by R. K. Ryals
I smiled. “Yeah … yeah, I guess I would.” Taking a cautious step forward, I asked, “And you? I always thought you’d do something with machinery.”
He shrugged. “I do now. I specialized in it in the military, and then got a job in New York soon after discharge.”
I was wearing a tank top over shorts, and my fingers fell to the belt loops of my cutoff jeans. “Is that where … is that where Ginger and Brayden are from?”
“Upstate, yeah. Not the city.” His gaze dropped to my hands, to the way my fingers fidgeted with the shorts. “I wasn’t with Ginger long. I wouldn’t even call it a relationship. I’m not good at those.”
“You used to be,” I blurted, my eyes dropping to the floor to hide the appalled expression in my eyes.
Heathcliff’s shoes came into view, stopping just short of mine. “You really think that, don’t you?” he asked. “Honey, I was never good at relationships. That was you.”
Startled, my head shot up. “What?”
His lips quirked. “Hawthorne, other than short relationships and a few experimental rolls in the hay in high school, I didn’t date long. Mostly because they all knew I was leaving. Then you came along. At first, you intrigued me, but then you sort of … kept me. You do that with people.”
My eyes widened. “No,” I whispered. “No, I don’t.”
“Yeah,” he responded. “Yeah, you do.” He closed the distance between us, his face peering down into mine. “Forget your parents. Forget about your uncle’s illness for a moment. Those are things that happened, things you couldn’t control. Think about afterwards. Think about all of the people who haven’t been able to let you go.”
I stared at him, my lips parted, my forehead creased. “No—”
“Remember that paper you wrote for us in high school? It was a beautiful paper, by the way, but it was wrong. You taught yourself to trust again. You opened up the lines of communication with your uncle. I just got lucky enough to be brought along for the ride.” He leaned forward, his face growing closer to mine. “I do like to help things, but you’re the one who saves them.” He laughed. “You think I don’t know what my grandmother has told you? She asked you to save me because, deep down, she knows I’ve always needed it. It wasn’t you that was lost. It’s always been me.”
“I don’t understand—”
Heathcliff’s hand came up to cup my cheek. “Did you know I was a twin?” I gasped, and Heathcliff smiled. “It’s tragic, but not as tragic as you’re probably thinking. At birth, one of us came out screaming, and the other came out stillborn.” He shrugged. “It’s funny, you know. I never got to meet my brother, but I always felt like I had to live two lives. It didn’t help that I never seemed to fit in with the men in my family. I didn’t want to run a store and sit around whittling on wood. I would have done it though … if it hadn’t been for you.”
“What?” I pulled away from him, backing up until I was against the wall next to the door. My eyes fell to his chest. “So I’m responsible for all of your scars?”
He stared at me. “No, those are all mine. Again, that was my mistake. I wanted to be a part of my family somehow. Following in my grandfather’s footsteps seemed like the way to go.” He gestured at me. “What you did was encourage me to be different, to embrace the desire to leave, to do other things. Even with the scars, I don’t regret going. I regret not being able to do more for the men I spent time with overseas. I regret not being strong enough to go straight to college. I regret not being … not being better at relationships.”
My hands flattened against the wall behind me, grounding me. “I didn’t expect anything from you.”
The smile he gave me was genuine. “I know. You were the first one who didn’t.” He stared at me. “How many have you been with since me?” he asked suddenly, his hand coming up to rub his forehead. “I keep trying to tell myself I don’t care …”
I watched his face, watched the war of emotions dancing across his features, and I swallowed hard. “I’ve been in two relationships since high school, but I only slept with one of them.”
Heathcliff frowned. “Was he good to you?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “He was a nice guy. The problem wasn’t either of them. It was me. It’s kind of hard being with someone when you keep wishing they were someone else.”
Heathcliff stepped forward, but I pressed myself into the wall as if it would protect me somehow from him and from me. “You’re leaving, right?” I asked.
He stopped. “I don’t know.”
My gaze searched his. “It’s okay not to know, and I’d never expect you to stay. But, Heathcliff … I’m not sure I want to go back to that … to what we were before.”
“I don’t want to go back,” he replied.
I knew by the look in his eyes what he meant. We’d both changed. A lot can happen in five years. We weren’t the teenagers we’d once been, and yet we were. They were still there, buried deep.
“I want to show you something,” Heathcliff said. Walking to the bed, he kicked open the top of his suitcase and leaned over, his hand digging in a side pocket. When he stood, he cradled a book. Even with the cover torn, repaired with tape, and marred by the elements, I knew what it was.
“Wuthering Heights,” I breathed. “My book.”
He opened the cover, revealing a folded piece of paper. I knew without looking that it was the paper I’d written in high school.
“Why?” I asked. “Why did you keep them?”
“It’s funny,” he laughed, “but I kept them for the same you reason you run, the same reason you walk back when you’re done. When things seem to be moving too fast, I pull them out to remind me why I keep moving forward.”
Dropping the book, he stalked me, his body looming over mine, his palms against the wall flanking my head. His dog tags swung between us. “You grew up good, Hawthorne.”
I stared up at him, my chest heaving. “You’re still growing, Heathcliff.”
