Written With You

by Martinez, Aly

  Caven chuckled. “We’ve established you aren’t a fan of my decorating, but not everything can be pink. As far as I know, Willow isn’t allergic to brown, right?”

  “Nope. Not at all.” I looked back at Rosalee and waved my hand front of my nose, making her giggle.

  “Traitor,” Caven mumbled.

  I shot him a megawatt smile and let Rosalee pull me to my feet and then straight up the stairs.

  We read six books. Six long books. Rosalee only heard five and a half of them though because she fell asleep while the princess was still stuck in the tower. With her curled into my side, I was in no rush to move, so I finished reading. And even after that, I remained in her bed, watching her sleep until my lids got heavy. As I drifted off beside her, I decided she was right. The brown guestroom really did stink.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been out when I was startled awake by a man standing over me.

  “Shhh,” he whispered, scooping me into his arms.

  It took several heartbeats for my mind to make sense of the fact that it was Caven and he was carrying me out of Rosalee’s room, the day coming back to me with a crash.

  It was embarrassing, given our situation, but a pang of disappointment hit me hard as he bypassed his bedroom door and carried me straight into the guestroom.

  He set me on my bed then walked around to move my bag to the floor.

  “You could have left me. I didn’t mind sleeping with her.”

  “She kicks,” he said without looking at me.

  And it was done without looking at me because he was grabbing the back of his shirt with one hand and tugging it over his head.

  My mouth dried as I watched the muscles on his back and his shoulders ripple when he closed the bedroom door. And then I lost him completely when he turned out the lights.

  “Caven,” I breathed.

  “Lay down.”

  My heart was in my throat, but I obeyed, eager for anything and everything he was about to give me. The bed dipped along with my stomach as he crawled in beside me.

  Like a juggling routine, he turned me, facing away from him, and scooted in close, his front becoming flush with my back and his face nuzzling into my hair at the curve of my neck.

  I struggled to breathe as his every exhale danced across my skin, but it was his hand that ever so slowly inched under the hem of my shirt that stole the air from my lungs.

  Only it didn’t drift up to my breasts or down into my panties.

  It moved only far enough to rest directly over my scar.

  My chest ached as he let out an agonizing groan, his finger curling into my skin as if the marred flesh were burning his palm. He’d seen it the day at my house when he’d found out who I truly was, but this was different. This was tangible.

  This was the brutal past crawling into bed with us.

  “Caven,” I whispered, trying to roll toward him, but he had me anchored to his front.

  “Please,” he murmured into my hair. “Just let me have this.”

  I would have let him have anything. But why that? Why did he need that?

  “Oh, God, Willow,” he rumbled like the words had been torn from his throat. His shoulders shook as his hold on me became tighter.

  I screwed my eyes shut, hating the thought of the memories ricocheting in his head far worse than I’d ever hated the scar. Unable to take it any longer, I covered his hand in an attempt to move it, but he laced our fingers instead.

  “I don’t want to be the girl from the shooting,” I confessed into the darkness. “In your head, I want to be the woman you were falling in love with, not a reminder of that horrible, horrible day. And I know that might not be a possibility anymore because of what I did, and you now have an even worse reminder of me from when I lied to you. But if I could wish anything, it would be that we were strangers so we could have something real that wasn’t tainted.”

  His hand flinched, and his body went solid. “If we were strangers, Willow, I’d be dead.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I croaked, unable to keep the devastation out of my voice. “The paramedics weren’t going to let you die that day.”

  Suddenly, his hand was gone and I was flipped over, first to my back and then to my side, facing him. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and as his head came down, sharing a pillow with mine, his face was the picture of desolation.

  “You didn’t save my life that day because you made me get medical help. You saved my life because you forgave me.”

  Chills exploded across my skin. “W-what?”

  “It’s taken years, but I do realize that I’m not responsible for what he did. But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be able to stop blaming myself for what happened. It’s haunted me since the first shot was fired. I was the only reason he came to the mall that day. But then there was this little girl who, at the very least, had lost her mother and was bleeding out of her stomach, with no idea at the time if she was going to survive or not. And she forgave me. Truly forgave me. Knowing that someone was out there who didn’t blame me was the only way I got through a lot of really dark times.”

  I rested my palm on the side of his face. “There was nothing to forgive you for. I was eight and I knew that.”

  His hand slid around my back to my side, holding me where the exit wound should have been.

  But that bullet hadn’t left my body at the mall.

  It’d ravaged me from the inside out before the doctors had removed it.

  “You can’t have kids, Willow. There’s still a lot to forgive me for.”

  God, how could he be so smart and still so wrong?

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “Let’s for a minute say that the bullet that you did not fire damaged one of my ovaries and destroyed the other along with the majority of my uterus and it’s all your fault. But we also have to factor in that if it weren’t for you, I more than likely wouldn’t have made it out of that mall at all. I was going to run or scream or… I don’t know. My parents were gone and I was freaking out. You calmed me down and gave me hope in a hopeless situation.” I paused, waiting for the lump to clear from my throat.

