by Jill Jaynes
Their lips met, and there was no room for thinking or worry about whether anyone saw them or not.
Thomas’s lips were firm and soft at the same time. His kiss was light, caressing. He took it slow, giving her time to get used to him, as if she might spook. Like he had all the time in the world to learn her better.
He tasted, explored, lifted away, and came back for more nibbles, more tastes.
Chloe had been kissed before, plenty of times. But it had never been like this with anyone else.
She held her breath, not thinking, only feeling. Tasting him back. Listening to the hum of her senses build with every touch of his mouth. The only other parts of their bodies that connected were their linked fingers.
He made her want more. So much more.
He pulled back at last. “Wow,” he breathed.
“Yeah,” she said. “Wow.”
Thomas stepped closer, putting his arms around her. “You are kind of amazing, Chloe Reiser.”
The feel of his arms circling her, his strong body pressed up against hers, was like coming home. He made her feel wanted. He made her feel safe.
He made her want to do that for him.
“I could kick my teenage-self’s butt for letting you get away the first time, but you’re back now and I’m not going to waste any more time.” He touched the pad of his thumb to her lower lip. “I’m going to kiss you again, if that’s all right with you.”
“Yes, please—” was all she got out before his mouth closed over hers. She gave herself over to the feeling of completion that came with it.
She wrapped her arms around him, ran her hands over the muscles that tensed in his back, his shoulders. She could feel the answering hum in his body that he had caused in hers. Little shockwaves of pleasure buzzed through her veins, pumped by her racing heart.
At last, he pulled back and rested his forehead against hers. He looked as rumpled and breathless as she felt. “God, Chloe. You make me hot all over.” He laughed. “And here I thought you were a nice girl.”
“I am a nice girl.”
He smoothed her hair back from her forehead, then cradled her cheek with his palm. “The nicest,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. “And that’s the truth.”
“So are you,” she answered, then smiled. “Nice, I mean.”
The afternoon shadows stretched before them by the time they reached the asphalt of the parking lot, and they walked slowly towards Thomas’s truck, fingers linked, shoulders bumping.
Chloe basked in the glow of both a new-found feeling of closeness, and the anticipation of more to follow. Judging from the way Thomas literally dragged his feet, he didn’t want this date to come to an end any sooner than she did.
They had made a beginning. Of what, they would have to see.
A little cloud prodded at the back of her mind, insisting on spoiling her pleasant thoughts. How far are you going to let things go before you tell him the truth? Is what he thinks going to be more important than being who you are? Chloe pushed the thought away. She didn’t have to make every decision right this minute. This was only their first date, for goodness’ sake.
She looked up. They were almost to Thomas’s truck.
Harry Stone was waiting for them, sitting on one of the boxes in the back of the truck, elbows resting on his knees. As soon as she made eye contact with him, he jumped to his feet and began waving his arms.
“Chloe! Chloe! They’re here! The letters are right here!” He hopped up and down, pointing at the box he’d been sitting on.
Chloe glanced at Thomas, who was unaware that his dead father was doing jumping jacks in the bed of his truck. He met her eye and smiled. She smiled back, her mind racing as she sorted through her options.
As Thomas walked her to the passenger side of the truck to open her door, she stopped and put a hand on the box Harry was fixated on and looked directly at him. I’ll take care of this. He seemed to get the message, because he faded silently away once more.
“What are you planning to do with these?” She kept her tone as casual as she could manage. “Taking them back to your place?”
“No, these are going to the dump. Just junk.” He paused, his hand on the door handle. “You could come with me—just for the ride, that is.”
“Um,” said Chloe, stalling.
What if she went to the dump with him, then “accidentally” drop the box while moving it, exposing the contents, which she would happen to pick up and discover were long-lost love letters written by his parents? Or maybe she could think of some reason he should open the box to just double-check for something important. Or she could…
Thomas grinned at her hesitation. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it on my own time.” He pulled the door open for her. “I know, I’m a hopeless romantic, inviting a girl to go to the dump with me. No wonder I’m still single, huh?”
“It’s not that—” she said, but broke off when her cell phone began to ring. Pulling it out of her pocket, her heart jumped into her throat at the number on the screen. She’d made sure her dad’s friends had her number in case of an emergency. But this was the first time one of them had used it.
“Sorry, gotta take this,” she said as she turned away to answer it. “Hi, Glen. What’s going on?” She forced herself to keep her voice calm in spite of the panic that clutched her chest.
“Hey, Chloe.” The voice on the other end of the line was apologetic. “Sorry to bother you, but your dad has me a little worried. He’s here at my place and he says it’s nothing, but he keeps kinda wincing and grabbing at his chest every so often. Maybe you should come take him to see someone. He doesn’t know I’m calling. You know how he is.”
“Thanks, Glen. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She ended the call and turned to find Thomas regarding her solemnly.
“Your dad?”
“Yeah. Sorry, I’ve got to get home and get him to a doctor. I hate that this happened when I wasn’t there.”
“Yeah, problems never wait for a convenient time, do they?”
