Be What Love Is

by Malouff, Ellie

  “Then what, Reid?”

  But I don’t complete that thought out loud.

  With a jolting slap against the desk, I drop the folder and storm out of the room. Cara follows after me, but I don’t let up. I head directly to the kitchen and open up one of the top cabinets. I grab the first bottle my fingers touch. Whiskey. And then a juice glass. I have no intention to drink with dignity.

  I pour in three fingers worth and take a long drink. The burn soothes me. Cara is keeping her distance, but I can feel her eyes on me, watching every move I make. I take another long one, then place my hands on the countertop and bend over. My head hangs between my arms and I rock back and forth.

  How could they have done this to me? They should have told me. I could have talked them out of their horrible decision.

  “Reid,” Cara squeaks.

  I slowly lift my head to look at her. She’s holding herself tightly, and her face is one that I’ve come to expect when she’s upset.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “Are you hurt that she didn’t tell you?”

  I shake my head no because that’s not what actually hurts.

  “Oh.”

  The whiskey calls for me, so I take a sip and another. I drain the glass and set it hard against the counter. My cheeks are warm while my eyes get heavy.

  The silence in the room is overwhelming, but I don’t think she wants to hear what I have to say.

  Finally, she speaks again. “Cancer is a terrible disease, I’m so sorry, Reid.”

  “It is, indeed,” I reply, but I don’t give a fuck about the diagnosis now. Sure, it would have been horrible for her to fade away just like my mum. I barely got through that. But this. This is different. “Do you know what else is terrible?”

  “What?”

  “Suicide,” I reply with a lifted eyebrow. I stand up straight and sloppily pour more whiskey into my glass. It takes no time to gulp it down.

  She takes two steps closer. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you get it, Cara?” I sneer. “The letters, the will, the accident. It was perfectly planned out.”

  “No,” she says, refusing to believe it.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what happened. They took their own lives because they couldn’t face her illness. I’ve had a bad feeling about it all along. They were so well prepared. It was too coincidental.”

  “Reid, don’t be ridiculous. They wouldn’t do that, there’s no way,” she says, but her argument lacks conviction.

  I take another long drink as I let all of this sink in for her. Christ, the fact that she’s even here proves it to me. My only remaining family abandoned me intentionally, and they didn’t want me to go through this alone. That’s why they brought her into all this. That’s why they wrote us those letters.

  Fuck, I’m angry, so I turn back to my glass, trying to dull everything. Things are going to get messy if I don’t slow down, but I don’t care much about being messy right now. I fill up the glass again, and Cara comes to take the bottle away.

  “I wasn’t finished with that yet,” I bark

  “Let’s go sit down,” she says and starts to pull on my arm. I roughly pull my arm away from her grasp, and she takes a step back.

  “How naïve can you be? He drove them into that tree on purpose,” I shout and point with my glass in hand, a little bit of the liquor sweeps up, over the side. “I know it. They quit. They left us. They left me,” I rage and she takes another step back, away from me.

  For every step forward I’ve made with opening my heart, I keep getting pulled back into this darkness. I’m not sure if my love for her is strong enough to keep me out of it. I’m not sure if her love for me is strong enough to stay by my side through it. She’s going to keep backing away from me until I really am all alone. I drink the rest of the whiskey as that truth sets in. I’m going to lose her.

  To my surprise, though, Cara is determined. At least that’s what my hazy mind thinks, it’s hard to tell. She takes a few steps forward and closes some of the distance between us.

  “Reid, I hear you. You’re right, okay. It’s fishy, it is. But you know what I learned today? I learned all about what love is. I learned what happens when you’re apart from someone you love. You were only gone for a day, and I missed you far more than I would have ever expected. I had to keep busy so that I wouldn’t pine after you. Then I read all of his letters to her. I literally saw the course of their relationship play out. After everything they went through we can’t imagine what they would do for one another. So yeah, okay, if they did it on purpose, which is supremely unlikely, then so be it. They were together on their terms, just like we’re together on our terms.”

