“I’ve done worse for whiskey,” Travis said. “Why?”
I stood up from the couch. “You’re joking, right?”
“No,” he said. “This is… we’re going to make it to my place tomorrow, Willow. This is the last night of our adventure. I know it’s not really this long and drawn out thing. But I figured that we could just sip whiskey and enjoy the night.”
Reality punched me in the gut.
We were going to be at Travis’s tomorrow. Not that I was going to get there and rush back home myself. But this illusion and allure of freedom was coming to a really quick end.
“You really played guitar? How? Your guitar is…”
“Someone else’s,” he said. “I guess I’m good at what I do.”
He was close enough to touch my face. When he did, I shivered.
He lifted the whiskey bottle off the bed and twisted off the cap and flicked it across the room.
“Cheers,” he whispered. He took a sip and handed me the bottle.
I took a drink, never letting my eyes leave his.
There was a lot of time to kill. A lot of things we could have done.
“I want you to read something,” I said.
“The love letter you packed?” he asked.
“It’s not a love letter, Travis,” I said.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a goodbye letter,” I said. “From someone I lost.”
24
Flickering Shadows and Silhouettes
TRAVIS
And in the last hours of time that only matter to me, I wish you happiness. Nothing but happiness. Because happiness gives you time. And when that time is cut short, you live on happiness like stolen breaths. I lost time a while ago. In the shell that’s my new home, I can find everything that’s been done. Everything good. All the happiness flashing like fireflies in the summer. Back at my great aunt’s farm. Standing there in the twilight with a jar, a lid, and a hope to catch a few of them and watch them glow. I hope you never stop glowing, Willow. And at the same time, I hope nobody ever catches you with a jar and contains you. The hardest thing we ever have to do is face time. And we’re forced to face it every single day. So, I’m going to face the last little bit of time with whatever is given to me. For you, I want nothing but happiness.
With love,
Helen
I looked up from the letter and folded it.
“Helen,” I said.
“Not what you were expecting,” Willow said.
She sat on the floor with her back against the couch. She stared at the fireplace.
I gently placed the letter on the couch and walked to the fireplace. It was a simple gas fireplace and took me the quick flick of a button to turn it on. I walked to the lights and shut them all off.
Now it was just the flickering glow of the fire.
Willow hugged herself with the thick comforter still wrapped around her.
“That’s not from an old boyfriend,” I said as I sat down next to her.
I had the whiskey bottle ready to go for both of us.
“No, Travis. That was never my thing. There was only one person I ever had feelings for.”
The look she gave me screamed it was you, but I didn’t want to believe that for a second. We didn’t really know each other before, and only shared one kiss. That wasn’t enough to fall in love with me, was it?
“So, who is Helen?” I asked, avoiding anything that would result in Willow spitting out something romantic when she had been drinking whiskey.
“You know I’m a nurse,” she said.
“So I’ve heard.”
“I worked at a hospital, but didn’t really like it. It was so busy all the time. And I just didn’t… I didn’t like it. So, I went into private care. Cancer patients. Alzheimer’s. Hospice care. People at home that were sick and not going to get better.”
“That sounds like a hard job.”
“You know, it wasn’t as hard as I thought,” she said. “My first day, there was a woman named Gina. She told me to not get serious with anyone. That I needed to fall in love with caring for the person and not the person. Which sounded strange, but it made sense. It made losing them easier. There were times when I was there when someone… you know, passed away… and I needed to be clearheaded. I needed to write things down, make phone calls, console the family. And I was good at it. I took pride in it, if that makes sense. To be there and try to ease that horrible feeling.”
I looked at Willow and felt my heart twisting harder than ever. “Shit, Willow. I had no idea that’s what you did. That’s amazing.”
She touched the whiskey bottle. “Until I met Helen.”
“Helen was a patient?”
“Helen had Alzheimer’s. She thought I was her daughter. Her daughter was killed in a car accident. I guess her daughter was my age when she died. I could deal with that though. But then Helen… she took to me. Beyond thinking I was her daughter. The only time she was coherent was near me.”
“So why did she think you were her daughter?” I asked.
“She had moments,” I said. “But most of the time, it was just us. And she understood who I was and why I was there. She had two sons and they were living their own lives. They didn’t come to visit as much as they probably should have. And I got too close. I started visiting Helen when I wasn’t on the clock. I brought her dinner. We watched movies. We read books together. She showed me pictures of her family. Told me stories. I… I messed up, Travis.”
“How did you mess up?”
Willow looked at me. Her eyes welled with tears. “I secretly and emotionally traded my family for Helen.”
“What?”
“I looked to her as my mother. You’ve met my mother, Travis. She never got over the death of my father. She and Wren have the same mindset. I was alone with Wren with nobody to talk to. And with Helen… she was caring. Loving. She would give me little gifts. Make me little things. Even the dumbest of holidays… like the first day of spring… she gave me a flower. Just these small little things that mattered. I got too close to her. And when she started to take a turn for the worse, I couldn’t handle it. At one point, I got into an argument with her one son, William. I was screaming at him over the phone while Helen cried in her bed, thinking it was fifty years earlier and her dog had run away. My boss finally told me to stay away. To take a breather and clear my head.”
