by Mia Sheridan
“He’ll be fine for fifteen minutes. He has plenty of ladies to fawn all over him.”
We walked along the fence that separated our property from the one next to it and stopped when we got to the large tree she used to sit under when she was a little girl.
She leaned back against the fence, staring out at the rows of farmland. For a moment I stood looking at her, feeling like a boy again, a boy whose heart lurched wildly with joy to see Annalia waiting for him. Only . . . this time she’d run from me. First in her mind, and then in her car. She was back, but she still felt distant as if I’d have to run after her and bring her back. I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that when the chasing was figurative.
Open up. Talk to her. “There’s nothing romantic between Tracie and me. We went to dinner last night—that was all,” I said in a rush of words.
Lia turned to stare at me, her eyes wide with surprise. She was quiet for several beats as she tilted her head and studied my face. “Did you . . . want there to be?”
I thought about that for a moment, really thought about it, knowing I owed her the truth. “No.” I just hadn’t wanted to hurt so much over Lia. But maybe that’s what I needed—to hurt, to regret, to finally feel something—anything—after nearly two years of being the mere shell of a person.
Her gaze continued to move over my features for a moment as if she was trying to determine if I was being completely honest. Finally, she nodded, seeming satisfied with whatever she’d seen.
She looked back to the farmland, and I took in the classic beauty of her profile for a moment before I followed her gaze. “I used to stand here when I was a little girl and wish so hard that I had a home like this. I thought it was the biggest, most beautiful place on earth.” She smiled, but even in profile, I could see that deep sadness dominated her expression. She turned her head to look at me again. “But then I did come to call this place my home, and it felt just as small as any other shack or apartment I’d ever lived in.”
I let out a long breath, understanding that she was talking about the heart of the home, not the actual size. “I know, Lia. It felt that way to me, too.”
She gazed at me thoughtfully for a moment and then looked away.
“What did you do? At your aunt’s? What was it like?”
She leaned her hip on the fence and a ray of sunlight hit her face, making her eyes appear translucent. Her lashes fluttered, long and dark and lush, and her lips tipped up slightly. Ah God. She was so beautiful. She always had been. I was a simple man, a farmer who wasn’t drawn to riches or finery. Except when it came to the bounty of Annalia’s loveliness, a woman who offered all the treasures I’d ever seek in her fine boned features, her full pink lips, her rich velvety skin, and those jewel-like eyes.
It wasn’t only her beauty that called to me, though. I wanted to know her. I wanted her to let me into those secret places inside of her.
“It was strange at first,” she began, answering the question I’d asked about her aunt and bringing me back to the moment. “She’d written to my mother the year before and I’d found the letter and a few more she’d written over the years. Until then I hadn’t even known I had any family at all, much less here in the U.S.
“When I showed up at her door I had the letters with me. She seemed happy to have me there and encouraged me to stay.
“She and her husband own a small pottery shop and I worked there to earn my keep. It felt good to be among family but . . . they were also strangers and I . . . I spent a lot of time alone.”
She frowned slightly. Had she felt like she hadn’t completely belonged there? The thought clawed at me from the inside because although I hadn’t set out to do it, I had probably made her feel as if she didn’t belong with me either. “She never asked me to talk much about myself, although maybe she sensed I wasn’t in a place to do so. She liked reminiscing about the past, though, and what my mama was like as a girl. My aunt is a nice but very reserved person,” she went on, snapping me back to our conversation. “I see where my mother gets it from.” She let out a small laugh that didn’t hold much humor.
“What else? What did you think about when you were gone?” Did you think about me? Did you hate me, Lia?
She was quiet for a moment, and it looked like she was picturing the place where she’d been. “I thought about Cole.” Her eyes shot to mine, and I gave her a small smile to let her know it was okay. “I thought about why I was such a bad mother.”
I frowned, taken aback. “You thought you were a bad mother?”
She stared at me for a moment before looking away. “Yes.”
