises until they’re a hundred and one years old.”
That was one year more than Gran had lived, and though I knew it was greedy, I wanted it. Out of every year I’d been alive, this was the one I’d needed her the most.
Noah pivoted, consuming the space in front of me, looking at me with such intensity that I had to fight not to look away. He saw too much, made me feel too exposed. But my body certainly didn’t mind how close he was. My heart thundered, my breath hitched, my blood warmed.
“I see them walking hand in hand at sunset to get a few minutes away—after they put the kids to bed, of course. I see her looking up from her typewriter to watch him walk by, knowing if she gets her work done for the day, he’ll be waiting. I see them laughing, and living, and fighting—always passionate but fair. They’re careful with each other because they know what they have, they know how rare it is, how lucky they were to survive it all with that love intact. They’re still magnetic, still make love like they’ll never get enough, still open, bluntly honest, yet tender.” His hand rose to cup my cheek, warm and steady. My breath caught, my pulse leaping at the touch. “Georgia, can’t you see it? It’s in every line of this place. This isn’t a mausoleum, it’s a promise, a shrine to that love.”
“It’s a beautiful story,” I whispered, wishing that had been their fate…or mine.
“Then let them have it.”
I sidestepped out of his reach, then walked across the gazebo to get some perspective. He wove his words into a world I wanted to live in, but that was his talent, his job. It wasn’t real.
“It wasn’t what she wanted, or she would have written it that way, ended it like all her other books,” I said. “You still think it’s a story, with characters who speak to you and choose their own branches. It’s not. It’s the closest she came to an autobiography, and you can’t change the past.” The tightness in my chest transformed to an ache. “What you described is why you’re so good at what you do, but it’s not what she wanted.” I walked to the split in the railing and down the stairs, staring up at the tops of the trees.
“What she wanted or what you want, Georgia?” he asked from the top of the steps, frustration cutting lines on his forehead.
My eyes slid shut, and I took a steadying breath, then another before turning back to him. “What I want has only ever mattered to one person, and she’s dead. This is all I can give her, Noah. The gift of honoring what she went through—what they lost.”
“You’re taking the easy way out, and that’s not who you are!”
“What the hell makes you think you know me?” I fired back.
“You sculpted a tree coming straight out of the water!”
“And?” I folded my arms over my chest.
“Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, there are pieces of me in every story I tell, and I bet it’s the same for you with sculpting. That tree isn’t anchored by earth. It shouldn’t be able to grow, and yet there it is. And don’t think I didn’t notice the lighting. It shined straight through to highlight the roots. Why else would you call it Indomitable Will?”
He remembered the name of the piece? I shook my head. “This isn’t about me. It’s about her. About them. Wrapping this up with a bow, whether it’s a tearful reunion at a train station or showing her rushing to his bedside, cheapens what she went through. The book ends here, Noah. Right at this gazebo, with Scarlett waiting for a man who never came back to her. Period.”
He looked up to the sky like he was praying for patience, and the fire in his eyes had lowered to a simmer by the time he brought his gaze back to mine. “If you force this, it will earn inevitably shitty reviews and disappoint her fans who will burn me at the stake for fucking with Scarlett Stanton’s legacy. That’s what people will remember, not her love story, not the hundred other books I could write in my lifetime.”
I bristled. His career. Of course. “Then use the opt-out and walk away.” I did exactly that, not bothering to look back as I headed down the path.
I’d seen enough looks of disappointment in my life without adding his to the mix.
“The farthest I’m walking is back to my place. I’m here for the next two and a half months, remember?”
“Good luck crossing the creek in those shoes!” I called back over my shoulder.
Chapter Fourteen
November 1940
Kirton-in-Lindsey, England
The pub was jammed full of uniforms from bar to door. It had taken Jameson a week to secure a house nearby but, for a rather healthy chunk of his pay, as of yesterday, they now had a place of their very own. At least for as long as the 71st stayed in Kirton.
As of this afternoon, Scarlett was his wife.
Wife. It wasn’t that she wasn’t aware of just how reckless they’d been to marry so quickly—it was simply that she didn’t care. That beautiful man with the bright smile and undeniable charm was now her husband.
Her breath hitched as their eyes locked across the crowded room. Husband. She glanced at the clock and wondered exactly how much longer they’d have to stay at their wedding breakfast, because the only hunger she had was for him.
And they were finally married.
“I’m so very happy for you,” Constance said, squeezing her sister’s hand lightly under the table.