  “But—”

  “But it doesn’t matter who did what or why, because it’s over! It’s done, and there’s nothing we can do about it but remember them fondly and move on. It’s time for us to move on.”

  “It’s not unlikely,” I argue.

  “When she was diagnosed, they probably did the responsible thing and got her affairs in order. Like Mr. Leeds said, the version of the will that bequeathed us this estate was a contingency plan if they both passed. That’s all.”

  I shake my head and start to say a lot of things, but I can’t quite get it out. The alcohol has made its dent. I slouch over and loosen my tie. I’m slipping into a stupor.

  “I was going to lose Anna anyway,” I mumble.

  Cara comes closer now and takes my hand. She leads me out of the kitchen, and I stumble over my own two feet. We somehow get upstairs and into the bathroom. She turns on the shower, and as steam fills up the room, she starts to undress me. All I can do is stare at her pretty face and that dark freckle she has beside her eye. If I stare at it the room doesn’t spin. Her hands sweep over me and stop for a moment on my tattoo, the symbol of all my pain. She works on my belt buckle and in my mind it’s an invitation to start taking her clothes off too. I tug on them, struggling to figure out how they come off.

  “Reid,” she mumbles and pulls back. “I’m not the one that needs a shower to sober up.”

  “Please,” I plead. “I need you.”

  She nods. I undress her with my clumsy fingers, taking any opportunity I can to squeeze and caress her. I feel like utter shit, but at least I can feel a little better by touching her.

  Once we’re undressed, she gently pulls me into the shower with her and places me beneath the head. I close my eyes and lean my face back into the water. The remaining tension I’m holding in my body eases. Suddenly her hands are there, in my hair, washing it with a soapy lather. I lean down to give her better access, using her hips to help me keep my balance.

  “Thank you,” I murmur because this soothes me. I feel so cared for when I thought for sure she was going to walk away from me.

  She gently presses me backward to rinse, and she starts with the shower gel, washing me head to toe. There’s an undeniable pressure in my groin. It’s a miracle I feel anything, but this is what she does for me. I can’t ever imagine a time when she doesn’t turn me on. She carefully cleans me, but things get a little rougher when she closes her hand around my erection. I can’t hold back, and my lips smack against her neck and my hands immediately go for her breasts. I’m not the smooth lover that I usually am, but I do feel myself sobering up. The storm is passing through me, but it’s not gone yet.

  Before things escalate, I have enough sense to swap our positions, so she’s beneath the shower head. It’s my turn to wash her, and I’m pleased to regain some control. She closes her eyes and lets me take the reins. It makes me feel better to be on this end of things. I take great care to clean her body, surprising even myself that I can be so thorough given the fact that I’m still quite drunk. I’m tender where I need to be and use more pressure when I should. She likes that and moans just enough to get me going again. She is most definitely the magic elixir to whiskey dick.

  I press two fingers against her sex, while I pull her back against me so that her b
ack is to my front. My erection nudges against her back, and she lets out of a heavy breath. Using my middle finger, I dip into her and she groans.

  “That’s it,” I whisper into her ear.

  Her wet hair rakes over my chest and my thumb finds the target and begins to swirl, slow at first and much faster as my middle finger pumps in and out. I wish it were my cock inside her, but this isn’t about me. This is about her and my way of saying thank you for standing by me, for being here with me in this unreal aftermath, and for loving me.

  She writhes against my hand and moans so sweetly, I add a second finger, to see if she likes it even better. The sensation is more than she can handle at first, but she writhes even harder against my hand. I nibble her shoulder until she cries out and clenches tightly around my fingers.

  “Let go, sweetheart, I won’t let you fall,” I tell her.

  She gives into the pure pleasure of it, her legs are shaking, and her ass grinds against my crotch. I start to suck on her earlobe at the same time as I pinch one of her nipples. She completely crumbles, sagging in my arms, as she moans out my name. Her orgasm ripples through her and I hold her so close to me, feeling overwhelmed with love and possession for this woman that is mine.

