Awake (Reflections Book 3)

by A. L. Woods

  Maybe Rosa had locked herself out again. That happened once before. I enjoyed almost a solid day of peace until my stomach rumbled and I had to open the door so I could accept whatever she had made that day.

  Smoothing my wet hair over one shoulder, I turned the knob and pulled the door forward an inch. “Did you lock yourself ou—”

  My breath caught in my throat. I thought I’d seen ghosts before, but nothing compared to this one. My legs bowed, my body threatening to drop to the floor like a bag of concrete.

  Russet brown eyes held mine, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to yell or cry with agony as the stitches that held the lacerations of my broken heart mercilessly tore apart. Sean’s tall frame loomed in front of me, masking the sun like a shadow.

  Why was he here? Why now?

  I willed myself to speak, fighting the tears that burned the back of my lids. “Sean.”

  He drew in a sharp breath when I said his name, like hearing it fortified him somehow. He appeared tired, the heavy set of his eye bags ashen and gray under his normally golden complexion. His stare was a frightening combination of distraught and hopefulness, his hair freshly clipped, and the line around his five-o’clock shadow told me he must have shaved recently.

  Heartbreak never looked so devastatingly good, did it?

  My jaw felt stiff from clenching it so hard, my trembling fingers tightening against the doorknob I clutched.

  Breathe, Raquel. Breathe, c’mon.

  But I couldn’t. It was like I’d forgotten how. All I wanted to do was collapse to the ground and dissolve into a puddle of inconsolable sobs.

  “Hi,” he said hoarsely. The brokenness in his tone didn’t escape me. I wondered if he hurt the way I did, if seeing me was as painful for him as it was for me to see him. We’d both experienced indisputable pain before, but this was a hell unlike any other.

  It was one thing to mourn someone you knew had left this earth; it was another thing to mourn someone who stood right in front of you with the other half of your heart in the palm of their big hand.

  He was going to destroy me, wasn’t he? He was going to undo all my progress, and I was going to let him.

  No, don’t you dare break, you bitch.

  I sniffled, willing the tears away while staring down at my bare feet. “What are you doing here?”

  I watched as his weight shifted from foot to foot. “Can I come in so we can talk?”

  “You came all the way to California to talk?” I cast him a disbelieving glance.

  He was the only person in the world who could show up at my door reeking of airport and travel and still look perfectly put together.

  The fucking asshole.

  “Yeah.”

  My expression took on something dubious, my head shake indolent. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” But I couldn’t muster the energy to close the door. Every time my mind screamed to just push it closed, my body resisted.

  “Okay.” He nodded. He smothered the pain on his countenance, trying for a half-smile instead. “Can we talk out here?” He was always negotiating.

  Tell him no.

  Send him back.

  Close the fucking door.

  “I guess.” I shrunk inside the robe, staring over his left shoulder to find the top of a building in the distance to concentrate on. I didn’t trust myself to look at him, I was liable to crack.

  My heart was pounding so hard, my pulse was in my ears, and I felt my blood rushing through my body. I stepped forward, my backside catching the door. My hands trembled violently at my sides, my fingers curling around the stitched seams of the robe.

  “I’m so sorry about everything that happened,” he began.

  I felt the unbearable weight of his dark gaze on me, searching my face for something.

  “I should have told you right from the start that I knew about Holly Jane and your dad.” He hung his head with shame, then drew in a sharp breath, regarding me once more. “I violated your trust, and I breached your privacy when I was aware of how much you valued it. Those weren’t my stories to read, but yours to share. I’ve done nothing but push you away when all I’ve ever wanted to do since the day I met you was to pull you close.”

  My traitorous bottom lip trembled as the confession penetrated through the walls I’d erected once more to protect myself.

  Don’t cry. Don’t succumb to the heartache just because it comes in a six-foot-two broad-shouldered bottle with a face that looks like an intoxicating combination of sex and sin and tastes just as good. Remember that like alcohol, it still burns going down and hurts just as bad in the morning.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t help but dial into every word that came out of his mouth. “You are…” he trailed off. “Magnetic and all-consuming, and losing you over something so avoidable has been a hell unlike any other.” He rubbed the corners of his mouth, his eyes finally winning the war. I met his stare, regretting it immediately.

  Awareness flickered in his face, as if he realized he had me in his snare. How easily he entrapped me in the vise grip of his affection, because I craved him. I missed him. And this dark and devastating place that we birthed by our lies was the last place I wanted to be. “I can’t ask you to forgive me, but I can tell you I won’t ever stop trying to earn a place back in your life.”

  My chest shook when I drew in a breath that didn’t reach my lungs but instead swirled in my chest, choking me. “I can’t.”

  He waylaid me, desperation flooding his face. “Please, let me finish. I need to say this,” he pleaded, clutching the back of his neck with both hands. “I don’t know about you, but the last two months have been hell for me. I’m struggling to eat; I can barely sleep. I’ve never felt so broken in my entire life, and the only thing I can think of is that if it’s been like this for me, what’s it been like for you?”

