Sinful Ever After (Romance Collection)

by Vivian Wood

  We actually move pretty quickly then, especially since we are not communicating. I realize that I probably should have stopped back on the shore for a sample of water, but I guess we can stop on the return journey.

  I try to breathe and paddle in time with Grayson’s mighty strokes. As we leave the shore behind us, I look up at the calm blue sky overhead. Except the sky isn’t blue exactly; it’s light gray now, thunderclouds gathering overhead.

  Struggling to keep up with Grayson, I watch the sky darken. It’s definitely about to rain. As soon as I can see the shore on the other side, I see raindrops begin to hit the lake’s smooth surface.

  “Shit,” I hear Grayson grumble.

  Digging my paddle into the water deeper doesn’t help as much as I want it to. The skies open up and dump rain onto us. There is suddenly water everywhere, each raindrop seeming to bounce back up from where it falls on the lake.

  When we are almost there, Grayson actually gets out of the canoe, soaking himself up though to the waist. Unsure what to do, I try to stand up. I see Grayson glance back at me and do a double take.

  “Rachel—”

  But it’s too late. I tip the canoe over and fall out, flailing awkwardly. The only thing that breaks my fall is the water, which is shockingly cold. Then I am submerged for several breathless seconds, underneath the lake’s muddy waters.

  I feel something move in the water beside me. My heart starts to pound.

  Grayson materializes right there, grabbing me and pulling me to the surface of the lake. I gasp for breath. My arms automatically go around his neck as he pulls me toward the shore, dripping wet.

  Even though I’m half drowned, I’m also intimately aware of how warm the hard muscle of his chest is. He holds me tight, almost uncomfortably so. It feels wonderful to be held and cared for, even if the man who’s holding me also makes me feel irritated and angry and lustful.

  If everything wasn’t happening all at once, I might make some noise about it.

  I try to clear my face of my own water-dampened hair. He runs up onto the shore with me in his arms, not stopping for a second. He keeps going until he trots into a little lean-to.

  Only when there is something over both of our heads does he stop and breathe. His eyes dart to and fro, scanning the downpour outside. He leans forward and pulls the door closed just a little.

  Something about his behavior is… off, somehow.

  “Grayson,” I say, gently putting my hands on his chest. “Gray?”

  He looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time. When he speaks, his voice is oddly quiet. “Hey.”

  I squirm a little but he doesn’t get the picture. Pushing against his chest makes me realize that he is really the one in control here. “Can you put me down, please?”

  He scans my face, breathing hard. Raindrops trickle down his face, onto those perfectly kissable lips. Grayson’s hair is slicked back in a way that makes me want to bury my hands in it.

  This is such a bad idea.

  There is a moment of hesitation there. I can see in his eyes that he wants to say no. But he lets me down.

  And for just the briefest moment, soaking wet and pressed against his warm body, that I don’t want him to let me go. I peer up into his eyes and wonder if he ever thinks about kissing me. And he looks right back at me, his eyes glinting blue.

  Nothing is between us but our wet clothes and an aeon of history. For just the barest second, I lean in and begin to close my eyes.

  Then he pushes me away. It’s so silly to feel this way, but it’s like being rejected by him all over again. My eyes mist over and I curse myself for being so weak.

  Grayson heads out into the pouring rain and I watch him go, determined not to cry.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Grayson

  It continues to rain heavily all the rest of the day. After rescuing the canoe, I fish our backpacks out of the waterproof bags. Fantastically, everything inside the bags is dry.

  I spend a lot of time setting up a makeshift tent out of plastic tarps that I carry for just such an occasion. Though I’m completely soaked through and starting to feel cold, I would rather shiver and set up a tent than cuddle up to Rachel.

  I can’t look at her right now. I can’t need her the way that I do.

  I just can’t.

  The way she looked at me back there in the shed… her white tank top almost see-through, her brown eyes dark with need…

  It makes me feel like I’m a man without skin, vulnerable to every damn thing in the world. I’m afraid that if Rachel sees me like that, sees my complete need for her, she will be repulsed.