I moved closer, turning her toward me in one quick movement, and she startled slightly. “You’re not a bad mother, Lia. You never were.”
“How would you know?”
I took her words like a punch to the gut, clenching my eyes shut for a second. How would I know? I hadn’t been around enough to see if she’d struggled or not. And the few times I’d seen pain in her eyes, I’d turned away because I’d felt ill-equipped to deal with my own pain, let alone hers. Was that my own innate selfishness, or just the way of grief? I didn’t know but either way, I would take responsibility. Either way, I’d hurt her.
I blew out a gust of breath, raking my fingers through my hair. “I was checked out. You’re right. But I saw enough to know you’re a good mother.”
She bit at her lip for a second and then her shoulders sagged a little. “I can’t blame you for being checked out, Preston.” She shook her head. “It was just . . . it was just what happened and you did what you had to do to get through that time.” She turned her head, looking away from me. And there it was. In typical Lia style, she had offered me the olive branch, an offer of empathy and forgiveness, and then she’d retreated inside herself.
I frowned slightly. Yes, what she’d said held some truth, but why did it feel like she was still absent, even though she was standing right next to me? Even though I could feel the heat of her body and smell the sweetness of her skin, it felt like she was a thousand miles away—closed off, untouchable. A part of me wanted to shake her. Stop being so understanding. Yell at me—something.
Cole would have known how to draw her out. He would have either made her laugh or made her mad. But not so mad that it did lasting harm. Just mad enough to get her temper to flare and loosen her tongue. I didn’t know how to elicit emotion from her without doing some sort of permanent damage. God, maybe we’d been doomed from the start, even if Cole hadn’t died. Maybe Lia and I were just doomed in general—always managing to just miss each other. Like two people searching for one another in the dark.
I looked up at the big old tree next to us, the one she used to sit under sometimes. “Cole and I came up with this secret handshake under this tree,” I murmured. “We used to do it all the time. Hell if I can remember it. In the beginning, right after he died, I used to go over and over it in my head—just trying to recall it—each time I passed this tree and I couldn’t figure out why other than to keep my mind busy, or maybe just to torture myself. I can barely remember his funeral. It’s like I was cocooned inside myself, just going through the motions. So I don’t know. I thought . . . if I could just remember that handshake, I’d have a piece of him back however small.”
Lia turned her gaze back to me and the sadness in her eyes had turned to surprise. I’d only mentioned Cole one other time since he’d passed away. I remembered because that time had hurt, too. “We fought that day. He hit me, and I hit him back. I never told you that, but we did.”
Lia was staring at me in startled silence, and I forced myself to go on, to say the words that had been lodged inside me for so long. “One eye was swollen shut when he left and . . . I wonder if that was why he didn’t see—”
“Oh, Preston,” she breathed. “No. No, you can’t do that to yourself. He was on the highway on a motorcycle barely fit for back roads, and he wasn’t wearing a helmet. You’d warned him about that bike. I heard you. It was not your fault.”
>
I let out a huge gust of air, clenching my eyes shut briefly. She stared at me for a moment, the look on her face so full of stunned heartbreak. “The fight, was it . . . was it about me?” She flinched slightly.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but I also knew this conversation had been long overdue. “Yeah.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as I’d just done, and let out a long, slow breath. “You told him what we’d done and he didn’t like it.”
“No, he didn’t. But . . .” I let myself go back to that day. “It was because he cared about you. And the truth is, Lia, he didn’t know that I cared about you more because I’d never told him. And I should have.”
She turned her whole body toward me and nodded slowly, biting at her lip. She opened her mouth as if to say something and then closed it. I couldn’t blame her for not quite knowing what to think—it’d been so long and I still hadn’t settled on anything that felt right. I’d gone through grief, and self-blame, anger, and denial, but I was still searching. Maybe I always would, I wasn’t sure. Maybe if we kept talking, maybe we could help each other come to some conclusions that brought a measure of peace.
