by Mia Sheridan
Sadness filled his expression. “I’m so sorry you were left to choose between two places where you felt unwanted—and even more sorry I was part of that. And I understand why you never shared more of your life with me, with us,” Preston said. “But I wish you had.”
“I didn’t know how to. Growing up, I always had this sense that I was . . . less. The feeling of not belonging anywhere has followed me so relentlessly. It’s why I kept myself away from you and Cole, and everyone else who ever tried to befriend me. It’s like I wanted it desperately, but I resisted it stridently. It’s why I defended those people who live in the camp like some avenger.” I laughed softly and he smiled. “I meant what I said, but I didn’t mean to make you the villain. You’re not. You’re kind and fair and honorable, and I’m sorry I suggested anything differently. I went a little off the rails there.”
His smile widened and he chuckled softly. “I might have even liked it if it wasn’t directed at me. You’re pretty sexy when you’re fired up.”
I tilted my head and smiled at him, the mood lighter, the weight lifted from my shoulders. “In all honesty, Preston, I want to help out at the camp. I won’t put myself in danger, and it gives me a feeling of . . . purpose. Maybe you’d even like to come along sometime.”
“Maybe I will,” he said on a small smile.
I grasped his hand in mine. “I love you. And I promise you I won’t leave again—no matter what. Please, please believe that.”
“I love you, too.”
I squeezed his hand and then looked around the old barn, remembering what his mom had said. “Your mom said your dad used to come out here and pace.”
He looked surprised at my words, or maybe that I’d heard them from his mother. “Yeah. He did. After they fought, he’d come out here and smoke. It was the only time he did, and I learned to associate that smell with this helpless kind of resentment. Even now, if I pass by someone smoking and . . .” He shook his head, staring off into the distance. “I hated it—I hated being around them when they were together. They didn’t have a happy marriage.”
That surprised me. I’d always thought Preston’s family was so perfect. Of course once I’d come to know his mother, I realized that she, at least, was far from easy to live with. But I had taken it personally. Apparently the three men in her life found it at least a little bit difficult to live with her, too.
I remembered what Cole had told me about her buying the motorcycle for their father. It had sounded like she bought it in an effort to make him into something he might not have been. How tragic that her son had died on the motorcycle she’d purchased with misguided intentions. She and I weren’t close enough to discuss things like that, but I had to wonder if she thought about that and suffered inside because of it.
“What about Cole? Did he have a good relationship with her?”
Preston shrugged. “Cole had a good relationship with everyone. Or maybe he just didn’t let anything get under his skin enough for it to be any other way.” He paused for a moment and I let him choose his words, almost holding my breath to hear him voicing his feelings about his brother. “When we were young and got in trouble, Cole always talked our way out of things. If he couldn’t, I’d take the blame and serve the time. It was just . . . the roles we naturally fell into. In high school, and even a few times in college, Cole wasn’t prepared for some test or another, so I’d go to the class and pretend to be him and take it so he didn’t fail.” He laughed softly, but it didn’t hold a lot of humor. “I think he would have been better off if I’d let him fall on his face a couple of times. I just couldn’t seem to do it. And I think I would have been better off if I’d learned not to let him be my mouthpiece. But we were twins, and it felt natural to pick up where the other one left off—two pieces of a whole.” An expression of pain altered his features for a moment before he sighed. “Cole did some things that hurt me, and some things that were wrong and dishonest, but I miss him. He wasn’t only my brother. He was my twin—the other half of me—and I’ll miss him forever.”
“I know. I will, too.” Tears filled my eyes, but they didn’t fall. “I don’t think Cole meant to hurt you. He just never took anything very seriously. I used to think that the two of you were such opposites. Cole never took anything seriously enough and you took things too seriously. He didn’t have enough honor, and you would kill yourself to keep your word.” I gave him a smile that felt sad when his eyes met mine.
“He cared about you, though, Lia. You might have been the only girl he ever really did care about.”
I tilted my head, considering that. “Yes, he did care about me, but like a sister. I think he would have come to realize that, too. Most of the time we spent together, we’d end up talking. He was protective of me, but not passionate for me. It was never like that with us. He wanted to protect my virtue, but he never really staked a claim of his own.” Cole had turned into a gentleman when he kissed me, and Preston had turned into a marauder. There was nothing wrong with a gentleman, but I didn’t think it was necessarily Cole’s true nature that brought out that reaction, but rather his lack of passion for me. Frankly, though it had hurt me on occasion, I wanted the fiery lust that Preston exhibited when we touched.
“He was attracted to you,” Preston said quietly. I watched as his hands clenched and unclenched slowly on his thighs and then he frowned as if saying the words bothered him and he felt guilty for that.
I put my hand on one of his, lacing our fingers. “You can think someone’s attractive and still not feel any real passion for them.”
His eyes moved to mine and he stared at me for a moment before he let out a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.”
His expression made me think his mind was in the past for a few moments before he made a small humming sound and returned my same sad smile, squeezing my hand in his.
We sat in companionable silence for a few moments. My eyes caught on the benches that had been pulled forward for that barn party, the one that had resulted in an unplanned pregnancy and plenty of despair. “It seems so surreal that the party where we made love for the first time was almost two years ago,” I mused. “In some ways it seems like a lifetime.”
