Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  “Actually,” she says, “you’re the one who’s scared.” My hands twist the sheets as Lo drags Ren’s chair next to the bed and plops down on it. “The question is, what exactly are you scared of?”

  When I don’t answer her, she wraps her hand around mine and leans in. “Relationships aren’t perfect, Frankie. They’re living, breathing things. They have growing pains. They have highs and lows. They take trust and forgiveness. They don’t require perfection or flawlessness. They just require two people who want to love each other and keep learning the best way to do that.”

  I open my eyes and slant her a sharp look. “Who needs the Hallmark Channel when I have you and Ren?”

  Lo searches my face. “Oh, honey.” She sighs and thumbs away my tears. “That’s what you’re scared of, huh? Being loved by that big redhead teddy of a lover who worships the ground you walk on?”

  I wipe a stray tear angrily from my cheek. “I kicked him out, Lo. What did I do?”

  “You reacted badly to being loved well.”

  “I love him,” I sob, covering my face. “And I just made him leave.”

  “I know, Frankie. And that is what we have to work on. Because Ren doesn’t need that shit in his life, and neither do you.” Lo gently squeezes my hand. “So, what’s the therapist say? When you’ve talked to her about him?”

  “Well…” I clear my throat. “I haven’t actually—”

  “Oh, woman.” Lo releases my hand. “You haven’t talked to her about him.”

  I shake my head.

  “Because you knew what she was going to remind you about, and you’re too scared to own the truth she would have dropped on you.”

  I nod.

  “Which is?” Lo presses.

  “That I deserve love for being exactly who I am,” I admit miserably. “That the person worthy of my love will love all of me.”

  Exactly what my therapist has told me. Exactly what I told Ren that night on the beach. I’m damn good at giving advice and shit at taking it.

  Lo sits back in her chair and throws her feet on the bed. “That’s right. So you’ve got to make a decision. If you believe you’re lovable, you have to believe there’s someone out there up for loving you. Isn’t that him?”

  “Yes,” I whisper, as I wipe away tears.

  “No, you will never know if he’s going to hurt you, not definitively. Guess what, Frankie? Nobody knows if love’s going to hurt them. You simply have to take a chance.”

  My breath comes fast and short. I fist the sheets, trying to breathe. God, I fucked this up. So badly. I’m still terrified and insecure and insanely vulnerable, but she’s right. I’m right. If anyone is going to love me, if there’s anyone I want to love and be worthy of loving, it’s Ren. And when he showed me how much he felt that way about me, I pushed him away. Because this is frightening. Beautifully, vulnerably frightening.

  I try to smile at her. “It’ll be fine. I’m okay.”

  She cocks an eyebrow. “Really? ’Cause you look like you’re trying not to shit yourself.”

  I groan. “You know I can’t smile on command.”

  “So why try with me?”

  “Smiling conveys all-right-ness. I’m trying to show you that I can handle this.”

  “Hey.” Lo squeezes my hand. “Yes, you’re going to be all right. And yes, you can handle this. But guess what?”

  “What?”

  She smiles. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

  * * *

  Three weeks. Lots of bickering with Lo, who just finally left my place a few days ago, when she was confident that I wasn’t going to pass out in the shower or spiral into another fit of anxious sobbing. Five tele-therapy sessions with my counselor to actually talk through my hang-ups about having a relationship.

  I’m not fixed. I’m not perfect. And I never will be. But I’m healthy enough to travel and ready to be brave. I can only hope Ren will find that’s enough for him.

  At the airport, I sit in the terminal, phone pinched between my ear and shoulder.

  “So listen,” Willa says over the line. “Word is Aiden showed up at the Love Shack—”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The Love Shack,” she says simply. “Trust me. Once you get to the A-frame, it will all be very clear.”

  “I’ll be lucky if Ren doesn’t spin me around in the road and tell me to go right back where I came from.”

  Willa snort-laughs. “Please. He’s going to lose his shit with happiness when he sees you. The person he’s going to send packing is Aiden.”

