Guilty Needs

by Shiloh Walker

  But she couldn’t not ask. “Is this about Alyssa?”

  She could see the answer in his eyes. He’d seen her. When, though?

  She might have even asked him, except, just like that, his features became shuttered, blank. With a shake of his head, he muttered, “No. Forget I said anything.”

  The rest of the meal passed in awkward silence and Bree ended up leaving two-thirds of her spaghetti uneaten on her plate. By the time the waitress came with the check, she was damn anxious to get out of there and apparently Colby was in the same state of mind. They both reached for the check at the same time. “I’ll take care of mine,” she said.

  He didn’t even look at her. “I brought you. I’ll pay.”

  Arguing with him was only going to keep them trapped there longer and she needed to get out of there, get away from him.

  He’d locked her out.

  Again.

  The pain inside him was a cancer and all she wanted to do was help, but he wouldn’t let her. He had disappeared for a year, no letters, no phone calls, nothing—it was pretty damn clear he didn’t want or need her help.

  In her chest, her heart was a cold, icy knot. He doesn’t want me, Lys. I wish you could see that.

  The drive to her house was another exercise in awkward, tense silences, but when she tried to make her escape, he hit the door locks just as she reached for the handle. “I’m sorry. I think I forgot how to act with people in public,” he said quietly. Sliding her a glance, he shrugged. “It’s been a weird day.”

  “They happen.” She wanted to lean forward and wrap her arms around his shoulders. His eyes were so serious and he looked so worried, so miserable. But touching him? Not a good idea.

  Instead, she forced a smile and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

  Don’t worry about it? Oh, the irony.

  For the next week, Colby did nothing but worry about it. Worry about her. Worry about Alyssa. Worry about the very weird day when he’d seen his wife’s ghost in the basement of her best friend’s house.

  She hadn’t made a return appearance.

  Even when he had another dream about Bree and woke up feeling sick with guilt. It had hit him hard, but instead of collapsing under it, he’d shoved back. “There’s nothing to feel guilty about,” he’d told himself. He mostly even believed it. At least now.

  And that might be why Alyssa hadn’t made a repeat appearance.

  He spent the week in his office going through paperwork. On Friday, he found a partially finished manuscript that he’d set aside probably four years earlier. Most of his stuff was in the urban fantasy scene, with a few more traditional pieces.

  Darkness might have some urban fantasy aspects, but it was too dark, too macabre to be called anything but horror. Flipping through the loose pages, he found himself getting engrossed. A red pen, a tepid bottle of water—with his back pressed against the wall, he lost track of time, making notes in the margin, going back, rewriting a few passages in long hand then he got to the last page and realized the sun had set and he’d spent the past four hours doing rewrites on a piece that wasn’t even done.

  But the story had turned into a song in his head, one that wouldn’t shut up. So instead of stretching out the kinks in his back and getting something to silence the growl in his belly, he pulled out the chair, booted up the computer and brought up the file holding the notes and partial manuscript for Darkness.

  By the time the song in his head settled down to a quiet hum, it was dark outside. Dark in his office too, because he’d never bothered to turn on the lights. He didn’t bother doing so now, either. Instead, he just saved the updated file and made a backup copy on an SD card he found buried in one of the drawers.

  His back was a mess of knots and aches. Exhaustion pushed at him but he didn’t head to the guest room where he’d been sleeping since he came home.

  He headed outside, stripping out of his clothes, his goal the pool.

  It had hit the high nineties today and right now, he’d bet the water would feel like warm silk. He was right. The water closed over him in an embrace. Holding his breath, he swam along the bottom until he had to surface. Then he started to swim laps.

  His muscles warmed and he fell into a regular rhythm. Letting his mind drift, he toyed with the plotline for Darkness, taking mental notes and debating whether or not he should even try getting a proposal together for his agent. Hell, if she was still his agent. He hadn’t talked to her in a year and he wouldn’t be surprised if she’d decided to let him go. Yeah, he’d made her a decent amount of money but he was dead weight right now. Publishing didn’t allow for a lot of dead weight.

  But the story wasn’t going quiet—he already knew that. He even had a glimmer of how it was going to end and unless he’d lost his rhythm during his twelve-month break away from the computer, he had a feeling he could wrap Darkness up in a few weeks.

  Putting together a proposal was a good idea.

  His muscles were starting to burn but he didn’t quit swimming until he’d managed to hammer out the basics in his mind and formulate a somewhat formal letter to his agent. Angela Browning wasn’t the overly formal type, but since he’d been playing mute the past year, going formal wasn’t a bad idea.

  He swam another two laps and then just let his body float.

  Overhead, the moon shone down—a pure, clear circle of silvery-white. His mind drifted, with little surprise, to Bree.

  It just means you’re ready to love her.

  Ready to love Bree.

  For some reason, the idea of it didn’t rub him quite so raw. Ready. Was he ready?

  Always one to test himself, Colby deliberately thought about his wife. For the longest time after she’d died, he wouldn’t let himself think about her and when he had, he’d tried to jerk his thoughts away before he got lost in them. Thinking about her bought a stab of pain that threatened to eviscerate him.

