by Jillian Neal
“Arley, baby, what’s wrong? I kind of thought you’d be happy.” John handed her a mug of coffee, but she couldn’t drink it. She set it on her desk and tried to navigate her way back to him. It was too much. There was just too much at stake. She couldn’t fight the overwhelming tides of never knowing when the end was coming.
The ground beneath her felt unsteady, like she was living in blind hope on a cracking fault line of lies she’d told herself from the beginning. She couldn’t go on that way forever. She just couldn’t. It wasn’t in her.
She’d spent her entire childhood trying desperately to be something that she wasn’t to make everyone around her happy. She’d been the perfect child, gotten perfect grades, always acted however her mother decreed, and all it had earned her was her family turning their back on the real her. It was all because she’d never allowed them to see who she really was until all of a sudden her name was being stamped across an erotic novel. Everyone needed love and acceptance, but she’d orchestrated herself out of ever really receiving it. They loved the woman she pretended to be and hated the woman she really was. As soon as she revealed her true soul and desires to John, he was going to walk away, as well.
She’d gone on far too long pleasing them instead of being true to who she really was. She couldn’t do that ever again. You couldn’t pretend to be someone you weren’t for an entire lifetime, and an entire lifetime is what she wanted.
“Arley, come on. You’re scaring me.” John stepped closer, trying to soothe her.
She shook her head and dammed back tears with the clench of her molars. She had to do this, and she had to do this now. Gathering the original manuscript of The Man from Wellington, she handed it to John. “I want you to have this.”
“What?” He looked like she’d just backhanded him. “No, I’m not taking that. Why are you saying this?”
“Please, I want you to have it. My father, his work, this book is real to you. It means so much to you. But what we have, John, it isn’t real to you. And it’s so incredibly real to me. I’m in love with you, and I’m pretty sure I will always be in love with you, but I want forever.”
He stared at her completely stunned.
“I want you forever. I want a ring, and a certificate, and a little house out on a lake where I write and cook you dinners and you come home early from work and we have a real life together. I want that forever, and you don’t believe in forever.”
“Arley …” He shook his head, unable to refute her pleas.
“And what’s more than all of that, I deserve forever. I deserve everything I just said I wanted. And the worst part of all of this is that I know you love me, too. I can feel it when you hold me in your arms, but you don’t want forever, and you don’t believe anything lasts that long. You don’t believe in love, John. You can’t seem to see the most powerful force in this whole stupid world. I can’t go on like this. I can’t go on wondering if someday you’re going to get sick of me or tired of me and turn around and walk away. I just can’t.
“So, thank you so much for the past two weeks. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, but I can’t keep doing this. Please, take the manuscript. He would want you to have it, and it would mean so much to me to know that you have it. But I think you should go.”
“Don’t you get it, Arley? Marriage is a stupid piece of paper. It’s nothing. I help end a half-dozen a day. I cannot do that to you. I can never hate you, and I could never live with myself if I somehow made you hate me. And every single marriage that ends, that’s what comes of it. All of that love they swore they were in evaporates into the oblivion, and hate is the only emotion that they bring to the courtroom. I cannot hate you. I won’t do it. I can’t. If you want me to go, I’ll go, but this is real life, not one of your books. No one gets a happy ending. Nothing lasts a lifetime.”
“You’re wrong! Love can last a lifetime. It isn’t easy. Life isn’t easy, but you can’t just always leave yourself a way out, John. Sometimes you have to believe in something outside of yourself enough to step out in faith. I need you to believe in us, to believe in me, and you don’t, not really. I’m not sure you ever will.”
John caught her chin in his hand and lifted her eyes defiantly up to his own. “You’re right about one thing; I do love you, but it’s better for me to leave right now while we still love each other than for me to try and make myself believe that you could love me for a lifetime. No one could love me that long. I cannot hate you and that’s what’s at the end of this road. I see it every fucking day of my life.”
Arley jerked her chin out of his hand, spun, and broke down in sobs. Why did the right thing always have to be the most horrible thing to do?
Shaking his head in abject disbelief, John stalked to the bedroom, gathered his things, grabbed his briefcase and slammed the door behind him.
Trying to recapture her breath and manage to speak somewhat clearly, Arley located her cell phone. She had to make one phone call before she gave herself over to the cessation, to the riptide that she was certain was going to swallow her whole. She had to know that someone would check on him and make sure he was all right.
“Hello?”
“Sienna … it’s … Arley.” She broke down again. She just couldn’t hold it together.
“Arley! What’s wrong?”
John could taste the bitter salt of his tears as they trailed over his lips, but he refused to wipe them away. At least their fever was something he could feel. Everything else felt numb. What the hell had happened? They’d been perfect together. What the hell was forever, anyway? Some moronic concept that didn’t exist, of that much he was sure. His body jolted as he passed the Georgia line. He refused to look back. Nothing good ever happened in that stupid state anyway. It was full of nothing but pain.
He had no interest in going home. Everything there would just remind him of her. He located a dive bar outside of Buckhead and headed inside. The liquor wasn’t capable of burning away the sickening pain. He left after one drink and ordered himself home. He’d figure out the rest tomorrow.
