by Becky Wade
Corbin was up on a ladder, hammering one of the pieces of crown moulding into place.
“I haven’t needed Him yet,” Joe said.
“Really? You don’t think God’s help might have come in handy along the way? From where I was sitting, it didn’t look like your life was a picnic.” Corbin sighed. He felt about as qualified to explain the reasons why his dad needed God in his life as he was to give a lecture on quantum physics.
“No, but I got through the hard times by depending on myself and through hard work.”
Corbin drove another nail home, moved the ladder, and accepted a fresh piece of moulding from his dad. “I’m not saying that self-dependence and hard work aren’t good values. They are. It’s just that they’re not . . . enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“To save you from what I hear is a very fiery hell.”
“You know I don’t believe in heaven and hell. I believe that when you die that’s just it. Lights out. The end.”
Corbin sent the hammer barreling forward with more force than needed. “I can tell you that self-dependence and hard work weren’t enough to save me after my shoulder injury. If it weren’t for God, I might still be in Dallas, drinking myself stupid.”
His dad frowned. “It wasn’t necessarily God who helped you last winter, Corbin. It could be that time is what healed you.”
“I wasn’t sure at first whether or not it was God who helped me. But looking back on it now, it’s pretty clear.”
“Your recovery could have been due to any number of things,” his dad said stubbornly.
“It could have been,” Corbin replied with equal stubbornness. “But it wasn’t.”
To Corbin’s everlasting frustration, none of the guests who showed up for dinner at Bradfordwood to say good-bye to Willow seemed to be in a hurry to leave.
Nora and Britt had served everyone appetizers, followed by a dinner of lasagna and salad. They’d eaten dessert an hour ago, and now it was time for every one of these people to go away so he could have Willow to himself. Tomorrow she was flying from Washington to a photo shoot in New York.
At the moment Willow was standing at the edge of the den talking to Tristan. Since Tristan was Britt’s boyfriend, Corbin had no idea why he was looking at Willow the way die-hard female Mustangs fans looked at him. He watched the two of them through narrowed eyes.
Nora, Britt, Jill, and Charlotte had walked down to the canal. John and Mark were standing next to him, watching the fourth quarter of the Vikings–Saints matchup. Corbin was faking interest in the game. He couldn’t drum up any actual interest, not even for the league he’d been playing in this time last year.
A year ago the NFL had been his complete focus. All he could think about tonight was resisting the urge to scream, Get out! Every time he looked at his watch and saw the minutes ticking down to Willow’s departure, he felt a sick sense of powerlessness in his gut.
Most of the people here had known and loved Willow a lot longer than he had. Of course they wanted to spend time with her on her last night in Merryweather. Thing was, no one loved her as intensely as he did, and no one wanted to spend time with her as badly.
Get out. Get out.
Willow’s grandmother, Clint, and Valentina made their way toward Corbin. “I’m sorry that your father couldn’t make it tonight,” Margaret said.
“Yeah. Me too.” Nora and Britt had invited his dad to join them. His dad had boycotted in order to underscore his disapproval of Willow.
Whatever. At the moment, Corbin didn’t have the energy to be irritated with his dad. All his energy was going toward being upset about Willow’s departure.
“What kind of work did your father do before his retirement?” Margaret asked.
“He worked for GM in Detroit.”
“Ah!” Her eyes lit with passion. “I remember the heyday of American automobile manufacturing. American cars were the absolute best of the best. Then overseas car companies pushed their way in, and many Americans turned their backs on our own wonderful cars and began buying cheap, poorly made vehicles. It’s criminal.”
Not exactly criminal.
“I still drive an Oldsmobile,” she said. “I understand what it means to be loyal.”
“Royal?” Valentina asked, grinning. “Yes, miss. You Queen Margaret of this family.”
“In a few years, cars as we know them won’t exist,” Clint said, looking proud of the prediction. “We’ll all be riding around in computer-driven pods.”
“Pies?” Valentina asked with confusion.
“That doesn’t make a bit of sense, Clint Fletcher.” Margaret looked outraged. “What a thing to say.”
John caught Corbin’s eye and gave him an amused tip of the chin.
“I’ve read about it in—” Clint said.
“No. Pods. Gracious me. Certainly not.” Margaret continued preaching about American cars.
Clint shifted on his feet. The guy had to be at least fifty-five, but he looked like a kid who’d been scolded.
“Well, this seems like a fun conversation,” Britt said, putting an arm around her grandmother and cutting off the older woman’s speech. “But I’m ready to call it a night. Tristan and I will give you a ride home, Grandma.”
God bless Britt.
Everyone finally began gathering their things and filing out. Corbin helped the women find their coats and purses. He shook hands with the men.
Get. Out.
Charlotte and Jill were the last to leave.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, when they were all standing near the door.
“You’re welcome,” Willow said to the girl. “I loved getting to know you, and I’m so glad that you asked me to find Josephine with you, because it was a privilege for me to work with you on her case.”
Tears gathered in Charlotte’s gray eyes.
Corbin’s spirits dipped even lower. He couldn’t stand to see Charlotte cry.