She shifted and the soft swells of her breasts rose very slightly in her sundress, drawing my gaze. I remembered how they’d looked when she’d been nursing, swollen with milk, her nipples dark and enlarged. I hardened so quickly, I let out a quick hiss of breath at the wonderfully painful sensation. Lia glanced at me and I attempted to adjust myself subtly. Between my legs I felt hot and heavy and I wanted to lay her down and connect my body with hers. If it was going to take us some time to find our way to each other in other ways, at least we could have that. But then I remembered how she’d left after the last time we’d made love, and my body cooled with the fear and regret that trickled through me.
But I had to touch her. I needed to feel her skin under my hands, wanted so desperately to taste her sweetness on my tongue. I still loved her. God help me, I did. And I wanted her so much I could barely breathe. I stepped toward her, and her eyes widened in surprise as her head tipped back to look up at me. “Lia,” I said, my voice gravelly, “I missed you. I’ve missed you for a long, long time.”
Her lips parted and her eyes blinked and a gust of breath whispered from her mouth. “I’ve missed you, too.”
I wove my fingers through her silken hair, supporting her head in my hand. “Do you think there’s a chance for us, Lia?” I rasped. “After everything, is there any chance at all?” I didn’t know myself, but I wanted her to want it as badly as I did. If we both tried . . . maybe if we started over with the intention of repairing what had been so broken, there was a chance. However small, I’d take it.
She stared up at me for a moment, so many emotions flashing through her eyes that I couldn’t identify them. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Do you want there to be?”
She closed her eyes briefly, just a fluttering of her lashes, as pain flickered across her face. “Yes,” she breathed. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
My heart leapt and I took her mouth, hard and sudden, and she let out a tiny squeak as her arms came around my neck, her fingers weaving into my hair. She tasted just the same as I remembered and every cell in my body responded. Mine. I dipped my tongue into her sweetness and she moaned, tangling her tongue with mine and pressing her slender body against me. Blood surged through me in a hot, fast rush, but I willed myself to slow down. It’d only ever been that way with us. It’s all Lia had ever known, and I wondered if she even realized there was anything else—lovemaking that was slow and languorous and didn’t result in ripped clothing and bruised skin.
Ah, hell.
I pulled my mouth from hers, ending the kiss, resting my forehead against hers for a moment as we caught our breath. I leaned away, tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear, her full lips red and swollen from my kiss, her eyes soft and vulnerable as she looked back at me.
We stood together by the fence where I’d once waited for her with bated breath, and I felt something inside me open up, like a flower that had bowed its head and shut its petals when the darkness fell upon it and suddenly felt the warm, unexpected glimmer of a sunbeam.
Slowly, Lia reached out and took my hands in hers, her eyes not leaving mine. For a moment I was confused, not knowing what she was doing. I glanced down at our hands and then back to her. Then she curled her fingers toward her palm to create a loose fist and used her other hand to close mine, bumping our knuckles together once, then twice. She opened her hand and I followed suit, grasping her fingers as she grasped mine.
Oh. It felt as if my heart breathed the word.
Her hands were soft and gentle, and they moved with certainty. I watched as she went through the handshake that I’d had so much trouble remembering. Once and again, and then she let go of me and I did it on my own, imagining her hands were Cole’s, swearing I could hear his laughter drifting to us from the fields, through the breeze, and in the rustling of the leaves above.
I laughed out a strange sort of choking sound. “That’s it.” I nodded. “That’s it.” She knew. She knew because she’d been there, and I recognized the sweet simplicity of the gesture for what it was: a gift.
Our hands dropped, and we looked at each other for a moment and something shifted in the air around us. I didn’t know exactly how to name it, but it caused another spark of yearning to flare within me. “Come over tomorrow, Annalia. Spend Hudson’s birthday with us. Please,” I said, the words falling from my lips.
