“You take her to a professional. Because let me tell you, Father, that isn’t normal.” I gasp, covering my mouth after yelling that. Did I really say it? Yes, I did because the best thing that happened to me was having my family and friends to help me understand that I needed help. “Traveling around the world is only denying that there’s a problem.”
I pause, controlling my voice. “Mom has a big problem. I can’t imagine how you deal with it. It can break you, too.”
“It’s ironic,” Hazel says, glaring at him. “That you’ve repaired, and built houses for hundreds and hundreds of children you don’t know.” She straightens her spine, lifting her chin. “And yet, you don’t give two fucks about your wife or your own children,” Hazel concludes.
“Tell me, Grant,” I speak. The heat of the conversation is firing my voice. “Is this volunteer gig penance for fucking up your family or just a way to pretend that you’re close to a holy prophet?”
“You can’t possibly imagine what it was like to make the choices I did,” Dad says, breathing loudly.
“No, we can’t because you pushed us away,” I counteract, my free hand balls into a fist. “In a way, you erased us from your life.”
He shakes his head. “That was never my intention, Willow. Never. I loved you from the moment the doctor put you in my hands. There’s no greater love than the one I have for you girls.”
His shoulders drop. “No one will ever understand why I did what I did. I made a judgment call. Was it right?” He shrugs, looking at both of us. “At the time, it felt like it was the only solution. The family next door was loving and caring. We only left a few days at a time.”
“It became a few months,” Hazel adds. “Then years. We came to visit because we want a relationship with you. Or at least to stop yearning for it.”
“I want that, but . . .”
“She doesn’t,” I finish his sentence.
“No, we’re leaving.”
Dad tells us that Mom found another place to volunteer. “She’s embarrassed about her behavior,” he explains.
Unfortunately, I understand. There have been times I fucked up a relationship because I was too embarrassed to apologize for my mistakes. That’s the old Willow. If my mother doesn’t know how to handle her emotions, it’d be almost impossible for her to see these people eye to eye again.
“So that’s it?” Hazel and I sound like little children learning that the Easter Bunny never existed, and we will never celebrate the holiday again.
He asks if we can meet them at the place they are going. It’s just outside of Mexico City. Hunter, who hasn’t left my side, consults with Harrison and Scott about this new trip. We agree to find some time at the end of summer.
“We need to know more about your partner,” Hunter suggests. “Laila must have triggers. If we learn them, it’ll be easier for all of us.”
Dad says he’ll try to borrow a computer or find a library where he can email us everything he knows. As Hunter requested, Harrison makes the necessary arrangements for my parents to travel tonight. He explains that once he lands, his people will provide him with a phone and a computer.
“I’m sure your daughters will appreciate receiving daily updates about you, sir.” Harrison hugs Hazel, kissing the top of her head. Fitz and Scott who I just noticed were in the room do the same. The three of them hug me when Dad leaves telling me I will always have them. We are a family.
“Dinner, people.” Harrison breaks the tension.
“Why don’t we eat and come up with a plan? Grant is willing to donate a hefty amount to the town. We need to send him a list of improvements they need in order to receive it.” Fitz heads to the kitchen.
“Are we staying, or do you want to leave?” Harrison starts serving once we are all seated around the table.
“I vote for finishing the week,” Anderson, one of his friends suggests.
After discussing my grandfather’s donation, we talk about the possibility of going to dinner and surfing. We eat. Hazel and I offer to wash dishes tonight. I want to talk to her.
“What are you thinking?” I ask my little sister who is chewing her lip as she rinses the dishes and passes them to me.
“Can I hate them tonight?”
I arch an eyebrow, tilting my head. “For only one night?”
She nods. “Tomorrow, I’ll remind myself that he’s been living in some kind of hell separated from his daughters while dealing with her.” Then she sighs. “I can’t imagine Mom’s pain, Wills.”