Arley sobbed until her body was able to supply her no more tears. She laid curled up in a ball in her bed, clinging to the pillow he’d slept on. She wasn’t certain she could go on without him, but she had a better chance of surviving this than she would’ve trying to be something she wasn’t. That knowledge just didn’t make it hurt any less.
John stumbled from the horrific pain more than the liquor as he managed his way up to the steps to the condo he despised. It was nearing midnight. He felt like he hadn’t slept in days, but was certain he wouldn’t be resting that night. His chest was hollow and his body ragged and raw. He saw someone move in the shadows and he jerked his head up right. Truthfully, he couldn’t find it in himself at that moment to give a shit if he got mugged.
Ryan stepped into the light. “We need to talk.” He pointed to the door.
“What the hell are you doing here? How the hell did you get here?”
“I brought Evie down to see Alexa today. We left a little while ago, but I just took her back for the night. Like I said, we need to talk. You’ve been taking care of me for the last decade, and I think it’s high time I returned the favor.”
John shoved open the door to his condo, tempted to slam it in his best friend’s face. “Fuck off, man. I’m really not in the mood right now.”
“Yeah, I figured that, but we’re still going to talk.”
“John.”
He spun around before closing the door to take in his mother’s face. She’d been crying.
He glared hatefully at Ryan. “Really?”
“I brought in the big guns because you need to listen, John.”
“Please, son, just hear me.” His mother all but begged. He stared her down. There was nothing she could say to make this better, and they both knew that. “John, baby, you’ve spent your whole entire life trying to undo what your father did, and that was never your responsibility.”
John shook his hea
d, unable to believe the past six hours of his life.
“You are not him, John.” Ryan cut his mother off. “You have never done anything like what he did, until you walked out on her tonight. Think about that. Until this moment, you were nothing like him, but this, this is precisely what he did.”
“He’s right.” Ms. Rowan nodded. “You wanted so badly to be able to fix what you think he broke, but sweetheart, you just can’t. See, what you could never seem to see was that life may not have always been easy, but we were never broken, John. We had each other. That was all I ever needed. You can’t craft your way into some version of a perfect life and hope to insulate yourself from the world. Baby, you need Arley, and she needs you. You cannot go on for your entire life pretending that you don’t love her because you’re terrified that she’ll walk away, too. That isn’t how life works.”
“She’s right. Life will break you, man. It’s inevitable. But having someone that will hold your hand when life isn’t going the way you want, that is the only way to survive this fucked up world. You can’t just go on not living. You’ve been doing that for years, and it hasn’t gotten you anywhere good. You belong with her, forever. You know that. You’re letting your terror that you’ll somehow turn into your old man and hurt her the way he hurt you rule your entire life. You’re not a coward, John. Don’t act like one now.”
His mother wiped away another round of tears. “Do you want to know what I really think? I know you won’t believe me, but I’m going to tell you anyway.”
Too tired to argue, John waited.
“Arley told me that when her father wrote The Man from Wellington that he stayed up night after night for weeks to finish it and get it published the following year. He rushed it to the editors and publishers. She said that with every other novel he worked methodically on a schedule, but not with The Man From Wellington. He was like a man possessed. Baby, I bought that book on your birthday. I checked on it at the bookstore for weeks before that. I needed something to bring you back to me. That book that saved your life is the very same book he wrote so frantically. Something wouldn’t let him delay it. It wouldn’t give him rest. So, call it God, or fates, or angels, or whatever you want, but her father saved my son so that someday, after he was dead and gone, my son could marry his daughter and they could save each other.”
“Gypsy magic.” Ryan breathed the words. His chiseled face was set in shock.
“What if I can’t?” John finally erupted. “What if I don’t know how to love her for her whole life? She deserves someone that knows how to do that! What if I just up and decide to leave her?”
Ryan’s shock melted, and he shook his head. “You are not your father! You will not do that, but if you want to know how you love someone for a lifetime, man, let me tell you. You do it one day, one moment at a time. You get up every single morning for the rest of your life and you decide that she is the most important person in your entire world. You do everything you can to make her smile, and trust me, if you do that, she’ll do a whole lot of things that make you smile. But a lifetime is just this collection of one moment at a time, one smile at a time, one cup of coffee at a time and it all adds up to equal a lifetime love. That’s how you do it. One millisecond at a time. You stop trying to take on an entire lifetime in one moment and let the moments make up the lifetime.”
“And, baby, I want you to have that with Arley. I’ve never seen anyone make you smile like she does.”
“Me either.” Ryan agreed.
“You’re too smart to let your fear beat you, John. Choose love instead. Always choose love over fear.”
The pain went to war with the hope his best friend and his mother thrust upon him. The knowledge that he had already walked out on her took vicious blows at his battered soul. He had to fix what he’d done. He’d let fear turn into the very monster he’d tried so hard to bury inside of himself, inside of his work, inside of his entire life.
