Awake (Reflections Book 3)

by A. L. Woods

  Goosebumps broke out across my skin at the contact.

  His throat worked, his stare fastened to where we remained connected, his thick fingers curled around my hands. His Adam’s apple bobbed twice before he gritted something that sounded close to “Keep it.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to jerk my hands back. I wanted more of it, like an addict craving to repeat the experience of their first hit. You knew it was wrong, but you chased the high, hoping the second feeling would be just as good as the first.

  I didn’t know how many times I’d found myself in this exact position with him, but the intensity of the addiction never lessened. It had me in its clutches, and I suspected it always would, because forgetting Sean wasn’t something I could go to rehab for. I could spend hours in my therapist’s Malibu office. I could cleanse myself in the Pacific Ocean in hopes of a redemption arc. I could indulge in conversations with middle-aged women who believed they knew better.

  None of it would change one thing.

  I was his, now and always.

  “It’s yours,” I said, keeping my tone even. “It feels wrong to keep something like this.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I didn’t want to give that ring back. It had become a vital anti-anxiety attack item for me, stronger than any prescription benzodiazepine. When he wasn’t around, this ring was the safety pin on the ticking time bomb that lived within me—the one that always felt like it was close to detonating. The ring kept me in control. But none of that changed that this ring belonged to him, to his family, and it would rightfully belong to someone else who deserved it someday.

  Someone who wasn’t me.

  Sean’s lips pursed, his hold on me slackening before he dropped his hand back into his lap. I felt the immediate loss of our connection, my eyes drifting to my hand that he’d touched only seconds ago. I still felt his pulse on my skin.

  He sniffed, rubbing his cheek to bolster himself. “I meant what I said to you that day.”

  I released my hold on the chain, feeling it thump against my chest.

  “When you’re ready, I’ll be waiting,” he finished gruffly.

  My stomach knotted, the flurry of emotions swirling inside me like a gust of wind ripping autumnal leaves free from its branches.

  “It’s been months,” I hedged, the pad of my thumb circling the perimeter of the ring.

  “Four months, one week, and two days.” He rolled his lips together. “Trina said it was weird to count the hours, so I stopped.” Slouching in his chair, he blew out a breath. “I know that makes me sound compulsive. I’m probably clinical.”

  “Twenty hours,” I offered weakly.

  He met my eyes, a glint of surprise hitting his irises. Shock glistened in his dark stare. “What?”

  “Twenty hours,” I repeated. “Four months, one week, two days, and twenty hours since we last saw each other.”

  I didn’t worry about appearing clinical, I already knew I was. The therapist I’d been seeing in California assured me that measuring time was my brain’s own coping mechanism I created to feel like I was in control.

  Even though I felt far from it.

  Sean’s smile was as thin as a sheet of ice on the Charles River when the first frost set in. He scrubbed his face with both hands, making a small sound. “Months later and you still confuse the fuck out of me. Jesus Christ.” He folded his arms around his chest, doing everything in his power to avoid looking at me.

  “How so?”

  “’Cause you’re so you.” Sean pegged the wall in front of us with incredulity, his profile tense, refusing to regard me. “You’ll wear my ring around and count down the hours since we’ve been apart, but you still won’t be with me.” He ripped his stare free from the wall, practically taking bits of plaster with him. His appraisal singed me, his eyes alone like gasoline that fed the fire that heated my body. I couldn’t break eye contact with him, his sculpted face as hard as carved stone scraped by an expert’s hand. “Why, Raquel?”

  I cringed, cowering into the chair. I wished like hell that I could summarize the answer to that into a single sentence.

  Sean scared me, even now, after all this time. Terrified me, really. And it was because of what his presence in my life represented for a time. Stability, immeasurable safety.

  Love.

  Things that I always resisted because I never felt deserving. I paid someone to learn that my ongoing need to force those around me to prove that they weren’t like my parents was an undertone in everything I did. I rejected anyone who tried and perpetuated my victimization because I believed that if I pushed hard enough, that the people I genuinely loved would know they needed to push back harder.

  I had unaddressed abandonment issues I was working through that went beyond Dad rushing into certain death, or Holly Jane’s untimely drug-fueled demise, and how Cash’s influence and grooming contributed to that.

  The issue possessed deep roots, like those of a hundred-year-old tree, and at the helm of it all was my abandonment of self. I stopped trying because I genuinely believed I didn’t deserve what Penelope had offered me, her friendship. Nor what Sean had given me either—love. So rather than acknowledge my insecurities and share what they made me feel, I played into them. Danced in the middle of an open field during a cyclone boom, willing for lightning to strike me.

  I’d been mistaken for believing that the pain my denial brought me felt good. Pain was just all I knew; I didn’t know what to do with anything else.

  Then there was the crime I was punishing Sean for. It was indisputable that looking me up had been wrong, but how many people had I done wrong to? Sure, I could absolve myself by saying it was the nature of my line of work back then, but I had done it to give myself the edge I thought I needed to have in order to get to the crux of any interview.