  It got to be habit, until he found himself thinking intentionally less and less. Wayward thoughts would intrude and he’d find himself fighting the tidal wave of grief, but thinking back, he realized that had been slowly ebbing down over the past couple of months.

  It no longer had the power to level him.

  And now? It was the first time he’d deliberately tried to do much more than visualize her face in his mind—excluding all the times he’d done it just to punish himself.

  He went through a mental list, tried to recall the way she smelled. The way she tasted. The way she felt against him. It was all too hazy and vague. A surreal memory that would grow ever fainter with every passing day. Some part of him hated that—he wanted to keep her memory alive. But, even as he tried to make his thoughts of Alyssa clearer, more vivid, he realized other thoughts were trying to intrude.

  Bree.

  He closed his eyes, and just like that, he could see her. The way she knelt in the grass, her long, slender fingers digging through the earth. The way she smelled of flowers and sunshine. The smooth, golden glow of her skin and the quiet, deep gray of her eyes. Her smile. The way one look at her had his knees going weak while his dick got hard.

  It just means you’re ready to love her.

  Maybe.

  Just maybe.

  Of course, just because he was ready to admit that maybe he was falling in love with Bree didn’t mean she felt the same.

  And one thing he knew he wasn’t ready for was to have his heart shatter inside his chest again.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday dawned a little cooler, the skies a leaden shade of gray and threatening rain. Although Bree tended to sleep in a little on weekends, she rolled out of bed and hit the shower. Saturday—she needed to cut some flowers from the backyard and take them to Alyssa.

  It was a ritual.

  After a quick shower, she cut a couple of stargazer lilies from one of her flowerbeds in the back, their pale petals streaked with deep pink. She wrapped the stems in wet paper towels and climbed into her truck—only to swear, the second she looke
d at the gas gauge.

  She’d forgotten to fill up. If she took the truck, she might not have enough gas to make the drive to the cemetery. Weird for her, but the past few weeks had been a study in weirdness. So much so that she couldn’t do more than sigh and swear under her breath as she climbed out and headed for her bike.

  Half an hour later, she knelt by Alyssa’s grave and took out the flowers she’d brought last week, replacing them with the fresh lilies. They’d fared okay on the bike ride, she guessed. Good thing she hadn’t decided to bring roses this time.

  “So are you still going to be bringing me flowers this time next year? Five years down the road?”

  Blowing a sigh, Bree looked up to see Alyssa sitting on the stone bench a few feet away. “You know, it’s sort of a respect thing.”

  Alyssa shrugged. “No. It’s sort of a comfort thing people do for their loved ones.” Her face softened with a smile and she said, “I’m glad you still think about me, but you don’t need to bring flowers to do that.”

  “I’ll bring flowers if I want to bring flowers.”

  Alyssa’s dimples appeared. “Which means, knowing you, you’ll still be hobbling down to my grave when you’re ninety, just to bring me flowers.”

  “So what if I do?” Tears stung her eyes. Ninety—hell, was she really going to be still doing this in sixty years? Spending her nights alone, making Saturday treks to a cemetery to sit with a friend who never should have died so young?

  “If I wasn’t meant to die so young, Bree, I wouldn’t have died.”

  Feeling more than a little bitchy, Bree snapped, “Are you still going to be fussing at me for bringing you flowers when I’m ninety?”

  But the expected retort didn’t come. She looked at Alyssa and found her friend gazing at her with something between grief and peace. “No. I don’t think I’m going to be fussing at you much more at all.”

  Bree blinked. “Huh?”

  Alyssa shifted her gaze, staring at a point behind Bree. “I still love him, you know. And if it was anybody but you, I think this would hurt like hell.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Alyssa smiled. Her body shimmered, faded. “I love you, Bree. You were the best friend any girl could have ever wanted. Be happy with him.”

  “Are we back to that?” Bree demanded.

  But the question was posed to empty air, because Alyssa was already gone.

  She didn’t know what made her turn.

  She hadn’t heard his car, hadn’t heard him approach and she knew he hadn’t said anything. But he was there. She knew it even before she turned around. Slowly, her legs stiff, her heart slamming away, she turned to watch as Colby walked her way.

  There was something different about him.

  It had only been a week since she’d seen him, but something had changed. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  His hair was still too long, in desperate need of a cut. He looked a little tanner, like he’d spent some time working outside. But that wasn’t it. He moved… She nibbled on her lip, watched how he strode toward her and thought back.

  His walk, she realized.

  The past few weeks and before, really back when Alyssa and he had first gotten the news that the cancer was too advanced, he had walked as though he had the weight of the world crushing down on him.

  Slow. Not feeble or anything. Just deliberately slow, as though, if he moved too fast, the weight on his shoulders would fall and crash. Or he would.

  As if he were doing some sort of unseen balancing act.

  But that had changed.

  He moved with the confident, easy grace he’d been born with.

  He came, halted beside her and smiled, reached up to brush her bangs back from her eyes. He glanced at the flowers on Alyssa’s grave, then down at the ones he held. It was a store-bought bouquet, a bunch of daisies that were dyed brilliant colors. They looked exactly like something Alyssa would have loved.