“You didn’t listen, did you?” I asked. “Because you’re stubborn and have the biggest fucking heart in the world.”
“I don’t know about that,” Willow said. She sipped the whiskey and made the wincing face again.
I reached across and softly touched her jaw. “Bunny, you have the biggest fucking heart in the world. You’re fierce. You’re a ball of goddamn fire. You trust your heart and gut in a way that most people can never do.”
“Look where it got me, Travis.”
“And where is that?”
“I didn’t stop going to see Helen. And when they assigned a new nurse to her, she got angry and confused. She declined really fast. There were times I’d visit, and she’d get mad at me. The last time she actually spoke with me, she cried and said I left her like everyone else does. The next time I visited, she had that letter left out for me. That night, while I was reading the letter for the fiftieth time, she passed away. It crushed me. Everything around me crushed me. So, I quit my job.”
“I don’t blame you for that,” I said.
“But I fucked up. I got too close to Helen. And… what if…”
She looked forward at the fire.
“What if what?” I asked. “We’re leaving it all out here. So say it.”
“What if me getting close and then getting fired made her die?”
“Why would you think that?”
“She was so upset. And confused. The stress on her body…”
I slowly put my arm around Willow. “Don’t think that. If anything, you gave her life. You gave her love. That letter she wr
ote you, Willow, that was her clear as day writing to you. From her heart.”
“I know,” she said, her voice cracking. She looked at me. “Can I say something mean to you?”
“Sure.”
“Shut up and hold me,” she said as she broke down in tears.
So, I did what she asked.
I sat on the edge of the bed with the fire dancing, casting shadows across the shiny wooden floors. I touched Willow with my left hand, feeling the beautiful curve of her hip as she slept. She was curled up tight in the comforter and I put an extra blanket on top of that. The whiskey had done its job for her. She opened up, broke down, and was now passed out cold. Sleeping it all off. Lucky for her, she knew her limit and would probably wake up with a hangover that only required a decent amount of coffee and a pair of sunglasses.
As for me, I sat there with the bottle in my right hand, sipping it like water.
I never really knew what Willow had gone through. She wore guilt that nobody deserved to wear. And it was a sense of guilt I understood.
Oh, fuck, did I get it.
I pushed from the bed and stood up. I walked toward the fireplace and stared down at it, feeling the intense heat against my body.
All those bullshit words I spat at Willow were the same ones that had been said to me. The same words I had said to myself in the mirror. Lying to my own fucking reflection. And now lying to Willow.
Don’t think that. If anything, you gave her life. You gave her love.
But for me, it kept going…
You were her everything, Travis. She looked up to you. You did nothing wrong. You have to think of it as if she was sick… and there was nothing you could do to help her. You were there. That was all you could do.
I swung my hand forward and punched the brick mantel of the fireplace. The brick didn’t move, but I felt my knuckle explode with a white-hot pain.
A hand touched my back and I jumped.
“Travis?”
I turned quickly and saw Willow standing there.
She was awake.
And she caught me in a really fucked up moment.
Lost in a memory. Unable to escape.
“Oh, Travis,” she whispered.
Willow reached up with one hand and touched the tear on my cheek. I couldn’t speak at that moment. I could only take heavy breaths, like some kind of beast ready to lose its mind.
The whiskey bottle fell from my hand and crashed to the floor with a thud, tipping over.
I moved my right hand toward the comforter draped over Willow’s body. My fingers cut between the cloth until I touched her warm skin.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“I lied to you, Willow.”
“Lied to me? About what?”
“Not wanting to feel guilt,” I said. “You should feel guilty. I do. I could have done more. Seen more. Asked more questions. I could have stayed that night. I didn’t…”
“But you did,” Willow said. “You know you did. You can’t blame yourself.”
“That doesn’t work on me,” I said. Rage built up from the pit of my gut.
“But you just tried it on me,” she whispered.
“Yeah. That’s why I’m a fucking liar. And you’re a fucking liar. Because it doesn’t make anything feel better. Ever. You just get more numb. More angry.”
“More lost,” Willow said.
My hand slid around to the small of her back and pulled her close.
“Travis, you don’t have to be afraid to show yourself to me,” she whispered. “I… I really care about you. What you don’t know…”
I didn’t want to talk anymore. I didn’t want to think anymore. I didn’t want to imagine Willow going back to that fucking town with her messed up family and then falling into the arms of Sam. He wouldn’t know how to hold her. How to kiss her. How to explore her wildest depths with his mouth, body, his eyes. Nobody would fucking know how…
“Fuck this,” I growled.
My hands ripped at the comforter, throwing it off her body. I scooped her up into my arms and walked her to the bed.
The entire time we stared at each other, not even kissing.
We were going too far over the line.