Seventeen
He stopped at a Waffle House in Chattanooga and got two large coffees to go before he returned to his car and continued his northward trip. The sun would be up in another hour. He had to do this right. He owed her this, even if she wouldn’t give him a chance to undo what he’d done out of pure terrorizing fear.
He rubbed his head as he tried to wait patiently in line at the Starbucks in Smyrna, Tennessee before he continued onward.
“Give me a venti bold black with an extra shot. I’m in a hurry.” His voice was hollow and agitated. The barista’s head lifted from the cash register. She gave John a wary look.
“Black, sir?”
“As my fucking soul, sweetheart,” he huffed.
An hour later, he paced outside the bank offices deep in the heart of Brentwood, TN. Everything around him appeared bleary through his bloodshot clouded eyes. He’d given into the tears far too many times on the trip up for it not to have affected his vision.
He checked his watch again and downed another swig of the coffee he’d acquired. He’d already been to the bank branch where his accounts were housed.
Ten minutes past eight, the trustee handling the Rigland Publishing bankruptcy slithered into his office. John followed him inside and closed the door behind them.
Shocked, the trustee huffed, “Excuse me! Can I help you?”
“Yeah, you sure as hell can help me. I’m here to make you a one-time offer of $15,000 for the publication rights on all of Arley Copeland’s novels. You know that’s a hell of a lot more than Rigland ever paid her in an advance, and I know they need the money. You’re going to give me the rights to her work and then you’re going to reject the rest of her contract, making it null and void. When Rigland comes before the bankruptcy courts, Ms. Copeland’s contract will no longer exist in the estate. If we can’t come to an agreement on this, I’ll add another lawsuit to Rigland and to you, Mr …” he lifted the nameplate on the man’s desk, “… Davidson, claiming that Ms. Copeland had no legal representation when she signed that contract and was under duress because of her father’s impending death. I don’t really think that either of you can afford another suit, now can you?”
Davidson’s eyes rounded as he glanced nervously out of his corner office.
“I would have to speak to someone from Rigland and to their attorneys. You understand?”
“You go talk to whomever you want to talk to right now. If I leave this office, the next time you hear from me it will come via courier and will be alerting you to the lawsuit I’m filing against you. I am not a patient man, Mr. Davidson, and I’ve had a hell of a night.”
“Yes, uh, well, just give me one minute.” He all but sprinted out of the office. John drove his fingers into his eyes trying to wipe away the entire night before.
Davidson returned twenty minutes later carrying the necessary documentation. “We’ll accept the offer on Ms. Copeland’s work.”
“I thought you might.” John signed the paperwork, handed over the bank check, and took the legal documents binding Arley’s work to Rigland.
He headed to the other end of Brentwood to make his next stop before he flew back to Birmingham to beg her forgiveness.
“This one, sir? It’s quite expensive.”
“Yeah, well, trust me, she’s worth it.” Several minutes later, he raced out of the store with the three-carat Verragio diamond ring in his pocket. He floored the Porsche and prayed to a God he’d refused to believe in until his mother had given him her take on The Man from Wellington the night before. She’d known about that car wreck all along. He should have known. She knew everything.
The fear threatened to drown him once again when he pulled into that ancient apartment complex at three that afternoon. He’d been up for the last thirty-four hours. His body threatened to collapse, but he wasn’t giving up yet.
Her car was still in the lot. It hadn’t been moved. Rubbing his eyes again, he forced his feet to step one in front of the other until he was standing at her door.
The beat of his heart in his ears wa
s louder than his fist knocking on the door. Impatient as always, he knocked continuously until she finally opened the door. Her eyes were almost swollen shut. Defeat had wilted her entire body. She was broken, and it was all his fault.
He had to do this right. He fell to his knees and handed her the book rights. “Arley, I’m sorry, and I swear, if you’ll let me, I will always fight for you. Always. And for us. I’ll never stop fighting for us to make it. I won’t walk away again. I’m so sorry, baby. I never wanted to leave you. I was just so fucking scared, but I swear I’ll never let you down again. I got Rigland to dissolve your contract. You’re free and clear to write whatever you want and to sell it to anyone you want, and you can release your books for sale as an indie author today if you want. I’ll help you set it up. And here.” He held up the ring, and she gasped. Another round of tears overwhelmed her.
“You know I suck at patience, so if we’re gonna do this, I want to do it right and I want to do it now. I’m quitting my job. I just can’t fight that anymore. It was killing me. I’ll buy you a house wherever you want. Just please, please say you’ll marry me. I swear that every single moment, every millisecond of every single day for the rest of our life I will choose you. I won’t walk away again. Just please.”
“Oh, my gosh! Are you sure? Are you really sure you want forever? You really believe in us?”
John stood. “I only want forever if you’re in it. I believe in you. I believe in us, and someday, hopefully, I’ll believe in me, too. But I have to prove myself to you first. I screwed up too badly to forgive myself right now.”
Still wary of him she forced herself out on the stoop and fell against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and felt his entire being settle. She was all he would ever need. The world might have broken him, but she’d put him back together, and together they would make it through. He just needed her in his arms. That was all that would ever matter.
