by R. R. Banks
"They're for him," he said.
"For him?"
"He went through a lot, too," he said. "The least I can do is bring him flowers during his recovery. Isn't that what people do?"
I thought of the carnations that I’d had delivered to Garrett's hospital room and smiled. It was such an unexpected gesture and one that instantly made me fall a little harder.
Garrett spent the next three hours at my house and by the time we both knew he should be heading home, I felt like we knew each other completely differently. We had laughed our way through dinner and curled into each other to watch a movie. As the credits rolled, I realized that I had no idea what happened in the movie because I had spent the entire time just enjoying having his arm around me and my head on his chest and listening to his heartbeat. I had never been so thankful to hear a heartbeat. I had been terrified every moment that he was in the hospital. Even when the doctors told me that he was doing better, even when he opened his eyes, even when Jason told me that he had gotten out of bed and was walking up and down the hallways. I was so afraid that I was going to lose him.
I walked with him to the front door and he turned and looked into my face. His eyes burned into mine then he reached forward to wrap his arm around my waist. He ducked his head down and pressed his lips to mine. It was just a kiss, but it seared into me, reaching a part of me that none of our other kisses had. Our lips parted, and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against mine.
"Goodnight," he murmured.
He walked out of the house, leaving me breathless. Over the next few weeks, we fell into a comfortable pattern together. Evenings were spent having dinner together, watching movies, and taking walks in the mild weather. On weekends we took adventures together, though many of those adventures were such things as shopping for new furniture for his house or driving several towns over to visit a farmer’s market that we didn't know had been shut down until we already got there. It didn't matter what we were doing. We were together. He held my hand or wrapped his arm around my waist. Sometimes he would lean down and brush a kiss against my head or on my lips. Some nights we would steal a few hours together and he would hold me in his arms and show me the breathtaking, indescribable passion that seems to come from deep within him.
As the days passed and spring break drew closer, however, I couldn't help but think about the trip that I had planned with my parents. I didn't want to think about the days that I would spend away from Garrett. I hadn't yet mentioned it to him. The truth was I had a huge decision that I needed to make, an opportunity that had just presented itself to me and that I needed to decide on before I left. I still didn't know what to do. There were many times when I started to tell Garrett, to find out what he thought about it, but each time I started, something inside me stopped. Even with all the time that we were spending together and the closeness that I could feel forming, I still felt like he was closed off from me. I knew that I was still closed off from him too. Whenever we were together we talked about trips we had gone on and the careers that we had thought we would have when we were younger, the things that we wanted to do, the hopes that we had. We even mentioned a few plans that we could pursue together. But he never mentioned his childhood. He never mentioned his parents. He never mentioned his ex-wife. There was a whole part of him that he kept hidden away from me. At the same time, I never talked about Michael or my ex-husband.
That was something that I needed from Garrett before I could change my plans or even begin to consider doing anything different because of him. Finally, one night we were sitting in my living room watching a TV show that I wasn't paying attention to and he looked at me with a wide smile.
"I was thinking," he said. "Jason is spending a few days of spring break with one of his friends. Their family is going to the beach and they invited him to go with them. I thought that that would be the perfect opportunity for us to go on a little trip of our own together."
I drew in a deep breath. I knew that I didn't have any option now.
"Actually," I said. "There's something that I need to tell you. It's about spring break."
"What about it?" he asked.
The Reverend and The Bishop had both crawled into his lap and were making a multicolored fur swirl on his thighs. I was surprised by The Reverend's total change of heart when it came to Garrett. It was like the night that he attacked him, he could sense my upset and was trying to have my back, but now that Garrett and I were on good terms, he was a good lap and a reliable source of petting.
"My parents planned a vacation. I'm actually taking some vacation time from work and will be gone for two weeks."
He nodded.
"Oh." He said. "Well, that's fine. I guess I'll just have to miss you for two weeks. Make sure that you don't have anything planned for a few days after you get home."
He had a mischievous glint in his eyes and I wished that I could just fall into him, but there was more that I needed to tell him.
"It's not just that," I said. "When they were planning the vacation, they found out about a research opportunity and got me in touch with the program director. I'm supposed to meet with her during the vacation and talk about possibly participating in the program. If I was accepted, I would be gone for a year."
I waited for him to react. I waited for him to protest or to tell me that he didn't want me to go. I waited for him to look hesitant or even sad. But none of that happened. He picked up his drink and took a long swig out of it, then looked at me with an almost blank expression.
"That sounds like fun," he said.
