A stringed quartet starts in on a beautiful piece. It sounds like a dove crying out to God. Izzy appears like a dream, like a tall glass of water in a vast dusty land, and the sky gets a little brighter.
“God almighty,” I whisper.
“Keep it in your pants,” Bryson mumbles. “It’s my lucky day, remember?”
Tears blur my vision as she glides her way over. Her hair is swept to the side. Her eyes blaze like fire. As far as I’m concerned, Izzy has already outshined the brides. Heaven help me. I think Bryson has it wrong. I think it’s my lucky day. Hell, every day with Izzy in it is my lucky day.
Roxy and Annie head down next. I can’t get over how grown up Annie looks. It gets me that much closer to tears. The music switches to the all-familiar bridal march.
Bryson takes one look at Baya and loses it. Cole walks his sister down the aisle, and it’s an emotional scene, not a dry eye in the house, not even mine. I know they lost their dad a while back, and seeing Cole step up to the plate has me wanting to boo hoo with the best of them.
Ryder lets out an audible breath, waiting for his own bride to make her way to him.
Laney appears, beautiful in her own right. She walks down with her mother on one side and her father on the other. For a moment, I imagine it’s Izzy, and a lump the size of a fist gets trapped in my throat. By the time the girls are at their sides, both Ryder and my brother have rivers slicking down their cheeks. The ceremony goes off without a hitch. No one passes out from the heat. No one objects to the state of the unions. And, before I know it, the boy I grew up with both in and out of utero is a bona fide married man. The brides and grooms take off running down the aisle as the crowd breaks out in a celebratory applause. I hook my arm in Izzy’s and pause as we make our way under the arch.
“You mind if I steal a kiss?”
Izzy sheds a mile-wide smile. “I’d be upset if you didn’t.”
I lean in and plant a sweet kiss right over her lips, and, for a brief moment, I imagine this is our wedding day. It feels like magic. Like something I’ve secretly waited my whole life to do with Izzy. I know I’ve wanted it. And now it’s right here in our grasp.
The reception takes place right after the ceremony. Rue Capwell has this place operating like a five-star restaurant with enough food to feed a football stadium. After dinner, a live band starts up, and the crowd mixes both on and off the dance floor.
Izzy sways in my arms as we stand just beyond the masses. I warm her back with my hands, brushing a gentle kiss over her ear.
“You want to dance?” I rock our bodies to set the mood.
“I was thinking we could take a little walk.” Her eyes widen, pale and round as the full moon above. “This place is huge. Rumor has it there’s a pond out there somewhere.”
“Sounds like we should find it.”
I snap up two champagne glasses from the roving waiters, and we begin to make our way outside the crowd.
“Well, look who’s here!” Laney waves us over to herself and Ryder. “You’re not leaving are you?”
“Nope.” Izzy offers her sister a quick embrace. “We thought we’d ditch the crowd for a moment.”
“Okay, but find me before all this madness ends.” She bears into her sister. “And as soon as I get back from my honeymoon I want to get together. I want us to talk about things the way we used to. I want to know you and everything you’re willing to share with me because I love you, Iz.”
Izzy swallows hard. “Done. You’re on for coffee when you get back.”
“Coffee.” She holds up a finger as she and Ryder fade into the crowd.
I hand Izzy a glass of champagne and wrap an arm around her waist.
“Do you think you’re ready to talk about things with me?” I trace my lips over hers. If she doesn’t want to, I’m not pushing it ever again. “I’d love for you to open up, but only if you’re ready.”
“Yeah, I think it’s time.” She pulls back and inspects me under the moonlight. “Holt—is there something you’ve been holding back from me?” She cuts me a look that says she wants answers. “Because if there is, I’d like for you to open up as well.”
I knock back the champagne.
I plan on telling Izzy everything—right now.
