“Have you taken it before?” Katy asked as she turned to face David. The sunlight gave her an ethereal glow.
“I’ve taken a couple of trips to New York City since I’ve been at Harvard. Once I took it all the way down to D.C.”
“Did Zeke go, too?” Katy asked. David wondered if she was actually asking in a roundabout way if a girl had accompanied him.
“No, I usually take trips like that alone,” David replied. “I like to travel by myself because then I don’t have to make small talk, and I can simply enjoy the sights.” He caught himself just as he said it, hoping she wouldn’t misunderstand. “But I’m really glad you’re here.”
Katy giggled, a sound that David thoroughly enjoyed. “I know what you mean. I love Cassie, but honestly sometimes I just want to be alone, too.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that you guys are pretty close. Seems like you’re always together,” David ventured. It was actually kind of frustrating for him. He’d really only had a couple of opportunities to speak to Katy without her best friend hovering over them, and Katy seemed different when Cassie was around. But that just made this trip even more exciting. They were finally alone.
The brakes hissed as the bus rolled to a stop outside the train station. David stood and offered Katy his hand. She accepted it, grasping it lightly, but she didn’t stand immediately. Instead she simply held on to his hand and looked up at him.
David was transfixed in that moment, his senses alight at the touch. It felt like time briefly stopped. Every beat of his heart seemed grander, more meaningful, as he held Katy’s hand and smiled down at her.
I wish we could stay like this.
“Pardon,” a man said gruffly as he passed David.
And just like that, Katy stood and released David’s hand, breaking the spell. David hoped he’d get a chance to feel her lingering touch again.
As they walked through the terminal together, he thought of how much it meant to him that Katy was joining him on this trip. Because, as excited as he was to meet his cousins and his aunt, he was also nervous. What if the whole encounter was more awkward than pleasant? Joseph had seemed so welcoming and even familiar during their chat—going so far as to call David “cuz,” which had touched him more than Joseph probably knew—but that didn’t change the fact that David was a stranger to them. What if his presence upset his aunt, rather than bringing her any comfort? What if David was just a painful reminder of all that she had lost, a woefully insufficient substitute for Jeanine?
They sat on a bench together to await the train’s arrival, and David tried to break away from his anxious thoughts.
“Are you nervous?” Katy asked. “I know this is a big moment for you.”
“A little.” It was an understatement. He looked over at Katy to see her staring back expectantly, waiting for him to go on. He knew he needed to share the details with Katy before they arrived, so she could know what to expect from the situation, but it was strange for him to put it into words. “But we’re just meeting the Bests. The rest of the family doesn’t know where my mother is either, since she cut off contact with them before she had me. They didn’t even know she was pregnant.”
David couldn’t deny how seedy it all sounded. The whole thing kind of made him feel like a dirty secret. And while he didn’t usually care what others thought, he couldn’t help but worry how Katy saw him. But she only nodded, letting him continue without asking questions.
“And my aunt is very ill. She wants to see her sister again, and I . . . well, I feel a little guilty that I’m going there without any answers for them. Only more questions.”
David sighed after he finished. This was the first time that he’d voiced his concern aloud. He felt embarrassed by it, like he was oversharing. But he couldn’t deny that it felt good to admit what he was really feeling.
Katy placed a reassuring hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry to hear that about your aunt. And I understand why you feel the way that you do.” She squeezed his arm. “But I bet they’re just as excited to meet you as you are to meet them. Because, in a way, you are an answer. And now you’ll be able to work together to find out more.”
David felt relief flood over him. He hadn’t thought of it that way. And she was right that he already felt less alone in his search. He had never before met anyone with a vested interest in finding his mother, but suddenly he knew people who had known her and missed her. Together, maybe they’d finally find some answers.
Maybe they’d find Jeanine.
David looked over at Katy longingly, noticing again how full and soft her lips looked. He wondered what the trip would be like if the circumstances were different. If he could have been honest about his burgeoning feelings—and if Katy reciprocated. Would they be holding hands right now? Would he be able to steal a kiss in public? Rest his arm around her waist? But then the train announced its arrival with a long screech of its whistle, drawing her attention elsewhere. Her eyes lit up with excitement as she watched the locomotive roll into the station.
“First time on a train?” David asked.
“No, I love trains. Reminds me of home,” Katy replied. Her eyes had glazed over dreamily with a faraway look, like she was remembering something fondly.
“Are they big in California?”
Katy blinked, looking away. The train rolled to its stop in the terminal, and she stood with her bag. David followed suit, wondering if he had dredged up some unpleasant memory for her.
He offered her the window seat, knowing she’d enjoy the sights, but her excitement seemed to have been tamped down by his earlier question. He made a mental note not to ask about her time in California again unless she brought it up. Obviously there was something about the experience that she didn’t want to share.
They were quiet for a while as fellow travelers took their seats around them. But then Katy turned back to David, leaning close to him.
“So what did you do on your solitary trips to New York City and D.C.? I’ve never been to either place.”
