Why did it have to be this way? Why did they have to go? I fucking hate them for it while I miss them all the same. They were all I had, and they left me completely alone, just like everyone else I’ve ever loved. The faces of my family, that day-by-day fade in my memory, flood my mind. My father, my mother, my aunt Anna, and Trevor. But at the end of all their faces is hers. The one I see, even when I don’t want to. The one that’s as fresh in my mind as the dew on these leaves. The one that I can still feel in my skin from when I cupped her cheek last night as she writhed beneath me.
She is not a memory.
She is alive.
And she is mine…if I want her to be.
* * *
The house is eerily quiet when I return, and my first thought is that she’s gone. My chest tightens up, and I rush to the kitchen, in hopes that she’s having breakfast in the nook. I let out my caught breath when my hope is confirmed. Her back is to me, and she’s staring out the window at the garden. She’s not eating or drinking. She’s not looking at her phone. She’s just staring.
“Cara,” I say in a near whisper.
She looks over her shoulder at me, and I’m alarmed to see how puffy and blotchy her face is. There’s no light in her eyes. There’s no sparkling smile at my greeting. Remorse pummels me in the stomach.
What have I done?
“Hey,” she says in a shaky voice and pushes back in her chair. She brings a barely touched piece of toast to where I’m standing and throws it in the bin. She places the dish in the sink and then turns to look at me. There’s a long pause and my jaw clenches. I don’t like the way it is between us now, and I have no one to blame but myself. Finally, she speaks, “I’m going back to California.”
It takes me a few seconds to process that. My voice is raw when I ask, “When?”
“I don’t know yet. I need to make the arrangements.”
I bite on the inside of my cheek and rock my head a bit, as the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach fights against me.
Cara waits for me to say something, but I am lost for words. She tries to brush past me, but on reflex, I reach out to stop her by the arm and pull her back to face me. She’s mere centimeters from my body.
“What do you want?” she asks.
My lips part, but I can’t make a sound.
She squints her eyes and pleads, “Then let me go.”
“No.”
“No? How audacious. Jesus, Reid, what do you want from me? I’m so confused and angry at you, and I’m so—”
“Fine, I’ll tell you what I want,” I bite and bring her face even closer to mine. “I want to consume your every thought. I want you to only be able to breathe comfortably when I’m around, and I want you to fear living a life without me in it. I want all of that for you because that is what you’ve put upon me. That is how I live now. Can’t you see that?”
“Fuck you,” she sneers and starts to thrash against me.
“Cara.” It’s a command. It’s rough. And it stops her.
She pulls out of my grasp. “I get it, all right. Your heart has been broken more than any person deserves. And my heart hurts for you in that regard. But it’s no excuse to be this way. It’s no excuse to do what you did last night.”
“I know I fucked up,” I tell her, but my ability to apologize is out of reach.
“Yes, you did. You used me.” Tears form in her eyes and the ice within me melts away.
“Cara—”
“No, stop. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Trust me when I tell you that I wasn’t using you. I could never do that to you.”
She just stares at me, not believing a word I said.
“I was giving in to the thing I want most, even against my better judgment.”
“Against your better judgment? Thanks for thinking so highly of me.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. I think very highly of you. In fact, I’m absolutely mad about you. You have to feel that from me.”
“I don’t know what to think or feel anymore, Reid.”
“Please, don’t give up on me yet.”
“Give up on you? You’re the one who keeps walking away. You’re the one who gives up. I’m following your fucking lead.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
I said it. I put it out there.
“What?”
“I know I hurt you, but I’m asking for a little more time. I need more time with you. Please stay, just a little while longer.”
“Why? So you can use me again? So you can treat me poorly?”
“Don’t leave me,” I beg.
“And what? Carry on like this, with you sneaking into my room against your better judgment? No thanks.” She tries to pass by me again. She’s slipping through my fingers and out of my life forever. I’ve never been so terrified.
I take three steps back and hold my hands up. “Wait. Are you going back to California?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think straight when I’m around you. I’m so confused because I feel everything when I’m with you and even when I’m without you. Hurt, joy, ache, longing, pain, love. It’s a mess. I’m a mess.”
Something unexpected happens. Warmth spreads through me, and the hollowness cedes some of its space. “Love?”
Cara pauses for a moment. “Against my better judgment.” For the first time this morning she breaks and lifts a corner of her mouth into a small smile.
“Then please stay,” I say and search her eyes, hoping to get a clue about what she’s feeling. “I want to be with you, even if this hurts me one day. Please don’t go. I’m in love with you.”
She drops her head into her hands and shakes it back and forth.
“Cara, look at me.”
“I need a second,” she says into her palms.
I give her exactly one second because I can’t wait to know what she’s going to do. My heart hangs in the balance. I gently pull her hands away from her face and force her to look up at me. I’m met with soft and hopeful eyes. “I love you too,” she whispers, and her words have the power to make me commit to this, no matter how afraid I am to open my heart again.