The Whole Story
Izzy
Dear Dad,
I guess I don’t really have to write you these letters anymore since you’ve come back, but old habits die hard. I’m so glad you’re in our lives again. I feel full now. Does that make sense? Between you and Holt it feels as if my cup is running over.
I love you so much.
~Izzy
When Laney was seven years old, the exact age I was when our father mysteriously vanished from our lives, she put on a white dress and declared herself a bride. She said she was going to marry a prince and live in a castle—be a princess forever. I’d say she’s batting a thousand. I guess she knew what she was talking about after all.
Laney was always the kind of girl who knew what she wanted and went after it. She had goals, ambitions, and, most importantly, standards regarding who she would and wouldn’t allow into her life. God knows she didn’t get that from my mother.
“What’s going through your mind?” Holt pulls my hand to his lips and peppers it with kisses.
“Laney once said she’d marry a prince and live in a castle.” A dull laugh trembles through me. In truth, I’m giddy for my sister beyond belief. Today may have been her wedding day, but it’s also the day I pass the baton to Ryder. I know he’ll always keep her safe, perhaps a little better than I ever could.
“If it means anything, Ryder lives in some fancy high-rise, so I guess that qualifies as a castle.”
“That’s good enough for me. It’s been my dream to see her ride off into the sunset—in a good way.”
“I know what you mean. I’m happy for Bryson, too.” He leads us under a willow, and then we see it.
The moon pours its reflection over a black pool of water, smooth and glassy, like a giant mirror shinning into the night.
“Looks like we found the pond.” He buries a kiss in my neck.
“More like a lake.” It’s huge with the borders stretching out far into the night.
“Check this out.” Holt plucks a metal pontoon from a nearby bush and pushes it towards shore. “You think we should take this for a spin?”
“Sounds like a dream.”
Holt helps me into the tiny boat and jumps on board just as we sail from shore. He pulls an oar off the floor and rows us toward a marshy swamp where the reeds grow six feet above the waterline.
“You ready to do this?” He shakes out the oar and carefully places it by our side.
“Your secret or mine,” I blow it out in a whisper. “How do we decide who goes first? Rock-paper-scissors?”
“I couldn’t think of a more democratic way.”
We shake our fists at each other while chanting, rock—papers—scissors, in unison. The sound of our joy—our laughter, echoes up to the dusty lavender sky. There’s not a star in heaven that didn’t show up for this event tonight.
“Paper covers rock. You win,” I say. “So I guess I go first.” I glance down and play with the ribbon wrapped around my waist.
Holt slides over and pulls me into his lap. He lands his lips to my cheek and holds them there a good long while.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” I say it so fast I’m half afraid I’ll blurt the truth out before I’ve had the chance to formulate the proper words. “Okay, here it goes.” I take a breath and close my eyes. That day floods back like the nightmare it was. The memories suck me in like a tornado. It carries me high in its dark dizzying funnel, threatening to drop me back to earth and watch me shatter all over again. “When my father left, it was a scary time for me. Laney was too young to realize it, so things were a little different for her. Anyway, right afterwards, we moved and my mother purchased the studio. She ended up spending a fair amount of tim
e there. Usually when she worked, she’d leave us girls home with whoever was her main squeeze at the moment.” A tear rolls down my cheek, and I wipe it away. “My mother, being her overbearing self, had a way of attracting the lowest of the low. But, for some reason, I liked the thought of having a man around almost as much as she did. I wanted someone—anyone to come in and try to take my daddy’s place. Deep down I knew they couldn’t but that didn’t stop me from holding out for a miracle. Anyway, by the time I was thirteen the new string of wannabe daddies started to pay me a little too much attention if you know what I mean. They were interested in more than just reading me a bedtime story. Suddenly there were grabby hands and lips that found their way far too close to mine. One day, Laney walked in the room and one of them started to lay his hands on her, so I became a barrier. I made sure she was safe and they wouldn’t think of touching her. Of course, I told my mother, but they always denied it, and she always believed them. So I did what I had to—I ran them all out.” My body goes numb. A breeze comes up, and the tears drip down my cheeks in an icy luge. “I beat them. I threatened them with fake video footage that I would take to the police if they didn’t leave overnight, and they almost always did. Some were tougher to get rid of than others. One of them told me that I was a nasty little witch and would get mine one day.”
