Seagulls circled overhead, their cries blending in with the sound of the waves. The scent of the ocean was heavy in the air.
Not surprisingly, it took him a few moments before he spoke. “I heard you were with my father when he passed.”
“Yes.” She didn’t explain further. This was something she’d learned from him and his silent ways. Her answer was simple and precise, giving him nothing more than required.
“I appreciate it.”
She shrugged off his gratitude. Elaborating the events of that day wasn’t necessary, and in Seth’s case, they wouldn’t be helpful. His father had never loved nor appreciated his son, and Keaton knew it; he’d always known it. That was something she found astonishing about Keaton. That he could have withstood that complete lack of tenderness and become the caring person he was. Her admiration for him kept expanding in equal measure to her love for him. The last time they’d spoken, he mentioned he didn’t know how he was going to let her go. She had her own pressing question. Annie didn’t know how she could bear leaving him.
“I know you’re moving back to Seattle soon,” he said. Even mentioning it seemed to cause him pain.
“I only have a couple weeks left at the clinic.”
He nodded and looked down at the sand, scooting it around with his feet, trying to find the words he wanted to say. “You’ll make a good doctor.”
“Thank you.”
His feet had built a small pile of sand. “It’s selfish of me to not want you to go.”
“The truth is, the thought of leaving Oceanside fills me with dread.”
“I reacted badly, Annie. I’m sorry.”
Leaning sideways, Annie braced her shoulder against him. “Your blessing would mean the world to me, Keaton.”
“You have it, Annie, right along with my heart.”
Tears clouded her vision, and she swallowed hard before she thanked him. “That means more than you know.”
“I’m going to Dad’s house,” Keaton said.
“Moving there?”
“No. Cleaning it out. Selling it.”
“Would you like some help?” She wanted to spend as much time as she could with him before she left.
“You’d do that?”
“Of course; I’d be happy to, Keaton,” she said, pressing against his shoulder with her own. “You didn’t hesitate to bring your strength and tools to help me when I needed it. I carry a mean broom and sponge.”
They set a time to meet, and Keaton agreed to pick her up.
* * *
—
On Saturday afternoon, he arrived a little before five. Annie had been over to see Mellie earlier in the day, and her friend was busy making dinner preparations for her and Preston. Mellie remained entrenched in the house, but Annie suspected Preston was working on convincing her to move beyond the porch and back into the real world. Annie believed it wouldn’t be long before Mellie agreed, as much in love with Preston as she was.
On the drive to the cabin, Keaton was silent, but this wasn’t his normal silence. He seemed to have something on his mind, something he wanted to say but found it difficult to find the words for. After all these months, she knew him better than she realized. He often had trouble expressing emotions. Of course, cleaning out his father’s home would be traumatic enough.
Once they arrived, it came as no surprise to find the house in complete disarray. Seth had been sick for several months and housekeeping chores had long been neglected. Dust and cobwebs were everywhere. The windows were dirty, the floors sticky and smudged with dried mud.
“Where would you like me to start?” she asked, as Keaton brought in several packing boxes.
He stood in the middle of the living room and seemed overwhelmed. “Kitchen, I guess.”
“Okay.” She carried two of the larger boxes into that area. The contents were sparse. A few pots and pans, a skillet, a few utensils, and that was about it. All those were stacked in the sink, which made it necessary to wash nearly everything that required packing. Nothing was of much value or worth saving. It took her less than an hour to clear it out and clean what was necessary. After wiping down the counters, she mopped the floor.
Keaton had disappeared into the bedroom that had belonged to his father. She hadn’t seen him since they’d arrived.
When she’d finished the kitchen, she found Keaton sitting on the end of the bed, his head down. Unsure what to do or say, Annie silently sat down next to him.
“I didn’t love him,” Keaton said. “Didn’t think I’d miss him.”
Because of her last conversation with Seth, Annie felt she understood Keaton better. “He was a bitter, angry man who didn’t appreciate love.”
“Never able to give it to me.”
Annie had become painfully aware of that because of Seth’s deathbed declaration.
Reaching for her hand, Keaton entwined their fingers, raised them to his lips, and kissed her knuckles. “I heard.”
“What did you hear?” she asked, staring down at their joined hands.
“You. With my father, just before he died.”
Annie tried to hide her surprise. “You were there…at the hospice center?”
He nodded. “They called me to let me know. I was determined to let him die alone, but then I couldn’t do it. I went and saw that you were at his bedside.”
Annie bit into her lower lip, knowing that if Keaton had been listening he would have heard his father mention his one regret. Her heart ached that he had heard those hurtful, demeaning words.
“He didn’t mean it,” she whispered.
“He meant every word. He blamed me for her death from the minute I was born. He never loved me. Never wanted me, especially since my birth is what cost my mother her life.”
Annie had no words of comfort; nothing she could say would take away the brutal sting of Seth’s dying words. “I’m sorry you heard any of that.”
