Written With You

by Martinez, Aly

  “Night, Daddy. Night, Willow.”

  Willow’s eyes lit. “I love you, Rosie girl.”

  She spoke through a yawn as she replied, “Love you too.”

  “Hey, what about me?” I teased.

  Rosalee giggled. “Love you too, Daddy.”

  I grazed my fingertips across Willow’s stomach as we walked out of Rosalee’s room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  She started toward the guestroom, but I caught her arm and pulled her into my chest.

  “Where are you going?”

  Her cheeks pinked as she pointedly flicked her gaze to Rosalee’s door. “She’s not asleep yet. I figured I could read or something for a few minutes until she is.”

  I slid my hands down to her ass. She was wearing my favorite little shorts and a tank top, but she’d ruined it with a bra. “She’s not going to be asleep for like half an hour. You lucked out last night because she fell asleep while you were reading. That right there was just step one in the bedtime parade. We have time to kill and you aren’t going to do it sitting in the guestroom, reading.”

  As if on cue, Rosalee yelled out, “Daddy! Can I have some water?”

  I winked at Willow and replied, “Left a bottle on your dresser, sweetheart.”

  Willow and I listened, nose to nose, sharing the same oxygen as Rosalee padded across the floor, fumbled with the bottle before putting it back on her dresser, and padded back. The creak of her bed announced her return.

  Less than a second later, she asked, “Can I have a snack?”

  “Sorry, Charlie. You should have eaten your dinner.”

  Willow leaned into me, sagging in my arms, and whispered, “Dinner was gross, remember?”

  “Dinner was amazing. And if I give her a snack now, it will be a whole production and she won’t be asleep for two hours.” I gave her ass a firm squeeze. “I don’t have two hours to wait.”

  Her breath hitched, and she inched deeper into my curve, resting her hands on my pecs. “Good call.”

  “Daddy! How long is Willow going to be sleeping here?”

  “I don’t know. Go to sleep, Rosie Posie.”

  “Will she still be here at Christmas? Can we get her a guinea pig?”

  I shook my head as Willow let out a soft giggle. “It’s the summer, Rosie. We have plenty of time to worry about Christmas shopping. Now, go to sleep.”

  “Will Miss Gallis be my teacher next year?”

  Willow dropped her forehead to my chest and looped her arms around my waist, her breasts pillowing between us, and I felt every single curve.

  I’d been performing this nighttime Q and A since Rosalee had learned to string together a sentence. I usually stood in the hall, scrolling through my phone and catching up on emails.

  But this…

  Holding her.

  Listening to her giggle.

  Knowing she was Willow and knowing she was mine.

  Fuck. It was better. So much better.

  “I don’t know, Rosie. But you need to go to sleep. I’m going to bed now. You do the same. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she grumbled.

  I released Willow and lifted a single finger in the air. “Wait for it.”

  “Daddy, wait! I need one more hug.”

  “Of course, you do.” I tipped my head, signaling for Willow to go to my room, and then went to hug my daughter one last time for the night.

  This naturally turned into a hug and a kiss. Then turning on her bathroom light, which she declared was too bright as though I’d changed the bulbs since we’d tried it almost every night for the last two years.

  Turning off her bathroom light.

  Turning on her nightlight.

  Another sip of water.

  Finding her favorite stuffed animal, but not the one that was her favorite the last time I’d put her to bed. Her new favorite stuffed animal.

  And then, finally, another hug, another kiss, and another I-love-you before I was able to leave again.

  Willow was standing in the hall, a huge smile on her face. “She does that every night?”

  “Pretty much.” I put a hand at her stomach, guiding her backward into my room.

  I followed her step for step until she reached the edge of my bed. Rosalee was still awake and would be for some time, so there was little we could do in that bed.

  But I still wanted her there.

  Talking. Laughing. Freezing the guilt coursing through my veins as only she could do.

  “Lay down,” I ordered.

  “What if she comes in here?”

  “Then she’s going to see us hanging out on my bed.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  I peeled my shirt off before climbing onto my side. “We’re going to have to tell her about us eventually. This will soften the blow.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Oh, God, do you think she’s going to be upset?”

  “No, I think she’ll be stoked. The blow will be to my wallet when she insists we throw a party to celebrate.” I pulled the covers back. “Get in bed.”

  She grinned without moving. Just standing there, devastatingly beautiful and completely out of my reach. “I like parties.”

  “Good. I’ll get the Daddy-has-a-girlfriend balloons ready. Now, get in my damn bed.”

  She giggled, biting her bottom lip, but she finally made her way around and crawled under the covers. The only problem being that the bed was a king and she was hugging the edge like I’d just developed a case of leprosy.

  She squeaked as I hooked her around the waist and dragged her toward me.

  “Caven, this isn’t hanging out. Your door is wide open. She could walk in at any second.”

  “Okay, so she sees us cuddling. The balloons have already been ordered, Willow. You’re stuck.”

  She turned, rolling into me and tangling our legs like it was the most natural thing in the world while continuing to argue. “You haven’t ordered any balloons. We’ve been together for approximately twelve seconds. This time last week, you hated my guts.”

