Loving the Storm

by Linda Seed

  Whether she would listen to him was anyone’s guess.

  When Aria had left Cambria in a hurry on the evening of Christmas Day, she’d regretted leaving the yurt behind. She figured she’d deal with that later.

  Once she’d settled back into her apartment, she realized just how problematic that was.

  How was she going to explain to Gen why she’d fled Cambria and abandoned the residency? How could she expect Gen to go to the trouble of packaging and shipping the piece, after the way she’d run away?

  Aria was in breach of contract. What would that mean in practical terms? Was she going to owe Gen money? If so, how much?

  And finally, there was the fact that Gen was Liam’s sister-in-law. Aria wanted to cut off all contact with the Delaneys, but how could she do that when she and Gen Porter had financial and legal business between them?

  All of that would have been difficult to navigate given the best of circumstances. But these weren’t the best of circumstances. In fact, the circumstances kind of sucked.

  Aria felt as though she’d been lowered into a pit of sadness so deep she couldn’t even see the sky from here. The sadness, she told herself, wasn’t about missing Liam. It was about the chaos of everything—how she’d left her artwork behind, her residency blown, her career in shambles. And yes, maybe she felt bad about how she’d rejected him, because rejection hurt, and she never meant to hurt Liam.

  But she didn’t miss him. Of course not. The raw despair she was feeling had nothing to do with the absence of him beside her in bed at night, or the fact that she longed to talk to him about this or about anything, and couldn’t.

  She didn’t need him. She didn’t want him. And she sure as hell could live without him.

  The fact that she had to remind herself of that several times a day, sometimes while crying, didn’t mean a thing.

  Aria’s landlady stopped by a couple of days after she got home, mainly to check in and make sure everything was okay. Everything wasn’t okay, but Aria was determined not to give that fact away.

  “Oh. Jeannie.” Aria opened the door to the woman standing on her doorstep. Jeannie, who was in her mid-forties, had a long braid hanging down over each of her shoulders, and she was wearing a dress with a small floral print. The two things together made her look as though twelve-year-old Laura Ingalls had suddenly gained thirty years and been transported to the twenty-first century.

  “Aria, hi!” Jeannie said. “Max told me you were back, but I told him, ‘No, she can’t be. She’s not due back in town for another six weeks.’ But here you are.”

  “Here I am.” Aria tried to sound perkier than she felt. “My residency ended a little early.”

  “Well, that’s odd. Isn’t it? It seems odd to me.”

  Aria knew she should invite Jeannie in, but she wasn’t up for it. What she needed was to give the woman some kind of answers to satisfy her curiosity, then get her out of here.

  “Well, it’s unexpected, yes. But … I finished my project earlier than I thought I would, so …” She hated to lie, but the truth—she’d fallen ass over end for a man and had fled in terror—didn’t seem like a viable option.

  “Ooh, your project!” Jeannie’s eyes widened in curiosity. “What is it this time? I loved that thing you did with the surfboard and the cats.…”

  They hadn’t been real cats, of course, because that would have had protesters from PETA on her ass, and while that would have boosted publicity for the show, it wasn’t quite the effect she’d wanted.

  “It’s … a surprise,” Aria said. If she started talking about the yurt, she’d never get the woman to leave.

  “Ah. Got it. You don’t want to spoil the big unveiling.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Okay. Well, I can’t wait.” Jeannie’s ever-present smile faded, and she peered more closely at Aria. “Say. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Aria tried to sound like she meant it.

  “Are you sure? You seem a little …”

  “Really, I’m just tired.” Even before it was out of her mouth, Aria realized her mistake.

  “Oh! Well, let me go downstairs and get you some special herbal tea I’ve got—I have it mixed specially for me. Very energizing. Then I can give you the number for my aromatherapist, and—”

  Aria stopped paying attention at aromatherapist. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the doorjamb, listening to the perky tones of Jeannie’s voice.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It was going to take Liam a couple of days to get to Portland. He made it all the way to Eureka the first day—a drive of five hundred miles that took him almost ten hours, factoring stops for food and gas.

  He stopped at a Motel 6, bought a cold six-pack at a liquor store, and drank two bottles of beer while sitting on the bed watching football. He couldn’t really focus on the game—football was his mother’s sport more than his—so he tried reading a book he’d brought, a John Sandford novel that he figured had enough action to provide a pleasant distraction.

  The book didn’t work, either—he found himself reading the same paragraph multiple times while his mind wandered to Aria.

  Finally, he gave up and called Gen.

  “What if this doesn’t work?” he said when she answered her cell phone.

  “It’ll work.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” Gen blew out some air, and Liam heard it over the line like a small gust of wind. “But, Liam? If it doesn’t work, you’ll survive.” She didn’t say it like she was trying to make light of the situation and tell him that he was overreacting. She said it like she meant it. Like she was genuinely uncertain whether he knew that he would keep breathing if Aria shut him down.

  “I know it,” he said.