“I can,” I whisper. She must live terrified of everything and hating everyone, herself the most. I want to help her. The kid inside me wants to search for her mom, make everything better and hope that she’ll love me again. But I hate her, too. I hate that she’s weak like I am. I hate us both. I shouldn’t. My head hurts, and I hold it shaking it several times as I try to make sense of today’s events, of this week. Nothing helps. Maybe Hazel makes sense. Hating them isn’t fair. But giving ourselves a chance to do it, and purge the feeling out of us isn’t a bad idea.
“If I had my phone, I’d call Elliot,” she says, her shoulders slumping. “Feels like this is something I should share with him. He witnessed what happened. He was there for me.”
“Why don’t you?”
“It’s like when I slept with nameless guys. In my mind, I pretended they cared. But the next day, I knew it meant nothing.”
I want to tell her that she doesn’t know that. That maybe if she calls him, he’ll fly out and be with her. I think about Hunter, who worked his schedule so he could be here with me. That’s when I get it. She’d expect that big of a gesture from him, and she’s afraid Elliot won’t do it. I believe my sister’s free pass is to hate my parents, but also to dream that he’ll come to her side.
“We have a free pass, then. You can always ask Harrison to lend you his phone.” I smile and wink at her before finishing off the dishes.
Thirty-One
If all else fails, set her ablaze
I like to think of myself as a hopeless romantic, with a dirty mind. ~ Hunter Everhart.
No one is sleeping tonight. After Grant’s visit and dinner, Willow withdrew from everyone. I wanted to soothe her, to love her, and to take the pain away. She didn’t let me or anyone else close to her. I remain awake, leaning against the wall outside her room waiting for a sign. A sign that she’s okay, or that she wants me nearby. It’s been a long night. The tension has increased now that everyone is supposed to be asleep. Listening to Grant Beesley Jr. talk about his family, set everyone on a state of alert.
We don’t know if Willow is going to lose her shit. I’m confident she won’t. Hazel asked for Harrison’s untraceable phone to make a phone call. We don’t know who or what happened, but afterward, she remained close to Fitz. In fact, she moved her sleeping bag to our room where my brothers are watching her. I think we’re all afraid she’s going to have a nervous breakdown. We knew almost everything about her. Yet, she had kept a big chunk of her life from us. It included living alone since she was sixteen. During high school, she worked part-time to compliment the stipend her parents sent.
She moved in with her grandfather after graduation to earn money because the neighbors who cared for her almost lost their home. She felt compelled to do something since they raised her. I recall seeing her tired from weekly traveling to North Carolina and back, staying up all night working on homework or the projects her grandfather assigned her. Yet, she never had money to spend on frivolous things.
“I’m saving for something special,” Hazel used to say.
Until the weekend when she traveled to San Francisco. It was her twenty-second birthday, and she decided to spend it in California with her friends. She came back the next morning broken. Ever since then, she’s had more time to spend with us and money to spend on herself.
The rustling coming from Willow’s room makes me turn. I rise and open the door. She’s sitting against the wall with her legs crossed. She’s tearing the pages
of her journal. I push myself to enter the room and close the door behind me. The room smells like Willow. Coconut, flowers, and that sweet scent unique to her.
“Willow?”
She sets the journal on the floor, lifting her gaze. “What would you do if you were him?”
I take a step back, balancing from the force of her question.
“Who would you choose? Your daughters or her?”
“Both.” I don’t falter. “I would find a way to help my wife while being with my children. They would need at least one of us.”
Walking to her, I slide along the wall, sitting right beside the most confused woman. I feel her body shaking, and hear her soul screaming. “You’re you. Remember the way you protected your sister when you were children? You’ll be a fearless protector.”