  Yeah, I can’t do that. Or maybe I can’t look at her and not be tempted to press my lips against hers, which is why I need a cooling off period.

  When I finish building the tent and duck back inside the tiny shed, I find Rachel has changed into some dryer clothes. She also has her raincoat on, but I see her shivering.

  I almost panic, seeing her suffering like that. It goes against the very grain of who I am to not gather her in my arms and warm her against my own body. But I don’t. I am so terrified to let my mask slip, to let her bear witness to how much of a fucking wreck I am right now.

  So I just wave her over.

  “Come on,” I beckon. “The tent is ready. I can’t make a fire right now but you can warm up in your sleeping bag.”

  Rachel bites her lip and doesn’t say anything, but she does hurry toward the tarps I’ve strung up. There is a tarp on the ground too, to give us somewhere dry to sit.

  I unfasten her sleeping bag and unfurl it. She grabs it and places her wet hiking boots aside. Then she zips herself into the sleeping bag, burrowing down and trembling. I have a flash of guilt for the whole situation, looking at her mascara-ringed eyes and her chattering teeth. If I had only thought to say something to her before I jumped out of the canoe…

  I keep myself busy, which is the only way I know to deal with guilt. Freeing our campsite of branches and debris, stacking a little bit of dry kindling, and otherwise rushing around fills a couple of hours. Rachel gets out her paperback book and reads.

  All in all, it’s an okay way to spend an afternoon with someone you don’t really want to talk to. It is still raining really hard when the sun starts to slip from the sky. I finally come to rest with my book of personally annotated maps to keep me company.

  Watching the sky, I sigh. “I don’t think that we’re going to be able to start a fire tonight.”

  Glancing up from her book, she looks at the sky. “Probably not.”

  “I’m sorry to say that I think that means crackers, cheese, and tuna for dinner. Or…” I scrounge around my pack. “One of these pre-made meals. This one is chicken marsala…”

  “Crackers and tuna sound fine,” she cuts in. She pulls a face. “I don’t want to even try the chicken marsala. It sounds super gross.”

  Shrugging, I lay out the stuff for dinner. Tuna in the can, cheddar slices, and a package of Ritz crackers. It’s a little sad when I am presenting it to another person. To my surprise though Rachel doesn’t complain. She just grabs a cracker and some cheese, munching on it.

  “Needs some wine,” she jokes. “What goes well with this? A chablis, maybe?”

  My mouth curves upwards. “Oh, man. I left all the chablis back at the campsite. How stupid of me.”

  She smiles at me, her mouth still full of crackers. I dig in, glad that the tension between us seems to have temporarily dissipated. She crawls out of her sleeping bag and puts her book down on top of it.

  “What are you reading?” I ask.

  Her cheeks immediately stain with color. “It’s… a romance novel.”

  I chuckle. “One of those ones with Fabio on the cover?”

  Her blush grows deeper.

  “No. It’s a highlander and his foreign bride. It’s silly, but…” She shrugs and takes another cracker. “I just needed an escape from reality. These are great for that.”

  “I can
understand that.” I feel a weird need to put her at ease. “Maybe not Scottish brides, but… the other part, I get. That’s one of the reasons that I live out here in the woods.”

  Her mouth pulls down into a slight frown. I realize my gaffe too late; I’ve never said a word to her about why I vanished, or my motivations for being here. Here I am, rubbing it in her face.

  I stand up and peer outside. My shoulder aches from the weather. The rain has slowed to a steady drip-drip-drip and the skies are partly clear, allowing me to see the sunset. I clear my throat.

  “Right up there we should be able to see Orion’s Belt as soon as the sun goes all the way down.”

  Rachel stands up to see. “Yeah? How do you know?”

  My brows furrows. “I think we are facing southeast. According to the farmer’s almanac, the stars that make up Orion’s Belt should be the brightest in the sky tonight.”