I felt my heart break. That was nothing like the reaction that I wanted. I wanted him to prove to me how he felt about me and about the future of our relationship. Even as I thought that, however, I realized that that was exactly what he had just done. He didn't care how long I was away. He knew that he would be able to find as much willing and eager entertainment as he could possibly want. I didn't think that he didn’t care about me or the time that we were spending together, but it was far from what I needed to hear from him. As he sat there beside me I realized that he was exactly what I thought. I couldn't trust him or my feelings for him. I couldn't trust that he had real feelings for me. I knew, now, that it was time that I just moved forward. I couldn't put my life on hold for something abstract, something that might be there but that may never be. That night when he kissed me goodbye, it didn't feel as powerful. I felt like he was already slipping away.
Garrett
I felt like it was getting harder and harder to breathe the further that I drove away from Gwendolyn's house that night. I was still trying to process what she told me. In all the time that we had been spending together the last few weeks, she hadn't bothered to mention her spring break vacation to me or the fact that she might just be leaving for a year. I was furious at her for keeping that from me, but I also felt like my heart was being shredded. I told myself that I couldn't understand why she was doing this, we were getting along so well, and I thought we were really enjoying being together, and then she suddenly pushes me away.
Deep inside though, I knew exactly why she was doing it. As much time as we were spending together and as much as we were becoming a part of each other's lives, I hadn't really brought her into mine. She was there, ever present in my mind, but I hadn't yet told her that she had done what no other woman had ever honestly been able to do. She had found a place in my heart. I felt like it wasn't very much to offer her. It was tattered, broken and hardened. But it was what I had and if I was going to have the chance to keep her there, I was going to have to be willing to show it to her. I needed to finally put the past behind me and be courageous enough to look ahead.
Gwendolyn
I spent less time with Garrett over the next few days as I prepared for my trip with my parents. I felt like I was almost easing myself away from him like I was weaning myself from the feeling of having him with me. The day finally came that I was leaving, and I sat in the airport listening to my parents chatter hap
pily about all of the plans that they had for the trip ahead. I knew that they could see the pain that I was going through. They knew that I was unhappy. It seemed that they were doing their best to counteract it with their own enthusiasm. The loneliness inside me had become a deep ache like there was actually a part of me that was empty and hollow. I felt like as soon as I got on that plane I wasn't just leaving my regular life for a couple of weeks, but leaving Garrett and any hope that I had that we would have a future together behind.
Suddenly the air split with the sound of sirens. All around us, everyone in the terminal began to talk, trying to figure out what was happening. I looked over at the airline employees standing at the podium and they all looked just as confused and unsure as all of us felt. The sirens got louder, and we realized that they were coming directly toward the airport. I looked to my parents and at nearly the same moment we grabbed our carry-ons and started toward the door with a flow of other passengers coming along with us. We all shoved our way out of the terminal and into the parking lot, looking around to see if we could see any sign of what had happened. In an instant, I saw the gleaming red fire truck coming toward me. The siren turned off, but the lights were still spinning, and I noticed a figure clinging to the ladder on the back.
As the truck turned into the emergency lane in front of the airport, I saw that it was Garrett. He was wearing his uniform except for his mask, and as he jumped down off the back of the truck he took his hat off.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"I'm here to respond to an emergency," he said.
"What emergency?" I asked.
"The fact that you might leave without me having a chance to tell you that I'm falling in love with you."
I heard the gasps rising up out of the crowd around me, but I didn't care who was there. All that mattered to me was that Garrett was standing in front of me. I stepped closer to him.
"You are?" I asked.
He nodded.
"I've been falling in love with you since the first moment I saw you, but I wouldn't let myself believe it. I didn't think that I was capable of love, but you've proven to me that I am. Or at least that I am willing to try with everything that I have, to show you what you mean to me."
"I'm falling in love with you, too," I told him. "I think that I fell a long time ago."
He leaned down and kissed me and the crowd behind me cheered. I turned and looked at my parents. They were both beaming, my mother's hands clasped in front of her chest and tears shimmering in my father's eyes.
"You go on with him," my father said.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
My mother nodded.
"Absolutely," she said. "You go on. You wouldn't have been much fun, anyway. Now we can go rock climbing and explore the caves without you telling us that we are too old."
I laughed and rushed to hug both of them.
"We will talk to the program director," my father assured me. "Will let her know that something came up and see what we can do."
I smiled and nodded.
"Thank you."
I turned back to Garrett, but before I could say anything, my father gestured at the fire truck as if he had never seen one.
"Don't worry, sir," Garrett said, walking toward me. "It was a false alarm."
He swept me up into his arms and I wrapped my arms around his neck. He turned to me and kissed me deeply as we walked back to the truck. He hopped back on, lowering me to my feet beside him, and we both gripped the ladder as the truck gave cheerful beeps of the horn and headed away from the airport.
Chapter Seventeen
Gwendolyn
The truck brought us back to the fire station and from there we got into Garrett's car. I laughed as I settled into the passenger seat, feeling like we had come full circle, or perhaps even found the place where we should have started in the first place. I glanced over at him and immediately changed my mind.