She looks down at our entwined hands, mine are dirty and caked with dry blood. “What happened?”
“I got run off the road by a car.”
“Jesus, Reid,” she says and turns them over to inspect my cuts.
“And then I attacked a tree.”
“You what?”
“Trevor and Anna’s tree,” I tell her softly.
“Oh,” she says, understanding me like no one else would. She pulls my hands up to her lips, closes her eyes, and kisses them so gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ballerina
Cara
Like a ballerina in white denim shorts and a blue striped t-shirt, I twirl around the kitchen with earbuds in, listening to my favorite playlist, washing dishes instead of breaking them. It’s the day after Reid asked me to stay and my heart is whole again, ready to love him with everything I have in me. His heart is one that’s been broken too many times, and I would rather die than break it. I suppose that’s what love is.
Reid’s arms wrap around me from behind. I hum along to my song as he starts kissing my neck. Blood rushes through my chest, and I wonder if I’ll ever stop experiencing these flutters, cupid’s delicious hormone, oxytocin. I need this rush more than I care to admit. Shortly after I agreed to stay yesterday, we ended up in his bed, and in the shower, and back in his bed for the rest of the day. We couldn’t get enough of each other. Before coming to England, I would have told you that I was a happy person, but I’ve never known happiness like this.
I drop the sponge in the sink and pull out my earbuds. Without the music, I can hear just how heavy my breath sounds from his kisses. “How did it go with the auctioneer?” I ask.
“Good,” he coos. “I think we’re off the hook. He’s going to take it from here.”
It takes a lot of m
ental effort to get out my next question. “And what about our personal mementos?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control,” he says and pops over to the other side of my neck.
“What do you mean?”
He pauses for a moment. “They’ll set aside the meaningful items, for example, the letters your grandfather mentioned.”
Guilt washes over me. I still haven’t told Reid I already found my grandfather’s letters.
“I guess I’m all right with that, but I want to work closely with them, is that okay?”
His head drops to my shoulder. “We shouldn’t do anything to interfere in the process. In fact, we should leave, and go stay in my home in London while they sort all this out.”
“Leave Wells?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not ready to leave yet, even if we have help. You told me once that it was okay for me to keep the things that mean something to me. How will I know if I don’t get to see it?”
Reid’s eyebrows furrow.
“Listen,” I tell him, “You do your work during the day, I promise I won’t bother you and I promise I won’t hold them up. Just stay here with me a little longer,” I say and tug on each side of his collar.
The wheels turn in his head for a while. “Okay, we’ll play it your way.”
I yelp and throw my arms around his neck. “Thank you!”
“Don’t mention it, but I may have to dash off to London on short notice. I’ve got to see this Collins Group deal through,” he says.
“Do anything you need, baby.” I wrap my arms around him, holding him close to me.
“I love you,” he mutters into my neck, and I soak it in.
This. This is what love is.
It begins with a small set of kisses, but it quickly escalates and before I know it he’s lifting me onto the countertop, deja vu style of our last attempted tryst on the cold white marble.
“This is happening,” he insists.
Who am I to argue? His tongue dives deep into my mouth as my legs wrap around his torso. I can feel how much he wants me. He has no idea how much I want him too. I start to yank at his shirt, wanting to see him bare. The way he oozes virility makes me so eager for him.
“Are you sure?” he whispers along my lips.
I’m panting, but I manage to say, “Yes. I want you to fuck me.”
“As you wish,” he says with a devilish smile and starts to touch me over my shorts.
I’m working on pulling off his shirt when a well-dressed man appears at the edge of the kitchen.
“What the…?” I blurt out and pull Reid closer to me. He takes one look over his shoulder and starts laughing. I’m totally immobile as Reid basically untangles us.
The man clears his throat and stares up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s fine.” Reid helps me off the kitchen counter. “Cara, this is Mr. Damien Rosenthal, the estate seller.”
I stare up at Reid and hope he can telepathically hear all the cuss words I’m directing at him in my head. Nasty words that would make Mrs. McHenry cringe. This guy was here the whole time?
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Damien says. He’s surprisingly young for being an estate seller, thirty at most, probably younger. I always pictured some stuffy old man tackling this job, not a guy with a black faux hawk in a flashy suit and paisley pink tie.
My face has got to be a deep shade of red. “It’s nice to meet you too.”
“What do you think?” Reid asks him.
“To be perfectly honest, you should have called us from the start,” Damien says. “We have a lot to catalog and appraise for the auction. The artwork alone is going to take a while. The collection is astonishing, quite a few rare pieces.”
“Yes,” Reid replies. “They were connoisseurs.”
“My art appraiser and her team are top notch.”
“That’s good to hear. We want to fetch top price.”
