Pucker Up

by Seimas, Valerie

  Trevor’s mother, Charlotte, arrived with half a dozen people in tow – family, friends, all full to the brim with excitement. Just the kind of people Faith expected to find at the side of her charming houseguests. There had barely been time for greetings before Trevor came out to the waiting room, announcing that Madison was fully dilated and getting ready to push.

  “Leave it to Mad to be efficient,” her best friend, Sophie, had said with a laugh. Faith couldn’t help but agree; she’d made the drive to the hospital just two hours before. She’d been stuck in traffic longer than it took for Madison to get ready to push.

  But that’s where the urgency had ended. Baby Clark was content to stay exactly where it was. And so they all sat in a waiting room well into the night.

  Trevor’s best friends, Clint and Enzo, entered the waiting room that had been emptied of everyone but their group, and the aroma was heavenly. “Coffee for all,” Clint said with a smile.

  “Except for the woman that said Madison was efficient,” Enzo grouched, holding the cup away from Sophie. She was more than a foot taller than him; he didn’t stand a chance.

  “Well, the baby must take after Uncle Enzo then – meaning it won’t listen to anyone and will annoy us all.”

  “And we’ll love it even more for it,” Charlotte said with a grin as she took a cup from Clint. “That smells wonderful, dear.”

  “For the pop star,” Enzo said with a grand bow that Faith couldn’t help but laugh at.

  “Thank you, kind sir.”

  “I still can’t get you to hum a few bars?” he asked with a wink.

  “I don’t think I know that one.”

  The sun was just beginning to rise when Trevor approached again, beaming, to tell them that their number had grown by one. Faith couldn’t help but get swept up in the excitement and love of the moment; even her heart was itching for a guitar.

  “And just that quickly everything changes,” Charlotte murmured, pulling her son in for a big hug. He glanced at Faith, looking slightly sheepish. She knew exactly what he was thinking, but his meltdown didn’t matter anymore – she read the conviction and peace in his stare.

  “Change never comes slowly,” Faith said. In her life it always hit her like a Mack truck. Sometimes it took her longer to acknowledge, but it never came softly or safely. Crashed into her was more like it. They filtered down the hall, two by two, to see the new baby until only Faith was left. She peeked her head through the door, afraid to interrupt the new parents. Their wide smiles told her nothing could dampen their joy.

  “Hi,” Madison said. “Come and meet the newest member of our family.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Faith whispered, already enthralled by the tiny baby sleeping in Madison’s arms.

  “Takes after her mother on that one,” Trevor agreed, placing a kiss against her temple.

  “What’s her name?” Faith asked.

  “We don’t know yet.” Madison laughed. “I was so sure we were having a boy I didn’t even think about girl names.”

  “This,” Trevor said, taking his daughter from Madison’s arms, “is Ella Margaret Clark.”

  “What?” Madison looked at him with a questioning stare.

  “So now,” he whispered, still looking at his wife, “there is a Cinderella in the story.”

  Tears started steaming down the new mother’s face, and Faith’s hands itched for a guitar. “Here,” Trevor said, handing over the baby. “Ella, meet Faith. We already ruined her car today, so be nice to her shirt,” he whispered to his daughter as he placed her in Faith’s arms.

  “When are they releasing you?” Faith asked, captivated by the baby in her arms and ignoring the kissing couple on the bed.

  “They want us to stay overnight,” Madison said, pulling her gaze from her husband. “And then we’re going to Trevor’s mom’s. I don’t care how long the commute is, I’m not going into work for a while.”

  “That’s what she told me, too,” Faith murmured as she rocked back and forth. “She didn’t sound like she wanted to let this little one out of her sight.”

  “It’s been a few years since there’s been a baby in the house,” Trevor said. “But she’s going to have to wrestle me for her.”

  “I’d like to see that.” Madison laughed. And then yawned.

  “I should get out of your way. Let the womenfolk get some rest,” Faith said as she handed the baby back to her mother.

  Trevor beamed at her. “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us today. And the whole week.”

  “You going to dawdle on my doorstep the next time you come over for a visit?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m just going to walk right in like I own the place.”

  “There you go,” Faith said with a smile. She blew them all kisses before walking out the door.

  Faith left the hospital and sat in her car, in no hurry to leave, too full of the laughter and love and affection of the last eighteen hours. She didn’t have a guitar, but she didn’t need one. She pulled a scrap of paper out of her purse and let the emotions wash over her.

  Didn’t think I’d make it

  For sure I’d fall apart

  Just too monumental

  And no clue where to start

  But the tide keeps on rising

  No matter where the sand falls

  And the world keeps on turning

  The night comes out when called

  She kept scrawling, words of baby girls and fairytales, finding happily ever afters in the looks between parents and children. She’d never written a love letter to a child before, but her night with Dustin had washed away all the fear and taboo of such an idea. Words poured out of her at lightning speed – enough for dozens of songs.

  “Faith,” Trevor said with a smile as he spotted her reentering the hospital. “I thought you left half an hour ago. My girls are sleeping.”