  “Just don’t pull away as soon as you drop me off.”

  “Of course, I won’t,” she says. “But I’m telling you, you have nothing to worry about—”

  The flight attendant announces early boarding over the speaker, cutting through our conversation. Signing off with Willa, I stand and grin at the grannies who eyeball my cane and mutter “faker,” loud and clear.

  Even when your illness isn’t invisible, people can still be blind to it. But I’m done being embarrassed or humiliated or defensive. I’m being me. Because that’s enough. And for the first time in too many years, I know that I’m loved for exactly who I am. The person who reminded me of that waits for me in a little cabin in the woods. I can only hope he’ll forgive and love me still.

  30

  Ren

  Playlist: “The Night We Met,” Lord Huron

  “Easy.” Aiden drops the axe and wipes a hand across his sweaty forehead. “What did that log ever do to you?”

  I glance up, meeting my brother-in-law’s gaze. “Just staying busy.”

  Aiden rolls his eyes. “Could you be any more tortured?”

  “I didn’t ask you here, Aiden. It’s my stretch at the cabin, my time here that you’re crashing.”

  My parents own an A-frame in Washington State, which is where I spent a lot of my childhood, up to my sophomore year of high school. We moved to LA because Dad got a great offer at UCLA Medical, and while I enjoy Southern California, I like coming back to the Pacific Northwest. Bundling up, seeing my breath in the air when I wake up. Surrounded by evergreens and deep blue sky.

  The siblings all get use of the cabin, but the older ones have to come during our scheduled time and do maintenance to keep that privilege. My time is usually mid-summer since my work schedule is most flexible then, but Ryder swapped with me and gave me this stretch of late spring when I essentially begged him.

  “Bit of a theme I’m bumping into lately,” Aiden says roughly. “I’m unwanted here. As I’m also unwanted in my own home. The one I worked really damn hard to buy and fix up.” Aiden lifts the axe and swings, splitting a log in two. “Thank you for reminding me. Not that you’ve asked why I’m here or what’s wrong.”

  “You’re right,” I grunt, hauling an armful of wood over to the stack and dropping it. “I haven’t.”

  “Which is very unlike you,” Aiden calls.

  “Guess I turned over a new leaf.”

  I swing and split another log, feeling the ache in my muscles, the burn in my back. All I’ve done is try to exhaust myself around here. Otherwise, I can’t sleep to save my life.

  Three weeks.

  Three weeks and those two words still ringing in my head. Get out.

  After I got home, I beat the hell out of the punching bag, cried in the shower—yes, you heard me, I cried—and then I took advantage of Ryder’s willingness to trade times at the cabin and came straight here. If I spent another moment in my house with Pazza’s chew toy lying on the floor or Frankie’s scent all over my sheets, I was going to lose my mind.

  Aiden just showed his punk butt up here two days ago, looking disheveled and under-slept. I didn’t ask him what was going on with Freya, because I didn’t want to know. I have enough of my own problems.

  In the hospital, I told Frankie I’d give her time, that I wasn’t walking away for good. I’m about at the end of my rope with that waiting, though. I promised myself after a month, she was going
to hear from me, see my face, and have to talk this out.

  “You surly is weird. When you scowl, you look like Axel.” Aiden drops to the ground and leans against a massive hemlock, sipping from his water between pants for air. “Shit, when did I get out of shape?”

  “Happens when you work all the time.”

  He levels me with a look. “So, you do know why I’m here.”

  I glance at him over my shoulder before I turn and swing, splitting another log. “I have no idea why you’re here. I just know you’re a workaholic.” Aiden’s a professor at UCLA. He’s actually the one responsible for pairing up Willa and Ryder when they were both his students, largely against their will at first. “You teach, grade, lecture, guest panel, publish constantly. When would you have time for exercise? Or anything else, for that matter.”

  Aiden’s jaw tics. He has near-black hair, a shade darker than Frankie’s, and three days’ worth of scruff, a sharp contrast to his blue eyes and the dark circles below them. He looks angry and exhausted.