  She cocks her head. I feel her gaze on me.

  “How do you know what direction we are facing?”

  I glance back at her. “Because. We are right by Lake Sutherland. I can calculate what direction we are facing by knowing where we are in relation to the lake.”

  She looks thoughtful. “Most people don’t know where they are, much less what direction they are facing. I think that you must just be blessed.”

  “Nah. The Navy trained me to be aware of it, and I can’t ever not be aware of it again.” I shrug.

  She rolls her eyes. “I barely know what state I’m in.”

  “Why don’t you use your compass then? It should help you get a better idea of where we are at.”

  Rachel laughs. “If only I knew how to use one of those things…”

  My eyebrows rise. “You don’t know how to use one?”

  She ducks her head and blushes. “Well, when you say it like that…”

  Striding over to my pack, I dig through it and pull out my compass. It’s attached to an old bronze necklace, engraved on the back with the initials R. G. T. I pass the whole thing over to Rachel, who takes the necklace in.

  She turns it over. “R. G. T. Who is that?”

  My whole body grows rigid. It stands for Robert Greaves Tillson, the great grandfather of my best friend in my old Navy unit. I don’t even have the words to tell her how much I don't want to talk about it, so I just brush the question off.

  “Never mind,” I say, clearing my throat. “You’re supposed to be looking at the other side anyway.”

  She shoots me a look, but thankfully she lets the matter drop. “Alright. Now what?”

  “Well…” I sidle up to her, gently grabbing her hand and moving it back and forth. “See the two arrows? One moves, and one doesn’t. The one that doesn’t move is the orienting arrow. The one that moves is the magnetic arrow. It always points to true north.”

  Her hand is cool under mine, but where we touch it feels like… there is an energy that sparks between us. Being this close to her makes me ache with the need to kiss her and hold her. I don't have to touch her to explain how a compass works, but it just seems natural to do so.

  I haven’t felt the touch of a woman in so, so long. And she’s not just any woman…

  She’s the only one that ever knew me, inside and out. And though I have a lot of misgivings about my past, I would never give up one second of our past together.

  Never.

  Rachel swallows, her throat working. She looks up at me, her brown eyes softening. “I see.”

  Does she? It feels as though I’m translucent, as if she can see right through me and knows my thoughts.

  Our shared history hangs in the air between us, unspoken of and yet very much still there. It makes me all the more angry at myself, at the past, just knowing that it’s still alive between us.

  Her eyes drop to my mouth. She’s thinking about kissing me. God, how I want that. I lean my head down, she presses up on her tiptoes. Our lips brush. Suddenly all I can think about is taking her, right here and now, stripping her bare on this battered tarp.

  I kiss her harder, feeling for a second as though I can reach through the past and find the Rachel that I knew once more.

  She pulls away though. It takes a few seconds, but she seems to remember where she is. The look in her eyes says that she remembers exactly who she’s with, too.

  She remembers and it causes her pain.

  “Oh my god,” she gasps. “Oh, that was a mistake. I shouldn’t have—”

  Of course. Of course it’s a mistake. I know that as well as she does. This is just one more thing in my collection of regrets, I guess.

  “Sorry,” I say at the same time. “It’s just… I didn’t sleep well and—”

  RRRRIPPP.

  One corner of the tarp above our heads collapses, causing both of us to fly to the other side. In the chaos of her pulling our packs out of the reach of the rain and me trying to un-collapse the tarp, the moment between us is lost.

  And I’m glad to have the distraction. She blushes her way through helping me fix the makeshift roof, but doesn’t say a single word about our kiss.

  Which is just as well. Because I can’t think of anyone who would be less well-suited for a casual fling than Rachel. And I sure as hell am not interested in anything more.

  Sure, I could see us starting something in the short time she’ll be here. But then I imagine it being torn away from me once more when she inevitably decides she’s had enough of roughing it in the woods.