She shook her head and stared down at her phone. “I should have been there. He’s the whole reason I’m even in Moonlight Cove right now. You’d think I could keep my priorities straight.”
She looked up at Thomas, who was still holding the passenger door open for her, waiting for her to climb into the truck.
Keep your priorities straight, Chloe.
There was just something about a life or death threat to a loved one that put things in their proper perspective like nothing else could.
And everything was perfectly clear and obvious.
Thomas needed to read those letters, or he might not ever get over his fears about getting married.
And she needed to be true to herself. If Thomas couldn’t accept her for who she was, all of her, it was better to know now than later, because she definitely deserved a man who could take some of the craziness that was her life. Maybe even support her when she needed it.
She was out of time for diplomacy, so the direct approach would have to do. She plunged in.
“Before we go, there’s something I have to tell you. In fact, it’s better if I just show you.”
“Sure, Chloe. Okay.” He frowned. “Don’t you need to get going?”
“Yes I do, so we’re going to make this quick.” Breathing past the painful thump of her heart at what she was about to do, she stepped to the side of the truck, reached over and patted the box Thomas’s father had pointed at. “I need to you to open this box.”
Thomas raised an eyebrow. “You want me to open up this box of junk I cleared out of my dad’s attic,” he said in the tone one would use to placate an unreasonable child.
“Yes. Now please.”
“Okaaaay.” He reached into the bed of the truck, lifted out the box and set it on the ground between them. He pulled open the folded-over flaps, revealing a tossed clutter of papers that filled it to the top. “Now what?”
She swall
owed. “Somewhere in there is a large brown envelope. We need to find it.”
He frowned. “What is this about, Chloe?”
She wrapped her fingers around the phone in her hand, holding onto her resolve as she watched Thomas slip away from her. He wasn’t going to take this well. “I’d be happy to dig for it if you don’t want to, but we need to move this along. I’ve got to get to my dad. Trust me, this is important, or I wouldn’t be asking.”
“Fine.” His lips a thin line, he reached into the box and sifted through the contents until he withdrew a large brown envelope, wrapped with several disintegrating rubber bands. “This it?”
“I think so,” said Chloe. “Open it. There should be letters inside.”
Thomas pulled out what looked like several bundles of folded pages, each bundle tied with a simple piece of string. He looked at her. “Are these yours?”
“No, they’re yours. Or they’re yours now. They were written by your parents to each other. You need to read them.”
He flung the letters and the envelope back into the box. “I don’t need to read anything my dad and stepmother wrote to each other.” He shoved the flaps of the box closed, and lifted it to toss it into the bed of the truck. “I had a bellyful of them my whole life.”
“Not your stepmother, Thomas. Your mother.”
He stopped mid-toss, staring at her. “What do you know about my mother?”
Chloe looked him straight in the eye and swallowed her pain at the wall of disbelief she met there. There was nothing to gain by hedging now. He was as good as gone to her. “I know she died of a brain aneurysm when you were about three. I know that your parents loved each other very deeply. It’s in those letters.”
“How do you know what she died of?” His tone was belligerent. “I only found out about it myself about a year ago when my dad kept trying to talk to me about love and marriage and a bunch of stuff he never knew anything about.”
No matter how many times she faced this reaction, it was hard not to take it personally. Right now it was impossible.
At least he had set the box down again.
“I’m sorry this is painful for you.” She was really sorry, because painful as it might be for him, it was killing her to lose him like this. But not only had she made a promise to Harry Stone, it was a promise she believed in.
She took a deep breath and hoped he’d be able to hear her over his defensiveness. “I don’t think anything about this will be easy, but you need to read those letters so you can see for yourself that your mother and father truly loved each other and made a marriage and a family out of that love.”
She pulled the box open and picked up the brown envelope. She held it out to Thomas. “They would want you to have that too, the same happiness they found in each other, but you need to start by believing it’s possible. Read the letters—they are what’s left of their love.” She paused, shook her head. “No, actually, you are what’s left of their love.”
For a moment, Thomas only stared at her. The defensiveness seemed to have moved down a notch to disbelief. She could see an inner struggle taking place as he dropped his gaze to the letters she held out to him.
He reached out and took them.
Chloe released the breath she’d been holding. Thank goodness, curiosity seemed to have gotten the upper hand in the debate she knew he must be having with himself. She watched as he pulled out a letter from one of the bundles, opened it to scan the writing. Then he folded it back up and stuck all the bundles back into the brown envelope. She noted that he held onto the envelope rather than tossing it back into the box. A good sign, she thought. Maybe they could wrap this up. She really needed to get going.
“I have two questions for you.” He crossed his arms and planted his feet shoulder width apart.
She squared her shoulders at the challenge in every line of his body. She knew what was coming. “In the interest of time, I’ll take a wild guess that you want to know how I knew about the letters and how I knew they were in the box. Right?”
“You don’t need to be a psychic to know that.”
“I’m not a psychic. I’m a medium. I don’t tell the future, I just see the dead. And talk to them sometimes. And the answer to both of your questions is the same. Your father told me.”
