Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3)

by Jasinda Wilder

  He pulled back and slid deep, breathing hard, holding back, tensed and flexed. Again, and then again, he drove into me. I accepted his thrusts and met them with my own, and each slide of his cock inside me sent lances of ecstasy through me as he stimulated my sensitive nerves. I held on to him, pulling him against me with my legs, lifted up and kissed him, sucked his tongue into my mouth and bit his lip.

  And then he couldn’t hold the kiss, could only slump over me, pressing his mouth to my chest, and gliding hard and fast into me as his own orgasm gripped him, made him frenzied and wild. He grunted against my skin, gasped my name, wrapped his arms under my neck and held me tight. I lifted up, arched my back and held him to my breasts, grinding my hips against his, clenching with my inner muscles as he thickened within me.

  He came with a shout, squeezing his eyes shut and then forcing them open, meeting my gaze as he emptied himself inside me. I held him, caressed his back, his hips and his ass and his thighs and his face, everywhere I could reach.

  “I love you, Ever. God, I love you.”

  “Forever, and after forever, Cade. Always. I love you, no matter what. No matter what. I promise.”

  He let his weight cover me for me a few minutes, a few short perfect moments of complete bliss.

  I held onto those moments of afterglow, cradling Cade’s head on my breast, hoarding the joy I felt, the completion and love. I’d need them, something told me.

  All too soon, he rolled off me and tucked me into the nook of his shoulder, and we drifted off to sleep together.

  northward

  I woke up alone in bed. His side was cold. Pale yellow sunlight streamed in through the open window, the weak remnants of a late winter’s afternoon. Without sitting up, I glanced through the open doorway, catching a glimpse of Cade. He was at the kitchen table yet again, wearing a pair of gym shorts, his sketchpad open in front of him, pencil case to one side, a bottle of Jameson and a tumbler on the other. The glass was empty, and the bottle was a third gone. It had been full the day before, brand new, a gift to him from his supervisor at UPS.

  He was leaning forward, his elbows on the table, head in his hands. Fists clenched in his hair. His posture was one of utter agony, pure defeat. His breathing was slow, as if he had to convince himself to drag in each breath.

  I hurt for him. I wanted to take away his pain. I wanted to share it with him.

  But cowardly me…I was afraid of the pain, afraid that it meant pain for me, too. I could endure pain if it meant helping the man I loved. I could endure pain if it meant he and I were together. But if the pain was sourced in a wedge between us, then I wasn’t sure I could withstand it.

  I watched him from my place in our bed. I watched, and I worried.

  Long minutes passed, and he didn’t move except to breathe. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, my Cade. But this man, the broken ghost who sat in my kitchen, poured another half-glass of golden whiskey, liquid the color of his eyes swirling in the glass, and he knocked it back, hissed, finished it, and slammed the glass down on the table. Then did it again.

  Unable to take it anymore, I slid out of bed, padded still naked into the living room. I didn’t speak, didn’t ask him what was wrong. I stood beside him, leaned against him, waited until he reached for the bottle once more. He poured, and I grabbed the glass from him. Swallowed the contents in three burning gulps. Coughed, my wrist to my mouth. His arm snaked around my hips and held me. I held the glass out to him, and he went to take it from me, but I shook my head. “Again,” I rasped, my throat still raw from the first shot.

  He hesitated, then poured once more, while I held the tumbler. I sipped it more slowly this time, exploring the burn, the smoky fire of it, the way it made my throat convulse and shudder as I swallowed.

  “If I asked, would you tell me?” I said to him, setting the glass down.

  His fingers scratched at my hip, dug into the crease where leg met hip. “I don’t know.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  He shook his head. “No. You don’t.” Cade reached for the bottle but missed, and his hand flopped to the table. “Fuck, I’m drunk.”

  I put the cap on the bottle, pushed it away from him. “Even though I promised you I’d love you forever, no matter what?”

  “Yeah.”