But the good news… our hearts were already broken… so who gave a shit?
I told myself that this was it. This was the moment to steal for the rest of my damn life. We’d been tiptoeing around this shit for a long time and I was done with it. There was no romantic fantasy of Willow making an announcement that she was going to stay on the beach and live near me - or with me. I would need to make my peace with my decision to leave town, and would need to find some sense of comfort knowing that another man would offer Willow forever, and she would take it.
Even if it was the wrong kind of forever.
With each kiss to her sweet and smooth skin, I felt my brain throbbing, working overtime to make sure I would never forget. From this moment forward, any woman that I decided to be with would be thrown against the wall of comparison to Willow… and they would lose.
I tasted the curve of her hip, moving down to her inner thigh. The whiskey in her body left her loose, groaning louder than normal, her body wiggling, wanting me to just fuck her.
Between her trembling thighs, I paused to inhale her. Her honey clung to her folds, my tongue aching for one more taste of desire. Which I helped myself to. Except there was never just one more taste when it came to Willow. My hands eased around to her ass, my fingertips kneading into her skin, lifting her, my tongue already starting to write something that sounded like a goodbye, but felt really fucking good.
Her hands dug into the sheets on the bed, her back arching, a breathless moan dancing across the room like the flickering shadows and silhouettes from the fire in the fireplace.
I realized my tongue was moving slower now. I was studying her. I was memorizing her. Flirting with the temptation of going too low, only to ease back up and thrust forward, her slit pulsing with her racing heartbeat. Trying to battle the need to come, but knowing she would lose that battle, no matter how hard she tried. When the taste of her body overtook the taste of whiskey in my mouth, I inched up and pressed my lips to her tender clit. Her sweet pearl was for the taking, and each time I kissed her there, her hips bucked.
I kept going, kissing up her body. Rounding over her smooth skin, kissing around her belly button, feeling her heavy breathing, never stopping. Not once. I didn’t want to ever stop kissing her. We could live in our own world of guilt, letting the open road flirt with us and never actually heal ourselves, because this was what broken got us.
I nuzzled my nose over her left nipple, watching her skin tighten as I did. I parted my mouth slowly and tasted it. With the very edge of my teeth, I pulled just enough to get her to wince with excitement.
There was one more trail of kisses left for her from me, working my way to her ear where I paused. I reached down between our legs, sliding my fingers against her slit one more time before gripping myself with the force I had been holding back from Willow. Which wasn’t like me at all. I didn’t hold back.
As I eased myself into her, her hands slapped to my back. Each time I took her, it was like she had never felt this before. Which made her even sexier.
I grit my teeth as I slowly guided myself to the hilt. She sheathed me tightly, pulsing with the desire to make me lose myself.
I pulled my hips back and thrust forward. Slowly. Thoroughly. Making sure there wasn’t an inch of my body - or hers - that wasn’t properly taken care of.
With a quick nibble at her ear, I moved so I could stare into her eyes.
That felt like a mistake.
Our eyes locked and never let go.
Our noses sometimes touching, sometimes not. Her lips parting, closing, parting. Her breaths laced with whiskey, a little groan escaping and flirting with my lips. I kissed her once, stopped, promised I would never kiss her again, and broke the promise a second later.
Everything was slow. Everythi
ng was perfect.
The fire from the fireplace left our shadows dancing across the walls. We’d forever be ghosts in this room, in this bed, which was the whole point of this trip.
My heart and my head ached in a way that nobody understood… except Willow.
I brought my right hand up along her perfect body, stopping at her face.
I held her as I fucked her.
She spread her fingers wide across my back.
With one more kiss, I had to break the stare. So, I eased down to her ear again.
There were words jumping from my tongue to my lips, my brain telling me to speak the fuck up, my heart telling me to shut the fuck up.
Willow hooked her legs around my ass and pulled, letting out a whimpering groan.
“I love this,” she cried out. “Travis, I love… oh…”
I felt the explosion from within her core as she came.
Her soft touch to my back became rough again. Which was what I needed. So, I sped up. I matched the roughness she craved in that moment.
Which was perfect.
Because I was one breath away from telling Willow I loved her.
25
A Little Bit Like Home
WILLOW
I couldn’t figure out how to start the fire in the fireplace. I held the comforter around me yet again, and stood with the letter from Helen in my hand. I wanted to burn it. I wanted to leave all this right here.
It was morning and my head ached more than I cared to admit. But the night before… it felt stupid and girlish to say the best I’d ever had, but that’s what it was. I never felt anything like that before. Being able to open all the way to Travis. To see Travis so vulnerable. I wiped a tear off his face. The biggest and toughest boy, who turned into a man, I ever knew. The guy who could stand stoic with a stone like face no matter what. And he let himself go in front of me.
This was our moment. To open up and let things out.
I tried hard not to think about what would happen later today or tomorrow. Or when I’d have to figure out if it was time to go home.
What You Don't Know (True Hearts Book 6) Page 23