  This wasn’t hell, this was purgatory. That infernal of the unknown and the incumbering longing that reverberated within me was excruciating when I thought about what we lost. I’d rather be tortured and have my nails peeled from their beds while still conscious than to have to relive this nightmare. I desired sedation through all of this. I didn’t want to have to go through this again. I didn’t think I would survive this, and if it weren’t for Rosa’s interference—whom I fucking needed right now, but God only knew her whereabouts—I didn’t think I’d be having this conversation.

  Eventually, I believed I would have drank myself to death like I always wanted.

  “I realize I can’t fix this, but I can do better if you’ll give me the chance. I want to be the man that you deserve, the guy I should have been all along. I promised you everything, and if you’ll allow me, I want to give that to you.”

  Sean made it sound so simple, so easy. I wanted nothing more than to wipe the slate clean, to clear the Etch-a-Sketch, to undo it all and start anew. But that wasn’t an option because I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust him. I would always wonder how much of what I told him would be the first time he was learning of it, and not some carefully collaborated plan he had successfully executed. None of this changed the fact that he’d lied, and so had I. Our relationship had been weaved on lies from the very beginning, and I was done trusting people who didn’t deserve it. No matter what I felt for him, I wouldn’t put us or our friends in that situation again. “Sean, I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” His tone was reedy, the set of his shoulders stiff. “Or you won’t?”

  “Both,” I whispered. “I meant what I said. I can’t trust you anymore. I wanted you to be different, for us to be different. But it was just more of what I had already experienced with—”

  His jaw turned to granite, his eyes tightening on me. “Don’t.”

  “Someone else,” I finished. I wouldn’t insult him by saying Cash’s name. Not after what I knew he had done to him. “Us holding onto this thing won’t do us any good. It’s going to make things worse.”

  “For who?”

  “For Dougie and Penelope, when w
e inevitably end up in the same place.”

  “What if we don’t end up in the same place? What if things end up being different?” he challenged.

  God, did I want to believe him. I desired nothing more than to buy into the narrative he was selling, the one that I conjured up when I’d dreamed about what this year would be like with him before the entirety of our feeble, vitreous world came crashing down at our feet.

  I tensed, my body wilting in place. “You don’t know that it will.”

  “And you don’t know that it won’t,” he countered, fisting his fingers through his hair, tugging the strands north.

  Other guests passed us as they entered and exited their rooms, my cheeks heating from what was obviously a groveling man. I didn’t normally care about what people thought of me, but my hair was dripping wet and I was sporting a robe, while Sean appeared visibly distraught.

  “Aw, c’mon, honey,” someone called in the distance, erupting into laughter. “Give him another chance.”

  Fuck you, assholes. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

  Give him another chance to what? Destroy me all over again?

  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice?

  Shame on me.

  I drowned out the other jests. Sean’s molars clenched, the muscle in his jaw straining, and I didn’t know if it was because he felt bad for me for crumbling under the deluge of emotion right in front of him, or if it was because he wanted to point out that even strangers wanted me to give in to his request.

  “We can wrap this up in my room, but you need to leave right after,” I whispered, opening the door wider for him. Sean stared straight into the room, momentarily frozen in place. Then he nodded, shifting past me to cross the threshold. His scent in my nose awoke the dormant part of me that I’d convinced to hibernate. The spice warmed my insides, the faint traces of leather reminding me of home.

  It took everything in me not to cry. With my back turned to him, I shut the door, leaning forward to press my forehead against the rolled steel that was cold to the touch. I couldn’t believe he was here.

  I almost didn’t want to believe he was here.

  Had Dougie known he was coming? Was this why he had been so quiet yesterday?

  “Are you going to look at me?” Sean asked.

  “I don’t want to,” I confessed.

  “Why not?”

  Easy, Slim.

  Because looking at you hurts. It feels like someone’s fed my insides through a paper shredder and I don’t know if I want to scream at you or cry.

  “I’m not sure,” I lied. If I gave him anything, he’d run with it.

  “Raquel, turn around and look at me, please.” I’d rather watch paint dry, sit on the Pike during six-o’clock traffic, or concede that Pismo Beach was the clam chowder capital of the country.

  But my body had other plans. With my mind protesting, my legs turned on their own accord.

  My heart hit the floor at the sight that greeted me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed.

  Sean was bent on one knee, holding a ring dwarfed by the wide pads of his fingers. He was not about to do this.

  “I told you I wanted to marry you someday,” he began, his voice cracking. He peered up at me, and it didn’t escape my notice that this was his way of trying to prove to me we were on an even keel. I had always been the one looking up.

  “Don’t,” I croaked. “Don’t ask me.”

  “Raquel Marie Flannigan,” he began.

  My breath snatched in my lungs and my lids compressed together, a buzzing filling my ears.

  “I have no right to ask you this, just like I had no right to fall in love with you the day you walked into my life—but I’m going to ask you, anyway.”

  “Please, please, don’t.” I was panicking, shielding my eyes with my hands.

  I didn’t trust myself to say no.

  I dropped my hands at the same time he said the one thing I didn’t want to hear.

