Perhaps it was simply that she had contemplated marrying him and Gannon was jealous and even hurt by the idea that she had once considered herself fully committed to this man, ready to link her life to his and share them into eternity, even though there had always been a glimmer of questioning in the back of her mind when she thought of marrying Gavin and a spark of relief in the concern when he didn’t return home that day. The thought that Gannon could have that strength of feelings for her already seemed almost ridiculous when she first considered it. They had known each other for such a short time and though they had been working toward getting to know each other and becoming closer with every passing day that they had spent together in the greenhouse, there was still so much that she didn’t know about him.
The more that she thought about it and allowed herself to truly experience the emotions that were going through her, though, the more she realized that she felt the same. If she knew that something was happening between Gannon and another woman, or that he had had the type of connection with another woman that she had had with Gavin, no matter how short a time that they had known each other, it would upset her. Letting this sink in only underscored how deeply she had come to care for him, and made it even more difficult for her to understand what would have caused him to be so upset that he would leave her that way.
Willow wanted so much to talk to Gannon, but she didn’t know what she would say to him. He was the one who ran from her, and she knew that that meant that he needed to be the one who came back to her. She had to give him time. There was no other option, though that was a more painful thought that she could ever have imagined.
Chapter Nine
Gannon wanted to break something. He hated the feeling. He hated what the anger and frustration was causing within him, and he felt like every second that he felt it was only a confirmation that he had made the right choice in leaving Willow, even though it was that very decision that was causing the feelings. His hands clenched at his sides as he paced up and down the stable. The horse stood in its stall, seeming to watch him as he paced and struggled to regain control over this thoughts and emotions. He felt like the violence that had been trained into him was bubbling back up and the thought of allowing that to happen was sickening, yet his fingers tingled with the desire to release the pressure that was building in his chest.
Finally, he let his head fall back and an animal scream echoed up to the ceiling. The horses whinnied in response and pawed at the ground, seeming to commiserate with him. A few moments later the door to the stable opened and Jonah ran in, his eyes frantic as he looked around for whatever danger might have caused Gannon to scream that way.
“Gannon?” he asked. “Was that you?”
“Yes,” Gannon said. “I’m sorry, Jonah.”
“Are you alright?” he asked.
Gannon didn’t know how to respond. He certainly didn’t feel that he was alright, and yet he had no idea how to describe what it was that was making him feel that way. He couldn’t put words to it or even reconcile it in his own mind. There were too many things, too many worries reverberating through his mind.
“I don’t know,” he finally answered.
“What’s going on?” Jonah asked, coming further into the stable. “Did something happen? Is it Ryan? The Valdicians?”
Gannon shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
“Willow,” Gannon replied.
“Willow?” Jonah asked. “Didn’t you spend the afternoon with her helping her with her strawberries?”
Gannon nodded.
“I feel like something is happening in me and I don’t know what it is or what to think or do.”
“What do you mean?” Jonah asked.
“I kissed her,” Gannon said.
He saw Jonah smile and take another step toward him.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” he said. “Do you care about her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you care about her?”
“No. I don’t know if it’s good.”
“Why wouldn’t it be good for you to care about someone? Isn’t that what you wanted? To be able to live a normal life now that you aren’t in the facility with Ryan anymore?”
“That’s just the thing,” Gannon said. “Is it even possible for me to live a normal life? Am I just fooling myself into thinking that getting out of that facility would actually give me my life back, or let me do anything that might be normal?”
“Your life can be anything that you want it to be, Gannon,” Jonah said.
“I don’t know what it is that I am feeling for Willow and even if I did, she doesn’t know who I really am.”
“I think that you do know what you are feeling,” Jonah said. “You want to be near her. You want to spend time with her. You want to touch her.”
“But she doesn’t know who I am,” Gannon reiterated. “She doesn’t know where I came from or what I’ve gone through.”
“Does that matter? If you want to be with her, don’t you think that you can find a way to get through anything?”
“I want to be with her more than I would ever have believed that I could want something. I would do anything for her. But I don’t know what she would think if she really knew about me. How would she feel knowing that I was created in a lab? Or that I’ve been trained my entire life to fight? Or that the only reason that I know how to take care of plants is because I cared for the farms that fed the other captives?” He took a breath, feeling embarrassment creep its way into his mind. “Or that I have never been with a woman.”
Jonah nodded, his expression telling Gannon that the other man finally realized what was bothering him.
“You don’t have a normal background,” Jonah said. “I’m not going to argue that. But neither do I. I didn’t think that Aubrey was ever going to be able to understand what I went through and what brought me to the laboratory building where we found you. I thought that when she heard about it and knew who I was that she would either not believe me and have nothing to do with me because she thought that I was lying to her, or that she wouldn’t be able to handle the truth and not even want to try. But she did. It took her some time to process it, but she never faulted me for the reality of my life. You can’t help where you come from and who you are any more than I could, and you can’t judge how Willow will react any more than I could have judged Aubrey. The reality is that you don’t know how she will respond to the truth about you, but if she cares about you, it won’t matter to her. You are the same person when she finds out your past that you were when she didn’t know, and if the feelings that she has for you are real, they won’t change.”