No. That was exactly how we were supposed to meet.
My heart swelled in my chest when we pulled up in front of his house. I had seen it before. I had brought Jason here to get some of his clothes the night that Garrett went into the hospital. But I hadn't been inside. Garrett had never brought me here. Instead, we had always spent our time at my house or going out. Now I felt as though he was literally bringing me into his world. He came around the side of the car and opened the door. He reached for my hand and pulled me out and into his arms. His mouth closed over mine for a kiss and I remembered the first night that we spent together. His hand intertwined with mine as we walked toward the house. Once we were inside he led me into the living room. I looked around at the pieces of furniture that I had helped him choose. It had been difficult trying to visualize the furniture in the space where it would eventually sit when I didn't know what the room looked like, but now that I saw it I knew that we had chosen the perfect pieces.
We sat down on a plush navy-blue couch and Garrett turned toward me. He reached for my hands and held both of them between us. He looked down at them as if he was trying to come up with the words that he wanted to say, then pulled them up to his mouth and kissed them before settling them back down onto the couch.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"What are you sorry about?" I asked.
"I'm sorry that I let things get this far without really being honest with you. I might fight fires and pull people out of car wrecks, but other than finding out that I would be raising Jason alone, nothing in my life has ever been as scary as you."
"Scary?"
"Until I met you, I didn't think that I had space in my life for another woman. What I went through with my ex-wife was enough to make it so that I couldn't imagine ever trusting another woman. I was far too young to be doing things that I was doing, and I ended up paying the consequences. Not Jason. Having him is the only thing that makes anything that I went through during that time of my life worth it. Having to bring myself to propose to a woman who was barely even a woman, and who I had only known for a few months felt horrible. I didn't want to marry her. I didn't want to feel like my future had already been locked in place when I was barely out of high school, but I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. That's why I joined the military. And that's why I spent every day of my life working as hard as I could to try to provide for them. Apparently, though, all the time that I was spending working, she was spending cozying up with my best friend."
"I'm so sorry," I said.
"Even after that happened and I told her to leave, though, I hated myself for it. I hated that that's where it had all ended up."
"Why?" I asked. "You didn't do anything wrong. It seems like you were the only one in that situation who was actually being an adult. You didn't deserve to be treated that way." I took a breath. "I need to be honest with you, too. I was married. It's been about two years since my divorce. We met each other, dated, we got engaged, got married, broke up, and divorced in a shorter time than that. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, but it was over because I knew that I didn't deserve to be treated the way he treated me."
I knew that there would come a time, someday, when I would tell him about what I went through with Michael and how it has affected me, but suddenly that felt far away. Suddenly I felt like I could breathe.
"I wish that I had done it that way," he said. "Looking back on it now, I know that there were so many times during my marriage when I should have just cut my losses and let it be over. But I refused to. I had made a promise to myself and even though I ended up breaking it, I tried as hard as I could not to."
"What promise?" I asked.
He looked at me and I saw a flicker of the dark, angry emotion that I had seen in his eyes the one time that I had mentioned his parents. This time, though, it didn't frighten me. It made my heart ache.
"I promised myself that I was never going to be like my father."
"Why would you promise yourself that?" I asked.
Garrett stood up and helped me to my feet.
"I need to show you something", he said.
I followed him out of the house and back into the car. He didn't tell me where we were going, and he stayed silent as we drove back through his neighborhood and across town. I could see that his hands were tightening on the steering wheel the longer we drove, and I wondered where he could be bringing me and what it had to do with his father. Finally, he stopped the car and we both climbed out. I looked around and then my eyes fell on an old house that sent a shiver through me. I remembered that house. It had been the stuff of whispers among the older people in Silver Lake when I was younger and then became the source of legends and myths when I was a teenager. I shivered when I looked at it. I remembered the stories that I had heard about it and the bets and dares between the guys, trying to get each other to go inside. I didn't know of anybody who ever actually had.
I looked at Garrett and saw him staring at the house intensely. Finally, he looked at me.
"What do you know about this house?" he asked quietly.
"A woman was murdered here by her ex-husband," I said, remembering that Garrett had only moved here a few months before and might not have heard the stories. "After he killed her, he attacked four other people. The only reason that they survived, and he wasn't able to get to anyone else was because the police got to him. A neighbor must have seen what he was doing and called."
Garrett shook his head.
"No neighbor called," he said. "The man's son ran to the police station."
"That's right, I remember hearing that. Nobody ever saw him again." I looked at the house again. Even in the sunlight, it looked dark. "Why did you bring me here?"
"This is where I grew up," he said, "and until I moved back here, I hadn't seen the house since the day I ran out of it and went to the police."