  I bent my arm between us so my hand was under my head, and I rested the other on the curve of her hip. “I didn’t hate your guts.”

  “Oh, sorry, my mistake. You only hated that you didn’t hate my guts.”

  “True. But I still loved you.”

  Her eyes lit, and whatever fight she was holding on to left her in the next heartbeat. Her whole body relaxed into mine. “Caven,” she breathed.

  I loved the way she said my name. It was only two syllables, but she made it sound like a symphony.

  “I could get used to this with you, ya know?”

  Her green eyes twinkled. “I want that.”

  Teasing at the hem of her shirt, I slipped two fingers beneath it and traced the scar on her side. Every raised seam caused an ache in my chest. But it soothed me as well.

  She was Willow.

  My Willow.

  Well, almost.

  Giving her a tight squeeze, I murmured, “I want you to be Willow again.”

  Her brows drew together. “I am Willow.”

  I trailed my fingers up her side and then moved in to dance across her collarbone. I’d never forget how many times I’d imagined tracing my tongue over the delicate curve of her neck while she was sitting at my dining room table, doing some silly craft with Rosalee. Given who she was, or who I’d thought she was, it had been wrong on more levels than I could count.

  But it’d never felt wrong.

  I’d had no idea she wasn’t Hadley at the time. Though, deep down, some part of me recognized her. She was all grown up, but my draw to that woman was just as strong as it had been from the start.

  It was like I had known she would be my salvation.

  There had been dozens of people in that mall that day.

  People closer to me.

  People farther away from Malcom as he’d paced his path of destruction.

  And then there’d been her.

  I remembered cussing to myself
as I made my way over to her, crawling on my stomach, my hat pulled low as if I honestly thought my father wouldn’t recognize his own son because I was wearing it.

  But even at fifteen years old, nothing could have stopped me from getting to her.

  That didn’t change when she came back.

  It didn’t matter that it had been eighteen years. Or that she had a different name. Something inside me recognized her. And it was that same something that overrode all logic and reason the first time I kissed her.

  My need to be with that woman was inexplicable. And while daydreaming of tracing my tongue across her collarbone was how it had manifested in the beginning, I could have lived the rest of my life having her safe, smiling, and breathing my name like a prayer.

  “No. I want you to be Willow again. The real Willow. You’re not Hadley when you’re inside this house. But the minute you walk out that door, that’s exactly who you become. And it’s dangerous, babe. I hope your sister rests in peace—genuinely, I do. But she left a shitshow behind and I don’t want you getting wrapped up in that any more than you already are.”

  It was an innocent request not intended to upset her in the least. However, in the very next second, it was as if a fire had been lit between us.

  She suddenly sat up, crisscrossing her legs like a physical barrier. “She was my sister. My name being Hadley isn’t going to wrap or unwrap me from her.”

  I sat up too, propping my back against the headboard. “I don’t mean it like that. I just mean you could finally be free from her chaos.”

  Clearly, it was the wrong thing to say.

  Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth fell open “Free from her chaos? Seriously?”

  I tipped my head to the side, confused and incredulous. “Yeah, seriously. You’re currently staying at my house after a man attacked you because he thought you were Hadley. That’s chaos. And if word got out that you were not your sister, that chaos would disappear.”

  She scrambled from the bed, rising to her feet and crossing her arms over her chest. “Maybe I don’t want it to disappear.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? That makes no sense. You could finally be yourself again.”

  Like a bomb had been detonated, her eyes flashed wide before the explosion flew from her mouth. “I don’t want to be myself! If Willow is alive, that means Hadley is gone forever.”

  Oh, fuck.

  How had I not seen that coming?

  She was her sister. Her twin sister. One she had loved so completely that she’d given up her entire life to be close to the daughter Hadley had abandoned. And knowing Willow, I’d have bet my bank account that during that time she’d spent hatching a plan to reclaim the only remaining member of her family, she’d never taken the time to grieve the sister she’d lost.

  Only hours earlier, as I’d poured my heart out to her over all the things she should rightly hate me for, she’d been nothing but patient and understanding, And there I was, in a roundabout way suggesting she bury Hadley all over again. Something that wasn’t my call to make.

  “Willow, come here.”

  She shook her head. “She always wanted to be me, ya know?”

  “Willow. Come here.”

  “She always thought I had it so easy. And, compared to what she went through, I’m not sure she was wrong. I get to live. Maybe if she’s finally Willow, she won’t resent me so damn much anymore.”

  Throwing the covers back, I stood up and walked straight for the bedroom door. I quietly shut it and twisted the knob to lock it before turning back to face her.

  For such a terrible day filled with confessions and ghosts from the past, it’d been amazing.

  But only because she had made it amazing. The way she’d lightened my guilt just by holding my hand as we’d driven the hour home. The way she didn’t look at me with contempt and blame the way I did so often in the mirror. She might not have said the words that day, but just as it’d been when she’d been a girl, her forgiveness was a comfort I’d never felt with anyone else.

  Willow was a warrior on levels neither I nor Truett West would ever understand.

