He laughed, pulled her in tighter.
“Oh! Wait, we have to go grab that basket and blanket. I promised her we would enjoy that picnic. Also, I am starving. I haven’t had anything but junk food for what feels like years and years.”
He set her on the beach. “Wait here, then.”
“Okay.”
“You won’t go anywhere?”
“I seriously can’t move until I’ve eaten and maybe slept for six months.”
“Right.” He jogged to the spot where she had dropped the basket and his mother’s quilt. She had her arms around her knees, looking out at the water.
She loved him.
His mum’s basket was heavy, and he couldn’t believe she had carried all this from his parents’ place to the shore. When he reached her again she held up her hands. “Gimme.”
He spread the quilt out and she promptly curled up on it, and he thought she might have even snoozed a little because he had to tell her twice to eat. His mum wasn’t much of a cook, but she was very good at making sandwiches and buying up cakes from the tearoom, so there was food enough for six.
“Ohmahgawd,” Destiny said, her mouth full of bacon sandwich, “this is so good.”
“Everything tastes better on the shore.”
“You could be right. Don’t eat all of that chocolate thing with the purple-icing flowers.”
“So.” He looked at her, and she looked back, smiling around her sandwich.
“Pour me some tea.”
He handed her tea in the lid of the thermos and she took a long drink and a deep breath. “There was this tree.”
And then she told him everything. About the tree, the very idea of which made him drag her over to sit on his lap again, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his jaw. A lot about her mother and a trip they would need to make, someday, to Pittsburgh. About the miracle of renter’s insurance. Updates on Sarah and what Sarah and Sam needed to work out and how pleased Paul was with the panel and with him.
She talked as he watched the bathers come and go, as he watched familiar boats in the distance. He sometimes made her stop to drink more tea or eat a pastry. Eventually, her voice got softer and her words slower, and she was heavy in his arms, asleep.
He didn’t know if it would work, or if there was even truly anything at work, and it had been a long time since his heart had been concerned with spiritual matters, but he thought of Destiny’s mother, remembering her photograph in Destiny’s house, and he thanked her. At the very least, for the name she had given her remarkable daughter.
He would write a letter to Mrs. Lynch later.
Destiny stirred just as he was worried that it had gotten too cool. She turned in his arms and wrapped hers around his neck. It felt so good he was worried he would die from it.
“Hey, you.” Her sleepy voice made him want to do things to her on this beach he had never imagined in the entirety of his life doing to women on this beach. And he had spent his teenaged summers here.
For an answer, he kissed her. This time, it was slow, soft, then not so soft as she slid her tongue over his and moaned, just a little. He grabbed her bottom lip with his teeth before she could get to his top one, but of course, that was what she did next, her tongue against his teeth.
“Touch me,” she whispered, and since she was facing away from the beach, he slid his hand under the straps of her dress, pulled one side down and hooked a nipple with his fingertip, pressing it, then found the other. Her bucks were so slow in his lap that they were almost family-friendly, but he ruined it by letting his hands travel to her bottom and cupping it low with both hands, massaging it over the skirt of her dress.
“Where are you staying tonight?” he said against her neck, licking as he went.
“I got a room at the Harbourmaster hoping we could eat sticky toffee pudding for breakfast.” She kissed the hollow of his throat.
“Do you think we can wait until we visit and have a drink with my parents?”
She leaned back and grinned. “Barely. But I want to meet your dad. He was somewhere in the village when I showed up at your place. I think I both didn’t surprise your mom and completely surprised her, all at the same time.”
“Well, it’s possible I’ve been talkin’ a lot about you.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s also possible she was thinking about the money I just tossed on my one-way ticket to Ohio, departing next week.”
Both Destiny’s hands flew to her mouth, where she pressed them, with wide eyes.
“Oh no, you didn’t.”
“Oh, but I did.”
“Oh holy shit, Hefin. Shit. I am sorry. I’ve been sort of coy on the phone because I really wanted to do the surprise thing, and even if the surprise thing turned out completely awesome, I should’ve told you I was coming.”
He laughed. He felt so absolutely unbothered he was certain that life had started over for him, from the very beginning.
“No. I liked this surprise. I had the notion to surprise you, as well. I’ll pay the penalty to have it changed for when your tourist visa expires and we need to return for your home stay before applying for a new visa. Unless—” He looked in her face, holding his breath.
She smiled, just a little. “Unless?”
“This is simply a visit? I don’t want to assume you’re—”
She wrapped her arms around him. “Assume. Not simply a visit. I’m with you. As long as you’ll have me.”
He let out his breath smashing her to him. “Okay, then.”
“I wouldn’t have come to you like this if it wasn’t to be your goose. I know how you are. You feed a girl some pancakes and toss your whole life in after her.”
“True. You’ve got me there.”
She let him hold her for a little longer, then insisted that they go to his parents’ just as he was thinking they could live right there on the beach, forever, right where she’d made her promise to stay with him.
They took the longest way back possible so he could show her the city-center bridge, the tearoom, the dunes, the brightly painted beachfront houses. He’d never seen her laugh more, from a woman who loved to laugh, and the village he knew like the feel of his own stride looked different with her alongside him.
