To Have and to Hold: A Returning Home Novel

by Serena Bell

  She took a deep breath. “I still love Hunter,” she said. “He just doesn’t love me.”

  She’d spoken too soon; Phoebe was still hunched over, wedging her water bottle out of her pack. Phoebe surfaced from between her knees and gave her mother a suspicious, squinty-eyed look.

  “Or, well, he doesn’t think he loves me.”

  And suddenly Trina was mad. At herself.

  “Because he’s terrified,” she said aloud.

  “Mom?”

  “He’s always losing people,” she said. “He’s terrified of losing people. Of course he pushed us away. And I’m so used to being pushed away, I just said, ‘Okay, sure, I’ll leave before anyone here gets hurt, just show me the door.’ ”

  She would have smacked herself in the head, if gestures like that actually existed.

  “Mom?”

  Phoebe was clutching something in her hand.

  “Someone left something in my seat-back pocket.”

  She held it out to her mother.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Trina said.

  In the palm of Phoebe’s hand lay a small, black velvet box.

  She reached for the flight attendant call button, because whoever had lost whatever piece of jewelry was nestled in that box was going to be pretty damn sad about it.

  Someone caught her raised wrist from behind.

  “Wait,” the someone said.

  The someone’s voice was familiar. Deep, warm, a little husky.

  The hand on her wrist was familiar, too. Would be familiar to her in the darkest room in the darkest moment, if it reached for her.

  “It’s for you,” another voice said, from lower down. A smaller, higher-pitched voice.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Phoebe said, jumping up and down.

  Trina turned slowly and found Hunter smiling at her, and she lost her footing and ended up half kneeling on her seat, the velvet box clutched in one hand, Hunter’s hand clutched in the other. He pulled her back upright and drew her as close as the seats would allow.

  Kiss me, she thought, but he didn’t. He just looked into her eyes, and his were dark and full of wishes.

  “We’re going with you,” Clara said brightly.

  “You’re—”

  “I should never have let you leave,” Hunter said. “After—” He stopped. “Phoebe. Do you mind if I switch seats with you?”

  Phoebe, who looked like she might burst from joy, just nodded, and he traded places with her and sat beside Trina. There was still no one in the window seat beside her.

  “After Dee died,” he said quietly, “I pushed everything I felt down. I couldn’t—I couldn’t bear to think of what Dee had lost. Or what Clara had lost.”

  “Or what you’d lost. You lost something, too,” Trina said, because she knew he wouldn’t say it, out of deference to her. But there was room between them for this piece of history, for all its complexity. There had to be, because he would never be at peace until he owned it. “Maybe you didn’t love her as much as anyone can love another person, but you did love her. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t have broken your heart so much that you couldn’t give her what you thought she needed.”

  He closed his eyes and lifted his hand to his forehead, but she pushed his hand away and leaned close to kiss him where it hurt, instead. And then she made a very, very small sound of satisfaction as his mouth found hers. Just briefly.

  He drew back. His eyes shone with affection and gratitude. And maybe—?

  She didn’t dare hope again. Not quite yet.

  “Yes. What I’d lost, too. I pushed it all down and it was back there in the bottom of my brain, and it ambushed me when I saw that other woman in the rubble. It ambushed me then, and the other night when it came back to me in that dream, and it was so much, too much, I couldn’t for a little bit see around it to you. But then—then Clara went missing. The girls—”

  “Phoebe told me.”

  “She scared me so bad, Trina. She shook something loose, and for the first time, I let myself—grieve, I guess. And I realized. There are so many things I can’t change. Can’t fix. But there are so many things I can, things I can make right. People I can treasure and protect—”

  The way he was looking at her was making something ache in the very center of her chest, and tears brimmed.

  “I promised you that I knew you, that my feelings wouldn’t change—”

  She stared at him, astonished.

  “You remember?”

  “After I found Clara and—everything—”

  Whatever he was trying to say, he couldn’t go any further. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and smiled at her almost sheepishly. “That’s it, though. That’s the only thing I remember.”

  “That’s a lot,” she said.

  “Yes. It is a lot. And, Trina—”

  He took both her hands in his. “My feelings haven’t changed. They never really did. Only how hard I tried not to feel them.”

  “Oh,” she said, because it was all she could manage without crying.

  “I tried really damn hard,” he said. “But apparently that’s not one of the things I have control over. Luckily. Anyway, I’m done trying not to love you.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said dryly, the humor making it possible for her not to begin bawling like a baby. She was über grateful that there was still no one in that third seat. She could concentrate only on him, his angled, beautiful face, his dark eyes, darker still with love and desire.

  “Or—let me put that differently. I love you. I love you so much, Trina.”

  Her lips parted, but before she could speak, he gestured at the small velvet box. “Open it.”

  She opened it.

  Nestled in the white satin lining lay a thick silver ring carved to look like intertwined branches, and settled into the middle, like a tree house cradled in the canopy, was a diamond.

  “I found it. When I was looking for Clara. It was in my closet. I must have bought it before I deployed.”