  “Will you marry me?” How could those four words decimate what remained of my resolve? The question was like a knife to my chest, my adrenaline coating my skin in a cold sweat, the panic snatching my next breath. Was his intention to destroy me all over again?

  It had gotten so quiet in my room, I swear I could hear the sea. I pictured each wave ebbing and flowing in a rush, crashing against the shoreline with a whoosh, and droplets of water going airborne, peppering the sand. I desired nothing more than to be pulled from that shoreline into the undertow…anything that would take this suffering away.

  The silence deafened everything. Hell, it seemed as if the entire town ceased movement, the residents all holding their breath as the moment played out. I stared at the ring sandwiched between his long, thick fingers. It looked antique, a pearl set on a thin gold band flanked with two small diamonds.

  My hand shook as I pointed at the ring like it was a live bomb Sean cradled in his clutches. “Get up, Sean.”

  He didn’t move. He swept his tongue over his bottom lip, holding my gaze dead-on. “Say yes.”

  “No.” I staggered backward, flattening my back against the door, and promptly sank to the floor. My body shrunk inside of the oversized terrycloth inn bathrobe with Pismo Inn emblazoned over the left breast.

  “Please.”

  The emotions rushed at me as if I was under fire and trying desperately to avoid being struck by the hail of gunfire. The knots festooning in my gut, the vacuum that sucked all the air out of my lungs, or the useless romanticized organ in my rib cage that screamed to accept it.

  Turning my head, I focused on the view of a palm tree far off in the distance from my window. “This is a Band-Aid fix to you.”

  “It’s not. I swear on my father’s grave it’s not.”

  I hugged my knees to my chest, pressing my forehead against my knees. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I can’t stand another minute away from you. Not now, not ever.”

  “That’s not a reason to propose to me,” I muttered into the fibers of the robe. “You don’t fly across the country to ask me to marry you under these circumstances, after nearly three months apart.”

  He didn’t so much as move a muscle, but I looked up and saw the malaise gliding over his features, his shoulders growing stilted with each laconic and painful second that passed.

  “I want to make this right with you, Raquel.” His voice was a whisper that zinged through me. “I want to do you right.”

  That was all he had ever tried to do, wasn’t it? Then he violated my trust. It was impossible to reconcile how much of what he said was true, and how much of it was said just to get his way.

  “That’s what this is? This is the grand gesture that’s supposed to fix things?”

  “No.” He dropped to both knees, kneeling in front of me. “You know it’s not.” He settled his hands on my biceps, the connection making my head spin.

  Shrugging out of his hold, I leaned away from him. “I know nothing about you, Sean.”

  His inhale was sharp through his flared nostrils, his anger pooling at my feet. “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t want to marry you,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t understand why you would show up here and ask me to, like that would fix things.”

  My words were like shrapnel wounding him, and his expression crumpled.

  “Okay.” Sean’s gravel-filled voice almost had my hold on my resolve slackening. “Let me try to fix this, then. We can do this at your pace, on your terms—”

  “You lied to me,” I interrupted. “There’s nothing to fix.”

  “And how many fucking times did you lie to me, huh?” He slammed a fist against his chest. His dark eyes grew violent, telling me he had run out of patience.

  I batted away the tears that sprung to my eyes, instead forcing myself to focus on an indistinguishable stain on the carpet inches from my bare feet.

  “You lied to me over and over and over again and I forgave yo
u, Raquel.”

  I realized the negotiation period of our peace treaty was over; now we were at war. The anger broke through the levy inside of me, spilling hot lava over the edges that burned. “You lied to manipulate me into doing what you wanted, Sean. My lies were to protect you.”

  “No, your lies were to protect you,” he accused.

  I pushed to my feet, my weak legs wobbling like Jell-O. “There’s nothing left here to salvage or get closure on. Get out.”

  Sean stood up, not giving me the satisfaction of remaining on his knees. His tall frame made an imposing entity in the room, fingers still pinched around the ring.

  “Fuck,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the torment that filtered through his face. First sadness pinched his features, then anger rolled off him in suffocating waves that matched the ire of the restless sea outside. Contrite and thin like glass one minute, irate and lethal the next.

  And then finally, some semblance of acceptance seemed to register, as if the sea that waged a war within him found some peace.

  Or so I thought.

  “Can you do one last thing for me?” he asked, clearing his throat.

  “What is it?”

  He fixated on my lips. “I want to kiss you goodbye.”

  I watched as he tucked the ring back into his pocket. Something about the gesture made me think he tucked what remained of my heart right alongside it.

  I held his gaze before I spoke, “That’s not a good idea, and you know it.”

  He smiled at me, a cross between bitterness and smugness. “It’s just a kiss, right? It won’t matter if I mean nothing to you anymore.”

  This was a test. One we both knew I was going to fail miserably because my lips and body would betray me; they always did. Sean stepped closer to me, my spine pressing against the door.

  My throat worked, but all that came out was a garbled and incoherent sound. The calluses of his palms cupped either side of my cheeks, my gaze still transfixed to the floor. He tilted my head up to look at him, his stare tracing over my face as though he was recording every small detail, because this moment between us was final.