  “Yours look better than mine,” he said.

  Bree made herself smile and shrug. “Yeah, but yours look like something Alyssa would have picked out.” She took them from him and knelt, under the pretense of adding his daises in with her lilies. Really, she mostly needed to have a minute to get her breathing level before he wondered why she was practically panting.

  The daisies’ bright colors should have looked silly next to the quiet beauty of the lilies, but she decided it looked just right. “How are you doing?”

  “Good. I think.” He crouched down beside her. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at him and saw that he was smiling. The faint, easy sort of smile a person had when things were going right. An unconscious smile. “Was going through my office yesterday and found an old story I’d set aside. Ended up flipping through it and next thing I know, it’s nine o’clock, I’ve added fifty pages to the story and half the plot is worked out.”

  “Really? That’s great.” She turned to look at him, smiling. He hadn’t written anything since he’d finished the last book in his contract a month before Alyssa died. “Your agent is going to be thrilled.”

  He grimaced. “If she still wants to be my agent. I’ve left her hanging for quite a while.”

  Without realizing what she was doing, she leaned forward and hugged him. “You’ve had a hell of a lot to deal with, Colby. She’ll understand that.” She squeezed, but before she could pull away, his arms came up and wrapped around her.

  It was an awkward position, her kneeling, Colby balanced on his heels. But he didn’t seem interested in letting her go. Bree didn’t have the will to pull back from him, not even when he shifted around and settled on the ground so he could pull her into his lap. All without letting go. “I missed you,” he said quietly, his breath whispering along her skin.

  It was an innocent statement.

  Even his embrace was innocent. Bree knew that.

  Just as she knew, if she didn’t get away from him soon, she was going to embarrass herself. She squeezed him and said, “I know. I missed you too.” Then she tried to ease back.

  He let her, but he didn’t let go completely. She ended up sitting on the ground between his thighs, one of his hands on her waist. She sat as straight as she could, trying to keep from leaning against him. “Where did you spend the past year?” she asked, trying to make herself think about something other than the fact that he was so damn close.

  “Here…there…everywhere. Spent some time in South Carolina, drove down the coast. Spent the past couple of months working in Mobile.” He shrugged.

  “Doing what?”

  “Nothing at first. Just driving. Had to keep moving around. Made it easier for a while. I took some money from my savings account and just used it for hotels, to eat on. When it was gone, I sold the Lexus and bought the cheapest car I could find and just did more driving around. Worked odd jobs—bartending, construction, whatever.”

  “Did it help?”

  He was silent for a while. When he answered, his voice was thoughtful, slow, as though he still wasn’t entirely sure of the answer. “I don’t know. Some, I think. I hid from it for a while. Hid from her dying. Did my damnedest not to think about her if I could, and when I started to think about her, I made myself stop. It made it easier.”

  “You weren’t ready.” Shifting around, she knelt in front of him.

  He lifted a hand and cupped her face.

  The feel of him touching her almost had her shuddering and she just barely managed to throttle it down. But she couldn’t control everything, and when she spoke, her voice was low and raspy. That could be blamed on other things though. He didn’t have to know it was because she was dying for him, right? “Sometimes we’re just not ready to deal with things. The mind shields us until we are, gives us time. You just needed some time. It gets easier.”

  “Yeah.” He slid his hand down, cupped it over the back of her neck. An unconscious gesture, she suspected, as he focused his dark amber gaze on Alyssa’s gravestone. “I’m going to love her
for the rest of my life.”

  Her heart broke. It was amazing that he didn’t hear the way it cracked inside her chest, amazing she didn’t drop lifeless to his feet as it shattered into thousands of useless pieces. “I know you will.”

  His gaze came back to her then and her useless, shattered heart trembled at the look in his eyes. But it was just a fantasy. He couldn’t really be looking at her like that. Looking at her with something an awful lot like desire—and more.

  Just a fantasy, she told herself as the sound of cars approaching broke the silence and ended the weird tension in the air. As one, they turned their heads, watched as a funeral procession turned off the main road into the cemetery. He stood and held out a hand. “I don’t really want to hang around here for this. Do you?”

  She grimaced. “Not especially.” Tracking the line of cars with her eyes, she slid him a glance. “Are you parked there?”

  “Yeah. Maybe we could get something to eat and you could bring me to get my car later.”

  “I’m on my bike.” She glanced up at the sky, but to her surprise, the leaden gray clouds were clearing up and sun was starting to stream through.

  Colby shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  “I don’t have an extra helmet.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Bree opened her mouth to say something else. Then she glanced back at the funeral procession and the unending line of cars. Alyssa’s funeral had been like that, attended by so many people that the parking lots had overflowed. If they were going to leave, it needed to be soon.

  Five minutes later, he mounted the bike behind her, rested his hands on her waist as she started it up. Already, cars were heading their way, coming around the back road toward the smaller parking lot. Bree whipped out of there before the first of the cars made it halfway down the lane.

  Heat.

  Shit, the heat of her was going to kill him. Even if guilt decided to rear its ugly head and make him suffer for what he was thinking, the heat would kill him before guilt had a chance.