“Hudson will always be the marker of how long ago that party was.”
I smiled on a breath. “Yes.”
“I loved you so fiercely that night, Annalia. I want you to know that. I know the way things happened after that was mostly awful. But we created that little boy in love. When I look at him, with your eyes and my face, that’s what I think. He’s the beauty that came from the ashes.”
“I feel the same way,” I said softly.
We sat in the barn for a while longer, musing about life and love and our little boy. When I left, though the sky was dark, it only made it easier to see the stars.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Preston
The next day dawned clear and bright, the spring sky a bowl of startling blue. After a year of rising before the sun, I was now working a more regular schedule, and waking with the light outside my window was a pleasure I’d missed and vowed never to take for granted.
My heart felt lighter and the day went by quickly. The conversation Lia and I had had was long overdue and inside, I knew it had opened a doorway in our relationship. We were learning to trust each other, learning to communicate—honestly—and realizing how good it felt to have another person to open up to. Or at least, that’s how it felt for me. And by the peaceful expression on Lia’s face when I’d kissed her goodbye the night before, I believed she felt the same way.
I thought it had been a good choice to begin slowly and hold off sexually because so many parts of our relationship had never developed naturally and now we were allowing them to. How much deeper and more satisfying was sex going to be once we knew each other—and loved each other—on an even deeper level? A shiver ran down my back and I hardened slightly at the consideration alone.
Still, I wouldn’t keep my hands off her entirely, whether we
were taking things slowly or not. Oh God, she made me weak in the knees.
My father had warned me not to love a woman just because she made me weak in the knees. But that wasn’t the only reason I loved Annalia. She was precious to me because she was tender and kind and so deeply sensitive it gripped my heart. She was smart and funny and she kept secrets, not because she was secretive, but because she didn’t think anyone would hold safe the private musings of her heart.
The pain had come, not from the fact that Annalia made me weak in the knees, but from the belief that she didn’t love me back the same way I loved her.
But she did. She did. And I vowed to do things right this time. I vowed to prove to her that her secrets—the tender places inside her—were safe with me. And I promised myself I’d trust her with my tender places, too.
As I worked, I thought more about our conversation and how it had also brought some understanding where Cole was concerned. It was a deep, open wound inside me that we’d never gotten a chance to hash things out regarding Annalia—never had a true, honest conversation. And yet talking to her had allowed me to see the situation in a clearer light.
He cared about you, though, Lia.
Yes, he did care about me, but like a sister.
I remembered the way he’d been so enraged about me possibly disrespecting her—the way he’d tried to protect her virtue, but yet had had no interest in staying true to her. He’d had the opportunity to spend more time with her than he had, but he never took it. If I had been the one who won that race, and found out she wanted me, I’d have staked my claim the very next day. He hadn’t. Perhaps he’d thought the deep protectiveness he felt for her and no one else meant he loved her. And it did, but if Lia was right and there was no passion there, then her belief that he loved her as a sister felt like the truth.
It didn’t heal the loss I’d always carry inside. But it shed some light—some healing—where none had been before, and for that I was grateful. I spent a quiet hour talking to my brother in my head as I worked and somehow felt certain he heard me. It felt as though there was forgiveness between us. A restoration of sorts.
I went in around noon, and Lia and I spent a laughter-filled hour watching Hudson walk from one of us to the other, clapping for himself and squealing over his new accomplishment. By the time we went into the kitchen to eat, the kid was a pro. When he took to something, he really took to it.
Over lunch, as Lia fed Hudson, I asked, “Are you free tonight?”
“What do you have in mind?” Lia brought her hair over her shoulder as she began braiding it quickly. My eyes were glued to the feminine movements, the way her slim, delicate fingers moved deftly through her hair, and the way she arched her neck to accomplish the task. How was it women just seemed to naturally know how to do those types of things? And did they realize how much watching it affected a man? My mouth felt suddenly dry. I took a sip of iced tea as I tried to remember what she’d asked me. What do you have in mind?
“Dinner,” I said distractedly. “At Dairy Queen. And then maybe we could drive to the top of Heron’s Park.”
She raised one brow, studying me. “Isn’t that where teens go to make out?”
“Yeah,” I said, and my voice sounded slightly lazy, even in my own ears.
She laughed. “Is this all part of going back to the beginning?”
“Uh-huh.”
“All right.” She looked at Hudson. “Your mom and dad are going to pretend they’re teenagers tonight. What do you think about that, little walker?” Hudson laughed, smooshing a handful of blueberries into his cheek. “That’s what I think, too,” Lia said, but the smile on her face was bright and happy.
**********
The park was dark and slightly foggy as my truck crept slowly up the mild incline of the road that wound through the trees and dead-ended at the top of a low cliff overlooking the town of Linmoor.
I’d never been up here when I was a teenager—but Cole had and from what I knew, kids still used it as a place to park and make out. But when we crested the hill, there weren’t any other cars parked anywhere. We had the entire place to ourselves, whether that was because it wasn’t as popular a place to hang out as it once had been, or because it was a Thursday night, I didn’t know. Didn’t care, either.