  And I just won’t put myself through that. I need to straighten my gaze and do a better job of looking forward. Soon she will be gone and I…

  I will return to my humdrum life as a park ranger. Maybe I can even try to lead tour groups.

  After we get it under control I lope out for a run under the stars. Pushing so hard I can barely breathe, I promise myself that when I get back I won’t let myself get thrown out of orbit by Rachel’s gravity again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Grayson

  I don’t know if it is falling asleep to the sounds of rain or what, but I dream of the mental hospital that night. The very first one they put me in when I got out of the regular VA hospital. The hospital and the staff are very grainy and gray, like the whole world is desaturated. Bleached of color. I’m on a lot of meds and I’m so alone. I’m also more fucked up than I can possibly comprehend.

  I’ve gone from freaking out over every little thing to a curious numbness, which is so much worse. I know, but I can’t bring myself to care. Maybe that’s why the doctors put me on this cocktail of heavy medications.

  If I don’t care enough to do anything, I won’t commit suicide.

  I stand in the faded blue pajamas that they issue to everyone, looking out the window. The legs on my pajamas are several inches too short but I don't really care.

  I don't care about anything right now, which is a sign that the doctors have me on enough medication. Or at least, the voice that constantly roars about my fellow soldiers dying is now muted to a hum. Everything feels… numb.

  The window is streaked with rain and everything outside is blurry because of it. I feel something wet on one of my cheeks. Touching it, I realize that my cheeks are streaked with tears. Why?

  That’s just one more thing I don't know. A nurse touches me on the shoulder, nearly causing me to crawl out of my skin. I blink at her.

  Her face morphs into the terrified face of Lieutenant Danvers. He steps closer, beseeching me. “Don’t go around the roadblock. Please…”

  He bands his fingers around my arm, and shakes me. I notice that he is bleeding out of his nose and mouth.

  I struggle to get away from him. “No!” I plead. “No, stop—”

  I wake up screaming at the top of my lungs. Shaking, shivering, and damp from my own perspiration. It takes a few seconds and a few long breaths before I am fully conscious. Rachel is already kneeling at my side, her face pinched with worry.

  Her voice is quiet. “Gray… are you okay?”

  “Oh, fuck,” I say, sitti
ng up and leaning my head on my knees. I can’t breathe. “God damnit.”

  The trembling gets worse. I can’t see anything but the blood leaking from Danvers’s nose. I can still smell the tang of iron in the air. My cheeks are coated with my tears.

  Closing my eyes, I listen to my heart as it pounds through my ears. Of course when I’m here with Rachel I have the worst nightmare I’ve had in ages. I tried not to fall asleep but there was no point, obviously.

  I feel Rachel’s small hand on my back, stroking in soothing motions. It only makes me feel worse somehow but I don't say that. Instead I launch into my mantra.

  “It is the fifth month, the month of May.” I whisper it to myself, tasting my tears. “It is the fourteenth day of the month, a Sunday. I’m currently in the Olympic National Park. My name is Grayson James Sellwood and I am okay.” I remind myself to breathe. “I am going to be okay.”

  Rachel stays quiet, sitting and rubbing my back.

  I exhale and try to make my mind perfectly blank. “It is the fifth month, the month of May. It is the fourteenth day of the month, a Sunday. I’m currently in the Olympic National Park. My name is Grayson James Sellwood. I am okay. I am going to be okay.”

  Exhaling another shaky breath, I feel the knot in my stomach loosen just a bit. Wiping at my face, I open my eyes. I can’t even bring myself to look at Rachel. I’m so ashamed of coming apart in front of her.

  I’m supposed to be this strong man, a Navy man. Instead here I am, a gibbering mess. I never intended for her to see any of this. This humiliates me.

  I look at her for a second, then look away. I won’t meet her questioning gaze.

  She keeps rubbing her hand over my back in little circles. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

  A huff of humorless laughter leaves my lips. “If three stays in three different psych wards can’t help me, what is it exactly that you think you can do?”