“I’m not. It helped me understand my father, understand why he was never able to love me.”
Annie was confident she hadn’t heard him right. “You mean you didn’t know that your mother had decided to refuse cancer treatment because she was pregnant with you?” If his father hadn’t said anything, his mother’s relatives certainly would have, she assumed.
“Her name was never mentioned. If not for a few photos I found of her when I was young, I would know nothing about my mother. Once she was dead, it seemed that she was forever erased from my father’s mind. I know now that just the opposite was true.”
Annie didn’t know that she would ever understand a man like Keaton’s father.
“What I didn’t know until I met you…what I didn’t appreciate, was my father’s feelings,” Keaton continued.
“I don’t get what you’re telling me.”
He looked uncomfortable. “I’d never been in love before, Annie. I never knew what it was to give another person your heart. At the very thought of losing you, the only thing I could do was withdraw. The thought of you leaving Oceanside devastated me. I had to accept that once you left you were never coming back, much in the same way my father had to accept that my mother would never return.”
“But, Keaton…”
“No, please, let me finish. I didn’t love my father. I never understood what I had done that was so bad that he could hate me the way he did. I realize what it was now.”
Annie closely studied him as he spoke and saw the intensity on his face, knowing the words were hard to speak. “Until my mother, I don’t think my father had anyone who loved him, and I was the one who took her away from him.”
“But it wasn’t anything you did, Keaton. Cancer is what took her away. Not you. Your mother wanted you enough to risk her own life to have you.”
“I know that now. What I didn’t realize was that she was everything to him.
To lose her was to lose the only love my father had ever known.”
His eyes were dark and intense as they met Annie’s. “I’ve known little love in my life. For a good portion of my youth, I felt like an outsider. My size and home life didn’t help. When you came back to town, Annie, that first time on the beach, it was like I’d taken a hit to my abdomen. Lennon saw you first. He knew. It was at that moment that I realized you were my destiny. Then later, there was the pain that I felt, knowing that I was eventually going to need to let you go.”
Annie continued to lock eyes with him and found it impossible to speak.
“You don’t understand. That day on the beach—I thought I was losing it. A girl I’d admired years earlier was back, but now she was a beautiful woman. I was convinced after all that time that you weren’t real, and that I had imagined things. Then, to see you again, right before my eyes, and learn that you were looking for a house to rent. If that wasn’t enough, you were interested in Mellie’s cottage.”
She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Having you close, living right here in Oceanside, overwhelmed me. I didn’t know what to think. God’s truth, Annie, you terrified me.”
“Why…” She didn’t finish her thought. Keaton knew what she meant.
“How was I to know if this was love?” he asked. “It felt more like an obsession. You were in every thought; every day I looked for ways to spend time with you. I was convinced these feelings would fade in time, and when they didn’t, I didn’t know what was happening to me. It didn’t take me long to understand that you owned my heart.”
“And you own mine.”
He exhaled. “Just when I thought it might be possible for the two of us to forge a future together, you decided to return to medical school. You planned to leave me, and I knew nothing about it. The news caught me off guard, but then to make it worse—all along, I’d been sharing my heart with you, sharing the pain of my youth, only to learn from Mellie that you’d lost your entire family. You kept that from me while I shared the deepest parts of my heart with you.”
“Oh Keaton, I should have explained, should have told you. In retrospect, I would do it all so differently.”
“I needed to protect myself,” he said, and kissed the top of her head. “I was so desperately in love with you that I realized you had the power to utterly destroy me. The only option I felt I had to survive was to separate myself completely from you.
“As time progressed, another deeper fear took hold of me. I was afraid that without you in my life I’d end up like my father, lost and bitter, angry at the world.”
“You could never be like your father.” That was beyond the scope of Annie’s imagination.
His hand tightened around hers until it was almost painful. She was convinced he didn’t realize how tight his grip had become.
“I love you, Annie, so much so that it feels like my heart is going to bust wide open.”
Annie bit into her lower lip. “I love you, too, so much I don’t know that I can leave you. Other than my aunt and Gabby, I don’t have any family left. You, Mellie, Teresa, and Preston are my family now. The only home I know is right here with you, and leaving you, leaving Oceanside, seems unimaginable. I…I don’t know that I can do it.”
Keaton bowed his head. “You’re my family, too, and as painful as this is to say, you should move back to Seattle and attend medical school. You need to become the doctor you were always meant to be.”
“I don’t know that I can make it through medical school without you, Keaton.”
“But you have me,” he assured her, his arm holding her closer to his side. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want me to come be with you every weekend, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t leave you.”
“Annie, no. You’re going to medical school. Please don’t fight me on this. It’s hard enough as it is to let you go. I’ll do everything within my power to help you. Everything and anything.”
“Anything?” She looked up at him, her heart in her eyes.