  He inched impossibly closer. “You don’t have to say anything else. We don’t need to talk about this. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Yeah, we do, Caven. Because no matter what happens between us, you will always be the boy I owe my life to. You don’t get to claim that I figuratively saved your life by forgiving you and then negate the fact that you literally saved my life when you chose to help a stranger, a terrified little girl, escape a madman. Last I checked, dead women can’t have babies, either.” My hands were shaking by the time I finished.

  He didn’t understand what he meant to me. But how could he when I’d spent the first four months lying to him about who I was?

  “Jesus,” he breathed, tipping his forehead to mine.

  The tears finally escaped my eyes. “I have loved you since I was kid, but back then, it was something different. You were almost this fictional character in my head—a white knight who saved me. And there were so many times I leaned on the memories of this hero—”

  “I’m not a—”

  I kissed him. I didn’t think or consider the implications of what it would mean. I just did it because in my heart it would always be right.

  His strong body sagged as he let out a long exhale, as if he’d been holding his breath for the last eighteen years. And maybe he had.

  Because, while I’d kissed Caven numerous times, that was the first time he’d ever kissed Willow.

  His head didn’t slant. Our mouths didn’t open. But there was a soulful exchange all the same.

  He drew me in close, holding me against his lips and speaking silent apologies that didn’t need to be issued.

  I took them.

  Accepted them.

  And lived inside them for every single one of those seconds.

  When he finally broke the kiss, he didn’t move far before coming back in for one more lip touch.

  �
�The elephants are suffocating us,” he whispered.

  “I know. But I still love you. And not because you were that boy at the mall. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished you weren’t Caven Lowe. Because then you could be mine.”

  He closed his eyes and came back for another lingering kiss capped off by another exhale ripped from his soul. “It’s a little different for me. Because if you weren’t Willow, you wouldn’t be sitting here at all. I’m so conflicted when it comes to you and all the lies because I’m so damn mad at you, but it makes me the biggest hypocrite in the world. You forgave me for the unimaginable and I can’t seem to let this go.”

  “It’s because of all the boxes.”

  “What the hell are these boxes you keep talking about?”

  “Ian said you compartmentalize everything. And, now, you have me in three different boxes and you can’t decide who I am. Sometimes you hate me because of what I told you. Sometimes you feel guilty because I’m the little girl from the mall. And sometimes you miss me because I was the woman you were…” I paused, not wanting to say the words.

  He laughed, sad and resigned. Rolling to his back, he took me with him, my head resting on his shoulder. “For the record, I currently only hate Ian.”

  “Don’t be mad at him. We ran into each other at the grocery store. He was trying to help.”

  He stared up at the ceiling with one arm wrapped around my shoulders, his other hand resting in the center of my chest. “I’m not mad at him. He knows me better than anyone else. And he’s right. I’m all fucked up over this. But I don’t for a second wish you weren’t Willow.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, peering up at the underside of his jaw. “Really and truly sorry.”

  “I believe you. And that’s one more reason why I’m so messed up about all this.”

  I waited for him to say something else.

  I waited for him to tell me that it was going to be okay.

  I waited for him to leave.

  But after what had to have been close to twenty minutes, all I got was his heartbeat in my ear as his breathing evened out.

  Nothing had been solved.

  Nothing had changed.

  But we were there together.

  Caven and Willow.

  And that was enough to make me fall asleep too.

  CAVEN

  I snuck out of the guestroom around four in the morning. I didn’t want to go, but I also didn’t want Rosalee to wake up and find me in Willow’s bed.

  The only heroic task I’d ever performed was forcing myself out of that bed. It’d felt right, being there with her. Like it was the way it was supposed to be.

  Our cruise ship’s worth of baggage aside, Willow would have been the perfect woman for me.

  Smart, beautiful, funny, and incredible with my daughter were the obvious things.

  But she was also a soothing warmth to my cold, guilt-ridden soul.

  She understood me on levels no one else could.

  And most of all, I had faith that if I’d just let her in, she could teach me to forgive myself too. That could be her heroic task.

  Ian wasn’t wrong about my confusion. I’d yet to be able to land on any kind of solid emotion I felt for her; that pendulum inside me swung hard and fast.

  But there was one common thread that ran through all the boxes I kept this woman in.

  I loved her.

  I loved her as Willow, the girl from the mall.

  I loved her as Hadley, the woman who’d traced her fingers over my tattoo and cried in my arms.

  I loved her as Rosalee’s family—the one who’d cared enough to give up everything she had to be a part of my daughter’s life.

  The mountain to any kind of future together was tall and the terrain grueling. But I wanted to try.

  However, Willow wasn’t the only one who had secrets. And if there was any hope of starting over with her, of building a foundation that didn’t revolve around my father or her sister, we needed to start fresh.

  But before we could be strangers, she needed to know the real Caven Lowe.

  Eighteen years earlier…

  “Get in the fucking car!” Trent yelled as he skidded to a stop on the gravel outside the trailer we shared with our father.