  And he did. If Aria shut the door in his face and never spoke to him again, he would, in fact, survive. But survival was one thing, and living the life he wanted for himself was another. Without Aria, he could survive all right. But he needed her in his life if he were really going to live.

  He hung up the phone, finished the second beer, and stared at a bad framed landscape print on the wall opposite the bed.

  “Goddamn it, Aria,” he said to the empty room.

  Then he took a hot shower and went to bed.

  When Aria had refused to take any phone calls from anybody in the Delaney family, Gen had e-mailed her. The message had been strictly business. Gen had informed her that she would consult her attorney and get back to Aria regarding the issue of breach of contract, and that she hoped they could reach a solution that would be agreeable to both of them. Then she’d told Aria that the yurt had been carefully crated and was, this moment, being driven up to her in a U-Haul truck. The truck should arrive either late afternoon Thursday or on Friday morning.

  It surprised Aria that Gen, always thorough and professional, hadn’t mentioned the issue of payment for the delivery. Had Gen footed the bill? Would Aria be expected to reimburse her? It would be entirely reasonable if Gen expected her to pay the bill, but she figured the cost had to be substantial, given the particular considerations of packaging and delivering a large work of art. Aria’s bank account was lighter than she’d like at the moment, and this wasn’t going to help.

  And then there was the question of where to store the yurt. Aria had storage space in the building’s parking garage, but she wasn’t sure it would be big enough for the crates to fit.

  She was still fretting about all of that at about four p.m. on Thursday when the doorbell rang.

  A peek through the peephole didn’t tell her much; whoever was out there was turned the other way, looking at the door of the apartment across the hall.

  “May I help you?” she said loudly through the closed door.

  “Delivery,” the voice said.

  Maybe he had intentionally disguised his voice. Maybe she was expecting a stranger, so that was what she thought she heard. Either way, she wasn’t expectin
g to see Liam standing there when she swung open the door.

  But there he was, looking tall and built and all man, just like he was when she’d thought of him every minute since she’d left.

  “Liam. This isn’t … I can’t.”

  She tried to close the door on him. Liam put a hand on the door and pushed, not hard enough to force his way in, just hard enough to keep her from closing him out.

  “Don’t you want your yurt?” he said.

  The connections in her brain were crossing in complex and confusing ways, and she shook her head slightly to clear it.

  “You have the yurt?”

  “Yeah. I thought Gen called and said I was bringing it.”

  “She called and said a delivery guy was bringing it.”

  “Well … that’s me, I guess. I have the yurt in the back of a truck. What do you want me to do with it?”

  She looked at him wordlessly for a moment, then said, “That’s not why you’re here.”

  He pressed his lips together tightly, then nodded. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a damned yurt in the back of a truck, and I can’t just leave it there.”

  Gen was right; the yurt ploy worked to get him in the door. She had no choice but to take him down to the basement and show him her storage space, then stand by while he unloaded the crates from the truck and put them where she told him she wanted them.

  The crates were heavy, but he had a strong back and a hand truck. A light rain was falling, but he’d worked in rain more than a few times, so he barely noticed it as he began the process of transferring the yurt from one place to another.

  He had more important things to worry about than rain. For instance, there was the question of how he was going to keep Aria from going back into her apartment and closing the door on him once his work was done.

  He took his time while he thought about it. When the first crate was tucked away in her storage space—a smallish area enclosed by chain link fencing—he was in no hurry to go out and get the next one.

  “How are you?” he asked as the two of them stood in the basement, the glow of fluorescent lights overhead and the smell of dust and mildew in the air.

  “You don’t need to make small talk,” she said.

  “It wasn’t small talk. I really want to know.”

  From the looks of her, she’d been better. He guessed from the shadows around her eyes that she hadn’t been sleeping much. Was that because of him? He was torn between finding that to be a hopeful sign and being concerned for her welfare. The concern won out.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “I don’t think you are.” Might as well be blunt. That was one thing he’d learned from years of living with his mother: You didn’t get anywhere by pussyfooting around about what you were thinking.

  “Well … I guess you can believe what you want.” She looked into his eyes for a moment, then broke contact and looked at the cement floor. “Do you think we could just go get the rest of the crates now?”

  His jaw flexed, then he nodded. “Come on, then.”

  Aria had been stunned when she’d opened the door and found Liam standing there. Stunned—that was the only word for it. Conflicting feelings had warred within her, and she hadn’t known whether to feel thrilled that he’d followed her to Portland or dismayed that seeing him was going to make it so much harder to say goodbye.

  Either way, she had fully expected to tell him she didn’t want to see him. She’d been ready to close the door with him on the other side.

  But the yurt had complicated things. She hadn’t known how she was going to retrieve it from the Delaney place, and it seemed he’d solved that problem for her. If he had the yurt in his truck, she had to accept it. What choice did she have? Leave him to drive the thing back down to Cambria?

  She’d put so many hours into it, and Gen had already begun making inquiries into where she would show it.

  So, she’d pulled herself together, told herself to be businesslike about it, and showed him where to unload the crates.