  When I know she can stand on her own two feet, I turn her around and kiss her deeply. The taste of whiskey fading as each moment goes by. She reaches out to touch me, to reciprocate, but I keep hold of her and won’t let go. This was for her, and she deserved every ounce of it. And who am I kidding, this was also for me, because being with her, making her feel good, is easily better than whiskey at fighting the hollowness.

  We don’t have to say a word about what we learned or how it makes us feel. The truth is simple. I am hers, she is mine, and we’re in this together, just as my grandfather and Anna designed it. No matter if the crash was intentional or not.

  Chapter Twenty

  Willed or Not

  Cara

  The fountain doesn’t look the same since I first arrived in Wells. It has algae growing in it and the stone has a layer of grime on it. It’s one of the many things that’s started to fall into disrepair since the McHenrys left. It will be so good to see them tonight.

  I’m waiting outside, waiting by the car for Reid, using this extra time to try and call my mom. As always, I’m greeted by her voicemail message. I stopped leaving messages weeks ago.

  I kick a few pebbles, frustrated that she’s completely shut me out. I’m her daughter. How can she do this to me? Then again, she had no problem doing it to my grandfather, so apparently, it’s her M.O.

  My very handsome boyfriend steps out of the house, looking nothing short of the Ralph Lauren model I met all those weeks ago. I catch my breath and shake my head with a smile.

  He catches me. “What?”

  “You,” I reply. “You’re very handsome, but I’m sure you know that.”

  “I’m nothing compared to the beauty that you are,” he says and comes close enough to twist my hair around his fingers. “I love this dress,” he murmurs.

  “This old thing?” I jest.

  He lets go of my hair and gently trails his hand down my pink and grey dress around the curve of my breast. “Of course. This is what you were wearing the night we met.”

  “You remember what I was wearing?”

  He tilts his head and gazes at me. “How could I forget? Everything about you that night overwhelmed my senses. It’s like I was living in standard definition and you came in and upgraded my life to HD.”

  I bite my lip to control my crazy huge smile.

  “That goes for every night with you, Cara. You’ll never stop overwhelming me.”

  “I’m the one that’s overwhelmed, Reid. All of this, what we have, and who you are,” I say and rest my hand over his heart. “It’s almost too much to handle.”

  He puts his hand over mine and takes a deep breath. Our hands raise and lower together with his breathing, and I can feel his heart beating rapidly through the fabric of his shirt. I have no doubt that my heart matches.

  We get in the car and head toward town holding hands the whole way. He drives slower than he usually does and looks straightforward as we pass the tree where Trevor and Anna died. I know that there are still so many unresolved feelings about what we discovered in the red folder, but we might never know the truth about what happened.

  The restaurant, much like most places in Wells, is close to the cathedral.

  “It’s Italian,” Reid says as he leads me by the hand to the cozy entrance that’s dimly lit with string lights.

  “Getting a taste of your upcoming trip, eh?” I respond and lean into him.

  “Mmm,” he agrees and squeezes my hand. “I think you mean, our upcoming trip. You have to come with me.”

  “Really?” I ask, not sure why I’m so surprised.

  He turns toward me and takes my other hand so that he’s holding both. “Please come.”

  “I love how you demand first, ask second. It’s one of your more endearing qualities,” I joke.

  He raises an eyebrow as he waits for my actual answer.

  “Of course, I’ll come with you,” I say, and there’s a little flutter of excitement in my belly that I’m going to Italy. With Reid. I’m not sure what it will mean for my potential internship, but I put that out of my mind for now.

  “That’s more like it,” he says and kisses me swiftly on the lips.

  As we enter the restaurant, we’re greeted with a delicious cornucopia of scents. Cheese, basil, meatballs, sausage, they all mixed together and make my mouth water. It’s heavenly. The warm glow of the fire in the corner finishes off the inviting atmosphere. Reid leads me to where the McHenrys are sitting. A bottle of Chianti is already breathing at the small table along with a basket of bread.

