by Tina Michele
Once she made the decision to attend the camp, she learned so much in just six days with ten survivors on the rivers of Colorado. It changed her life, but more than that, it gave her life back. She could help others the way Caitlyn had helped her. She found a family and they filled her with hope and purpose. Haven was now dedicated to Valiant and helping other cancer patients find their new normal and the strength to keep up the fight. Unfortunately, there were times when that also included saying a final good-bye to them when they were too weak to go on.
After the service, everyone flowed out of the church. Haven and Bianca mixed and mingled briefly on the steps outside of the church before saying good-bye and heading to the car. “I still don’t understand how you do it,” Bianca said, holding the passenger door open for Haven.
“Because it makes such a difference in their lives. Before it’s too late.”
“But they always die. You make friends and then they die.” Bianca closed the door and circled around to the driver’s side.
Haven had answered this question before. Not just from Bianca, but from just about everyone she’d ever talked to about her dedication to the nonprofit camp she volunteered with. She took a deep breath as Bianca slipped into the car. “They don’t always die. And if they do lose the battle, I know that for a time they lived. Truly lived, and I get to be a part of that. I get to see them in their happiest moments, living in spite of the disease that is trying its damndest to kill them.”
“It just seems like a lot of loss to purposely set yourself up for, you know?”
“None of us are getting out of here alive, Bianca. Valiant gives them a chance to experience life, even for a short time. It gives them hope. It gave me hope.”
“And it brought you to me, and for that I am thankful. You’re an amazing woman, Haven. I love you.” Haven smiled as Bianca reached once again for her hand and rested them on the console between them.
As they approached the next intersection, Haven blurted out, “Wait, turn here!”
“What? You’re not coming home with me?” Bianca asked.
“I can’t, hon. I’m leaving for camp in the morning, and I haven’t gotten any of my stuff together yet,” Haven said.
“You do this every time.” Bianca laughed. “Are you serious? I don’t know how you manage to get anything done sometimes.”
“That’s what I have you for, remember? At least that’s what you constantly tell me. You can always come stay with me and leave in the morning when I do.”
“Do you have to go away to camp this time? I’d like us to spend some actual time together.”
Haven sensed what was coming next. They were minutes from her apartment, but she didn’t think they were going to get there before Bianca would get to ask her question. No matter how hard she pressed her foot into the floorboard, the car wouldn’t go any faster.
“Why don’t you just move in with me? Then we don’t have to spend half our time arranging our relationship around all our commitments.” Bianca pulled into the parking spot but made no move to exit the vehicle, which meant neither could Haven.
“Bianca, you know I’m not ready for that. We’ve only known each other a short while and have dated barely half that time. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“It’s a fine idea if you think about it. We could combine our professional and personal relationship into one perfect package. And I wouldn’t have to keep asking you how your portraits are coming along. I could see it for myself.”
Haven always felt that the moment she would make art her career that it would no longer be fun for her. She didn’t like to be told what to do, and she certainly did not like being hovered over. Whether it was in her life, love, or career, she had always found it difficult to meet any sort of deadline. The best way to get her not to do something was to tell her she had to. And that hadn’t changed just because she had moved to Colorado and gotten involved with Bianca, her artist agent. She decided that she wasn’t going to think about that right now.
“Oh, wow. Um. How about we go inside?” There was nothing Haven wanted less than someone standing over her shoulder watching her work. The idea almost made her never want to pick up a brush ever again. Haven headed into the house.
“So, is that a yes?” Bianca asked, following Haven inside and closing the door behind her.
Haven took a deep breath and strode toward Bianca. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “Bianca, I like things the way they are right now, and I can think of several different things I’d much rather be doing than talking about this, again.” Haven traced a finger along Bianca’s collarbone. Haven dipped her head and ran her tongue along the taut muscle leading up to her ear. Bianca purred.