  “I only made it as far as the car,” she admitted with a smile. “This is for you.” She handed a piece of paper over, her messy handwriting scrawled across the page and frequently crossed out in places.

  “It’s a song for Ella. An Andy Peters song. And one, if you’ll let me, I’d like to record for my next album.”

  Tears formed in Trevor’s eyes as he read the lyrics on the page. He looked up at her with his heart in his throat. “This is a big deal,” he said.

  “I know,” she replied, a little choked up.

  “It would be an honor to have you sing it,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 24

  “What are you going to say?” Peter asked.

  Dustin just shrugged, staring out into the countryside.

  “I thought you’d planned for this? Wasn’t that what we talked about, why I dragged your ass back home?”

  “That’s why you did it,” Dustin said, shifting against the hood of his truck. “I realized I needed home court advantage. And a defense.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “Sports metaphors, wonderful.”

  “I needed help. And since you wouldn’t tell me what the girls were up to…”

  “Nope.”

  Dustin turned annoyed eyes on his twin before continuing, “I needed to call in bigger guns. And a place with meaning.”

  “You’re hanging a lot of hope on the fact that she visited here once in the last ten years.”

  “But that once was just last week. She’ll come again. This time, when Bea asks her, she’ll come.”

  “Bea doesn’t look nearly as sure as you do.”

  Dustin smiled. “I have faith.”

  “The emotion or the girl?” Peter asked.

  Dustin kicked off of the front of his truck and made his way across the dusty ranch. “Hopefully both.”

  She was putting the past behind her. That’s what she was doing. So visiting Bea at Sorrento Ranch shouldn’t be a big deal at all. Because the past didn’t matter. Because she’d put it behind her.

  That was the commentary running on continuous loop in t
he back of Faith’s mind as she drove south, feeling slight déjà vu at the process. She’d made a similar drive a little over a week ago, and here she was deciding to spend another weekend in the country. But Bea had asked her to come and talk about putting on a charity concert at the ranch. She’d spent ten years turning down that simple request; she owed it to the woman not to do it any longer.

  As she approached the turn-off, Dustin’s teenage face smiled down at her. She couldn’t help but be reminded of the first time she’d seen it from the back of a tour bus. Attitunes had been traveling cross country, playing shows in theaters big and small, and the boy on the billboard had called to her. Standing in front of a horse and a relaxing countryside, it had felt like the exact opposite of the life she’d been living then. Being in a girl group was fun, but she’d craved the ease she’d seen there, the slow pace of the country. She’d made reservations the next day.

  It had been at least a week before she realized the annoying waiter and stable hand was the boy on the billboard; he’d been too aggravating to smile at her before then. That first smile had been around a pot with a lemon tree, both of them there against their will and then neither of them wanting to leave. Bea had “threatened” to expose her true identity, but that had just been a ruse to get her in the same room as Dustin. It was something she’d have to start teasing the old woman about again, now that the past was the past and Dustin’s name was no longer taboo. Because she’d put it behind her.

  Faith parked next to the stables and made her way towards the entrance. Bea was waiting for her in the office, but Faith wanted to see if Maya happened to be around. She wanted to see her in person, see if she’d finally been able to let that anger go once and for all, in the past and behind her. She hoped desperately that she had – she could only think of one time she’d needed her friend more.

  “Hello. Anybody here…” Faith let her voice fade out to silence when she saw who was actually there. At least he looked as shocked as she did, his mouth gaping open as he jumped up from the bale of hay he’d been sitting on.

  “Faith,” he murmured.

  “What are you doing here?” she squeaked, taking a step back before letting out a bark of laughter. “Of course, I should have known. That woman will just never let this go.”

  “Don’t blame her,” Dustin said quickly. “I made her do it. Threatened to withhold all future apple tarts and lemon meringue pies. Don’t deny an old woman her tarts and pies.”

  Faith rolled her eyes at that comment and the halfhearted smile that accompanied it. He was trying to lighten the mood, but she wasn’t about to let him. The past might be behind her, but she was a songwriter, accessing the emotions was merely a blink away. “What more could you possibly have to say, Dustin?”

  “I want to try and explain—”

  “Explain?” she said, a sneer on her face. “Oh this should be good, please explain. Explain why it’s okay that you broke my heart. Explain why I should forgive you for breaking my heart. Explain what the hell you hope to gain from all of this.”

  He opened his mouth to answer, but she didn’t let him. “I never got to explain. Every time I made a decision that you didn’t like, every time you accused me of putting my career first and you last, every time you decided that I wasn’t all in and was going to get tired of us and our life and just flitter away, you didn’t listen or hear me or let me explain. But yeah, explain, please.”

  He didn’t say anything, just stared at her. She could see him grasping for words. “Here’s your chance, Dustin. For once just show up for it.”

  “I didn’t want it to go down like this,” he murmured, running a hand down his face in distraction. “In the office, with Bea and…”

  “Oh, the old lady was supposed to butter me up, was she? Tell me more stories of all the adversity she overcame for love? Well, I’m not buying into that anymore, Dustin, you hear me? I’m over it. Over it. Over feeling hurt and betrayed and wondering why.” She looked down at her feet and muttered as an afterthought, “So tired of wondering the fuck why.”