  Her breath caught, hard, in her throat.

  “You know what that means. I was going to propose when I came home. I knew. Even then. But now—”

  The expression on his face was so open it hurt, like looking into the sun.

  “Now I know in all the ways it’s possible to know. In my head, but also in my heart. And with every cell in my body. You’re funny and strong and smart and you’re an amazing mother and you’re sexy, not just in an in-bed way, but the whole way you are. No-nonsense and all-in. And you move into a room or a house or a life and make it beautiful, until it’s the best place to be in the world.”

  During that speech, the ache in her chest had turned to warmth and spread to her belly, into her core, radiating out like sun rays even to her fingers and toes.

  “And if I forgot a million times and had to start over and over again, I know those are the things I would love about you every time.”

  In the center of her chest, something blossomed, not a slow unfurling but something brighter and harder. She understood why so many writers, so many literary traditions, located love in the heart. It was hard not to believe it lived there, in the ache and bloom behind her ribs.

  “I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And if it has to be in L.A. for Phoebe’s sake, or because of your job, I totally get it. I don’t want to take either of you away from what you need. But just in case it doesn’t have to be L.A., I did buy us four return-trip tickets.”

  He pulled a folded envelope from his back pocket and handed it to her.

  She was crying, because the ring was so beautiful and he was sliding it onto her finger and the tickets lay on the seat between them, which meant she could go home to where she belonged. In his house, in his bed, with her family.

  “Yes,” she said.

  His face lit. His eyes, his smile, and something behind it all, a peace she hadn’t seen since before.

  “It doesn’t have to be L.A.,” she said. “Stefan Spencer has
survived twelve years of rarely seeing his daughter. He will learn to live with having a long-distance relationship with her. And the job—” She shrugged. “Sometimes you cling to the past because you can’t see the future clearly. I can find a way to do design here just as well as there. Once upon a time it seemed like I needed the glamour of television, but—” She smiled at him. “That feels like a different person, now.”

  He grinned.

  “Whew,” he said. “Because I don’t think there’s much of a market for tree houses in L.A.”

  —

  He had never seen anything quite as beautiful as the bright glow in Trina’s face as she looked from the ring to him and back again. Or felt such a deep sense of certainty.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it.”

  An announcement cut through her words. “If you would please give your attention to the flight attendants—”

  “Couldn’t have cut it any closer, really, could you?” she asked.

  “I could have done a dramatic show-up-in-L.A.-and-beg thing.”

  “That would have been cool.”

  “But honestly, I am totally opposed to not having you in my bed tonight.”

  He settled a kiss against her cheek, near her ear, his breath brushing softly over her skin.

  “Mmm.” She cast a look over her shoulder. “We don’t have a seat mate.”

  As if on cue, a skinny middle-aged woman with a pinched face made her way up the aisle, maneuvering around the flight attendants doing the safety demonstration. Hunter’s blood flow, which had been working its way south in response to the coy look Trina had given him a moment earlier, had to divert back to his brain.

  “Spoke too soon.” Trina sighed.

  They made way for their third seat mate, who was giving off the vibes of the profoundly overwound, muttering about the chain of complicated events that had made her so late. She’d barely gotten her seatbelt fastened when the plane lurched and pulled back from the gate.

  “Hey,” Trina murmured. “This isn’t all on you, you know. What happened. You said you should never have let me leave, but I should never have left. I didn’t realize that there was this little voice in my head saying, ‘Fine, you don’t want us? We don’t want you, either.’ I guess it’s been saying that ever since—ever since Stefan told me he didn’t want to help raise Phoebe. And it’s made me more defensive on my own and Phoebe’s account than I needed to be. You did an awesome job getting by those defenses the first time around, and I just didn’t see that you didn’t have the resources this time to put up the big fight. Which is fine. You don’t have to fight anymore, Hunter. You can be done. You can rest. I’ll fight for us for a while, until you get your energy back. Okay?”

  He felt a swift, glorious sense of relief, as if something infinitely heavy had been lifted off his shoulders. He hadn’t realized how tired he was. Ever since he’d come to with his head and chest hurting, he’d been exhausted, and even though all along she’d been telling him with her body that he was safe, that he could sleep, he could dream in peace, it meant so much to hear the words coming out of her mouth.

  He could rest.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. “And that feels so familiar and so new at the same time. My mother used to say—she and my father had been married thirty years, and she was this weird combination of romantic and pragmatic about it. And she said that the trick is to give yourselves new opportunities all the time. To fall in love again. And that if you can do that, it’ll last. So you fall out, because that’s the nature of life, that things get stale and time wears you down. But if you’re lucky, love renews itself. I guess this gives me faith that no matter what happens to us, we’ll fall back in.”

  He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her full on the mouth, and she didn’t hesitate before opening completely to him. She was so warm and soft and giving and—

  Their third passenger resettled irritably in her window seat. Hunter released Trina and shifted uncomfortably, his jeans suddenly way too tight.

  It was going to be a long flight.

  Chapter 30

  “You’re in big trouble, obviously.”