“Now? We just got back from—ahhh.” Haven flicked open a button and slid her hand into Bianca’s shirt. She cupped a full breast in her palm and pinched a nipple roughly between her fingers until it rose in response. Bianca sucked a quick breath through her teeth.
“Everyone has sex after a funeral. Plus, I leave tomorrow for an entire week. A whole week without sex is the worst part about these trips.” Haven quickly worked the buttons of Bianca’s shirt open. This was just one of the things she’d rather do than discuss a question she had no intention of answering. She slipped Bianca’s shirt down off her shoulders and dug her nails into her soft and supple skin. Goose bumps rose over her own body as Bianca groaned from the sting.
“Mm, somebody wants to play rough, I see,” Bianca said.
Haven stepped back and feigned innocence before Bianca lurched forward and took a handful of Haven’s long hair and wrapped it around her wrist. Haven gasped at the jolt of electricity and heat that flooded her body. Bianca controlled Haven’s movements and pulled her close, tilting her head to the side and exposing Haven’s neck.
“Take me,” Haven demanded as she offered herself to Bianca. As Bianca leaned in to lick Haven’s delicate skin, Haven ran her hand down to the zippered seam of Bianca’s tight pants. She felt an unexpected yet familiar bulge and her heart raced with anticipation. “You naughty girl.” To think that Bianca had packed for a funeral with every intention of taking Haven whenever and wherever she’d asked sent waves of need through her.
Bianca held all the control with one hand wrapped tightly in Haven’s hair. She spun her around and bent her over the back of the couch. She tossed up Haven’s skirt and squeezed her ass. Haven moaned with desire. Bianca pushed her panties down and ran her fingers through Haven’s wet folds.
Bianca released Haven’s hair and freed her silicone cock from the boxer briefs. Once free, she slid inside Haven with a commanding thrust. Bianca gripped Haven’s hips and pushed deep inside her, claiming her, taking her. Haven opened herself up and let Bianca take everything she wanted. Everything except for her heart.
* * *
Haven pulled into the driveway and honked the horn. As she waited, she connected her cell phone via Bluetooth so she could access her music files on the drive. This was one of her favorite parts of camp week, the drive up into the majestic Rocky Mountains. To make it even better, her dear friend Wendy was coming along for the ride. She had met Wendy just a year earlier when Haven attended camp as a camper.
Haven looked up as Wendy lugged her duffel to the SUV. Her modern black and blond hair was pulled up in a short, simple ponytail. Haven hopped out and opened the back so Wendy could toss her things in. “Hey there!”
“Hey, hey!” Wendy said before she grunted and tossed her bag into the truck.
“Are we ready to go?”
“Giddyup!” Wendy said, tapping on the dashboard.
Haven still found herself in awe each time she headed west on I-70. The earth dipped and then rose suddenly toward the sky. It kept rising with each curve and turn along the way. The red rock cliffs transformed into steel gray rock face covered with evergreens and splashes of yellow from the early changing aspens. Remnants of the Old West dotted the mountainsides with abandoned gold mines, vacant tunnels, and dilapi
dated ore mining rails jutting out and dropping off the hillside. The Colorado River rushed alongside the highway, and Haven couldn’t wait to get back on the water. The river roared between the colossal range and surged over the boulders and obstacles in its way, and her heart raced with it.
Chapter Two
Haven and Wendy met up with two other volunteers, Caliente and Diego, on the patio of the main lodge. Haven was excited about the week already. She’d met them when she was once a camper at Valiant. They had each changed her life in the most unique and unexpected way. Prior to her experience as a camper Haven had never considered herself a cancer survivor in the grand sense of the term. In her eyes, her personal experience with the disease had been brief. In her mind, she had barely had time to absorb her diagnosis before she was declared disease free.