Just as he knew it would.
His mother spent the evening teaching Destiny more Welsh and had never had a better pupil. Hefin spent the evening watching his dad watch Destiny, needing to know what he was thinking. His opportunity came when his mom offered to show Destiny her Welsh history re-creation gowns and Destiny, surely cracked from jet lag and sherry, seemed eager to look. He followed his dad into his workshop where he snuck his evening cigarettes.
“You didn’t say she was a ginger.” His dad carefully dropped his match into a bucket of water in the shop for that purpose.
“Didn’t I?”
“No, I don’t recall you did, then.” He took a long draw of smoke. “You’re surprised she came.” It wasn’t a question.
He was surprised, but only at the fact of the specific surprise. Having her here, the woman who’d lived in the same Ohio neighborhood her whole life, seemed entirely unsurprising.
He was already starting to feel that she’d been here ages, or that she always had. That he had toddled with her on the beach still in nappies, sat in school with her learning Welsh folk songs, kissed her at all the dances.
He thought over his life here in Aberaeron and somehow, she was inserted into it, her hair shot through with summer light bouncing up from the shore.
He’d been home for weeks now, but he hadn’t brought it up, and neither had his parents, but he had to, now. “Dad, what did you think of Jessica?”
His dad smoked thoughtfully, and Hefin picked up a piece of scrap wood to pick at with his pocketknife. His dad smoked, and then spoke at his own pace.
“She was beautiful, of course. Clever. I liked she was so thrilled you picked her up off the beach like you did. Your mum loved her, of course. Jess did
a good job keeping up with your mum, still does occasionally, on the email. After your visa was worked out, then your permanent residency, we started worrying we’d never catch eyes on you again, unless we traveled.”
“I’m sorry, Dad, I—”
His dad waved Hefin’s words away with the point of his cigarette. “No, that’s enough, then.”
They sat together in the quiet. The wind had picked up into a few squalls far offshore so they listened to the rough waves as they hit the beach.
“We were happy together, for a time. We stayed friends. Any suffering I did, Dad, it was my own.”
“Carving worked you out of that, I suspect.”
Hefin smiled in the dim of the workshop. It had.
After a long time, and long after his dad’s cigarette had hissed out in the bucket of water, his dad got up and clapped a hand on Hefin’s shoulder. “When I looked into your Jessica’s face, I saw a life. Don’t know how better to put it. When she looked at you, there was a life in her face that she was considerin’. Couldn’t fathom what it was, but you gave her something she wanted. That was good. If your only boy, your only child’s going off into the world, you look into a face with a life all coveted and worked out like that and think ‘well then, don’t know why he won’t be just fine.’
“Do you know what I see in your Destiny’s face?”
“What’s that, Dad?”
“You. Just you. She looks at you and sees you, just as you see her. I can guess that means you’ll be around again a bit sooner than you were last time, anyway.”
His dad squeezed his shoulder and exited his shop. He turned around to wait for Hefin to join him back in the house. His dad whistled a few notes on their way, something he did when he was pleased with himself.
“I always did like ginger-haired women,” his dad said.
“Yeah?” Hefin put his arm around his dad. “I like this one.”
Hefin found Destiny in the rocking chair, her legs tucked underneath her, her head lolled to the side in sleep. His mum was on the sofa pretending not to watch her.
“Perhaps she had a bit too much sherry after all the travel.”
Hefin laughed. “You did keep her glass full.”
“She’s a lovely young lady, Hefin. I can’t believe the Welsh she’s taken in with just a phrasebook, too. I gave her one of my extra schoolbooks, and you’d think I’d given her the moon.” She sent a pleased smiled in Destiny’s direction. “Good name, too. And she sat right there and called every one of her people, telling them she was safe and asking after them.”
“I suppose I should wake her and walk back with her to the hotel.”
His mum stood up. “You can stay right here. Destiny gave your dad and me her room for the night. She insisted. She said it was a gift for our hospitality and that she wanted to listen to the water on your rock, if you even know what that means. She never checked in, her things are all here in the hall. Bryn, get your pajamas and your shaving kit and we’ll go down and have ourselves a minibreak.”
His dad lifted an eyebrow at Hefin but ambled upstairs to do as he was told.
He wondered how his mother had wrangled Destiny out of her reservation.
When his parents had organized themselves and departed, Hefin took his mum’s place on the sofa and watched Destiny sleep off a little more jet lag. He continued to have a sensation of unreality and memory all mixed together.
Unreal that she was here, even as all he could remember ever thinking about was her.
Later, after helping her sleepwalk through brushing her teeth, washing up, and undressing, he had her next to him in his narrow bed, the window open to the sound of the water churning against the jetty.
“Do you hear it?” he asked.
She hooked her legs through his. “I do.”
“Even when I haven’t slept in this room, when I was away at university, or in China, or Ohio, just before I fall asleep I hear that sound. It’s what my brain thinks sleep sounds like, after hearing it since I’ve been sleepin’ in this room since I was a baby.”
“Your mom showed me pictures.”
“Already? She must have hopes.”
“She told me a little of the story of your adoption.”