  Welcome to the club, Aiden.

  “Freya kicked me out.”

  My head snaps up. “She kicked you out?”

  He sighs, eyes shut, head against the tree. “Say it again. I love hearing it repeated.”

  “Aiden, I don’t have the capacity for your sparkling sarcasm. I’ve got my own…” I exhale roughly, feeling a swell of emotion tighten my throat. “I’m dealing with my own stuff. Say what you need, but I can’t be your cuddle buddy right now. Call Ryder or something.”

  Aiden chucks his water at the ground. “What, so he can drive here and beat the snot out of me for hurting his sister? No, thanks. You’re the listener in the family.”

  I drop my axe to the ground with a thud. “You hurt Freya?”

  Aiden lifts his hands and leans away. “Not physically. Jesus, Ren, what do you think of me?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Emotional wounds are just as painful, sometimes more so.”

  Scrambling to stand, Aiden locks eyes with me. “I didn’t mean to hurt her, Ren. I don’t even know when it happened. All I know is that I got off-track with her at some point. I’ve been busy lately, a little distracted.

  “I missed something, I’m not sure what, but she’s angry with me. Really angry. I begged her to talk it through, told her I wanted to fix it, but she said…” He scrubs a hand over his face and looks toward the water nearby. “She said she needed time. That she doesn’t know if it can be fixed.”

  When he glances over at me, his eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot. He looks shattered. “I can’t lose her.”

  “So don’t. Go home and fight for her.”

  He laughs but it breaks with emotion. “How do you fight for someone who doesn’t want to be fought for? How do you repair something that they say is irrevocably broken?”

  “You show up and demonstrate hope. You show her that, yes, things break, and they’ll never be what they were before, but when you piece them together, they can still be beautiful, only different.”

  Thunder rumbles in the distance, followed by a fat raindrop that lands on my cheek and slides down.

  Aiden sighs. “She’s never been like this. I’ve never seen her so bleak. That light that’s always in Freya’s eyes was gone.”

  “So go put it back.” I shove a handful of wood in his arms. “Quit hiding here and go fight for what you promised to fight for. Love for a lifetime, thick or thin, sickness and health…”

  God, the words just rip through me, like a hot knife. I kick a pile of wood and storm off. Aiden’s wise enough to leave me alone. I hear him dump his armful and traipse back into the cabin. For his own good, I hope it’s to pack up and go home.

  Droplets of rain become a waterfall. The sky blackens, thunder booms, and though I’m under a canopy of trees, I flagrantly avoid caution and wander through them, scooping up twigs and smacking anything I can like I would line up pucks for drills.

  It’s not enough. Circling back to the clearing, I pick up the axe and go at the dead tree Aiden and I started on this afternoon. My hands throb with fresh blisters ripping open, but I don’t care. Better to hurt on the surface than deep inside.

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  A grunt leaves me with each swing. Until I can’t even hold an axe anymore, and it falls at my feet. I groan, pressing my forehead to the tree. How did I lose her? I did exactly what I promised her I wouldn’t. I made a choice that made her feel like a problem I prioritized rather than the person I love.

  And “therein,” as Shakespeare says, “lies the rub.” Because I will always choose her. I will show up for her and care for her, the same way she’s shown up and cared for me—with tenderness and empathy—but until Frankie stops seeing herself as a burden, she’ll always see my choices through that lens of obligation. Meaning all I can do is hope that with some time and perspective, she’ll see things differently. Once again, I’m left waiting.

  I’ve waited for her before. You think I’d be able to cope, but it’s like slowly suffocating without her, aching to know how she is and what she wants and if there’s a chance in hell she’ll finally see herself through my eyes.

  Helplessness and anger possess my body. A raging cry surges through me as I yell into the woods, and lightning cracks through the sky. I jump back instinctively as the world flashes blue-white, revealing the outline of a woman down the drive to the main road. A torturous ghost of a woman.