  I dove through the window when I heard Malcom behind me, yelling, “You are dead! Do you fucking hear me? Dead.”

  My legs were still dangling out the window as Trent peeled out.

  “Jesus, Cav,” he rumbled, grabbing the back of my shirt and dragging me the rest of the way in.

  My face was covered in dirt, and my ribs ached from rolling around on the floor and fighting with my father.

  He’d caught me in his room. I’d needed a fucking clean undershirt to wear to work, but what I’d found was a soft spot on the linoleum in the back of his closet.

  One that turned out to be a secret compartment containing a stack of Polaroids.

  All pictures of dead bodies.

  Watersedge was a relatively small town depending on what socioeconomic clique you ran in. Ours was the bottom of the barrel, a rather large sect, but struggling people tended to know the names of who else was struggling too.

  Derrick Grath had struggled a lot before he’d been found dead on his back porch, a needle on the floor beside him.

  Sara Winters was another one who’d had a rough go at things. She’d been found at the base of Manner Rock, her death ruled a suicide.

  Travis Glenn was a friend of mine’s dad. He was a dick. A lot like my dad. So, whether he’d been struggling or not, no one cared. That is until he’d gotten so drunk that he’d drowned in his own damn bathtub.

  Shit happened in our community. People were idiots, using the little money they did have to buy drugs or booze. I could have listed at least a dozen other people who had met their untimely demise over the last ten years.

  But none of that would explain why my father had a Polaroid of each and every one of their dead bodies.

  Derrick facedown on his porch.

  Sara’s limbs bent at stomach-revolting angles.

  Travis underwater, his dead eyes wide open.

  And those were just the people or places I’d recognized in the stack of photos.

  No one should have had pictures of that shit. Derrick had been found by his mother, Sara by the police, and Travis by his son.

  No one should have had pictures of those people. Especially not beneath the linoleum in their closet, literal skeletons hidden from the world.

  But my father did.

  He was crazy, abusive, and narcissistic to the point of delusions. I was fifteen and working, saving up every penny I made at the Pizza Crust, and biding my time until I could get out on my own. Trent was going to school and only came home when he couldn’t find a girl with an apartment he could shack up with for the night. We hated our father, but I’d never thought he was capable of what I’d seen in those pictures.

  However, his reaction when he’d walked into the room and seen what I was holding said otherwise.

  No words were spoken before he tackled me to the floor, my side hitting his dresser on the way down. Trent was there, and he attempted to wade into the melee, but my dad shoved him out of the way as I took off toward the front of the house. He caught me as I pulled the front door open, taking me back down to the ground, half in, half out of our piece-of-shit trailer. He was a fucking rabid dog, taking every kick and punch I threw at him. He finally got his hands around my neck, trying to choke the life out of me, but through it all, I clung to those pictures.

  I wasn’t going to be another photo to add to his stack.

  Adrenaline had thundered inside me, and with a hard buck, I’d been able to knock him off me, just long enough to jump off the front steps and dive directly into Trent’s waiting car.

  “He killed them,” I panted, throwing the pictures into his lap as he pulled onto the main road. “I know he did. Why else would he have pictures of people who supposedly committed suicide?”

>   He looked down at them, lifting one into his line of sight, and let out a boomed curse as he hit the accelerator.

  “He’s a fucking psychopath,” I panted. “We need to go the police. Lock his ass away forever.”

  “Okay, okay,” Trent whispered, raking a shaking hand through the top of his hair. “Let’s think about this for a second. We gotta be smart here. This is some heavy shit.”

  “There’s nothing to fucking think about! We gotta go to the cops.”

  He banged his hand down on the steering wheel. “There’s a shit-ton of stuff to think about! You’re fucking fifteen. They’ll send you to foster care.”

  I stared at him with my mouth gaping open. “You think I give a fuck if they send me to some group home? It’d be a damn vacation.”

  He shook his head. “No. I won’t let that happen. We need to buy some time. I’ve got a friend we can stay with tonight. How much money do you have?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe five hundred bucks.”

  “Okay. Okay. We’ll do this right. We can pack our stuff and leave.”

  I leaned against the door, my body twisted to face him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Our father is a murderer! Who do you think is going to help us in this town once they learn this shit? No one. Fucking no one.” His wild gaze flicked to me for only a second. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take you to work. Finish your shift and then see if you can get your last paycheck. If they say no, take that shit out of the register. I’ll do the same, and then tonight, we’ll go to the police. But I’m telling you, we gotta be ready to go as soon as this shit hits the news.” He reached over and grabbed my neck. “He’s done. We’ll make sure of that. But I’m going to take care of you. That’s what Mom would have wanted, right?” When I didn’t reply, he repeated, “Right?”

  I swallowed hard and then ruined the lives of forty-eight people and their families. “Right.”

  WILLOW

  I don’t remember stirring the entire night. At some point, Caven had left, because when I woke, I was alone in a dark room, the two chocolate-brown curtains excelling at their job.