  “I didn’t mean it,” he said, imploring her to believe him. “What you overheard that night. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh well, awesome,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her lips. “That just fixes everything. You didn’t mean it so, poof, all of my hurt feelings, they’re just gone. Problem solved. History rewritten.”

  “Faith – ”

  “No,” she said, cutting him off. “You said it; I heard it. I don’t care if you didn’t mean it; I am still allowed to feel the way I feel. And you want to know how that is? Broken. Battered. Betrayed.”

  Dustin looked away, running his hands through his hair in aggravation. She closed her eyes against it and the vivid reminder of a boy on a horse asking her to trust him. “Fine, I said it. And it’s something that I have regretted every day since, but it’s not what you think.

  “You know what I regret? That we rushed through everything because you were pregnant. That you didn’t get to wear the big white dress and have yellow flowers in your hair. That your band wasn’t there to sing you down the aisle. That there wasn’t a toast with pink champagne and a four-tiered chocolate raspberry cake, one layer lemon poppy seed. That all I was able to give you was a simple gold band as the sun rose when you deserved so much more than that.”

  “I didn’t – ”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t want them – I know you did.”

  “Of course I wanted them,” she said in exasperation, her voice rising. “I also wanted a flying car and house that would clean itself. But all I needed, Dustin, was you. Because the point wasn’t to have an enviable wedding; it was to have an enviable life.”

  Faith turned away, couldn’t manage to look at him and the earnestness she saw there. She believed that he was sorry, but it didn’t change anything. Not one damn thing.

  “I screwed up,” he whispered, a heartfelt admission. “I know I screwed up.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  Silence descended before he asked in a small voice, “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Yeah, I can forgive you.” She sighed, finally knowing it was true. “I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

  Faith heard him shuffle towards her and looked up to see him approaching her like she was a horse about to spook. His voice was soft and calm when he spoke. “When you came to my house, there was a moment…”

  “When you thought everything would be right again?” she finished, knowing exactly when he meant. That morning before Jackson arrived had been perfect.

  He nodded his head. “Yeah.”

  “I thought so, too,” she murmured, raising her eyes to his and letting him see all of the hurt in them. “But you let me leave. Once again, you didn’t fight for me. I can’t do this again, worry that at the first sign of trouble you’re just going to let go like you did ten years ago.” She turned away, tears threatening to fall.

  “I didn’t,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t,” he said, louder, his tone making her turn. “I didn’t let you go.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.” His raised his voice louder, no longer calm. “You think after everything we’d been through I was just going to let you go without a fight?”

  She huffed in annoyance. “What are you playing at, Dustin? We both know that’s exactly what you did.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t chase you – I didn’t catch you. I hopped in my truck and peeled out of there like a bat out of hell right behind you. But I got in a car accident and ended up in the hospital.”

  “The broken bones…,” she murmured, remembering Harmony’s inquisition.

  “When I woke up, I was still grieving, and I was so mad that you’d left me. By the time I was better, I’d decided that if you could live without me, fine, I’d live without you. But it wasn’t any kind of life I was having. Not until the girls showed up and reminded me that I wasn’t dead, even if it felt
that way.”

  “You came after me?” Her voice was hollow. She felt like the world had tilted on its axis, turning everything upside down. Everything she thought she’d known was wrong? If she didn’t sit down soon, she’d be sprawled out on the floor.

  “Damn straight, I did. And not because of some damn piece of paper saying you were my wife. Because you were my whole damn heart.” Tears started falling at those words, tears she wouldn’t have been able to stop if she tried.

  Dustin closed the space between them and grabbed her hands, drawing her close. “The hospital, that was the night Peter met Darcy. I can’t imagine how different our lives would be if I hadn’t ended up there. I try to regret it, but I can’t, even if it was the worst time in my life. Even though it led to the most stupid, childish decision of my life – not fighting hard enough for you.”

  He cupped her face, rubbing his thumb over the apple of her wet cheek. “But I don’t have to live there anymore. We don’t have to live there anymore with this huge misunderstanding between us.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers, and she struggled to draw breath, shaken down to the very core of the person she was. “We can do it; I know we can. I felt it. Can’t we start again? Ally, please?”

  Faith shuddered at her name on his lips, wanting to believe him, believe everything he was saying. But ten years of heartache demanded she take a step back, let his touch fall away from her. “I need some time. To take all of this in.”

  Dustin nodded, but she read the sadness in his gaze. She’d put that there, and her heart was breaking all over again. She turned, retreating as quick as she could but not before hearing his parting words. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

  “I can’t believe Dustin convinced me to do this,” Bea said to Peter as she grabbed herself a glass of sweet tea.

  “Don’t pretend you needed a lot of convincing.” He laughed.

  “It wasn’t the convincing I’m surprised about. It was that Dustin was doing it.”