He laughed. “Yeah … I am.”
“This is going to end,” I said.
“No,” Heathcliff replied. “I don’t think it ever really will.”
Chapter 29
My gaze remained riveted to his. “What are you doing?”
One of his hands dropped to my hip, his fingers spanning it. “There was something you said about ‘dirty’ and ‘rode too hard’ earlier.”
“Heathcliff—”
His fingers ran up beneath my shirt, brushing my ribs before pausing near my bra. “It was always Max when we made love.”
“Max …” I began again.
His hand found the clasp to my bra and undid it. It opened beneath my tank top, and he stared at the way the straps fell down my arms. With one swift movement, he had the tank and the bra on the floor before I even had a chance to inhale.
Leaning forward, his lips found my ear. “We’ve done this before, Clare. Like a mind meld, remember? The other night in the yard, I told you I wished I’d never left. You want to know why? It wasn’t because of the things I’ve seen or the people I’ve lost. It’s because the thing that’s haunted me the most was not staying in touch with you.” He nibbled on my earlobe, his breath fanning my neck. “I’m not soft anymore.” His hand fell to the front of my shorts, his fingers popping open the button. “You can tell me to stop.”
His head lifted, and I gazed at his face, my heart a rapid thud in my chest. “And if I’m afraid to ask you to?”
He froze. “You don’t have to fear me.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I’m not afraid of Heathcliff, but I’m terrified of Max.”
“That’s ironic, isn’t it?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “The irony isn’t that I’m afraid of one and not of the other. The irony is that I want them both.”
He exhaled, his fingers finishing what they’d started, my shorts pooling on the floor around my feet, my panties joining them.
As I stepped free of them, he pulled a money clip from his pocket,
tugging a foil packet free before removing his jeans and boxers.
Weirdly, I was nervous, my stomach churning. Sex wasn’t something new for us, but the people who were facing each other now were five years wiser, harder, and in many ways, needier than the clumsy teenagers who’d fumbled on my bed and his hooch couch.
It felt different. This wasn’t sex. This wasn’t even about making love. We were standing in a room full of new demons, having left the old memories and ghosts behind in our hometown. Here, we were going to be making up for the five years we’d missed.
In many ways, I wasn’t prepared for the man who pushed me up against the wall, his arms lifting me into his embrace, his biceps bulging. I gripped him, letting his whisker-sharp jaw move down my neck to my chest. He suckled me, and I arched, my hands going to his hair.
He left my breasts, covering my gasping lips with his, capturing every exhaled breath as he pulled my legs around his waist, walking us to the bed.
Wrapping my hair around his hand, he pulled my head back, his troubled eyes meeting mine. “This might hurt,” he said.
Laying me back, he entered me, his thrusts fast and hard and then slow and sweet. My gaze locked with his. He was right. This hurt. It wasn’t physical pain. There was nothing except pleasure ripping through my body. This kind of pain was deeper than that. It was worse than the pain I’d felt when he’d taken my virginity. I’d loved the boy who’d taken my innocence, but the man who was taking me now was breaking my heart.
I’d thought my heart was broken before, but I’d been wrong. He was breaking it because, for the first time, I realized just how much I could love the complicated person he was. I’d thought I’d known him when we were teenagers, but he’d held more back than I’d ever realized. He was surrounded by family, and yet he’d always felt alone. On the other hand, all I’d really had was my uncle, and that had been enough.
How do you save a man who’s still learning who he is? How do you do it so that he doesn’t lose you in the process?
“We can take this slow,” Heathcliff gasped.
My hands gripped him. “No,” I panted. “Take me fast, and when we’re cooling down we’ll talk about why we should have taken our time.”
He smiled, a small laugh escaping even as he thrust, his breathing growing more rapid.
He reached between us. “Come with me, Clare. I’m not doing this alone.”
My hand joined his between us, our orgasms met by my small scream and his satisfied exhale.
“Clare …” he breathed. Rolling onto his back, he pulled me on top of him. “Now we can talk. We’ve run, so let’s walk back.”
Chapter 30
“Did you find what you were looking for?” I asked Heathcliff afterward.
His fingers ran lazily up and down my back. “I found a lot of places,” he answered, “and a lot of people.”
Lifting my head, I gazed up at his chin. “But did you find happiness?”
“No.” He looked down at me. “I left that behind. You did though, didn’t you? You found happiness.”
I stared at him. “I found some of it. I’m waiting on the rest.”
He frowned. “You shouldn’t have to wait.”
“Some things are worth waiting for.”
Heathcliff’s face transformed, a small smile blossoming. “You know, it’s crazy. I think I needed the last five years. Carrying that book of yours around made me realize something.” His hand slid into my hair. “Life is like a book. Some of the pages you want to rip out and others you want to keep. I’ve been ripping out a lot of pages lately, getting rid of the ugly stuff. The stuff that’s left behind isn’t as bad as I thought it was. You want to know what one of the things that drew me to you was?”
“My hair?”
He chuckled. “That, too.” His head shook. “It was your house.”