“Of course,” Damien says and taps a note into his tablet.
“I want to take the painting in my room home, if that’s all right,” I add, nervous that it will get lost in the shuffle of the appraisal. “It was mine when I was a little girl. My grandfather gave it to me.”
“You don’t need my permission,” Reid whispers and takes hold of my hand. “Of course.”
“Okay, good,” I say and let out a big breath. I don’t care about the rest of the artwork, but I want my ballerina.
Reid turns back toward Damien and explains. “There are things here, some undiscovered, that are important to Miss Montgomery.”
Damien nods. “Of course, the sentimental items. We have a lot of experience in this, Miss Montgomery. We’ll be sure to set aside meaningful items for you to examine.”
“Really? You can do that?”
“Yes, we do that in every engagement. Nothing will be discarded without your permission.”
“Wow, okay, maybe we should have done this from the get-go.”
Reid turns to me. “Do you still want to go through the boxes yourself?”
“I suppose not.”
“So we can actually have some fun?” He raises an eyebrow.
I smack his arm, still upset that we almost had sex in the open when there was someone in our house.
Damien completes some notes and sits down with us in the breakfast nook to go over the estimate. After it was all said and done, Reid’s crazy good negotiation skills save us four percent, and we’re getting a discounted rate on the labor and appraisal fees.
“We’ll be here tomorrow at nine. ’Twas a pleasure,” Damien says.
We escort him out and watch him drive away.
“Lucrative business,” I comment.
Reid huffs. “You’ve got that right. The first estimate he gave us was ludicrous.”
I straighten his collar, which is still askew from our almost-tryst. “You were terrific in there.”
“You mean before Damien joined us?” he teases.
I smack him hard in the arm. “What on earth were you thinking?”
“What were you thinking?” he quips. “You offered me your beautiful body. What else was I supposed to do?”
“I thought we were alone and you knew the whole time. Christ, I told you…I wanted you to…”
“I believe the words you’re searching for are fuck me.”
I bury my face in my hands and want to scream something derogatory at the top of my lungs. Reid starts laughing harder than I have ever heard him. I pop back up and scrutinize him. “This is funny to you? Did you do it just to get under my skin?”
His laughter dies down. “Christ, of course not.”
I glare at him and wait for something more, like maybe a confession that he has some strange fetish for exhibitionism.
“Don’t you get it, Cara?” he says, all laughter gone. “I can’t resist you, no matter how hard I try. You make me lose all sense of decency. You make me lose all reason.”
His words sting a little. I take a step back and wrap my arms around my torso. “I’m ruining you?”
“Why do you always hear the worst part of something I say and disregard all the rest? I said I can’t resist you. I’m mad about you, so much so that I throw caution to the wind and give all of myself to you. I’m yours in every sense of the word.”
“So you don’t always try to have sex with women out in the open for people to see?” I tease.
He laughs again, which makes me smile. “No. That was a definite first. You don’t know how much I’ve changed, how much I’ve opened up since you came here.”
“I’ve changed too. I’m confused most of the time. This is craziness, Reid. You realize that right?”
“All too well,” he says and shortens the distance between us. The wind picks up causing my hair to dance around my face. He sweeps it behind my ears and cups my cheek. “But I like being crazy with you, Cara Montgomery.”
Reid
“Here,” Cara says and hands me a stack of
letters, bound together with green yarn. “I wanted to show these to you. They’re some letters I found from my grandfather.”
She takes a seat on her bedroom floor and I follow her down. “When did you find these?”
“I found them up in the attic,” she answers but doesn’t have to say another word. I know why I’m only learning about them now. She was angry at me because I foolishly suggested we just be friends.
“Did you read them?” I ask.
“Yes. In a nutshell, the letters go on and on about how much he misses me. They turn a bit bitter and hostile toward the end when he realizes that my mom is impenetrable.”
“Trevor, bitter? That’s hard to imagine. He was always so cool and collected.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Well, there are a few surprises. My grandfather said something about how my mom had been misled and hurt beyond repair. It’s really odd. My current theory is that he’s talking about my father. He goes on to say he still believes she has it in her to love again.”
I run a hand through my hair as I contemplate what that could mean. “Was there any mention of someone else? A name, a clue?”
“No, I don’t think so, but honestly I was totally caught off guard by the whole thing. I should probably read through them again and make sure.”
“Was there anything else?” I ask.
“Well, there was one more thing. He said something about how he didn’t know it was him and that it was a business association.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know exactly, but he said that she would know what it means and cautioned that she doesn’t think straight on this particular topic.”
“Okay. That’s curious. A business association?” I rack my brain to figure out what that could possibly mean. I know most of Trevor’s business associates.
“I think it could very well do with my father, but then again, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If it were about my father, why would they be discussing it so many years later? And if she was so hurt by my father, why would it take her so long to move away?”
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