“I’m afraid that I can’t control myself,” Gannon admitted. “What if I hurt her?”
“You aren’t a machine, Gannon,” Jonah said. “You are your own person, a unique being. Yes, you’ve been trained to do certain things and act in certain ways, but that doesn’t mean that that is all you are capable of.”
“I feel so vulnerable when I’m with her,” Gannon said.
“I know that feeling,” Jonah said. “It’s frightening, but only because it’s new. Loving someone like that makes you vulnerable, but not in the same way that Ryan’s control over you did. You won’t hurt her. You might feel like you are the only person who doesn’t know what to do, but you have to remember that every one of us has had that moment. Trust yourself. Trust her. All you need is to love her and the rest will work its way out when and how it is supposed to.”
Jonah patted Gannon on the back of the shoulder and walked out of the stable, leaving Gannon alone with the image of Willow in his mind. He knew that he had run from Willow because part of him believed it would be much easier if he didn’t try with her. That part of him knew that he was moving toward something completely unknown and that reality was terrifying. Another part of him, a much stronger part, though, now told him that he couldn’t jus
t be without her. He couldn’t simply pretend that he wasn’t feeling what he was for her, or that he could go forward into a normal life without at least trying to have her by his side. He had fallen in love with her and he needed to at least try. He needed to give himself a chance to reach out to her and try to figure out a way that they could get beyond everything that had been holding them apart so that they could be together.
Chapter Ten
It took three days before Willow felt like she was able to face the greenhouse again. She hadn’t gone to visit Nana again and when she didn’t hear from her, Willow figured that the older woman either didn’t know what had happened between her and Gannon, or that she was angry with her for the same thing that had driven Gannon from her arms. The last thing that she wanted to do was go into the greenhouse and face the space that she had come to associate with the time that she got to spend with him, but she knew that if she didn’t the plants that were in there would wither without her care. She needed to water them and ensure that they were healthy. Those plants were something that had always been a part of her and she couldn’t just start neglecting them now.
She walked into the greenhouse and immediately paused. She had expected silence among the flowers and fruit and vegetable plants. Instead she heard soft sounds coming from the far corner, behind a bank of fruit trees that were nearly ready for transplant in the small orchard she had been working on building. Willow walked toward the sound, curiously peeking through the trees and gasping when she saw Gannon standing at one of the high tables that she had placed there. He turned in response to the sound and she saw a glimmer in his eyes.
“Gannon,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I needed to talk to you,” he said. “There’s something that I never got a chance to show you.”
“What is it?”
He turned and picked something up from the table, turning back to her and holding it out. Willow narrowed her eyes at it slightly and walked around the trees toward him, scrutinizing the plant that he held in his hands as she approached.
“Is that…” she started, not believing what she was seeing.
“I’ve been working on it as a surprise for you,” Gannon said.
Willow reached out and rested her fingertips to the gorgeous blooms on the tiny bush he was presenting her, feeling the softness of the petals and the strength of the stems. It was vibrant, immediately surrounding her with its unique scent.
“I thought that it was dead,” she said. “How did you do this?”
“I found it on the first day that we were working in here together. It was just kind of tossed in this corner, but the way that it was positioned, it still got a little bit of water from the off-spray of the sprinkler system for those trees. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that its roots hadn’t fully dried up. I thought that with a little bit of care I might be able to restore it.”
“I can’t believe it,” Willow said. “It has never been this beautiful.”
“It reminded me of myself,” he said. “I felt like I was nearly dead, but then you brought me back to life.”
Willow’s lips parted and she felt tears forming in her eyes.
“Gannon…”
“I am so sorry that I left you the way that I did,” he said. “It had nothing to do with you. I want you to understand that.”
“Then why did you go?” Willow asked.
“I was afraid,” Gannon admitted. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, and I was afraid that if you found out who I really am that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”
Willow felt panic squeeze at her heart. His words were frightening her, but she needed to hear what he had to say. She had to at least understand what had happened, no matter what that meant she needed to find out.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I know that Nana told you that I came to live in her house because I am a friend of Aubrey’s husband,” he said.
Willow nodded.
“She said that you weren’t able to continue living where you had been and that she had offered to let you stay in one of her guest rooms until you found your own place.”
“That is only somewhat true,” he said.
Willow nodded, reaching out to carefully place the flower back on the table.
“Alright,” she said. “So, what is the truth?”