My eyes widened. “My house?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The work I knew it would take to bring it back to life. While fixing it up, it started to rebuild me. For years, I lived under this umbrella of grief that came with being born with a stillborn sibling.” He saw my expression, and his brows rose. “I’m not blaming my family. I love my family. They’re amazing and tight knit. It was all me, this really stupid idea that I must have done something in the womb that killed my twin. He was a ghost that haunted me. Why did I live? Logically, I knew it had nothing to do with me, but it plagued me anyway.”
“And that made you love my house?” I asked.
“In a weird way,” he snorted. “Then it was all about you. This girl who’d lost so much, who was hiding behind her silence, her wild hair, and her uncle’s old clothes. It was like when I was looking at you, I was seeing myself. Only you knew what you were hiding from. You just needed a little coaxing, a little trust, to overcome it. I was hiding in plain sight, in crowds and family and people. I’ve been running too long.”
“Then quit,” I said suddenly. “Quit running and start living.”
He glanced at me. “It’s a tempting offer.” His fingers slid further into my hair. “I want to be inside you again,” he said, “and this time, let’s make it slow.”
So, we did.
There’s this thing love stories always forget to mention. That love isn’t a constant thing. Sometimes it changes, other times it fades completely. Sometimes you have to fall in love twice to truly understand it.
People change over the years. Every so often, you have to relearn the person you’re with. Heathcliff wasn’t with me, but he was in my heart.
We made love two more times before he took me home that night. The plantation had never felt emptier. Even with the faint lingering odor of sweets and casseroles. That night, the only thing I cared to smell was chicory.
Somehow, I found myself in the kitchen, the coffee pot on, the smell of my uncle’s coffee floating through the air. When it was done, I hugged the warm mug I’d poured it in. I didn’t drink it. I just held it and inhaled.
Heathcliff had left home to find himself and had discovered death instead. He’d taken a hard road in life, but I could only hope he was learning that sometimes it takes plunging through mud to get to the clear water.
He’d come home. That was the first step.
Chapter 31
For days, I couldn’t stop thinking about Heathcliff, even with Rebecca’s babbling and the night crowds at Caffeine’s. It was like I was in high school again, lying in my bed wondering if he was thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him. Only now, he was different. He was older, broader, and—in a funny, weird kind of way—dustier. Like a vase that had sat on the hearth too long.
All I could think about was my body sprawled against his, my ear against his heart. I’d almost forgotten about his friends, about the life he had outside our town.
Until they showed up at the plantation.
I was in the kitchen working on a new recipe when Rebecca appeared in the doorway. “You expecting company?” she asked.
“No,” I mumbled, half paying attention.
“Then the really pretty silver car speeding up the drive in a cloud of dirt is news to you, too?”
Her words shook me out of my reverie, and I rounded the counter, joining her at the door. Together, we peered out the window.
“A Lexus with out of state tags. Methinks you pissed off the Ginger girl,” Rebecca whistled. “I’m impressed. Took an entire high school and college career before you got involved in a love triangle.” She patted my back. “Don’t worry. I’ve survived three. We’ve got this.”
I scowled. “I’m not getting involved in anything.”
“You really like to lie to yourself, girlfriend.”
I snorted. “Where do you get this stuff?”
Rebecca shrugged. “I record soaps. Lots of them. If you ever just feel really bad about your life, all you have to do is watch a soap opera and,” she mimicked an explosion, “boom. All better.”
“I’m suddenly glad I never owned a television.”
; Outside, a car door slammed, and we watched as Ginger climbed out of the driver’s side. She stared at the house, her hand rising to remove the expensive sunglasses on her nose. Brayden was with her, along with Chris’ wife, Samantha. Samantha, who’d I’d long since started calling Sam back in high school, looked as uncomfortable as I felt.
Rebecca grunted. “By the looks of things, you’re going to wish you’d seen some soaps. Trust me.”
There was a knock on the door, and I stiffened, wiping flour-stained hands down a plain white apron, before marching to the foyer.
Grasping the knob, I pulled, the opening door revealing three figures on the stoop. Behind them, Heathcliff’s Ford was pulling into the drive.
My lips curled into a smile, my heart fluttering. “Hi,” I greeted. “This is a surprise.”
Heathcliff was climbing out of his truck, his brother exiting the passenger side. Chris looked sad. Heathcliff was scowling.
Ginger was the first to speak. “Chris and Max have some business out here this afternoon, and I have to admit I was curious to see a real plantation. To see what all the fuss was about.”
I stepped aside, holding the door wide, my gaze flying to Heathcliff’s. Our eyes caught and then slid away. “It really isn’t much,” I said as they entered. “There are much bigger plantations not too far from here.”
“Yes,” Ginger drawled, “but you don’t own them.”
“Soap operas,” Rebecca hissed in my ear as she joined us.
Ignoring her, I studied the group. “Is there something I can do for you? Would you like some coffee? Tea?”
Chris stepped forward. “Max and I need to talk to you, Hawthorne. If you don’t mind, maybe Rebecca could show everyone else around the place.”
My gaze flicked from Rebecca’s to the group. She shrugged.
“Sure,” I replied, leaning over just long enough to hiss avoid looking at abs in Rebecca’s ear before indicating that Heathcliff and Chris should join me in the kitchen.