  Long hair plastered to her face, a short walking stick. She glances up and I choke when I recognize them—gold-green eyes, sun and earth, glowing in the light of the storm.

  My heart jumps in my chest. “Frankie?”

  She smiles, and lifts her hand in a wave.

  I say her name again. And again. Then, I’m running toward her, sprinting down the muddy road, breath filling my lungs for the first time in weeks. Laughter taking over breath. She’s here. She came.

  I stop, toe to toe with her as she looks up at me, shivering. Clumped dark lashes. Two curtains of wet, dark hair framing her face. “H-hi,” she says shakily.

  I swallow as a tear slides down my face. “How did you get here?”

  “By plane. Then Willa,” she says simply.

  I glance past her shoulders and see Willa and Ry’s Subaru pull out from the main road, followed by a stream of staccato honks. Staring down at Frankie, I shake my head and blink. This can’t be real.

  “Ren,” she whispers. Stepping close, she cups my cheek. I jolt at the touch, and my heart takes off inside my chest. “I’m so sorry. You loved me and I threw it in your face. It…it scared me, Zenzero. I’m not going to lie. No one’s ever loved me with no reservations.”

  I stare at her as rain pours down, as a love whose magnitude and depth and strength I can barely fathom wraps around my heart and pulls me toward her.

  Her eyes search mine. “What I said at the hospital, it wasn’t true. I have—I do—” On a shaky exhale, she steps closer. “I love you, Ren.”

  “Frankie. I love you,” I whisper, cupping her face, so close, so soft.

  “Still?” she asks warily. “Even after the past few weeks?”

  “Still. Always. I’d wait lifetimes for you, Frankie. You would always be worth it.”

  She peers up at me. “Ask me.”

  “Ask you what?” I say dazedly.

  “‘Membership is contingent upon authenticity,’” she repeats, just as I told her months ago. “‘Upon words spoken from the heart.’ Ask me what I’m prepared to say.”

  I shake my head. “Frankie, you don’t have to—”

  “This.” She brings her hand to rest over my heart, her eyes searching mine. “I want in. Lifelong privileges, ideally, but I’ll settle for a month-to-month trial-membership if necessary.”

  “Frankie, you already have it.”

  “‘Love is not love,’” she blurts, wiping rain from her eyes and blinking up at me. “‘Which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. O no
! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.’”

  “It’s cold, you’re still—”

  “Please, Ren, let me tell you. Let me say what you mean to me.” She inhales roughly, then shouts through rain and thunder, a rush of wind through the trees,

  “‘Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

  Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.’”

  I hold her close and kiss her, then pull back enough so I can stare into those wide, deep eyes. “I love you. I always have.” Wind rushes through the trees, wraps around us, as I tuck her close, as I press a kiss to her lips and whisper, “It was always only you.”

  Her cry breaks against my kiss, as I sweep her up in my arms, shielding her as best as I can from the rain. She shrieks with laughter, clutching her bag and cane tight against us, throwing her head back to the open sky. Tears of heartache become tears of joy, as the clouds break for the determined sun.

  I kiss Frankie and taste hope.

  31

  Ren

  Playlist: “Like I’m Gonna Lose You,” Meghan Trainor, John Legend

  I watch firelight play on her skin, a wash of sunset watercolors. Gold and bronze, ruby shadows beneath her chin, the swell of her bare breasts. Frankie, naked on a couch dragged in front of the fire is a vision of sated beauty.

  Leaning past her, I poke the fire and throw on another log. Her hand slides up my back and tangles in my hair.

  “That was nice of Aiden to make himself scarce,” she says.

  I laugh drily. “It was a requirement that Aiden make himself scarce.”

  Which he did. He took one look at me holding Frankie, both of us sopping wet from the rain, laughing and love-drunk, hiked his bag onto his shoulder and muttered something about the airport as he walked out. I heard the tires of his rental catch on the gravel, then the noise of an engine fading in the rain. Then I tore off her clothes, set Frankie in a hot shower, and got down on my knees to show her how much I missed her.