I place my hand on her bare knee, caressing her leg, slowly driving it toward her core. “Stop thinking about a future that doesn’t exist yet, Willow. Concentrate on the present.” I take off my shirt, picking up one of the markers she’s using, and hand it to her. Instead of taking it, she climbs onto my lap. Her lips press against mine, they are firm, soft, needy, and rejecting. Everything she’s feeling is personified through them. Opening my mouth, I let every emotion inside, too. She sways her body, rubbing herself against by growing, hardening dick. Fuck, fuck. Be strong, don’t touch her.
That’s impossible. My hands start roaming her body—remembering every curve. She peels off her tank top, releasing her tits. Pushing herself closer to me, my hips roughly driving themselves faster and faster against her body. I outline the taut tips of her breasts with my tongue. My hands move downward, skimming either side of her body to the elastic of her shorts.
“Willow,” I say her name as a prayer, a confession, and defeat. “We shouldn’t.”
“I need this, Hunter. I need the peace I feel when you drive yourself deep inside me.” She moves from my lap, my body missing hers already. “I ache for you. Tonight, I’m giving myself a pass. I’m letting my emotions drive my body. Please.”
As I nod, she undresses and unbuttons my shorts, too. My erection bounces as she frees it. Climbing back on my lap, she centers herself over my hard erection, moving forward. “Tonight, I’m in charge,” she says as she slams her hips against mine, burying my shaft deep inside her.
“Fuck.” I grip her hips with my fingers driving myself even deeper. Her back arches, crying out along with me. Her hips move as she slides up and down, riding slowly. Every inch of me filling her tightness. Fuck, she’s so fucking wet, soft—like sliding inside of warm velvet. I’m close to losing my shit as the grip of her walls squeezes me hard. Our bodies are in exquisite harmony with one another. Soaring together, reaching for that peak.
“Touch me,” she orders. This version of Willow is making me fall apart. I stop myself. She needs to lose herself in the moment—I want to make the moment last forever. At least for the entire night while she’s driven by her passion.
My mouth sucks her nipples with tantalizing possessiveness. My hands slide across her belly, all the way down between her legs. Her eyes flutter open when I find her clit and rub it. I gasp as she grounds herself harder on to my pulsating cock. My free hand moves around her tight ass, I wet my thumb with her soaking juices and slip it into her pucker. She loves when I fill all of her. This would be complete if I could tell her how fucking crazy I am about her. How much I love her. That this time it isn’t an illusion. I have a dream for us and if she allows it—it could become everything.
Suddenly, her movements stop. Her eyes open. My hands freeze as she looks at me in a way I’ve never seen. Her eyes are bright, filled with life. “You’re thinking. It’s too much and too loud.”
“What?”
“I need you to stop thinking about it.” She climbs off my lap, walking to the long dresser that sat on the other side of the room. Resting her torso on it, she turns her face to me. “Write it while you fuck me.”
“Lose yourself inside me and let me lose myself inside you. Everything else can wait.”
She opens her legs; the scent of her arousal hangs in the air. Grabbing the marker, I move closer to her, fitting myself inside her. One arm wrapped around her waist, my fingers finding her clit. My right hand scribbling words. The ones I can’t say. Her inner muscles clamp around me.
“Don’t come yet, Willow,” I order her, pushing myself inside deeper.
Writing faster as I propose to her to spend the next millennium with me. Everything I haven’t told her.
I missed you when you weren’t around.
I need you constantly.
I want every day of the rest of my life with you.
I want to trace your body with my lips.
I want us to sink deep into each other.
I want to be inside of you.
I want to cuddle in bed.
I want to fight.
I want to have make-up sex.
I want to fall asleep with you by my side.
I want to be the reason why you smile.
I want to grow older with you.
I want to be the exception to your rules.
I want to be the person you will trust with your heart and your soul.
Because I love you all of you just as you are.