“It was really nice of you to help me,” Charlotte said to Willow.
“It really was,” Jill said.
“The pleasure was all mine. If I had it to do over, I’d say yes again in a heartbeat. Will you keep in touch?”
“I promise I will,” Charlotte answered.
“Good, because you’re my source for whale trivia.”
Charlotte smiled. “And pictures of Jungkook.”
“Yes! How could I forget?”
Willow hugged Charlotte, then Jill.
Charlotte waved, then pulled her mom onto the front steps. Corbin shut the door behind them.
Finally, he and Willow were alone. “I thought they’d never leave.”
He prowled toward her.
Playfully, she backed away.
He continued his offensive.
“Uh-oh.” Willow smiled.
“Uh-oh what?”
“You look like a quarterback on a drive.”
“That’s exactly what I am.”
Her shoulder blades came up against the smooth wall of the hallway. He took her mouth in a hard, fast kiss. Their hands intertwined. He trailed his lips along her jaw, then slowly down her neck.
“That dinner,” she said weakly, “seemed to take a really long time.”
“It felt like it took ten hours.” He spoke between kisses. “I’m not a good person because I don’t want to share you. Even with them.”
She gasped when he found a sensitive spot on her neck. “You had me convinced for a long time that you weren’t a good person. But now I suspect the opposite to be true.”
He straightened, tilting down his chin so he could look at her directly. “I’m good, am I?”
“Yes.”
His heartbeat thudded in his ears, his wrists. It was ridiculous, the power she had over him. Scary. Wonderful. Unchangeable. “Am I good enough for you to keep? After tomorrow?”
Pain moved across her face like shade from a passing cloud. She’d always been careful to keep a separation between them, which he hated. If he could c
rush that separation, he would. Only, he’d never known how. He loved her, and he wanted her to love him back, but he couldn’t figure out how to convince her to keep him. He didn’t want to shame himself by pleading, but he was afraid he might.
She regarded him now through piercing green eyes that turned gray around the rim of the irises. Her nose was narrow. Her lips smooth. Her cheeks glowing. She was grace and beauty and calm. He was none of those things, and he loved her for being what he wasn’t. For being so unlike him and so perfect for him at the same time.
She turned her head and pressed a kiss to his wrist. He groaned and gently tilted her face to him. Keep me, he said through their kiss.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and made a quiet sound of answering pleasure.
She was leaving . . . and he couldn’t survive without her. Don’t pressure her, he told himself. Whenever he was in his right mind, he was convinced that no good could come of pressuring her. But he wasn’t in his right mind. Frustration had been carving him up all night while he’d watched her eat lasagna, talk with her family, collect dessert bowls, and carry them to the sink. He was fuming with it now. He couldn’t let her go until he knew where he stood and what he could expect over the next few months.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Panic flared in her features. “Sure!” She ducked away from him and walked in the direction of the den. “How about we talk about all the reasons why Britt and Tristan are not perfect for each other and how much I want Zander to come home so Britt can realize that he’s the love of her life.”
“Willow.”
“Let’s sit. I feel like I’ve been standing for hours.”
He softly caught her wrist, stopping her. She regarded him with concern, and an alarm went off within him. It told him to stop. Not to say anything else. To turn back.
Only, nothing important in his life had ever come to him from stopping, from not saying anything, from turning back. “We need to talk about us.” He released her wrist.
She stuck her fingers into the pockets of her jeans. She wore a pale pink shirt. Short boots. “I’d rather we didn’t talk about us, Corbin. I don’t want to spoil this . . . thing we have at the eleventh hour by trying to define it.”
She was trying to let him down gently, which both frustrated and worried him. He wasn’t a client she had to carefully manage. “I don’t want to spoil anything, but I do need for us to define it. What’s going to happen after you leave tomorrow?”
She hesitated. “We’ll stay in touch. We’ll talk. We’ll send text messages and pictures.”
“I talk to and send texts and pictures to my friend Gray. The way I feel about him is nothing like the way that I feel about you. I’ll come and see you in New York.”
Her skin paled. “You can’t come see me in New York. You can’t leave your dad, not for any reason. He needs you here.”
He knew she was right, yet claustrophobia choked him at the thought of remaining in Shore Pine without her. “I can get away for a few days.”
“No,” she insisted. “You can’t get away for a few days. You would never forgive yourself if something were to happen to your dad while you were gone, and at this point something could happen to him at any time. He’s your priority.” Her expression begged him to agree.
“You’re my priority, too. How am I supposed to do a good job taking care of my dad if I can’t see you? If I can’t be with you?”
She didn’t answer.
“If I can’t travel to see you, then how soon can you get away to visit me here?” he asked.
She swallowed. “I’m not sure. I’m going to be really busy for the next several weeks.”
She was hedging. “But you are planning to come back?”
She looked down at her feet for a long moment, then up at him. “I really don’t know. I’m sorry, but that’s the best answer I have at the moment.”
The air left his lungs.
“Corbin.” She spoke kindly, persuasively. “Every day I’ve told you that we weren’t together.”