David was distinctly aware of her closeness. He had to focus in order to answer. “I usually looked for the green places. Central Park in New York City. The National Mall in D.C. There’s something calming about being by yourself in nature but simultaneously surrounded by people and tall buildings. Like a reminder that we’re never truly alone.”
“That’s a nice thought,” Katy replied. The train’s whistle interrupted her, and the floor beneath them gave low, constant vibrations as the train began to pull out of the station.
“What about you?” David asked. “What would you do on a trip by yourself?” Or with me, if the circumstances were different.
Katy bit her lip as she considered the question.
“I think I’d go see a show on Broadway. I’ve always wanted to go,” she said.
“We could come down and do that after finals,” David offered. Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, but he certainly wouldn’t mind lining up more opportunities to spend time with Katy. He couldn’t imagine tiring of her company.
“I’d like that,” Katy said wistfully. “But I’m not sure what I’m doing after finals yet. I might visit home.”
Home. David supposed that Cambridge was his home now. He didn’t have any family left in London. He had sold his parents’ home and used the money, along with his modest inheritance, to move to the States and pay for the expenses that his scholarship didn’t cover. Since joining the Wolf Club, he’d gotten better at socializing. But between semesters, he still found himself turning into a bit of a hermit.
“Do you think you’ll come to New York for winter break?” Katy asked. “To be with your family?”
“I hadn’t really considered that yet,” David replied. But it was a nice thought. It had been a while since he celebrated Christmas with a family. “I guess we’ll see how this trip goes.”
Katy looked down, as if she was considering her next statement carefully.
“Can I ask about your parents? Your adoptive par
ents?”
“Of course,” David said. He liked that she wanted to know, and he certainly didn’t want her to think it was a subject that she couldn’t broach. It had hurt like hell to lose them, of course, but now it helped to remember them. “My mother was a teacher, and my father was an engineer. They adopted me as an infant when they were in their fifties, and they always treated me like their own flesh and blood. They were lovely people.”
Katy smiled gently at him while David spoke. He wondered about whether or not to continue, but he didn’t want to leave out important parts of the story. It was a story that had formed him into who he was today, after all.
“I lost my mother to a stroke. Unexpectedly. But my father and I were able to get through it together. And there were so many things in our home and lives that reminded us of her. Like she never really left.”
David smiled as he remembered. Even if those memories were still a bit painful, he also couldn’t stop that joy that came with them.
“I lost my father a few years later. He hadn’t been feeling well for a while, but we thought it was just a bad spell. By the time he finally got a diagnosis, it was almost the end.”
David could still see his father, running in from his garden, trailing soil all through the house, just so he could excitedly show him a humongous tomato. Or nodding off in his favorite rocker, his bifocal glasses slipping down his nose, but somehow waking up instantly any time David tried to change the TV channel. David liked to remember him that way.
“I didn’t come to the States immediately after he died. I took a couple years to backpack around Europe and find myself, as cliché as that sounds. But in the end, I decided to apply at Harvard, because I knew my biological parents had a link to Boston.”
Katy’s smile had softened as her sympathy grew. David hoped it wasn’t a pitying smile. He felt as he usually did any time he shared this story: a bit pathetic. It made him uncomfortable.
He tried to finish strong, to let her know that she needn’t worry about him. “They lived full lives and taught me to be grateful and live in the moment. I count myself lucky to have gotten as much time with them as I did.”
People always assumed that he was wounded and broken, which, thanks to his upbringing with the Rosens, absolutely wasn’t true. He considered himself extremely lucky, but sometimes people refused to listen to him, preferring to linger on the worst parts of his story. Would Katy handle him more delicately moving forward, considering him damaged goods?
He waited for the awkward sympathy to start. But to his surprise, Katy didn’t immediately tell him how sorry she was for his losses, like most people did. In fact, she said something that he hadn’t been told in a long time.
“I’m proud of you, David.”
He blinked, unsure how to respond.
“I mean, for getting through that and not letting it hold you back. It’s impressive,” Katy went on. Then she bit her lip and looked away, as if suddenly uncertain about what she had said.
David reached over and squeezed her hand. Katy turned back to him.
“Thank you,” he said. He didn’t feel like any sort of hero for “getting through it.” Because of how old his adoptive parents had been when they took him in, it had been natural, almost predictable, that he would lose them sooner than he would have wanted. So there was no reason to be bitter.
Still, it was the first time that someone had responded to his losses in a way that didn’t make him feel like the object of their pity. It had struck a chord inside of him. Especially coming from Katy. And, the more he got to know her, the less David was finding things like this surprising. She really was one of a kind.
She flashed her brilliant smile, the glow of it going straight to David’s heart.
Behind her, the Atlantic Ocean was reflecting the soft golden light of the early evening. David nodded his head toward it, urging Katy to look.
When she turned and spotted it, she let out a little gasp.
“Oh, I love being by the water! Are we going to travel along the coast for a while?” she asked, her voice rising in excitement.
In her voice David thought he heard another hint of the lilting, musical accent that wasn’t quite French—and certainly wasn’t Californian. And even though he couldn’t place it, he enjoyed its occasional appearance.
“Almost the entire way,” David replied.