Haven rubbed lightly at the scar on her throat. Her heart skipped, a rush of adrenaline surged through her, and her thighs tingled with pins and needles. She took several deep breaths and fought back the sudden onslaught of panic. She could rappel from a three-hundred-foot waterfall, kayak a Class IV rapid, or zip line over a thousand-foot gorge, but when her thoughts centered around her health, it sent her anxiety into full tilt. She always became hyperaware of each and every pang and pain in her body.
It was when she attended the camp that she finally confronted those repressed fears, irrational thoughts, and the uncertainty about her future if the cancer ever returned. As much as she told herself that she’d escaped the worst of the cancer, ultimately, her mental and emotional battle was like that of so many others regardless of severity or prognosis. It was worse every twelve months when she went in for her routine scans. Fortunately, this anxious episode was brief and she pulled herself back into reality and the excitement of the day and the week ahead.
Besides Wendy, Diego was one of her best friends. His heart was as big as he was, and a single hug from him wrapped Haven in more love than she thought possible. During their first camp together, he and Wendy became her people instantly. They were the three musketeers and forged a bond that would last a lifetime. They were the reason she packed up her life in Florida and moved eighteen hundred miles across the country. Of course, a devastating breakup had its own significant role in the decision as well.
Everything always came back around to Willa Bennette, the woman who broke her heart into a million tiny shards. The woman who stuck by her through her diagnosis, surgery, and recovery. The woman she’d known nearly all her life, and the one who almost killed her the day she walked out of her life without reason or explanation. Haven almost didn’t make it to that first camp to meet Diego, Wendy, and so many strangers who she now considered her family, her tribe. It was in her darkest and scariest months afterward, when Haven found it just about impossible to deal with life, that she found Valiant. It was a cancer camp, but she found more solace and hope for life in one week than she ever thought possible. She owed them her life, in more ways than one.
As the black SUVs rounded the long driveway, Haven grew even more excited. She couldn’t wait to meet the newest members of the Valiant family and experience so many amazing moments with another group of fighters and thrivers. Haven hoped there was a mixture of young and old, men and women, as it made things so much more interesting. The way such an environment could bring together a thirty-five-year-old mother from Tennessee with a seventy-six-year-old gay man from Boston and spark a connection that would last a lifetime.
Haven stretched her back from side to side in preparation for the hardest part of the guests’ arrival. The luggage. She was thankful to have Diego and his mass of muscles to help out with this part. Her belly grumbled as the trucks pulled up to the lodge, and she wished she’d eaten the energy bar she knew was still sitting on the counter between the kitchen and dining room.
As soon as the vehicles came to a stop, the doors popped open at once. And just like that, people and bags were spilling out of every opening. It was a cool afternoon at 13,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies, so it was easy to tell who her fellow thin-skinned Southerners were as they smiled and laughed between gasps of surprise and the weird fishy mouth movements they made trying to see their breath in the air. There were hugs and cheek kisses all around as the volunteers greeted the guests as well as the other volunteers just arriving. Everyone introduced themselves.
The commotion was exhilarating, and Haven moved amongst the crowd making her way toward the rear of the truck. She stopped when a large black duffel came flying out of the backseat and landed with a heavy thud on her feet. “Whoa, shit!” Haven shouted at almost being knocked out by a sixty-pound sack chucked at her.
“Sorry!” the voice shouted from inside the vehicle.
She had expected a deep, male voice in response to her, but what she heard was not deep, nor was it male, but it was all too familiar. Her stomach leapt into her throat and her heart slammed to a stop. She peered into the truck as a figure emerged. Her head was tucked, and Haven couldn’t see her face. Her heart started again but in triple time. The woman stepped out onto the ground with a crunch of gravel beneath her worn brown Justin work boots. Her jeans hung loose around the calf but worked up to a snug fit around strong thighs. Haven’s gaze traced up from the boots up, and her heart felt like it would burst from her chest. Her head told her it couldn’t be, but everything else inside said her otherwise. She could feel her ears burning, and the whooshing of her blood deafened her. The T-shirt, front-tucked to show a statement buckle that Haven had once purchased as a gift. Haven watched the woman’s hand as it reached up to the bill of her ball cap as she straightened it and then looked with dark brown eyes straight into her own.