“Annie, of course. What do you need?”
She didn’t hesitate. “You.”
“You have me. Heart and soul. You’ve always had me.” He stretched his arm out and touched the medallion she wore around her neck, letting it slide between his thick fingers. “It’s fitting that you are the one to wear that, seeing that you carry my heart with you.”
Her hand wrapped around his.
A half-smile formed. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to give it back to me?”
Annie grinned. “I love you, Keaton. Your heart is safe with me. It always has been. It took losing those I loved most to wake me up to the fact that life is fragile. I’m not the same person I was back then. Their deaths taught me what’s most important. The answer is love. You’re important, Keaton. I’m making a new life for myself, giving and receiving love. You’re a huge part of this transformation because you taught me what it meant to give my heart to someone.
“You said you felt I was your destiny,” Annie continued. “What you don’t understand is that you’re mine as well. I came to Oceanside because I’d been happy here as a teenager. What I discovered by living here is that my happy place is with you, wherever you are. I can go back to medical school. I can leave, but only if you’re willing to come with me. Can you leave Oceanside? Can you do that for me?”
Taking her face in both of his hands, Keaton leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers in a searing kiss that left them both breathless, their hearts beating in unison.
His eyes delved into hers. “I can go anywhere as long as we’re together, Annie. That’s what is important.”
“You’re sure about that?” She couldn’t believe that he’d agree.
“More than sure.”
Life had taken Annie on this rugged path. It wasn’t one she would have voluntarily chosen, but it had led her to this point, and to these friends who had become her new family. She had found home, and it was with them.
She removed the medallion from around her neck and handed it to Keaton. “I think it’s time this goes back to where it belongs.”
He bent forward and bowed his head as she put it around his neck. Tucking his arms around her waist, Keaton lifted her feet from the ground and hugged her against his massive chest, holding her as gently as an orchid, his eyes closed, his heart beating solidly against her own.
Annie tilted back her head and looked toward the sky, and for just an instant she was convinced she could feel her parents’ presence, peeking through the clouds, smiling down on her.
CHAPTER 38
“You coming?” Preston called impatiently from the driver’s side of his truck.
“Give me a minute,” Keaton said. He was busy getting ready to make the move to Seattle with Annie and had a hundred different matters on his mind that required his attention.
“Maybe it would be best if I met you at Mellie’s,” Keaton called out to his friend, who was too eager to be on his way to wait with even a modicum of patience.
Keaton realized Preston had been working for the last few weeks on a surprise for his sweetheart, building her a swing for the porch. His friend had persistently encouraged Mellie to venture beyond the emotionally protective walls of the big house and had met with limited success. This latest project was a means of readying her for the next step in more ways than one.
Love had turned Keaton’s life around, and it did him good to see similar changes in both Preston and Mellie. A warm happy feeling stole over him as Annie came to mind. She was never far from his thoughts. His hand automatically went to the medallion she’d given him. When she’d returned it, and personally placed it around his neck—it had been like a promise, a renewed commitment between them. Never again would he allow his fears to stand in the way of loving her. He’d had to let
her go for them both to move forward, he’d learned. In the process, he’d come to realize that he’d never really lost her.
Annie knew about Mellie’s surprise and had to keep it a secret, which had been hard, seeing that they now talked many times a week. Preston was pacing, nervous and agitated. His nerves were due to more than the swing.
Keaton helped Preston unload the swing from the back of his truck and carried it up the steps leading to the porch. They set it down and then removed the old one that Mellie’s grandfather had installed forty years earlier, before Mellie had been born.
No sooner had they started working when the door off the kitchen opened and Mellie called out from inside the kitchen, “What’s all that racket?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Keaton told her.
“Preston?” Mellie shouted from the other side of the screen door, unwilling to move beyond it to discover the answer herself. “What are you doing now?”
“Hush, woman.”
“Hush?” she repeated sarcastically. “Preston, did you seriously tell me to hush?”
“Yes, but only for a few minutes while I finish this up.”
“Finish what?” she demanded.
“You’ll see for yourself in a bit. Patience, my love.”
Mellie wasn’t having any of it. “Preston Young, you should know by now that I’m not a patient woman.”
“That I do.”
Annie arrived, having come separately from the clinic, where she was finishing up and saying her good-byes. In Keaton’s mind, it was in the nick of time. She parked, hurried up the steps, paused long enough to kiss him, and then went on to distract Mellie.
“What are they doing?” he heard Mellie demand as Annie eased her away from the door.
“You’ll see. Why don’t we make a pitcher of iced tea?” Annie suggested.
Even with Keaton helping, it took the two of them about thirty minutes to get the swing installed. It would have been a hundred times easier if Preston had ordered a mass-produced swing. Instead, he’d insisted on building it himself. Mellie’s grandfather had handmade the original, and any replacement, to Preston’s way of thinking, had to be done by hand.
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