That’s not who she saw when she looked at him though. To her, he had the same dark hair, and looming height of the monster who had killed her parents. I was honestly impressed that she’d agreed to stay at all. Had the roles been reversed, I’d have been peeling out of the driveway. Some memories, no matter how slight, were best left in the past.
For years, Trent, Ian, and therapists alike had warned me about triggers that could possibly set me off. I did everything I could to figure out what they were and then avoid them at all costs. But Hadley had stayed. Her desire to spend time with Rosalee—and possibly me—trumped her fears. And that fucked with the organ in my chest—as opposed to the one in my pants—that shouldn’t have had any feelings other than guilt for Hadley Banks.
But it did. In ways I’d been trying to deny. A connection I’d been trying to sever. And, worst of all, an ingrained need to protect her that I couldn’t shake. Therefore, the fact that Trent was well aware that he’d freaked her out and he still managed to find himself alone and clearly freaking her out again pissed me the fuck off.
He didn’t like her. He’d thought she was up to no good and biding her time before making a move that would reveal her true colors. All of which he’d assumed were tinted the color of money. He’d stated that numerous times on the phone and then again when he’d shown up that morning and Rosalee told him and Jenn all about the party she was planning. Hadley didn’t need my cash any more than I needed his bullshit. As long as he followed through on his promise to treat her with respect in my house, he didn’t have to like her.
Rosalee wasn’t his daughter. He didn’t get to make the hard calls about who was or wasn’t involved in her life.
That was my job.
One I took very seriously.
That is if you excluded my desperate need to bury my cock inside her mother.
Fucking hell.
“Blow out the candles!” Rosalee exclaimed, clapping her hands.
Hadley’s eyes met mine. Her tangible panic sledgehammered me in the gut.
“Come here, babe,” I murmured in a low tone while flicking a glower at my brother.
He replied with a puzzled expression that was about as genuine as Hadley’s smile.
She didn’t delay in hurrying to my side, her hand fisting the back of my shirt, out of view from Rosalee as she blew out the candles.
“Yay!” Rosalee cheered, hefting the pink bag toward her mother. “Open it.”
Hadley took the bag, then peered up at me, something unreadable on her face but panic glistening in her eyes.
“Dry-heave?” I whispered.
She bit her lips between her teeth and nodded.
“Right. Okay. Let’s do presents after cake.” Pivoting to the long wooden table, I set the cake down. Then I returned to do the same with Rosalee’s gift. “You know what? I forgot plates.”
“I’ve got ’em,” Jenn chirped.
I ground my teeth. “I meant napkins.”
She lifted a stack of pink and purple unicorns left over from Rosalee’s interrupted party. “Got those too.”
Tilting my head with waning patience, I pointedly flicked my gaze to Hadley. “A knife?”
Jenn’s eyebrows shot up in understanding, and she quickly tucked the one in her hand into her back pocket. “Oh, right. Yeah. We’ll need a knife. Hadley, you don’t mind if Rosalee and I lick the icing off your candles, do you?”
My girl squealed when Hadley replied, “Have at it.”
Jenn winked at me, and I spared one last glare at my brother before guiding Hadley inside. If he’d felt its heat, I couldn’t be sure because his eyes were locked on Hadley, a satisfied smirk pulling on his lips.
Asshole.
When the door closed behind us, I wrapped my hand around hers. She started toward the hall bathroom, but I guided her up the stairs.
“Privacy,” I mumbled, closing the door to my bedroom.
She’d never been in there before, but her eyes didn’t wander with curiosity. She stared at me. A trapped urgency showed on her face without a single word exiting her perfect lips.
I rested my hands in the shallow curve of her hips. “Talk to me.”
Her teeth trapped her bottom lip, but not like they had all the times she’d stared at me from across the room. This was different—a physical verbal blockage of sorts.
I went for humor. It wasn’t a cure-all, but she’d always responded well to a distraction.
Using two fingers, I tugged her lip free. “Go ahead. You can dry-heave on me if you need to.” I rocked her toward me. “Hadley, come on, babe. Spill it. Is it Trent? Did he say something? Help me out here. I’m shit at mind reading.”
She pressed her lips together as though it were a last-ditch effort to keep the words filling her mouth from escaping.
She probably needed space.
A little air.
Time to gather her thoughts.
But even knowing that, I couldn’t convince my arms to let her go.
What the fuck was it about this woman that overrode my brain’s ability to process common sense?
Sliding my hands around to her lower back, I encircled her waist, bringing her delicate curves flush with my front. “You can talk to me. He’s my brother, but trust me, no one understands that Trent’s a hardass better than I do. If he was slinging shit at you for whatever reason, I want to know.”
She shook her head.
No words.
No explanation.
No way for me to beat back the hurricane brewing in her eyes.
“Daddy!” Rosalee yelled from downstairs. “Where’s Hadley? It’s time for cake.”