  We catch their eye, and I wave. I’ve been a little bit nervous that there are hard feelings between us all, but by the looks on their cheery faces, I have nothing to worry about.

  “Hello, hello,” Mrs. McHenry says, and they both stand up to greet us. The men shake hands, and I hug them both. Mrs. McHenry pulls Reid into a hug last and squeezes him tight. He chuckles at first and gives into it.

  We all sit down and catch up. It turns out that the McHenrys couldn’t be happier since they left the estate. They call it their retirement and thank Reid over and over again. Apparently, he sent them on a trip to Portugal to show them our gratitude for all their years of service. I pat Reid’s thigh in appreciation of his thoughtful gift to them, and he puts his arm around me.

  “So the two of you are an item?” Mrs. McHenry asks.

  Both Reid and I smile and turn toward one another. His eyes are bright and shiny, and I’m so tempted to kiss him, but somehow hold it back for their sake and for ours. They are like our honorary grandparents.

  Reid answers for us, “Yes, we are.”

  “I had a good feeling about the two of you, didn’t I Hamish?”

  He’s chewing on some bread and gives a slight nod, not nearly as interested in our romance as his wife is.

  “And so you’ll be staying in England then?” she asks, and I nearly spit out my wine.

  “Umm.” I stall, and all eyes are on me, especially Reid’s. We haven’t talked about it yet, but he looks hopeful about my response. “We’re just taking it one day at a time.”

  Reid’s smile falls while he looks away and takes a piece of bread from the basket. Is he disappointed? Everything is so new, and it’s crazy to picture uprooting my life and moving to England to be with him. Sure, he’s become so important to me, but we’ve been isolated and thrown into this unique situation. We have no idea if we work in the real world.

  As our dinner is served, the subject shifts to Canterwood Manor. We update them on the progress. They listen intently and offer advice in a couple areas where we need it, but don’t say much more. Their attentive eyes tell me that they terribly miss the place.

  “Why didn’t you warn us about the third floor?” I ask dramatically.
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  They both laugh.

  “Seriously, you should have seen our faces when we discovered all the boxes.”

  “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were,” Reid chimes in. “It helped convince this one to go out to hire.”

  I playfully elbow his arm.

  “Find any treasures?” Mrs. McHenry asks.

  “I did, actually, a ton of them. Like all my old toys and books.”

  She gives me a knowing smile since she probably knew exactly where they were all along.

  “I also found a whole bunch of my grandfather’s letters to me and essentially my mum.”

  Reid suddenly chuckles.

  “What?” I ask him, a little embarrassed but not knowing why.

  “You said mum, not mom,” he answers, which is funny all on its own. His pronunciation of the word mom doesn’t sound right at all.

  Mrs. McHenry agrees, “Aye, you did m’dear. Your English roots are coming through.”

  “Weird,” I say and shake it off. I’d lost my accent a long time ago.

  When our Tiramisu arrives, Reid kicks me under the table so that I’ll bring up the subject that brought us all together. I nod and take a sip of espresso while I gather my thoughts.

  “Speaking of my mom,” I say, Americanizing it as much as possible. “I’ve been trying to learn more about why we left England.”

  Mrs. McHenry gently puts her teacup down. “Oh really, dear? I’ve meant to ask, how are things going with your mother?”

  “Not great.”

  “Is she upset?”

  “Oh, very much yes, as you can imagine.”

  “I can indeed. Laura was always such a feeling child. Easily wrapped into her emotions and stubborn as a mule.”

  “You can say that again,” I muse. Suddenly I feel bold. “What really happened, Mrs. McHenry? Why did we really leave?”

  She takes a cautious sip and won’t meet my eyes. I glance at Mr. McHenry who looks down at his whiskey. Reid places his hand on my thigh to show support, and it helps.

  I go on. “I know it’s not just about my grandfather and Anna. It’s about my father.”