“Thank you.” Scarlett’s smile was a mile wide, just as it had been since they’d come to Kirton. “It’s a far cry from what we pictured as girls, but now I couldn’t imagine having it any other way.” The wedding that afternoon had been small, attended only by their closest friends and a few of the pilots from the 71st, but had been perfectly lovely. Constance had procured a small bouquet, and though Scarlett’s dress wasn’t the family heirloom she had always assumed she would wear, the way Jameson looked at her told her she looked beautiful, nonetheless.
“Me either,” Constance agreed. “But I could say that about everything in our life. Nothing is how I pictured it two years ago.”
“It isn’t, but maybe in some small ways it’s better.” Scarlett understood her sister all too well, and though she longed for the days before the war, before the bombings, and the rationing, and the commonplace death, she couldn’t regret any of her decisions that brought her to Jameson.
Som
ehow, she’d found a miracle in the middle of the maelstrom, and it may have taken her a moment to realize what she had, but now that she did, she would fight with everything she had to keep it—to keep him.
“I am sorry Mother and Father didn’t come,” Constance whispered. “I held out hope until the very last moment.”
Scarlett’s smile slipped, but not much. She’d known that her letter would go unanswered. “Oh Constance, ever the romantic. It should have been you to elope, not me.” Scarlett stared across the pub, marveling that Jameson was hers. How ironic that the more practical of the two of them had been the one to run off and be married. She could barely believe it herself, yet here she was celebrating her wedding—in a pub, of all places.
True, it was nothing like she pictured as a child, yet it was all the better for it. And besides, who was she to deny fate, when it had taken a million and one separate events to bring her to Jameson?
“Maybe I am an idealist.” Constance shrugged. “I just can’t believe they wouldn’t want to see you happy. I’d always thought their threats were just that, idle threats.”
“Don’t be angry with them,” Scarlett said gently. “They’re fighting for the only way of life they know. They’re not unlike a wounded animal when you think about it. And I refuse to be sad today. It is their loss.”
“It really is,” Constance agreed. “I’ve never seen you look so happy, so beautiful. Love looks good on you.”
“Will you be all right?” Scarlett turned slightly in her chair, facing her sister. “Our home is only a few minutes from the airfield, but—”
“Stop.” Constance lifted her eyebrows. “I will be perfectly fine.”
“I know. I just can’t remember the last time we were separated for any length of time.” Perhaps a few days here or there, but not much else.
“We’ll still see each other at work.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Scarlett said softly. Now that she was married, she’d follow Jameson when the 71st inevitably left Kirton. Training the new pilots couldn’t last forever.
“Well, we’ll handle that when the time comes. For now, the only thing that’s changing is where you sleep…” She tilted her head. “Oh, and where you eat, and spend your free time, and of course who you’ll be sleeping with.” Her eyes danced.
Scarlett rolled her eyes but felt her cheeks heat as Jameson came toward them in his dress uniform. She spun her new ring around her finger with her thumb, assuring herself that this wasn’t a dream. They’d made it happen.
…
“That was the last of them,” Jameson said with a smile, his gaze skimming down the long line of Scarlett’s neck to the simple, classy dress she’d chosen. He would have married her in her uniform or even her bathrobe—he didn’t care. He’d take this woman any way he could get her. “I swear I’ve been holding the same pint for the last hour and a half, hoping no one will notice.” He put the glass on the table.
“You could have had more than one. I think it’s expected.” Scarlett’s own glass was still full.
“I wanted to have a clear head.” His lips tugged upward. He wasn’t about to be drunk the first time he got his hands on her. Hell, he’d nearly carried her over his shoulder to their new house last night, but waiting was better. The anticipation of it was killing him in the sweetest way imaginable.
“Did you?” Lord, that smile of hers nearly took him out at the knees.
“What do you say I take you home, Mrs. Stanton?” He held out his hand for hers.
“Mrs. Stanton,” Scarlett replied with a spark of joy in her eyes as her fingers brushed his.
“You sure as hell are.” Just hearing her say it sent his heart skyrocketing.
They made their farewells, and it was only a matter of minutes before Jameson parked one of the squadron cars in front of what was now their home.
He swept her off her feet, lifting her into his arms at the edge of the sidewalk. “You’re mine.”
“And you’re mine,” she replied, lacing her fingers behind his neck.
He kissed her softly, brushing his lips over hers as he walked them up the sidewalk, only lifting his head when they came to the steps.
“My trunk—” she started.