He interlaced his hands behind his head.
She gestured him forward. “Come sit down with me. Let’s not fight on our last night together, okay? I can get you some more ice cream since the portions that Nora dished up were small, and I’m sure you’re probably still hungry. Let’s eat ice cream and make out.” She attempted a coaxing smile.
He took a step back from her.
“Corbin,” she whispered.
He continued to press his hands into his skull in order to hold himself together.
They were still standing inside Bradfordwood’s foyer. Which was perfect, wasn’t it? She’d never let their relationship take them anywhere. They’d always been stuck in a place that was just an entrance to something better. And now the foyer of their relationship had become an exit to something worse. “Let me get this straight.” He kept his voice ruthlessly level. His arms lowered. “I can’t see you and you don’t have any plans to come back here to see me.”
“I really am sorry. I can’t express to you how thankful I am for the time we’ve had together.”
“I don’t want your gratitude.”
She flinched but kept her chin up. “I don’t know when we’ll see each other again, but we can talk every day on the phone—”
“I love you,” he said. Subtle fury edged the words.
He’d been ruined by her abandonment the last time. Even so, he’d given her the power to ruin him a second time. He was furious with himself and furious with her for refusing to trust him, for refusing to love him back. He wanted her to fight for them, to hang on to what they had. But he could see in every inch of her that—just like his dad—she’d decided not to fight. She wasn’t going to hang on.
“You are everything to me, Willow. I’ll do anything in the world for you. I want to marry you. I want to have a shot at taking care of you and loving you and making love to you every day for as long as I live. There never has been and there never will be another woman for me. You’re it.”
She moved toward him, and he could tell by her expression that she meant to throw her arms around him. To kiss him and comfort him. And then abandon him tomorrow.
Just like he didn’t want her gratitude, he didn’t want her comfort.
He held up a staying hand. Her steps immediately stopped.
“Do you love me?” he asked bluntly.
“I . . .” That one sound. It was just one syllable, and yet it was enough to damn all of his hopes.
He waited.
Tension vibrated through the space between them.
He waited.
He gave her more than enough time. Too much time.
One second slid into the next, but she didn’t say anything more. What more proof did he need? She’d made herself very, very clear.
He spun on his heel and slammed Bradfordwood’s door behind him.
———
Involuntarily, Willow lifted both hands to cover the lower half of her face. During their exchange just now, her lungs had tightened as if she were being physically wounded, and her breath had wanted to stop off in her throat. She stood unmoving on Bradfordwood’s polished hardwood floor, struggling to comprehend what had just happened. Things had fallen apart so quickly and so completely.
Just minutes ago, her family and friends had been here, and she’d been having a lovely time. Just seconds ago, she’d been in Corbin’s arms.
And now this.
If only she’d responded better to the things he’d said to her. If only she’d been able to find the words that would have placated him. Instead, she’d been limited to an inadequate handful of words because of the promises she’d made to Joe.
She felt like the mother in the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, who’d promised the little man her firstborn child and later come to regret her promise. Except in Willow’s case, knowing the word Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t going to save her.
Back when she and Joe had their discussion, she’d had no ide
a that her promises would prove so hard to keep. She hadn’t fully anticipated the power of Hurricane Corbin. She hadn’t understood then that he had the ability to change a day from bad to good with a smile, to make her feel as though she’d finally found home, to revolutionize her heart with his acceptance of her.
He’d said he loved her.
A wave of dizziness rolled over her.
He’d said he’d do anything for her. That he wanted to marry her. That she was the only woman for him. He’d spoken with unvarnished honesty and vulnerability.
Numbly, she walked toward the sitting room at the front of the house. Perhaps he hadn’t driven away. Maybe he was still parked out front, rethinking things. If so, then it was possible that he’d come back inside and spend more time with her on her very last night. She’d completed all her packing earlier in the day so that she’d be able to focus entirely on him when the others left.
The view out the sitting room’s window revealed empty driveway. He was gone.
She needed to make it right.
She couldn’t make it right. For now, she had to leave it the way that it was.
She must have seemed like the coldest, meanest woman alive just now.
Willow lowered into a nearby chair and wrapped her arms around her middle. For months now, she’d been the only occupant of her childhood home. But for much, much longer than that, she’d been encased in aloneness. Since she’d left home for college? Since she’d set out to pursue modeling? The girl whose big dream had been to be a part of a loving family of her own had been living with a sense of aloneness for so long now that she couldn’t put a start date on it.
She’d wanted to tell Corbin that she loved him, too. To assure him that she’d come back to see him. Soon.
Did you really think your relationship with Corbin would end happily? a taunting voice within her asked. After what you did in the past with him? You’re not good enough to deserve a happy ending.
Another thought rose up in defense: But I’m doing this—honoring his dad’s request—to prove that I’m trustworthy. To prove I’m not that same girl, riddled with mistakes.
She sprang up from the chair and went straight to the mudroom. She couldn’t stay inside, alone, with these thoughts. Not tonight, during the hours she’d planned to spend with Corbin.