  Over time, I had come to believe that Sean didn’t know what Maria was going to stumble upon. If my background was squeaky clean, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered to me so much. I just carried so much guilt and shame for what my family was, and who I had become, that I hated the idea that he had known those humiliating parts of my history before I was ready to tell him.

  I was ashamed of where I had come from, of who I was.

  My therapist, however, had pointed out that despite Sean’s premature awareness of all those things, it didn’t keep him away. It just spurred the inevitable and bolstered the connection. Did it really matter that it wasn’t divine intervention? I’d said it myself—I didn’t believe in God or any organized religion, really. I believed in seizing what you wanted.

  And Sean had done just that, hadn’t he?

  The longer the protracted silence went on, the more antsy Sean seemed to get. Finally, he exhaled a loud breath between his lips. “I swear to God, if you start your reply with ‘It’s complicated’,” he created air quotations with his fingers, “I’m going to volunteer myself to watch Penelope’s vagina tear to her asshole.”

  I laughed. I hadn’t wanted to, but I did. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

  “Really? I would, but then again, I think he’s getting much worse treatment in prison.” He chuckled darkly.

  My laughter died, replaced by sagging shoulders. Right, there was still that part. We didn’t cover that when we saw each other in March. We found ourselves too consumed with rehashing things we weren’t mature enough to go over and ended up in bed to let our bodies do the talking our mouths wouldn’t.

  “I’m sorry about that.” I couldn’t project my voice the way I wanted, but knew he had heard me just fine. “That they did that to you.”

  “Nothing for you to apologize for, unless you were an accessory.” He rolled his shoulders, his head lolling in my direction. “Besides, you had a point.” Sean picked an errant piece of lint from his jeans, not looking at me. “That house had some Nightmare on Elm Street vibes going for it.”

  I didn’t bother pointing out that Freddy Krueger’s inauguration as a killer who infiltrated the dreams of his victims started at the
hands of a fire, too.

  “So?” he pressed. His eyes were boyish, but the rest of him appeared browbeaten. His tone got gentler, his eyes a little kinder. “Give me a good answer, Hemingway.”

  Hemingway.

  How could a stupid nickname unleash every feeling inside of me I tried to cull? I swallowed the sob that crawled up my throat, checking myself. “Timing is everything.”

  “And when’s our time?” he questioned, looking earnest. “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “That’s not a good enough answer for me anymore,” he challenged with a hard shake of his head. “I deserve better. You deserve better.”

  My entire body went rigid when he stood, his frame blocking out the offensive lighting as he stepped in front of me. He placed his hands on either side of the arms of my chair and leaned forward. His scent rushed into my nose, releasing every memory from its gilded cage. The memories swirled around us like loose sheets of paper caught up in a windstorm, each page denoting another chapter of our story together.

  He lifted his right hand, brushing the back of his knuckles across my cheek. The tenderness almost broke me. I was shaking like a leaf in my seat, but he didn’t move away.

  Sean released his hold on the arms of the chair, taking my hand in his and pulling me to my feet, placing his other hand against the small of my back to keep me upright.

  When I was stable, he cupped both sides of my face. “I had a plan when I walked into this hospital, you know?” He ran his thumbs across my cheekbones. “I was going to make it seem like I didn’t give a shit about you.” He caught one of the errant tears that had broken through my fortress with his lips pressed to my skin. “Even when I’m trying to make it seem like you mean nothing to me, you make that impossible.”

  He brushed his nose against mine, his fingers sliding from my face to the back of my neck, the pads of his fingers tightening there. “You mean everything, and I don’t want to deny that anymore.”

  His mouth was so close to mine, I could practically taste his intoxicating kiss. “Sean.” I stopped him from doing something we knew we both would regret. Kissing me would have catastrophic ramifications that I didn’t think either of us could survive again.

  He knew before I even finished the sentence.

  I watched, suspended in a nightmare I desperately wanted to wake us both from. My eyes shimmered with a fresh batch of hot tears I was tired of shedding.

  What remained of his heart shattered at my feet as I pushed the two words I was so sick of saying from my lips.

  “I can’t.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Christopher Cullimore Patterson was born at exactly 11:11PM weighing a whopping nine pounds and four ounces.

  Numbers always struck me as a bit of an oddity.

  During one of our late-night heart-to-hearts—his term for it, not mine—Paul told me that the universe was trying to communicate with people when they spotted number alignments, a sign that a spiritual awakening was in our midst. Sequences like 1111 or 111 were the ones that made people make wishes on. Back then I blamed his burst of new age wisdom and naivete on the Cali Kush I watched him smoke on his back porch of his Malibu beach house, but when I spotted the time on the clock from the comforts of the guest room in the still and quiet house where Sean and my story had started, I made the wish, anyway.

  Wishes are akin to fairytales—a novelty that we impart to children who are still wet behind the ears to keep them in line, the ones who still believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Let’s be real. As adults, we all knew inherently that no rosy-cheeked man in a fur-trimmed suit was going to get his keister down a chimney to deposit toys for good little boys and girls. But it was nice to believe in it all the same, no matter how old you were.

  Dreams, wishes, and fairytales.