Shit. I dropped my forehead to Hadley’s. “I hate to say this, but there’s sugar involved. She’s going to be kicking that door down like the FBI in a matter of minutes. What do you want to do here? I can go stall her and buy you some time to collect yourself? Or I can make up an excuse if you want to leave? I could also drag Trent out back and beat him like a rug. It wouldn’t be our first or last brawl. You say the word—whatever I can do, I’ll make it happen.”
It was a joke. Sort of anyway. But she gave me nothing. Not even the hint of the smile that always caused my lips to curl as well.
Giving up on me altogether, Rosalee shouted, “Hadley!”
I sighed before calling back. “I’m coming, baby. Go wait outside.”
“Is Hadley with you?” she asked on another yell from downstairs.
“Yes. Go wait with Jenn.”
“Why is she in your room?”
“She…uh, had to use the bathroom. Go back outside!”
“Number one or number two?”
“Go!” I boomed, my voice echoing on the walls of my bedroom.
For such a serious situation, talking about number one or number two was awkward at best, but that was Rosalee. And I’d never been so grateful for her lack of etiquette as when I felt Hadley’s shoulder shake and a soft giggle escape.
Tipping my chin down, I caught her gaze. The pressure in my chest eased at the sight of her ghost of a smile.
“You know, if we wait up here any longer, you’re going to have to tell her number two, right?”
Her smile stretched, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the color began to return to her face. Unable to stop myself—or, at the very least, unwilling to try to stop myself—I dipped low, pressing my lips over hers.
She didn’t kiss me back. Instead, she rested her forehead on my chin, effectively hiding her face from my view.
“Caven,” she breathed, the two syllables merging into one.
“Tell me what’s going on. Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it.” I kissed her forehead. It was too close to resist.
She sucked in a deep breath. “I’m going to stay for a piece of cake and long enough to open her present. Then I think I need to go.”
“Okay.” I ignored the disappointment that rained over me. “Just a heads-up, I’m not sure that I can sneak away to your place tonight after all. Trent w
as talking about spending the night earlier and—”
“No, I get it. Family first. Maybe another time.”
“Maybe?” I teased. Anything to lighten the suffocating weight hanging in the air between us for reasons I didn’t understand. “I did not face a horde of zombies to recover the last condoms in existence to hear you say maybe.”
She laughed, soft and sweet.
But there was something about it.
Maybe it was the way it slid into a pregnant silence.
Or the way she leaned into me, her breasts pillowing between us, her hands going to the back of my neck and holding me tight, as if she could absorb me.
Or maybe it was just the unexplainable string that tied us together being plucked by karma.
But whatever it was, the lull that followed that laughter was utterly heartbreaking.
“Hadley?”
“I love her,” she told my neck. “I love her more than anything in the world. Please tell me you know that. No matter what happened in the past. Please tell me you know how much I love her now. I only want the absolute best for her. No matter what that entails.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
She was leaving.
That was the heartbreak I’d heard.
Whatever had happened with Trent. Whatever had been said on that deck. She was leaving.
Again.
I took a sudden step away from her, peeling her arms from around my neck. “What’s going on?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what the fuck is happening right now?”
“N-nothing. I was going to eat cake and then leave.”
“And when are you going to come back?”
More blinking from her.
More mounting frustration from me.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “Wednesday? Unless…you need to switch the date for some reason. I’m pretty free whenever. Just tell me when to be here and I’m here.”
That was when the alarm bells started ringing in my head.
As I stared at her with her long, red hair cascading over her exposed collar bone and her plump lips parted, all but begging for my mouth to press against them, that alarm became a blaring siren. And it screamed a warning just before a tidal wave slammed into me so hard and so fast that it stole the oxygen from my lungs.
For the first time since she’d reappeared over three months earlier, I didn’t want Hadley to leave.
I could bullshit myself and say that was all about my baby girl losing someone she cared about, but the relief singing in my veins told a different story.
That panic.
That anger.
That desperation when I’d thought she was saying goodbye.
That was all about me.
“Is…that okay?” she stammered out.
“Yeah. Shit. I’m sorry,” I ground out around the knot in my throat. “I misread that situation.” I swayed my head from side to side. “Ya know. Assumption. Making an ass out of you and me and all.”
She took a step toward me, my body igniting at her proximity. “What’d you assume?”
I could have lied. But not to her.
Hooking her around the hips, I dragged her to me. “I thought you were saying goodbye.”
“What?”
“I know. I know. It was stupid, but it felt real. And…” You’re under my skin. “I overreacted. It’s been a long day. I slept for shit last night. There was this insatiable woman who kept me up late.”
I expected a laugh.
What I got was a vow.
“I will never leave her, Caven.” She held my gaze with an unfettered determination. “I don’t care what it takes. What it cost me physically or emotionally. And I don’t give a damn who tries to stand in my way. When it comes to Rosalee, goodbye is not a word in my vocabulary. She’s my family and I love her. So you can bury that assumption four years in the past where it belongs.” And then she was gone. Head held high, marching down the stairs, taking Rosalee’s hand before hitting the back door.