“That’s right. I guess they tried for years before applying, then got a call in the middle of the night sayin’ a baby boy had been born in London and could they come up and fetch me? My birth mother’s grandmother had taken her in during the pregnancy, and the agency told her about my parents. Mainly, that they would adopt if the baby was mixed-race, and I am so mixed-up, like I told you before, I think there is a five-line list trying to explain what I’m made of on the birth certificate.
“Mum said I cried all the way home, and now you know how long it is from London. By the time they made it here, everyone was exhausted. Then, this was my parents’ room, and they walked in here with me thinking to sit up with me in their bed, get to know me. The story goes, as soon as Dad opened the window and the sounds of the sea came in, I quieted. And that’s how they knew, even though I was made of bits and pieces from everywhere, that I was in my heart a Welshman.
“It’s been my room ever since.”
Destiny turned her face into his neck. “I like that story. Baby Hefin.” She looked at him through the dark, her gray eyes shining and serious. “I love you,” she said, and he felt like all the places that had ever made him finally made sense.
She started in on neck kisses, and he skated his hand over the warm skin of her back, over her hip, under her panties, and over her arse. She took in a deep breath and met his mouth as he fondled all the dips and creases of her bottom with his fingertips.
He’d come to bed naked, but she was wearing a tee over her panties, so he abandoned her bottom to lift it off.
Then they were skin to skin, facing each other on their sides, their legs knotted, their mouths hot and knowing, their hands undecided—so much of each other requiring exploration and reacquaintance.
It was the very first time they’d had the whole night, then the entirety of their days to live after.
He kissed her in time to the sea.
Then it was impossible to keep time at all.
Acknowledgments
Lakefield, Ohio, is a place in my imagination but my imagination has been inspired by my incredible home of five years, Columbus, Ohio. Like the Burnsides, I lived in a close-knit and colorful south downtown neighborhood and spent the evenings, particularly beautiful ones, on my stoop. Columbus is an innovative and fascinating city and it gave me and my family so much. Daydreaming about the Burnsides’ Lakefield is like coming home, and I’ll always be grateful to the home I found there. The Burnsides are my ongoing love letter to this diverse Midwest city.
I’ve wanted to write about Destiny Burnside and her limousine for a long time, and Shelley Ann Clark saw some extraordinarily early drafts and gave me early and developmental guidance. What’s more, she believed in the project enough for me to go ahead and pitch a whole series. This kind of support cannot be underestimated—early, generous, loving support of a few ideas from a few good friends is everything, is all the luck anyone needs alongside their work.
Ruthie Knox, as ever, for writing alongside me nearly every day, and knowing exactly what it is I’m trying to do, even when I’m not sure I know what it is I’m trying to do. For a well-timed email about Hefin, exactly when I needed it, exactly when the reader was counting on me. Ruthie trusts my brain mill, is the thing, even when it churns up twig domes and first-period stories.
Serena Bell gave me pages of feedback and put a pin in a point of external conflict I was missing, opening up and giving weight to what is a very interior story. She is a gifted and intelligent writer and never fails to get to the heart of any story, and this story is a much better one for her attention.
Alexis Hall may be a genius line editor, finding how it is language and voice moves a story and when it’s failing. His scrutiny is careful and loving, and he has so much integrit
y as a critique partner and friend. Also, I have to thank him for his willingness to kill my chicken even when I couldn’t look.
Shari Slade, Megan Mulry, Cecilia Grant—all beta read this book with loving and sharp and hilarious feedback. I’ll love Megan forever for her little notes to me as she read and her appreciation of strawberry condoms.
Always, to my agent, Emily Sylvan Kim. She is always there—to clarify my goals and ideas and principles about absolutely everything I am doing. She thinks deeply about my ideas and she listens, even when I’m not at my best, or struggling to find my way to my best. She’s worked overtime for the Burnsides, selling them and understanding them, and she did a total solid for Hefin, in particular.
Sue Grimshaw, my editor, has a great deal of vision at Loveswept and has brought the line amazing writers with a huge diversity of ideas. She’s such a terrific reader, a reader’s reader, and she kept all of you close to her heart editing Live.
Gina Wachtel and Sue Grimshaw and the art department at Loveswept went completely above and beyond for the cover concepts for Live. The entire team has worked hard to develop what is a writer’s dream—a real contemporary family saga. I’m utterly humbled by their faith in me.
My boys, always.
Photo: © Elizabeth Wellman
MARY ANN RIVERS has been wearing a groove in her library card since she was old enough for story time. She’s been writing almost as long—her first publication credit was in Highlights magazine. She started writing and reading romance in the fifth grade once she stumbled on the rainbow of romance-novel book spines in the library’s fiction stacks.
She was an English and music major and went on to earn her MFA in creative writing, publishing poetry in journals and leading creative writing workshops for at-risk youth. While training for her day job as a nurse practitioner, she rediscovered romance on the bedside tables of her favorite patients.
Mary Ann lives in the Midwest with her handsome professor husband and their imaginative school-aged son. She writes smart and emotional contemporary romance, imagining stories featuring the heroes and heroines just ahead of her in the coffee line.
Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series Page 32