  Phoebe scuffed her sandal on the rug in the airport.

  “Both of you,” Trina qualified. “You scared years off Hunter’s life. And Nate and Jake and Griff’s, too. You would have given me a heart attack, had I actually known what was going on.”

  “He was supposed to tell you,” Clara said. “That was the whole point.”

  Clara’s face showed defiance, and something occurred, suddenly, to Trina. She crossed her arms and stared Clara down. “You didn’t really get your period.”

  Clara shook her head.

  “You lied to me. To get me to stay longer. Yeesh.” Trina shook her head. “This is what we get for enrolling them in theater programs,” she said to Hunter. “Actresses.”

  “I’m thinking no more theater ever,” Hunter said darkly.

  “Or softball, for that matter,” Trina said.

  She was enjoying herself. They sounded like allies. Like parents.

  They sounded like a family.

  She snuck a look at him, and he was sneaking a look back. And his eyes held all sorts of emotions, so many she didn’t trust herself, suddenly, not to cry.

  She didn’t even have words for it, for how she’d come back to life. Breathing for what felt like the first time in days. The numbness she hadn’t realized had taken over her own body thawing. Her heart beating, hard. Joy like an invader in her veins.

  And the look on his face when she’d said yes. He’d lit up, all the blankness gone, a sudden vivid longing painted all over him.

  This was everything she’d never dared hope for.

  Her silence must have scared the hell out of the children because Clara suddenly burst out with, “It was Grandma’s idea!” like she’d cracked under intensive interrogation.

  “You hiding, you mean?” Hunter said.

  “Not just the hiding,” Clara said, very, very quietly.

  Trina and Hunter both turned to her, and Hunter demanded, “Do you mean it was Grandma’s idea to pretend you had your period?”

  The last word came out like Hunter wasn’t quite sure of it.

  He’d never have been able to deal with menstruation without me, Trina thought. And hid her smile so the kids wouldn’t see.

  “You’ve been—plotting with Grandma all along? What, like on the phone?” Hunter sounded incredulous.

  Both girls were nodding.

  “You, too?” Trina asked Phoebe.

  More nodding.

  Trina finally gave up on pretending she wasn’t impressed. “Wow.”

  “I’m going to kill her,” Hunter said.

  “Don’t kill Grandma!” both girls said simultaneously.

  “We’ll figure out some suitable consequences for all three of you,” Trina said.

  “Grandma is grounded for a year. No phone privileges till she’s ninety,” Hunter growled. But she could see he was wrestling a smile, too. It made her heart feel two sizes too big.

  It made her want to cave in every possible way, which in turn made her stand up straighter and put more steel in her spine as she addressed the girls. “You know this is very serious.” But she, too, was having trouble with the corners of her mouth. “You lied to us. Outright. You deceived us and scared us and—”

  “But it worked!” Clara cried. “You’re going to stay!”

  Suddenly Trina’s chest felt terribly, terribly tight and she had to blink, hard.

  “Oh, honey,” Trina said. And put her arms around both girls. She snuck a look at Hunter, who nodded. “Yes. Phoebe and I are staying.”

  One of the girls in her arms gave a shriek of delight, and then both of them were talking at once. “We thought you were!” “Phoebe said you were!” “It’s pretty cool that he followed you to the airport. It’s really romantic.” “Not that we like romance. We think it’s gross. But still.
” “Does this mean you’re getting married?”

  “Yes.”

  There was an interval of loud hooting and hollering and quiet, tearful hugging.

  “And then he’ll be my father? And you’ll be her mother? And we’ll be sisters?”

  Phoebe’s tone was so reverent that it made Trina’s breath catch.

  “He’d be your stepfather. And I’d be Clara’s stepmother. And you’d be stepsisters.”

  “But good stepsisters. Not evil stepsisters.”

  “Speaking of which,” Trina said. “You’re still in trouble. No electronic devices for three days. Including all telephones.”

  It was a testament to the happiness of the moment that Clara and Phoebe barely even groaned.

  Chapter 31

  “Shh.”

  She woke to find a hand over her mouth, and she bit it, hard. The owner of the hand grunted and resolved into Hunter.

  “You were making a lot of noise.”

  “Because your hand is in my pants,” she pointed out. The other one was hot against the crotch of her flimsy panties, which were now wet flimsy panties.

  “You liked it. You were rocking against it.”

  She wasn’t going to argue about that. She could feel how swollen she was and wondered how long she’d been moving against him, but she put that question out of her head and resumed the rhythm she’d left off.

  “You fell asleep waiting for me to finish putting the girls to bed,” he whispered. They were staying in two adjoining rooms at a hotel near the airport.

  “Sorry,” she whispered back. Only she wasn’t. Not anymore. Hard to be sorry about anything when he’d found exactly the right spot to rest his palm against her. Ungh.

  But it wasn’t quite enough. Not the pressure against her anatomy, not his other hand idly swirling near her nipple. She arched her back to try to get more of both, but he failed to oblige. He was doing it on purpose, the bastard, teasing her. She moaned and closed her thighs around his hand.