Holt tightens his grip over me. “Damn pieces of crap.”
“You got that right. But I had made a promise to my dad the day he said goodbye that I’d make sure my mother was never alone, and that’s what I intended to do—be right there with her.” I blow out a breath. “So here’s the big one.” My body trembles as the words jerk up my throat. I swore to myself that Jemma would be the last person I ever told. I guess I could break a promise to myself. This probably wasn’t a healthy one to keep to begin with. “On the night before my eighteen birthday—it was almost the end of my senior year, and I had already been accepted to three different colleges—I was working a shift over at the studio.” I twist into him and catch his gorgeous face as the moonlight kisses it with its translucent beams. “You were there.”
“Me?” His eyes round out like twin globes.
“Yes, you.” I sneak a kiss onto his mouth. “You came to pick up Annie with your mom, and for whatever reason you lingered in the studio. It was just the two of us. The music had just finished, and I was cleaning up—you looked right at me and said—”
“Izzy Sawyer you are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen,” he finishes the sentence for me.
“You remember?”
“Heck, yes, I remember. It took me weeks to work up the courage to do that.”
“Holt.” My chest heaves, and I try to restrain myself from bawling. “That was the last good moment. The last innocent part of who I was.” I give a hard sniff. “I drove home. Mom had to take Laney to a friend’s house, and she ended up staying, too. It was just me and Chuck. I could tell he’d been drinking, and I tried to go straight to my room, but he tackled me. No warning. No come here sweetie, why don’t you sit by me for a while like he used to when he tried feeling me up. This was an all out assault. He jumped me right there on the living room floor, and, before I knew it, he was tearing off my clothes. I still had my leotard on and my dance tights, so it was near impossible for him to do anything but twist me up in a knot.” I close my eyes. “I can still feel his hands on my body, squeezing my breasts until I thought I would burst. His fingers slithered south, and he did things I don’t want to remember.” I look up at Holt as tears roll down his face. “Um, he didn’t, you know, but he came close. I was still a virgin when we—”
Holt lands his lips over mine to quell me, and I swallow down the rest of the words. Holt knows. A weight has been lifted off my body. An entire iron pot I’ve been carrying around with me all these years has slipped from my grasp, and I’m light as a feather. I’m finally set loose from the nylon chains I was fettered in all those years ago. Just speaking it out loud, right here to the man I love, set me free from the power that monster had over me all this time.
“As strange as it sounds, that felt good to get out,” I whisper the words with a thread of shame.
“That doesn’t sound strange at all. Izzy”—he blows a breath into my hair, warming me—“I want to find him and kill him.”
“No. It’s over. I’m fine, and Laney is fine. He took off the next day, and it was back to square one with Mom and her steady string of morons. None were ever as bad as he was. I was able to protect Laney until she was off to college. I hung around and made sure there were no more perverts—which there were, but I ran them all off, one by one. Also, I was determined to keep my promise to my father and not leave my mother alone. It was sort of my fault she was alone to begin with, but I couldn’t let those assholes stay—and I knew if they couldn’t I’d have to. It was a small price to pay.”
“They were never going to stick around and be loyal to your mom, Iz. You did the right thing by kicking their asses out the door. She was sucking off the bottom of the pond, to put it mildly.”
“I can see that now. And, with my dad back, it sort of eases the burden off me a bit.”
“Are they together?”
“I don’t know. He’s staying at the house, but he’s in Laney’s old room.”
“I guess it’s all going to work out like it’s supposed to.”