I pulled into a spot right at the guardrail and turned off the ignition, looking out at the lights of Linmoor. From up here it looked like such a dinky town, dwarfed by the acres and acres of the sprawling farmland that surrounded it, farmland that was now merely dark emptiness from where we sat.
“We’re not very high, but the town looks so small from here,” Lia said, voicing the thought I’d just had.
I looked over at her, barely able to make out her profile in the darkness where the moonlight shining into my truck was the only illumination. “Do you still wish you’d left?” I asked softly. It was a fear inside me—not that she’d leave again without telling me, I was determined to let go of that fear after our talk—but that someday she might regret staying in this small town all her life after she’d once dreamed of leaving forever.
She looked over at me and seemed to study me a moment though she couldn’t have seen much more than I could in the low light. “It’s not really that I wanted to leave. That was just a game Cole and I would play. It engaged my imagination.” She looked back out the front window. “I just wanted out of the . . . the smallness of my life, I guess. I wanted to break free of the parameters I thought had boxed me in so tightly. That smallness was inside of me, too, though. And I’m the one who created so many of the painful parameters, and I’m coming to see that. I’m coming to see that sometimes the most damaging borders are inside us. I’ve always tried to, I don’t know, diminish myself, fade into the background, keep quiet, and not make a fuss.” I knew exactly what she meant. I had built my own walls, too.
She suddenly smiled over at me, and it startled me momentarily at how beautiful she was even though I couldn’t make out the details of her features. It was her words, my own deep understanding of exactly what had kept us divided—separate—for so long; it was the feel of the moment, as if we’d suddenly come full circle and it was important. It was the sudden stillness I felt inside. The rightness.
“I love you,” I whispered, because I did and I felt it so strongly right then that I could hardly breathe. I scooted closer to her on the seat and she moved toward me, and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her right up against my body.
“I love you, too.”
“When Cole and I left for college, it was the first time either of us had been on a plane. We’d gone on family vacations but we’d always driven, so that was a first for us. I didn’t like it.”
She laughed so softly it was just the bare whoosh of breath and the tipping up of her lips. She moved a lock of hair off my forehead. “No, farm boy?”
I chuckled. “No. Cole loved it, and I hated it. Go figure. To me it felt . . . wrong to be up in the sky like that. I especially hated being in the middle of the clouds where it was bumpy and I couldn’t see anything. I lost all perspective of where I was.” I paused, remembering back to that moment, the way I’d clenched my fists on my thighs, just needing to grab on to something solid, wanting to fall to my knees and find the sturdy ground beneath me, to breathe in the clean smell of the earth—that anchoring richness. “But then, suddenly, we broke through the clouds into the blueness of that summer sky, and I suddenly had my bearings again. I wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I could see it, and I knew I’d be there again.” I brushed my lips over hers, just a whisper of touch before I pulled away. “Seeing you smile just now, that’s how I felt. Like breaking through the clouds.”
“Preston,” she whispered, her voice whispery and full of tenderness. I bent my head and kissed her and when I pulled away, she smiled at me, tilting her head teasingly. “I suppose all that sweet talk helped you score with the girls you brought up here?”
I laughed. “You’re the first, and I’d like to score,
but we’re taking this slowly so don’t try anything funny with me.”
She laughed. “Kiss me, Preston Sawyer.”
I brought my mouth to hers and our tongues met and tangled, already a familiar dance. I moaned at the sweetness of her and hardened immediately at her taste, the way she sucked at my tongue, the breathy sounds she made, and the softness of her body in my arms. It was a delicious sensory overload and I felt almost drunk with it. Annalia. I pressed forward, and she lay back on the seat. We both laughed when her head softly hit the passenger side door. “Are you okay?” I asked, pulling her back slightly so her head lay on the seat.
“Yeah.”
I leaned over her and took a moment to find spots for my knees so I could support my weight but still have access to her. In this position, especially, I felt so much bigger and stronger than she was, and I thought vaguely about how much trust a woman must have to give to a man to let him come over her smaller, more delicate body in such a way.
“This is what the kids do, huh?” she whispered.
I chuckled. “So I hear.” I leaned in and kissed her again, tilting my head so I had better access to her mouth. She moaned and clutched at my back and my blood pulsed fiercely in that familiar way only she elicited.
I put my hand under her loose top and stroked her skin. She was so silky, so smooth and soft, and her femininity, all the ways she was so different from me, made me feel crazy with need.
I unsnapped the front of her bra and she pressed upward, offering her breasts to me as I used one thumb to circle a nipple slowly and then moved to the other. She broke her mouth from mine, crying out softly. “Tell me what you want,” I said, needing to make sure she liked and wanted everything I was doing. I didn’t ever want to leave her unsatisfied again. I’d always . . . taken. I didn’t ever want to see distance in her expression and disappointment in her eyes after we’d been intimate. And for that, I needed her to voice her desires. We weren’t going to have sex, not yet—I was intent on that—but we were going to go further than the hot kisses we’d shared. I needed desperately to know she wanted it as much as I did.