I place the marker on the table, changing my pace as I get ready to come apart. I pull out, flipping her around and pushing her against the wall. Her legs close around my waist; her arms hold onto my shoulders. Her walls grasp me tighter as she tosses her head back. Her body is shaking. The heat of her juices pouring onto my pelvis, making every muscle in my body vibrate. My core tightens, and I capture her mouth drinking her orgasm as my body vibrates. My cock jerks deep inside her. I feel it as we both fall apart, collapsing on the floor.
I hold onto her, waiting until she falls asleep. I move us to her sleeping bag, adjusting the blanket and molding her curves against my body.
“I love you,” I mumble against her ear, kissing her long neck. My eyes close, as I promise that this time nothing will tear me apart from her.
Thirty-Two
Aftereffect
You wanted to dance, so I asked you to dance But fear is in your soul Some people call it a one-night stand, but we can call it paradise. ~ Duran Duran
I have no idea what to expect after last night. I feel like this is the morning after. It can’t be. We are both living under the same roof. What should we call it? A one night. Are we dealing with the aftereffect today? Should we talk?
I can’t talk about it.
It was my fault. It was a careless request from a desperate woman who had written a hundred times, I need Hunter. Because I didn’t want to need him. I wanted to work through the need as a useless emotion. But no matter what I said—or wrote—the moment he entered the room I knew that everything I did tried was pointless. I needed him throbbing inside me. To get intoxicated by the feel of his lips, the touch of his hands. I wanted him to set me on fire.
And it was. We were intense. Ablaze. We burned through the sky last night. We touched the highest peaks. But I saw it in his eyes. The need for more, of everything. Us. He was surrendering himself, hoping I’d do the same in exchange. I couldn’t handle those thoughts. Not last night when my mind housed too many negative emotions. Hunter, the paramount emotion I can’t handle, remains raw on the surface of my skin overshadowing everything. The man who also evokes all the emotions known to man. Falling asleep in his arms after the most intense declaration of love was bliss.
While he was thrusting himself deeper inside me, I realized he’s everything. He’s the sea of tranquility to my mind. The fucking storm that floods me with passion. He’s the madness to my clarity and the clarity to my madness. Everything makes sense. Except, my soul hides in fear. That senseless, ridiculous anxiety caused by my insecurities.
“We have things to do,” Harrison’s voice rumbles like distant thunder.
“I guess it’s time to wake up.” Hunter’s tone is deep and sinfully rich.
“Interrupt your internal chat?” He kisses my temple. “I wouldn’t dare. Do you regret it?”
He slams the question, my stomach feeling the full blow of the words. Shaking my head, I fire back, “Do you?”
“Nothing that’s happened between us is regrettable.” He closes his eyes for a second. I feel the fast thumping of his heart against my chest. “Not even when I had to leave you. We both needed time apart.”
“I know,” I mumble, last year the two of us were a mess. “Last night was powerful. But I’m not ready to discuss it. Is that okay?”
“Ah, last night. We can discuss it when we are home, and we can do a lot more.”
Home. Getting to do something for others is rewarding, but I could use my bed and my bathroom.
“I need a shower.” I squeeze my eyes tight, the walls in here are paper thin. “God, everyone heard me last night.”
His lips capture mine, devouring me. “We are adults, Willow. Today, Fitz, Hazel, you, and I are going to the next town for a well-deserved shower.”
“We need to work.”
“It’s also work,” he says, rolling me to my back. Pressing his lips to mine, I feel the tingling heat flow across my body. In one swift, powerful thrust, he takes ownership of my body and my soul. He doesn’t take his eyes off me, conveying the fiercely urgent need of making me his.
“More,” I moan, I beg and with each sound as he fucks me harder, pushing me to the edge. Losing myself as we run up high.
Under blue and sunlit skies, the view was wondrous to behold. We are in the rooftop restaurant of the small hotel. In a town called Piranha. It’s thirty-miles west of where we are staying. From up here, I can see the trees, the flowers, the sea, and the swarm of busy people going about their day. The damp smell, combined with the scent of the rose arrangement sitting on our table makes me want to stay for a few more days.
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