Katy turned her body toward the window to enjoy the view, and David sat back in his chair, content to sit in silence while Katy watched the coast roll by. It would be dark by the time they made it to New York City, or at least as dark as it could get in the busiest city in the world. And when they got there, they’d be greeted by David’s biological cousins, something that he still couldn’t quite believe.
Then, once they were all working together, maybe they’d finally find a place to start in their search for Jeanine.
23
Katy
Katy watched the ocean through the train window until it began to reflect moonlight. She turned back a few times to engage David in conversation, not wanting to be rude, but found him reading a dense-looking economics textbook. It was admirable, really. Even in the midst of what was probably the most exciting moment he’d experienced in years, David was still focused on seeing to his responsibilities. It was a testament to his character.
And perhaps as a testament to her own, she thought sadly, her guilt was lessening as she got farther from Harvard. Still—Cassie was hopefully hitting it off with her psychology classmate’s older brother, somewhere along the coast in the opposite direction.
David found a stopping place in his book and tucked it into the basket hanging off the seat in front of him. Then he turned to Katy.
“Almost there,” he said simply. But his eyes showed an excitement far beyond the casual tone of his statement.
Katy was glad to be close to their destination. As much as she liked the sight of the ocean, the smooth forward motion of the train gently moving over the tracks, and her close proximity to David, she was ready to see New York City for the first time.
Lorria was a small nation, mostly populated by quaint villages and vast expanses of mineral-rich land. It had its metropolitan areas, just like any country, but it certainly didn’t have a city that compared to the crown jewel of the United States. Not that Katy wasn’t well acquainted with renowned cities. As a princess, she’d traveled to many countries across the world. But, being royalty, she was usually heavily guarded or kept under the keen oversight of a chaperone. Even when she managed to sneak away, she was bombarded with cameras, wielded by both professionals and amateurs. Katy was always expected to be gracious, pose for photos, and sign autographs; while she certainly didn’t mind doing those things, she didn’t want to do them every time she tried to explore.
But this weekend, she’d be free of those expectations. Free to enjoy her time around David and support him through his journey. Free to walk the sidewalk or hail a cab without having to cup her hand and wave like royalty to hundreds of bystanders. Free to be herself.
With David right beside her.
The train rolled into the station, and Katy looked out onto the platform. She’d been able to see the immense network of skyscrapers and buildings from the train, all covered in brightly glowing advertisements, but she didn’t realize just how many people were around until they stopped. The station looked like a madhouse. What felt like thousands of people were standing around, almost shoulder-to-shoulder, listening to music with their headphones in, reading the paper, or just waiting impatiently to board a train. Even from within the train, Katy could hear a cacophony of voices, footsteps, children crying, and engine sounds.
“Just like I remember it,” David joked beside her.
Katy turned to look at him, trying to keep any hint of her trepidation from her face—and not quite succeeding. A less observant man may have never seen it. But David wasn’t that man.
“Don’t worry,” David said. “Just stay close to me.”
H
er heart skipped a beat for a different reason than before.
As soon as the train shuddered to a halt, the travelers around them stood and began to gather their things. David also stood and reached for their bags from the overhead compartment. Katy took a deep breath to steady her nerves.
“Don’t forget this,” she said, grabbing his economics textbook from the seat basket.
David put his backpack on and slung Katy’s bag over his shoulder. He grabbed the textbook with a gracious smile.
“Thank you,” he replied. “That would’ve been an expensive mistake.”
David looked over his shoulder at his backpack, indecision marked on his face.
“Here,” Katy said. “Let me.” She grabbed David’s shoulder to turn him around.
Without really thinking, she unzipped his backpack, reached for the textbook from his hands, and slipped it in. But before she zipped the backpack closed, she paused. David stood still. Katy looked over his broad shoulders, noticing the way his dark hair curled just slightly at the nape of his neck. She watched his shoulder blades, prominent even through the fabric of his clothing, rise and fall with every strong breath he took. In the stale, circulated air of the train, she could still smell the clean, masculine scent of David: a scent somewhere between pine and mint.
To her left, a line was beginning to form to get off the train. She zipped David’s backpack up in a last heady rush. He turned and gazed appreciatively at her, the corners of his mouth rising slightly, then made way for her to step in front of him and into the aisle. Katy walked off the train with her cheeks flushed.
When she got to the platform she paused again, unsure where to go. The wall of people around her seemed impenetrable. No one moved to let her through.
“Pardon me,” Katy said gently.
No one moved or even made eye contact.
“Different rules apply here,” David said with a chuckle.
He laid one of his strong arms over Katy’s shoulders and pulled her in close to him. Katy immediately felt warmth spread over her body; her senses tingled in furtive pleasure. Then, to her shock, he simply began to push through the crowd, drawing her through with him. And it worked. People moved out of their way, albeit only slightly, and while David had to physically bump past most of the people, no one seemed surprised by the bold move. David led Katy through the crowd and up a staircase to the ground level, keeping her within the circle of his arm the whole time. Once there, she finally had room to breathe again.
A Love that Endures Page 18