“What the fuck?” Haven said without any ability to do otherwise. Her hands turned into ice, her blood ran cold in her veins, and she struggled to keep her legs beneath her. Haven had no idea where she was. For all she knew, she had just been hit by a bus and was in the throes of death on her way to the hospital. “I…I need…” Haven stumbled backward, pulling her feet from beneath the heavy bag. She held up her hand and mumbled something about nothing. She blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of what, or rather who, she was seeing. She turned away and headed through the crowd into the lodge. Someone had handed her a backpack and a bag of cups and napkins as she passed, so she set them down on the table as she made her way through the dining room in a daze.
She finally let her legs give out, and she fell into a large blue denim chair. She sank down and prayed that it would swallow her whole. Haven tried to convince herself that she was seeing things. She’d heard many times about doppelgangers; it could be that. There could be another woman on Earth who looked, dressed, and smelled just like Willa. She knew it wasn’t a doppelganger, or a long lost twin situation. She knew there was not another woman in the world with eyes that could see into her soul. The world had one Willa Bennette, and she was here.
Haven’s heart was beating double-time. She clenched her fists, closed her eyes, and jammed the pads of her thumbs into the sockets at the bridge of her nose. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. Her entire body was ablaze. Not with arousal or desire, but with a building fire of anger that she hadn’t felt since the day Willa had given her some bullshit excuse for why “the relationship was no longer working for her.” Haven had replayed the moment in her head a thousand times, but suddenly with the rushing of blood in her ears, and the beads of sweat forming on her lip, she couldn’t recall the exact words Willa had used. The last words she thought she’d ever hear her say, before today.
* * *
Willa could only stare in disbelief as she watched Haven disappear into the lodge. The awe and wonder that she had experienced driving up into the mountains was gone in an instant. Her mind swirled with a thousand disconnected words, her ears hummed with the buzz of muffled voices, and her body stood frozen in place. How was it even possible? Willa couldn’t even begin to fathom what the odds could be that she would come face-to-face with Haven after three years, eightee
n hundred miles, and thirteen thousand feet.
Her hair was blonder, more of a bleach blond versus her once natural golden color. It was a wild style sticking out in various uncontrolled directions with a vibrant headband doing nothing to hold the unruly strands in place. Willa couldn’t help but notice how natural it looked on her, but also how uncharacteristic it was for Haven. Add that to her capri length, roughed-up boyfriend jeans, and what Willa could describe as a sort of long, crocheted, hippie sweater vest. Anyone else might not have recognized her. Hell, had it not been for her steel blue eyes and the familiar way her lips puckered up as she silently mouthed her name, Willa would’ve missed it, too.
A tap on her shoulder zapped Willa out of her haze. She blinked and focused on Diego, who stood next to her motioning to her bags.
“Hey there,” Diego said. “Is this all we have for you?”
“Uh. Yeah. That’s it.” Willa stooped to pick up her duffel, but he was faster.
He scooped her bag up and slung it over his shoulder in one smooth motion. “Follow me,” he called to her, heading off and away from the main lodge.
Willa glanced one more time toward the door where Haven had disappeared before she jogged along after Diego. “We’ve got you in cabin two with your bunkmate, Corey.”
Just then, Corey popped her head out the front door of the cabin and smiled.
“Willa! Sweet.”
“Hey there. It looks like we’re roomies.” Willa was pleasantly content with her roommate lottery. She and Corey had actually met in the airport earlier that day as they sat and waited for the other campers’ flights to arrive. She was eleven years younger than Willa but mature beyond her twenty years. Cancer did that to people, it seemed, but Corey had an undeniable love for life, and it showed on her face with a constant toothy grin. Willa expected such a perky attitude to grate on her nerves, but so far so good.