“For the first time in a long time, I’m okay with that.” A dull laugh rattles from my chest. “When I was a kid, before my dad left, I had this jar that I used to whisper my wishes and dreams into. It sounds insane, I know, but I thought that way I could always have them. I thought maybe someday when I was older I’d unleash them into the world, and they’d come true.” I turn to face him fully and gaze up at his sharp cut cheeks, the brows that fan over his stainless-colored eyes. “And here you are. Every wish and dream I’ve ever had—alive and in the flesh.”
His eyes shine like shards of broken glass. “Izzy”—he presses it out like a dying breath—“I want you to have that again. I want you to believe in all of your wishes and dreams. I want to be able to give you that.”
“You already have.” I press my lips to his, and neither of us moves, neither of us breathes. I pull back and take him in under the blanched light of the moon. “Holt Edwards, you are a masterpiece. You are one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen.”
“I think you’re pretty damn amazing, Iz. You’re the only gorgeous creature I see. And I love that you were storing up all of your wishes and dreams for someday.” He brushes the hair from my face. “I’m glad I’m part of that.” He drops a kiss onto my lips once again and lingers. “My turn, huh?”
“If you’re ready.”
“I am. I hope.” Holt starts in on a heartbreaking story I never expected to hear, and my insides wrack with grief for him.
Holt doesn’t think he deserves to be with anyone, ever. It’s like we’re the very same person. Can two people like us ever make things work?
I hope this confessional didn’t just damn our relationship to hell.
And a small part of me thinks it may have.
But both Holt and I have already been to hell and back—I don’t see why we couldn’t withstand one more trip together.
Holt
Two weeks later
For so long I held things close to the vest, so when it finally came time to open up it was like cutting myself loose from an anchor. I could see the light above on the surface—I knew there was good, clean air to fill my lungs with up there, and, as soon as I spoke the words to Izzy, I could feel myself corking to the top—breathing once again without anything weighing me down. After Izzy let her demons fly, I knew I could, too. We sat in that tin boat for hours after that just holding each other tight. It was a night I’d like to both remember and forget. It carved itself over our hearts, and the wounds sizzled as we poured out our grief. But, over the last two weeks, Izzy and I have been soaring higher than ever. I never thought I could feel so close to someone, still not su
re I deserve to. That’s why Izzy is coming with me tonight to my mother’s house where I’ve called a family meeting. Bryson is home from his honeymoon, so I asked if he could drop by, too.
“Looks like they’re all here.” I say as we head on in.
“There’s Annie.” Izzy nods to my sister on the porch swing.
“Hey, girl. Whatcha’ doing out here?”
Look who I found, she signs with one hand while holding a white ball of fluff in the other. It’s the tiniest kitten I’ve ever seen—nothing but fur and bright blue eyes.
“Oh my, gosh!” Izzy lunges at the poor fuzz ball until Annie surrenders it. “Where did you ever find this gorgeous creature?”
Out back. Mom says I can’t keep him.
“She says she found him out back. My mom is allergic to cats, so she has to find him a new home.”
“Done,” Izzy says it so fast my head spins.
“Whoa, what if I wanted him?” I give a cocky grin.
“Well, if you do, then we’ll just have to share custody.” The whites of her eyes shine in the night as she gives a tiny smile.
“I guess we’ll just have to do that whole, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—Thursday, Friday thing.”
“What about the weekends?”
“We’ll just have to work things out.” I drop a hot kiss over her lips, and the kitten purrs between us. “Or you could move in and save us both the hassle.”
Izzy gasps. The porch light frames her in from behind and makes her glow like an otherworldly being, like an angel.
Hello, Annie signs. I’m still here. She taps Izzy on the shoulder. And I think you should say yes. I still think you make a really cute couple.
“She says you have to, or she’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
Annie kicks me in the shin.
“All right, she thinks you should say yes.” I pull Izzy in until our stomachs touch. “She thinks we make a really cute couple.”
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