  It reminded me of being that kid in Southie who dreamed of something more. There was something soothing on the soul about those things. It created a false sense that we had reason to be hopeful. I just knew better than anyone else that if you wanted something, wishing on a clock, on a shooting star, or trying to get metaphysical while high would make nothing happen.

  Action would.

  That was the only explanation I had for why I’d gotten out of bed at the stroke of dawn, showered, taken the time to put together an outfit that evoked femininity before committing to the makeup and hair routine. I grabbed the keys to Penelope’s Range Rover that drove like butter on hot toast and was in Heritage Park before the caffeine even sank in.

  The shell of the ugly house, as I remembered it, didn’t exist anymore. In its place was an incredible edifice. The circular driveway appeared recently paved, the distinct smell of asphalt filling my nose as I parked outside the rebuild directly behind the Wrangler. They’d bumped out the portico compared to the original, creating an inviting space staged with two nesting tables and white rocking chairs. They salvaged the decorative transom from the original structure, the paneled front door topped with ornate long rectangular windows. The gambrel roof was decorated with dormers and chimneys that flanked both sides. Dark gray brick made up the exterior, with white sash windows in even lines that mirrored the top and bottom.

  Penelope and Dougie’s house was beautiful, but this—this was unlike anything else I’d ever seen before. My awe had me killing the engine, towing Penelope’s car keys and my small handbag with me as I climbed out of the car. The scent of lavender carried from two bushes planted on either side of the porch, the wind carrying its fragrance to me, immediately soothed my nerves as I edged toward the first step that led up to the portico. My fingernails dug into the strap of the bag on my shoulder, my palms growing sweatier by the minute.

  This could go as badly as yesterday had.

  As soon as I got the words “I can’t” out of my mouth, he walked away from me, taking his warmth and his renewed love with him in a way that had felt finite. It had taken a small miracle to keep me in place as I watched the muscles in his back stiffen when he took off down the hall.

  He didn’t look back at me.

  I dropped my ass back into the chair in the empty hallway, my fingers shoved painfully in my hair, my heart pounding with an alacrity that threatened heart failure at any minute. Ten minutes later, Dougie exited the room, looking like someone had just taken a dump all over Penelope’s bed.

  He blasted me, and I deserved it.

  “Stop fucking playing games with him, Raquel. He doesn’t deserve it. He’s worth more than the crumbs you want to throw at his feet when you’re feeling bold or need a fix like some bopped skeezer. Be with him or rip the needle out of your arm, fuck off back to California, and leave him the hell alone for good.”

  Dougie had said all the things his mother would have said to me if her God had permitted it. He was unapologetic for it, and then shoved the door to Penelope’s room open wider, exchanging places with me, storming off after his best friend, who didn’t return for the rest of the night.

  They didn’t need this. None of them did. Not from me. I stared at the open door until I heard Penelope summon me from her bed. We had mostly made amends since my return. She got what she had wanted in the end—months later, but I nevertheless had come back.

  I hoped that the pain of her contractions would keep her too distracted to pay any mind to what was happening out in the hall, but Penelope never missed a beat. Not even walls and a door could keep her in the dark. Her skin glowed under the sweat induced by the contractions, the flyaway hairs that had fallen out of her slicked-back bun matted to her forehead, her eyes heavy as another contraction rolled through her.

  She breathed through it like she had learned to in her Lamaze class, and then, when the worst of it was over, she patted her bed, her baby blues locked on me with a laser-pointer focus. On legs that belonged to a baby deer, my morose shoulders pinched together, I moved deeper into the inner sanctum of her room and dropped my weight on the edge of her bed.

  I stared at the outlet,
concentrating on her phone charger that was plugged into the wall. “Kell, you need to decide,” she said through a wince, pulling herself into a seated position behind her mountain of pillows. I chanced a glance at her, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth. “Either you’re going to look your fear in the eye and tell it to go fuck itself, or you’re going to resign yourself to being alone for the rest of your life.”

  Penelope flitted her fingers at the glass of water that I handed her, her throat bobbing as she gulped the liquid. She nested the glass on her belly, looking at me over the ski slope of her nose. “We’ve all got scars, Raquel. We’ve all done things that have been less than savory, but if you want to sit there and try to convince me that your life is so much better without him in it, let me save you the trouble and tell you you’re not as convincing of a liar as you think you are.”

  All I could do was stare at her, my hold on my bottom lip slipping from the sandwiched confines of my teeth. “You are so afraid of your feelings for him that you will spin whatever sounds good in your mind and tell yourself it’s true. But that is an excuse, and your excuse budget has officially hit your lifetime quota.” She served me a sad smile. “You’re running a deficit, sweetie.”

  She handed me the glass; I accepted it with trembling hands, placing it back on the nightstand. Then she continued, “I want you to think long and hard about what you want your life to look like. Who do you want in it? And if the first person you think of isn’t me, but him—then I need to ask you why you’re doing this to yourself? Or to him?”

  I gripped at her bedsheets, my fingers curling into the starched fibers. My eyes shone with tears, my head lowering. “I don’t know.”

  “Not a good enough answer, Raquel. It hasn’t been for a long time.”