Gannon drew in a breath and she could see that he was struggling with what he needed to tell her. The words seemed to be forming in his throat, but he wasn’t able to bring them forward. She stepped up to him and ran her fingertips along the side of his face so that he looked at her.
“You can tell me,” she said. “Anything. You can tell me anything.”
He nodded.
“It’s true that I came to live with Nana because I know Aubrey’s husband Jonah, but I wouldn’t exactly call us friends. At least, I wouldn’t have then. I suppose that we’ve come to be friends now, but when I first met Nana I had only just met Jonah a few days before.”
“Where did you meet?” she asked.
Gannon swallowed hard and stared into her eyes for several long seconds, seeming to want to extend the moment before he told her whatever it was that he was holding inside of him.
“He was one of the people who rescued me,” he said.
Willow felt like the words didn’t completely go into her mind, like she heard them but that they were still hovering somewhere in the air, unable to process through her mind but also irreversible.
“Rescued you?” she finally asked.
Gannon nodded and leaned back against the counter as he started to talk. She stood in front of him, listening, barely breathing, as he told her the horrible reality of how he had come to know Jonah. He told her of the inhumane experiments that were being performed at the University, experiments that created him but also turned him into a vicious soldier. He told her of the brutal treatment of not just the hybrid creatures that this man had made, but also of the women he had stolen from the world outside of his sickening facility to turn into human incubators for the hybrids. She listened, trying to withhold her emotion, as he described the battle that had waged in the building and how he had watched as one of the women, a woman who at the time had had no name, just as he didn’t, had broken strict regulations to reach out to one of the human women against whom they had fought to plead for her help, and then had been captured by people he called the Valdicians to be put through reprogramming.
Willow didn’t want to listen to it. She didn’t want to hear any more of the torture that he had gone through or the suffering that he had experienced throughout his life. At the same time, she knew that she had to listen to it. She had to give him the validation of having a voice and speaking to what he had gone through. Only by saying what he had seen and felt and survived could he truly take ownership not just of those moments, but of all of the moments that he had ahead of him. She had to give him that.
When he was finished, he looked weakened, tired as if pouring all of that out to her had taken all of his energy away from him. She felt relieved knowing that it wasn’t her that had caused him to run away, that she hadn’t hurt or upset him in some way that had pushed him away from her, but she also felt sad and had a deep longing to soothe him, to take away all of the pain that he had gone through and give him the new life that he deserved.
Willow walked up to Gannon and took his hands in hers. She looked down at them, admiring each callous, cut, and scar that stretched across his palms. She saw even greater beauty in those hands now. They were not just touched with a mastery of plants or the skill to care for animals. These talents may have been born into him, but every mark on his skin was earned through finding meaning and comfort through his toils. She brought his hands up to her mouth and gently touched her lips to each palm.
Gannon let out a long sigh as she repeated the kiss on the inside of each wrist. Bringing their hands down between them, she stepped up closer to him and looked into his eyes.
“It brought me to you,” he said. “I would endure it a thousand times more if it still brought me right here to this moment.”
“You will never have to go through it again,” she said. “I love you. I want to show you what it is to love and to be loved.”
Willow guided Gannon back so that he sat fully on the counter and stepped up between his thighs. Resting both hands on the sides of his face, she rested her lips on his, recapturing the kiss that they had lost when he ran from her. Their mouths immediately sank into one another, melting into a deep, searching kiss that went so far beyond anything that she had ever experienced that she already felt nearly overwhelmed. She craved more of the sensation, more of the need for him, and she climbed up so that she straddled his hips again just as she had when they were in her living room.
The low wooden counter wasn’t as comfortable as the sofa, but it felt natural and soothing to be there in the space where they had built their connection. His chest felt warm and strong against hers and she could already feel the beginning of his erection hardening beneath her hips. She knew that he didn’t understand what he was feeling and that each touch, each kiss, was a new exploration for him. She wanted to give him the time to explore each feeling and to move at the pace that was right for him, but she also knew that a powerful instinct was within him. She had seen the beginning of it when he first swept her into his lap and she knew that if he could connect with it, it would drive him.
Moving her hands down to his shoulders, she rolled her hips subtly against his. Her fingers found the buttons along his shirt and she worked her way down them, gradually revealing his body. Their mouths parted and she pushed the shirt back off of his shoulders so that it fell away. As soon as she did she could see the stark reminders of the torture that he had endured. A long scar stretched down from one shoulder along his chest and onto his stomach. She could feel Gannon tense as she looked at it and knew that he felt embarrassed that she was seeing it. Refusing to allow the scar to be a source of pain for him any longer, Willow ducked her head and kissed his shoulder where the scar touched. She followed the scar with a trail of soft kisses until she reached as far down as she could, then let the tip of her tongue slip out so that she could lick her way back up to his shoulder.
Gannon & Willow's Story (Uoria Mates V Book 2) Page 5