“I’ll get it later,” he promised. “I want you to see the house.” She’d been on watch when he’d found it yesterday. His stomach dipped. “It’s not what you’re used to.” He’d learned enough about her family to know this little place of theirs would probably fit in one of the Wrights’ dining rooms.
She kissed him in reply. “Unless you’re asking me to share it with eleven other women, it’s far better than anything I’ve had over the last year.”
“God, I love you.”
“Good, because you’re stuck with me now.”
He laughed, then somehow managed to unlock the door and push it open without dropping her as he carried her over the threshold. “Welcome home, Mrs. Stanton,” he said as he set her feet on the floor.
Mrs. Stanton. He was never going to tire of saying it.
Scarlett’s gaze made a quick sweep of the interior. The house opened into a modest living room that, thankfully, had come furnished. A staircase divided the space, with the dining room to the right, including a small table and chairs, and the kitchen lay just beyond it to the back of the house.
“It’s lovely,” Scarlett said as she took it all in. “Quite perfect, really.” She ran her hand over the dining room table as she walked, and Jameson followed her into the kitchen.
She paled, her smile vanishing as her gaze jumped from the oven to the small table, and over the counters. Horror emanated from every line of her face.
“What’s wrong?” His stomach pitched. Was it missing something? Shit. He should have waited for something better.
She turned to face him, then met his gaze with wide eyes. “This might not be the most opportune time to tell you, but I can’t cook.”
He blinked. “You can’t cook,” he repeated slowly, just to be sure he’d heard her right.
She shook her head. “Not a thing. I’m sure I could figure out how to turn the stove on, but not much else.”
“Okay. But the kitchen is acceptable?” He tried to equate the angst in her eyes to her confession and came up short.
“Of course!” She nodded. “It’s lovely. I’m just not sure what to do with it. I never learned to cook at home, and it’s been the officers’ mess since then.” She tugged her lower lip between her teeth.
The relief was so sharp and sweet that he couldn’t help but laugh as he wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Scarlett, my Scarlett.” He kissed the top of her head and breathed in her scent. “I’m not saying I can put on a five-course meal, but if I can fry up eggs and bacon over a campfire, I think I’ll be able to keep us fed while we figure it out.”
“If we could even get real eggs,” she muttered as her arms wrapped around his waist.
“Very true.” As a pilot, a diet of eggs and bacon bettered his chances of surviving a water landing and were shoved at him with such regularity that he’d nearly forgotten how rare they were.
“I’ve learned to press my own clothing over the last year, and do some wash, but not much else in the domestic sense of things,” she said into his chest. “I’m afraid you may have gotten a bad deal by marrying me.”
He tilted her chin and kissed her gently. “I got more than I could have dreamed of by marrying you. We’ll figure everything else out together.”
Together. Her chest ached with how much she loved him. “Show me the rest of the house.”
He took her hand and led her up the small staircase to the second floor. “The bathroom,” he said as he motioned through the open doorway to the functional space, then opened the door to the right of it. “The landlord called this a box room, but I’m not really sure what he meant, since it’s more of a r
ectangle.”
Scarlett laughed, taking in the smaller, vacant bedroom. “It’s just a second, smaller bedroom.” The space would only accommodate a single bed and dresser…or a crib. “It’s for a child…” Her voice trailed off.
Jameson’s eyes locked with hers, flaring slightly. “Do you want that? Children?”
Her heart stuttered. “I hadn’t…” She cleared her throat and tried again. “If you’re asking if I want children now, the answer is no. There are too many uncertainties at the moment, and they would be coming into a world where we couldn’t guarantee their safety.” Children had been evacuated from nearly every military target—including London—and just the thought of losing a child to a bombing raid was more than she could bear.
“I agree.” His thumb caressed the back of her hand reassuringly, but worry lined the space between his eyebrows.
She lifted her hand to his cheek. “But if you’re asking if I want your children someday, then my answer is emphatically yes.” There would be nothing better than a green-eyed little girl, or a boy with his smile when this was all said and done.
“After the war.” He tilted his head and kissed the center of her palm, sending a tingling jolt of pleasure down her arm.
“After the war,” she whispered, adding it to the ever-growing list of things to be accomplished at a later date she wasn’t sure would ever come.
“But you know there’s always a chance, right?” The muscle in his jaw flexed.
“I do.” Her fingers trailed down his neck. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take if it means I get to touch you.” She followed the line of his collar past his knotted tie and down to the first button of his jacket.
His eyes darkened as he palmed her waist, tugging her closer. “I’ve been waiting my entire life to touch you.”
The Things We Leave Unfinished Page 18