He appeared to think about this. “Was it one of the times you came over to help me study? I know he always liked you, Chloe. Did he confide in you then and you’ve just kept this to yourself all these years?”
She turned away, unable to watch the light die out of his eyes when she threw this last-chance lifeline back in his face. “He told me about the letters yesterday, and where they were about ten minutes ago. So, if that’s all, I’d really appreciate if we could get going now. I need to get to my dad.”
She climbed into the truck and pulled the door closed behind her. She swallowed back the lump of tears in her throat as Thomas walked around the front of the truck to the driver’s side, studiously avoiding any and all eye-contact. We could have been good together. She wondered which was worse—being honest up front and watching a dream die before it had a chance to come alive or wrecking her heart on another relationship doomed to fail when she later confessed the truth about her abilities. Surely the second, she told herself.
Maybe in a couple of weeks she’d believe it.
* * *
Chloe sat atop the bluff at Rainbow’s End, arms clasped around her drawn-up knees, and watched the sun sink toward the ocean in a blaze of pink clouds. The beach below was empty of all but a few couples enjoying the same view as they strolled the damp sand near the water’s edge.
She’d come here a lot in the last week, to walk and try to clear her head when she couldn’t outrun thoughts of what had happened, and not happened, between her and Thomas.
Apparently, watching over her dad to make sure he followed doctor’s orders and didn’t over-do again, working at the Honey Bee five hours a day, and a fair amount of baking-therapy weren’t quite enough to banish the events of that day.
She hadn’t heard a word from Thomas since he’d taken the letters. She didn’t know if he’d read them or tossed them or burned them. He hadn’t called and she hadn’t seen him at the Honey Bee. Even Harry was curiously silent.
Only the dreams continued.
She guessed now that the family who strolled that dream landscape was Thomas’s, a shimmering remnant of his mother’s memories.
Well, there were worse places to haunt if that’s what one decided to do. Re-living a perfect beach morning for eternity certainly had its attractions.
She sat now in about the same spot where she and Thomas had had their picnic. Her steps kept leading her back here when she came to walk, and she didn’t question it. Somehow it was calming.
She’d done the right thing that day, giving Thomas his father’s message. She had no doubts about that at all. And being straight with him about her abilities had been difficult, but a huge relief at the same time. Owning the truth, owning her whole self, had been empowering, and she couldn’t regret it.
However, she regretted Thomas’s apparent choices deeply.
She sighed and blinked back the tears that still hovered just beneath the surface these days. She couldn’t believe she still felt this strongly after a week. The two of them had only spent an afternoon together. Shared a few amazing kisses and the beginning of something wonderful.
For a brief moment she’d caught a tantalizing glimpse of what a future could be like with Thomas.
And somehow, the loss of what-might-have-been was the worst heartbreak of all.
She’d been around the block a few times and knew that eventually the pain would fade and she’d feel better. She just had to get up every day and live her best life. Happiness would follow.
She rubbed the tears off her face. She hated crying. She couldn’t wait till she stopped.
A familiar looking red-checkered picnic napkin suddenly dangled before her. “Have a napkin,” said a voice behind h
er.
She turned and looked up. For a moment she thought she was imagining things, so present had he been in her thoughts.
“Thomas?”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Sh-sure.” She took the napkin and wiped at her face while she watched him drop down to sit beside her. There were a hundred questions she’d like to ask, but this was his conversation to start. So she waited, searching his profile for clues to what he was thinking as he looked out over the horizon.
“Your dad said you might be here,” he said.
He’d come to her house looking for her? “It’s a good place to think.”
“Yeah.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “Well, its main attraction for me is the fact that you’re here.” He stared down at his hands where they clasped his knees, then tilted his head to look at her. “Chloe, I’m sorry for how I acted that day. I was a jerk.”
She sighed. “It’s a pretty normal reaction, Thomas. I didn’t take it personally.” Well, she’d tried not to.
“Don’t excuse my behavior, Chloe. I don’t. It may be normal not to believe something or not agree with it. That doesn’t excuse being rude. Especially when that someone is just trying to help.”
Chloe looked at Thomas, saw the truth of his words in his eyes as he waited for her response. The regret and the determination to make his error right.
“Apology accepted, then.” The heartache that pressed against her chest eased the slightest bit. An apology for rudeness was more than she usually got from those who were hostile about what she did. She’d take it.
“Thank you.” He nodded, relief clear on his face. “I appreciate it.” He turned and stared down at the beach again. Chloe stole a sideways glance at him. Was there more?
“I read the letters,” he said at last.
“Ah.” Maybe that’s why Harry had been silent. Mission accomplished.
“Yeah,” he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “It took me a while to decide to do it. I really had a chip on my shoulder about the whole psychic thing. Sorry, medium thing. I kept trying to figure out how, even if you knew about the letters in the first place, you could possibly have known they were in that box. I turned my brain inside out trying to come up with a logical explanation, and at the end, I had to admit there wasn’t one.”