I didn’t know if there was any chance we could ever wade through the years of miscommunication and loss between us. I had no idea if there was any way to reclaim what we’d once barely begun. But now I knew we both hoped for it, and that seemed like a pretty damn good start.
She watched me for a moment before she nodded, her face breaking into a smile that went straight to my heart. “I’d like that.”
“Me, too, Lia. Me, too.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Annalia
I woke to the sound of rain softly falling on my window. For a minute I didn’t move, just listened to the light, hypnotic drumming, my mind drifting. I thought about the party the day before and turned over, smiling softly at the memory of Hudson in my arms with his birthday hat and cake-smeared grin.
My mind moved to Preston and how we’d stood at the fence and talked, really talked, for the first time in so long. And the way he’d kissed me . . . Do you think there’s a chance for us, Lia? A shiver of hope moved through me, but I was still so wary, so afraid to invest my heart in Preston again. Had I ever really stopped? I sighed. Maybe not. No, be honest, Lia. Definitely not. Oh, but to love him had hurt me so deeply. Could I risk my heart that way again? Should I? Could I even stop myself if I wanted to? My heart, it seemed, knew only how to beat for him, like the wings of a bird soaring through an endless sky. As blue as his eyes and as warm as his touch had once been on my skin.
It was obvious we still had a physical spark. For a time I’d wondered if we’d even lost that. When I’d shown up at Preston’s house with my measly suitcase, his mother had let me in and told me I could take my bag upstairs. I’d passed what I saw was his room, unsure of whether I should put my things in there or not, deciding instead on the room across the hall with the door standing wide open, obviously a guest room by the sparse furnishings and lack of personal items. If Preston wanted me to sleep with him, he could let me know. He hadn’t. And that had hurt. So badly.
No, Preston hadn’t asked me to move into his room, and when I found him looking at me with the same heat in his eyes he’d had for me the night I’d conceived Hudson, he’d look away as if troubled by his own feelings.
At first I’d thought it was the grief . . . and then I’d realized he needed every second of sleep he could get, considering the hours he was working and the physical hardship of trying to keep the farm afloat. Then I’d grown so large with pregnancy I could hardly sleep, and I was glad not to be keeping him awake .
. . and then those first few lonely, terrifying months with the baby . . . I’d tried so hard to nurse him, but he had trouble latching on and some nights he’d cry and cry, and I didn’t feel as if I could soothe him. I’d wanted to cry right along with him. I had cried with him.
Preston had been so exhausted from doing the jobs of twenty men after having to lay off most of his workers, and the farm was dry and dead outside our window as if it was a reflection of the parched emptiness of the hearts inside the walls of the farmhouse.
How could I ask him to take over with our wailing infant when I didn’t have to get up and work in the morning like he did?
And then I’d begun having visions of something harming Hudson. I’d clutch him tightly to my chest as pictures of him dropping to the floor, or being burned by the oven flashed in my mind making me feel shaky and anxious. I wanted to ask Mrs. Sawyer about it, but I didn’t dare. She already looked at me with disdain and impatience as if I was a usurper in her home—which I supposed I was.
When I’d moved in, I’d vowed to do everything I could to make her like me. I’d cook, I’d clean, I’d do whatever was necessary to help her heal, and I’d win her over. Only . . . it hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. Just as it hadn’t with my own mother.
How would Mrs. Sawyer look at me if she knew I was having visions of her grandson being harmed? And what kind of mother did that make me? Some days I still wondered if I could be a good mother to Hudson. I loved him desperately, had yearned for him endlessly, but I still doubted myself.
I hadn’t had much of a role model—my own mother insisted I had the devil in me. Some nights I sat rocking Hudson, feeling so blue and so desolate I wondered if she was right—there was something wrong inside of me. I couldn’t even find joy in my own baby.
The rain continued to fall and my mind continued to wander, backwards to the night I’d left. It had rained that night, too, after months and months of nothing but burning sun and hot, dry wind. Finally, finally the rain had come.