  And, now, she was standing in my bedroom, her shattered heart all but on display because I’d unwittingly found the chink in her armor.

  The vulnerability that had been right in front of me all along.

  The one that had brought us together.

  And the one that had the ability to ruin us both.

  And she wasn’t even alive anymore

  Hadley.

  WILLOW

  I watched as he walked toward me. His steps were calculated, as though I might spook at any minute.

  “I didn’t know Hadley well, so you’re going to have to help me out here. Okay?”

  I shook my head and backed away. I didn’t know what he was about to ask, but I knew with an absolute certainty that I didn’t want to help him out. I didn’t want to talk about her at all. This was our night—our date.

  She had no part in that.

  But she did.

  And because of the little girl fighting sleep just down the hall, she always would.

  However, talking about Hadley meant thinking about Hadley. And, with Caven, it meant thinking about her in past tense. That was not a task I was ready to tackle.

  For the majority of my adult life, I’d only seen Hadley in sporadic bursts. She’d wandered in and out of my life based on what she’d needed at the moment. I’d just wanted a family. So, when she’d come knocking on my door at three in the morning, I’d let her in. Sometimes, she stayed for a few days. Sometimes, a few hours. Occasionally, a month or two under the promise that she was getting clean and back on her feet. But it never lasted.

  At Beth’s urging, I moved to Puerto Rico to escape the constant need to stress about where she was or who she was with. It was killing me. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, an ocean between us could solve, but it did wonders for my mental health. And, for Hadley, finally knowing there was no one she could fall back on seemed to serve as a reality check.

  For two years, Hadley settled down. We started R.K. Banks. I emailed her photographs. She printed them and then painted over them. Most, she’d mail back to me, and some, she’d ship to the customer herself. What she did at night or on the weekends, I didn’t know. But when I called with a question or a custom piece for a client, she’d always answer the phone. And we’d talk. Without fighting. Without name calling. Without…all the other bullshit that seemed to get in the way. It was one of the best periods in my life, and even though I only saw her a few times during those years, I was genuinely happy to have my sister back.

  However, as the old adage states, all good things must come to an end. At some point, Hadley got back into drugs. And stealing. And obsessing over the woman in the picture from the mall. She stopped answering my calls. She stopped laughing. Ultimately, she stopped painting.

  I sold off whatever inventory we had left, except for a few I kept for my personal collection. And then Beth and I did what we could to just keep her alive. The longest I’d ever gone without seeing Hadley was six months.

  It had been over eight now, and the time had been weighing on me. I missed her fiercely. But it was easy to pretend she was still alive. To imagine she had a new boyfriend and was out wreaking havoc with him. Maybe she was high and happy, bouncing from house to house, and I was letting her go, tough-love style. Maybe she was pissed at me again for something completely out of my control. But in the back of my head, even as I was pretending to be her and cleaning up the mess she’d left behind, she was always somewhere living, breathing, and not gone from the Earth forever.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  Caven’s large hands landed on my hips. Pained as I was, the way my pulse immediately slowed was almost laughable.

  A chill prickled my skin as his mouth came down to my ear, his warm breath fluttering over my neck. “I think we have to talk about her, babe. She might be the only elephant we haven’t set free
yet.”

  “I thought we were trying to set me free. Get me back to Willow. Erase Hadley from our lives once and for all.”

  He moved closer until my only choice was to look up or face-plant into his chest.

  Reluctantly, I gave him my eyes. “Just drop it.”

  “I’m not trying to erase her. This shit with us… It’s difficult. It’s going to take a lot of work and tiptoeing through the hard stuff on both of our parts to start a relationship with a solid foundation. But hear me when I say this: We are going through this. Not around it. Yes. I want you to be Willow. But that’s not completely selfish. A man put his hands on you because he thought you were Hadley. The type of man I am, I expect the worst to happen at all times, and thus far, life has not let me down. When that asshole attacked you, it didn’t matter that we’d been having problems. It didn’t matter that I was supposed to be trying to perform the impossible and forget everything I’d ever felt for you. All that mattered was that you were safe. And I’d really like to keep you that way. It’s not about forgetting Hadley. It’s not about erasing her. It’s about solving a problem head on. And our current problem is I don’t think you’re ready to say goodbye to her.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but that had been eerily accurate, and I both loved and hated that he recognized it.

  Loved because I loved him and it meant a lot that he noticed and understood things about me long before I was willing to admit them.

  Hated because it meant that it had been over eight months and I was failing at pretending, which meant accepting that Hadley was gone forever was just around the corner and I was seriously not ready to lose her yet.

  Tears hit my eyes at the same time I face-planted into his chest and blurted, “It’s easier to see Willow on her headstone. I’m Willow. So it seems like a silly mistake. But then I remember that she’s in there. And then I want her to be happy. She always wanted to be me. So I keep thinking that maybe I can live the easy life for her. There can be a world where Hadley loves her daughter and teaches her to paint and they do all the things she used to love. They can laugh about animals and she can sleep in the arms of a man who truly loves her and she won’t hurt anymore. I can’t fix the past for her. But I can fix the future.”