  I turned to face him, and even drunk his gaze was tormented. “I have midterms coming up soon. We’re going to go on vacation, and you’re going to tell me then.” I put my hands on his cheeks, my thumbs brushing his temples. “I love you, Cade.”

  “Okay.” He slumped forward, his face resting just beneath my boobs. “I love you too, Ev. Don’t ever doubt that.”

  I choked, hearing Eden’s words, all those months ago. Just before she left me. I blinked away tears. “Don’t say that. Eden said that, and now she’s gone.”

  “I won’t leave.” The way he said it made it seem like someone would be leaving, but it wouldn’t be him. “And we’ll find Eden. She’ll come back. She loves you too much to have left forever.”

  “If she loved me, why did she leave?” It was a question that had plagued me since the day she walked out of my room at the nursing home.

  Cade just shook his head, shrugged one shoulder. “Dunno.”

  I stepped away from him. “Go take a shower, and then watch a movie with me.” I pushed at his shoulder, trying desperately to regain the happiness I’d felt only hours before. “It’s Christmas Day. We have to watch Christmas Vacation.”

  He nodded sloppily, and shuffled into the bathroom. I put on one of his T-shirts while he showered and then got the movie cued up, curling in the corner of the couch while I waited for him. He emerged a little clearer-eyed half an hour later, his hair mussed and shaggy and way too long, wearing a pair of clean gym shorts and nothing else.

  He laughed with me at the movie, even though we’d both seen it countless times. Eden and I used to watch it every year on Christmas Day. We’d drink eggnog and eat a shitload of cookies, and quote our favorite lines along with the actors. Cade had told me once that his mom had loved it, too, so it held significance for him as well.

  When it was over, I eyed the shelf of movies beside the TV. “How about James Bond?” I knew those movies reminded him of his dad.

  Cade’s expression shuttered closed, and he shook his head. “No. Not Bond.” I was puzzled by the strength and immediacy of his reaction, but didn’t push it.

  We ended up watching the entire Riddick trilogy, and didn’t go to bed until after two in the morning.

  Merry Christmas.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  With the knowledge that midterms were approaching, and with it the conversation both Cade and I knew was coming, time slipped past all too quickly. Yet not fast enough. I dreaded the conversation, yet craved the closure I knew would accompany it, for good or ill. It meant an end to the wondering, an end to the questions and the fear. But it meant pain. I knew that much as clearly as I knew my own name.

  Cade was easier to be with, strangely. I didn’t question it, though, only tried to enjoy the casual conversations he’d engage me in, the way he held me tight at night. The way he’d wake me up early in the morning and make love to me with silent fervor. They were wild, those morning tumbles. Intense. Not so much passionate as…desperate. Frantic. As if he was afraid he was going lose me.

  I always held him, and told him I loved him, and he returned it, but his eyes held a distance, a sadness, a resignation.

  January wound down, and spring break approached. I took my tests, turned in papers, and fought the feeling of impending doom. Some days, it felt as if I couldn’t breathe, as if a weight was sitting on my chest.

  Prompted by I didn’t know what, I put in my notice at the office where I worked part time.

  Cade requested two week’s vacation from both jobs, and ended up quitting the janitorial job when they’d only grant him one week.

  The last day of midterms was a bright and sunny Friday. I only had one exam, mid-morning, a low-level math class I had
to take to finish out my requirements. I hated math but was pretty sure I’d at least passed the test, which was all I cared about.

  I turned it in, put on my coat, shouldered my purse, and sent Cade a quick text that I was on the way home. When I arrived, he had a bag packed for us. We were going to the cabin. I’d managed to find the address and had printed out directions.

  Cade drove. We were both quiet, tense.

  “Think she’ll be there?” Cade asked.

  I’d wondered the same thing myself, over and over again. I’d written a letter, put it in an envelope, and put a stamp on it, but hadn’t been able to send it. I couldn’t bear the waiting, the not knowing if I’d get a response from her, or a yellow “return to sender” sticker, or simply nothing at all.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s the only place I can think of that she might have gone.”

  “Are we planning on staying there?”