  But now he wanted to talk about how she was, and that wasn’t going to lead anywhere good, especially if she told the truth. Because the truth was that she was miserable, gutted, barely surviving.

  But miserable and gutted had been her normal condition for so many years that it hardly mattered now.

  As they walked back out to the truck to get the next crate, Aria couldn’t help but notice how damned good Liam looked. It wasn’t that he’d done anything special. He was wearing faded jeans, a flannel shirt, and a jacket that looked like it had seen countless hours of work on the ranch. His chin and cheeks were darkened by a couple of days of stubble, and his hair was mussed from where he’d run his hand through it a few minutes earlier.

  But Liam didn’t have to do anything special to look good to her. All he had to do was be Liam.

  She wanted so much to fall into his arms and stay there for the rest of her life, until the storm ended and the skies turned clear and blue, until she forgot everything that had come before, until they both grew old and comfortable in the fact of the two of them, needing no one and nothing else, forever.

  But forever was a lie. Forever was a fairy tale.

  Together, they loaded the rest of the crates into the storage space. They fit, though just barely.

  And now they’d come to the critical point in his visit: He was going to try to stay, and she had to make him go.

  “Thank you for bringing the yurt. I really appreciate it.” She held out her hand for him to shake as one of the fluorescent light bars overhead buzzed.

  “You want to shake hands? You’re kidding me, right?” He looked at the hand disdainfully.

  “Liam—”

  Then, suddenly, he took the hand and used it to pull her to him and into his arms. He kissed her, claiming her mouth with all of the urgency he felt. She stiffened, not wanting to respond to him. But her body betrayed her and she melted into him, her lips parting, her arms wrapping around him.

  She couldn’t let this happen. She simply could not. Because he wouldn’t just hurt her when he inevitably left, as everyone always did. He would kill her. He would manage to do what everything before him had failed to accomplish: he would destroy her.

  It was hard—it was so hard—but she wedged her hands in between them, put her palms against his chest, and pushed him away from her.

  “No,” she said. “Liam … no.”

  He let her go and stepped back, and ran a hand over his face.

  “So, that’s it, then? You don’t want me?”

  “I don’t want … this.” She made a sweeping motion with her hands to indicate the whole of what the two of them might mean.

  “I don’t believe that,” he said. “I think you’re just scared.”

  “I am!” It seemed absurd that she had to tell him that, as though he didn’t already know it. “Of course I am! If you’d lived through what I have, if you’d—”

  “Do you love me?” She could see in the set of his jaw, in the line of his mouth, that he was determined to keep control of himself, determined not to let his emotions rule him.

  She wished she could do the same, but she was trembling, and her heart was pounding.

  “Liam—”

  “I figure you owe me an honest answer. You owe me that much.”

  Her vision blurred with tears. “Yes.” She whispered the word so quietly she was surprised he heard it.

  Liam nodded. “All right, then. I meant what I said at Christmas—I love you, Aria. And if you love me … well, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be together.”

  She wiped her eyes with her hands and took a deep, shaky breath. “I can’t take the risk that it won’t work. I’m not strong enough.”

  He stood there, still and silent. Then the muscles in his jaw flexed, and he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets.

  “You know, Aria, I think that’s a load of bullshit,” he said.

  “Damn it, Liam …”
>
  “I’m not finished,” he said, interrupting her. “I figure I’ll say what I have to say before I leave, whether you want to hear it or not.”

  She nodded, waiting.

  “It’s bullshit that you’re not strong enough,” he said. “To live the way you did and come out of it to be who you are today, you’ve got to be pretty goddamned strong. So, yeah, you’re strong enough. You’re just telling yourself that you’re not because it’s easier than putting yourself out there, taking the risk. But you know what? I’m worth it. This thing we’ve got? It’s worth the risk.”

  The idea that she could just let him love her was so tempting, so alluring. But all her life, she’d dreamed of what it would be like if someone finally claimed her, if someone finally committed to belonging to her forever. First, she’d longed for a parent. Then, she’d longed for a partner, a lover, someone who could break through the walls she’d built and draw her out of the trap she’d constructed for herself.

  But no one had ever come, and now she didn’t believe it was possible that anyone ever would. Not even Liam. He thought he could stick—she believed that. But he didn’t understand how broken she was, and he wouldn’t want her when he found out.

  “Maybe,” she said finally. “But I still want you to go.”

  Liam left Aria’s place feeling frustrated and hurt, but not defeated. She’d said she loved him, and that was something. That was something big.

  He wasn’t naïve enough to think that love always won out. He knew that plenty of people loved each other and still hurt each other, still left each other, still broke each other into tiny pieces.

  But if she didn’t love him, he wouldn’t have anything to build on, and he’d have no choice but to quit, go home, and nurse his broken heart.

  Love wasn’t always enough. But it was a key element if he was going to fight for her. Which he damned well planned to do.

  Liam didn’t believe in pressuring any woman to do something she didn’t want to do. But this was different. Aria did want this. Hell, she needed this. She just didn’t know how to let herself have it.