True to her word, she stayed long enough to eat cake and gush over some painted rocks with Q-tip legs that Rosalee claimed were llamas. She laughed with Jenn while avoiding Trent’s scrutiny, and she’d done it so fearlessly that I couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride.
I didn’t know what had happened on the deck between her and Trent.
And I didn’t know what had changed while we had been in my bedroom.
But as she climbed into her car while blowing kisses to Rosalee, I felt like I was watching an entirely different woman.
WILLOW
Seven months earlier…
My bedroom was pitch black as I stared up at my ceiling fan. The large blades cut through the humid Puerto Rico air as waves crashed in the distance. My secluded home wasn’t on the beach, but late at night, if I opened my windows, the dull roar of the ocean would echo against my walls.
For all the years I’d been living there, the peace and tranquility of those waves breaking on the shore had eased my troubled soul.
Though, for the last two weeks, they had been nothing more than background noise to my turbulent mind.
It had been two weeks since I’d found out about Keira.
Two weeks since Hadley had taken off with my purse and car.
Two weeks of wallowing and trying to convince myself to climb out of bed.
I lived in the seconds. One emotion. One tick of the clock.
But when you were all alone, did time even matter?
I had a good life, though I would have loved it a hell of a lot more with a family to share it with. Hadley was all I had left, and I didn’t know how to help her anymore. I’d sworn I would fight for her. It’s what my parents would have wanted. But I was at war with a ghost.
Since I’d come home, I’d read her journals cover to cover more times than I would ever admit. There had to be an answer in those pages of how I could save her. But with every sentence, her blistering pain seeped from the words, scorching me to the core.
How had I not known how bad things had gotten for her?
I’d witnessed her struggle with drugs, but the cutting and multiple suicide attempts were news to me.
I told myself not to give in to the anger, but there was a time when Hadley and I had shared everything. In those journals, she was a stranger to me. The façade she showed me was nothing more than an attempt to blend into nothingness.
After two weeks of tossing and turning, my brain desperately needed a break.
But there was no sleep to be found. I had to go back. I had to try.
I had to…
The light to my bedroom suddenly flashed on.
Bolting upright, I threw my arm up to block the light. It was only the sound of her voice that kept me from having a heart attack.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me!” Beth roared. There was a crash across my room as the vase I’d filled with shells I’d found on the beach shattered against the wall. “I’ve been calling you for fucking weeks and you’ve been hiding out here? Not answering your goddamn phone.”
Oh-kay. So, Beth was pissed.
Pissed enough to hop onto a plane to Puerto Rico to give me hell. Surprise visits weren’t unusual when you lived in paradise, but the screaming was new.
“Relax. It was two calls. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.”
“What is wrong with you!” Her voice cracked as her rage gave way to a sob.
Beth didn’t cry.
Beth was an emotional rock who had carried me through the darkest nights when the demons came calling.
The sound of her anguish was like being struck by lightning.
Something had happened.
Something terrible had happened.
And there was only one person left the world could take from me.
Dropping my arm as my eyes adjusted to sudden illumination, I shot to my feet. “What’s wrong?”
She stumbled backward
, the color draining from her face as her mouth gaped. “Wha—”
“What’s wrong?” I repeated more slowly, striding toward her. “Beth!” I yelled, attempting to snap her out of her stupor. “What the hell is going on?”
And then, all at once, she exploded off the wall, nearly knocking me off my feet as she threw her arms around my neck. “Willow!” she cried. “Oh, God, Willow. You’re alive.”
I was alive.
I was very, very much alive.
But if she thought I was dead…
“I don’t understand?”
She leaned away, palming each side of my face. “I buried you. But you’re alive. Oh, Willow.” She drew me in for another hard hug. “Oh, God, you’re alive.”
I pushed her away, my gut sinking to the floor, knowing without knowing. “You buried me?”
I’d never seen such an incredible combination of hysterics and elation as she continued to wail and rejoice. Well, except for that day after the mall shooting when I roused to consciousness for the first time after surgery and saw Hadley sitting at the foot of my bed. I’d assumed she was dead.
I’d assumed wrong.
Beth had assumed I was dead.
She’d assumed wrong.
Which meant…
“Hadley?”
Tears hit my eyes as my knees gave out, sending us both crashing to the floor.
She was gone. They were all gone.
Present day…
I was pacing the polish off the wood floors in my living room as the conversation I’d had with Trent played on a loop in my head.
I’d wanted to tell Caven that I was Willow as soon as he’d led me up to his bedroom. The confession was all but burning on the tip of my tongue, but no matter how hard I’d tried, I couldn’t make the words come out—not at the risk of losing her.
I’m Willow, I’d thought over and over, hoping that he could read the truth in my eyes, all the while praying he didn’t.
You saved my life at the mall. I’d implored him to hear my silent confession.
Written With You Page 2