  I shook my head. “Probably not. If she is there, she’s been living there for almost nine months, and we couldn’t crash in on her like that. And if she isn’t there, the cabin probably isn’t in any condition to stay in.”

  He just nodded, and silence descended between us once more, and lasted the rest of the way up to Traverse City. We ate at Red Ginger, a sushi place downtown, and walked the sidewalks together, hand in hand, stopping into shops here and there, browsing through the trinkets and baubles and artwork. We spent over an hour in an art gallery on Front Street, admiring the work of local artists. There was a series of landscapes which were fairly underwhelming, some abstract pieces that had Cade and I both nodding in appreciation, and, along one entire wall, hand-carved wood sculptures by someone named Carter Haven. They were fascinating pieces, all of them. They were varied in style, ranging from life-size squirrels and birds to topographical maps of the Traverse City area, to abstract twists of wood fused with straps of black iron.

  I had put off the trip up the Old Mission Peninsula, and I knew Cade was putting off the conversation. The Conversation. It deserved the capital letter.

  But I knew we couldn’t put it off any longer. I stood with Cade at the corner of Front Street and Union, cars passing and flurries of late winter snow swirling around us. I took his hands in mine, looked up at him. “We should head up.”

  He nodded. “Okay.” A glance down at me, to assess my mood. “You ready?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “Not really. But I have to know if she’s here.”

  I’d booked a room at a hotel on the tourist strip, so we didn’t have to worry about finding somewhere to stay once we’d visited the cabin.

  With evening falling around us, Cade pointed the Jeep north on M-37 and, with every passing mile, my heart pounded harder.

  She was here. I could feel her. I could sense her.

  EDEN

  unlikely wisdom

  Summer faded into fall, and my belly went from bump to protruding round bulge. With the cabin remodel finished, time spent with Carter was hit or miss. He was busy all the time, I discovered. He was heading up the construction of the tasting room for the Haven Brothers Winery. He supervised the day-to-day care of the vines, and he also ran a handyman service on the side, mostly for friends on the peninsula. If you needed your cabinets repainted, you hired Carter. If you needed help with a brake job on your car, you called Carter. If your sink leaked and the plumber couldn’t come soon enough, you called Carter. He could do a little of everything, and was willing to help anyone, even if they couldn’t pay him. On top of all this, he also sold his hand-carved wood sculptures out of the gallery downtown, and he’d mentioned that he would occasionally do pieces on commission.

  But despite how busy he was, he always found time to stop by the cabin every day, even if just to check on me. As fall progressed and my belly got bigger, it got harder and harder for me to move around. That in itself was a hardship I hadn’t anticipated. I was a fit girl. It was who I was. Being insecure about my weight and body image, I was fanatical about exercise, obsessed, even. I had to work out every day, regardless of the weather or my mood or anything else. And now, suddenly, I could barely get up off the couch.

  By the time the first snow hit in late November, I was so hugely pregnant I felt like a walrus. I waddled. Actually waddled, with one hand pressed to my back. I’d seen pregnant women, of course, and I’d always shuddered in sympathy for them. I couldn’t imagine being so slow and ponderous, carrying around this whole other person.

  Nothing could have prepared me for how hard the reality of pregnancy was. As my belly got bigger and bigger, my back hurt more and more. And I peed all the time. I was hungry all the time, and craved bizarre things. According to the reading I’d done, I was under the impression that cravings were a first-trimester thing, and should fade away as the pregnancy progressed. I hadn’t had any weird cravings at all in the first trimester. No pickles and ice cream, or sushi at three in the morning, or peanut butter and olive sandwiches. If anything, food made me nauseous. It wasn’t really all that bad, but enough that I only ate when I was actually hungry enough for a meal.

  And then I hit my third trimester, and I was hungry all the time. I wanted Triscuits and Irish cheddar cheese, literally every moment of every day. I had to have Greek yogurt twice a day: peach in the morning, black cherry at night. With granola. Real granola, not the fake bullshit with the sticky clumps of oats.

  And decaf coffee. That was one of the hardest things. Giving up caffeine was like trying to rip my arm off. I tried cutting out coffee entirely for about two weeks, and then gave in, allowing myself one cup of actual real coffee in the morning, and then I had to switch to decaf. The idea was to psych myself out with the fake crap, but it never worked. I knew it was decaf, and it wasn’t the same. But it was something.

  The one thing I wished the pregnancy books had mentioned was that I’d pee my pants. That would have been nice to know. If I had to pee really bad—which was every hour or so—I’d find myself leaking. Like…seepage. I took to wearing maxi pads all the time.

  Carter usually stopped by around lunchtime, and he always brought me something to eat, most frequently a burger from the Peninsula Grill, or the parmesan-crusted whitefish, my other favorite menu item. He’d sit in my kitchen with me, and we’d eat and talk for a while, and then he’d leave.

  I didn’t dare examine why exactly my heart would start going pitter-patter as the noon hour approached. Or why it would start hammering when I heard his truck crunch to a stop on the gravel of my driveway. I’d have to stop myself from scurrying around the house, picking up before he came in. I had to stop myself from sighing every time I saw him, too. God, he was gorgeous. And the smell of sawdust and sweat that was wrapped up in his identity sent my pulse racing and made my mouth dry and made me quiver, just a little. Not as quivery as his eyes made me, though. He’d cast a glance at me with those ridiculously beautiful blues, and I’d have to blink hard and force my knees to stay locked. His eyes were so pale, so piercing, so knowing.

  I couldn’t think about why I reacted to him so strongly, and there was no point in thinking about it. I knew he liked me. I knew he was attracted to me. And he was there for me. But…for how long? He had his own life. Mine was a whole train wreck of baggage, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

  And, oh, yeah, I was pregnant. Very, very pregnant.

  Which, maybe, just meant the attraction I had to Carter was just due to hormones. Some chemical inside me creating a false sense of need.

  I couldn’t afford to hope that he’d stick around for much longer. He’d get tired of hanging out with a guilt-stricken pregnant woman, one who was prickly and moody and complicated. And…I got exhausted just thinking about what it must have been like for him, being around me.

  Why would he want to? He owed me nothing. He hadn’t knocked me up; he had no responsibility to me. And I’d told him, numerous times, that there couldn’t be anything between us. Not now, while I was pregnant, and not later, because I’d be busy trying to figure out ho
w to be a single mother with no job and no degree. My only real talent or ability was playing the cello, and that was kind of hard to turn into a career when you had a newborn and no support system.

  He wasn’t a support system. I couldn’t rely on him. Refused to. He was a friend. An acquaintance, even.

  But…he found ways to support me and help me without ever being asked. He’d swing by with his mower and mow my grass. He came by three times over the fall to rake up my leaves and cart them away to burn at the vineyard. He replaced the garbage disposal when it quit on me. He took me grocery shopping a couple of times every week.

  And those trips, the ones to the real supermarkets down the peninsula, they were the hardest for me. He was so attentive to me, always pushing the cart and opening the car door, grabbing the heavier items and loading and unloading. People always assumed we were a couple, which embarrassed me and made my heart ache a little, but Carter seemed to take it in stride. We didn’t usually bother to correct the misconceptions. I’d answer their questions vaguely, wait through the awkward exclamations of how big my belly was and questions about when was I due, and were we having a girl or a boy, and oh, I bet the baby would have Daddy’s eyes. Carter would just smile and wait patiently.

  Basically, Carter was doing all the work of acting like my husband or boyfriend, just without any of the benefits. Especially since my company wasn’t all that stimulating or fun most of the time.

  The closer to my due date I got, the more the panic and guilt and worry consumed me.

  By Christmas—a little more than two months from my due date—I was so afraid and worried and stressed out that I couldn’t get out of bed, as it was often simply too arduous a process to even bother. The only times I’d go through the effort of shifting my whale-sized body out of bed was to pee and to get something else to eat while I read my thousandth book.