Head Over Heels

by Serena Bell

  I’ve always liked hotels. You decide when to arrive and when to leave, and by definition, they are places you can’t stay. Tonight that fact feels incredibly comforting.

  I leave the hotel long enough to get dinner. I decide on The Cheesecake Factory, but can’t help thinking that Chase would have tried to talk me into Ruth’s Chris Steak House or The Olive Garden. Then we would have made a joke about our incompatibility.

  Tears fill my eyes again.

  I shouldn’t be crying. I’m doing the right thing. I’m taking a job in my field that uses my talents. I’m trying a new city, a place I’ve never lived before. I’m on the road, on my own, an independent woman who isn’t afraid to mold her life into something that’s right for her.

  I’m taking care of myself, learning from old mistakes, making sure I don’t set myself up for heartbreak.

  You have to stop crying, I tell myself, and I do a pretty good job of it during dinner. I read the new Sophie Kinsella book and people-watch over the top of my Kindle and eat waaaay too many avocado egg rolls. I leave a big tip and a thank-you note for the waitress, and I depart the restaurant in an excellent mood.

  It’s a good night. I could spend many happy nights like this.

  The only thing that would make it better…

  But I don’t need Chase to watch a movie and drink wine and eat chocolate. I have my iPad, the hotel minibar, and a stash of Ghirardelli to meet all my solo movie-watching needs.

  So that’s what I do. I queue up La La Land, which I’ve been meaning to watch, and I drink wine from a plastic cup and eat most of a bar of 72 percent dark chocolate.

  La La Land makes me cry. I know it’s one of those love/hate movies—people are crazy about it or it annoys the shit out of them—but it turns out I’m in the love camp.

  I feel pleased with myself, afterward. Look. I had a wonderful evening. I was sad, but I still had a good time.

  (I managed not to think about how much Chase would have hated La La Land, even.)

  I’m going to be okay.

  I shut down my iPad, clean up my cup and wrapper, and tuck myself into bed. The white-noise whir of the air-conditioning is soothing, and I know I’ll fall asleep quickly.

  I get out of bed. I need—something. Something important. Not candy. Not ice. I walk down the hotel corridor, but it’s longer than I was expecting, and the doors of the rooms are open. Each room, a child. Each child, vaguely familiar. But the children shouldn’t be here, in the Comfort Inn; that makes no sense. And the hallways don’t lead where I think they should lead. I wander. It gets darker. I hear sirens. The police will come and take me away and I’ll never find the thing that’s missing. I hurry, hurry, hurry, but I hear the door downstairs fly open, I hear the sound of voices, footsteps on the stairs; they appear at the top of the stairs, uniformed and faceless. I turn to run but they grab me…

  I wake up and turn in the dark, reaching for Chase.

  That’s when I realize that there’s a whole other gear of heartache that I’ve been holding at bay. The kind that comes in the middle of the night, when you reach for someone who’s not there. When you know that there is a little girl in a house eight hours away who might wake up reaching for you, and who won’t understand why you’re far away.

  When you understand that in trying to avoid the big mistake, you’ve made the biggest mistake of all.

  I cry, and cry, and cry. I cry until I can’t cry anymore, until my whole body hurts.

  Chapter 48

  Chase

  “Daddy, play with me!”

  “In a little bit, sweetheart. I’m working on something.”

  It’s Friday night and I’m being slack about getting Katie to bed. I know I’ll miss Liv the most when the house is quiet.

  I look up from my laptop and meet the sweetest, bluest eyes you can imagine. Her face has slimmed down but there’s still a childish softness to her cheeks, and her blond hair is a messy cloud. My heart squeezes.

  I close the laptop. “Let’s play, baby.”

  Katie is an adventurous princess, riding out on her trusty steed to map the kingdom and bring back news from its farthest-flung corners.

  She wears her Elsa costume, as well as a piece of silver fabric that Liv got for her at Goodwill, and a crown that she and Gillian made from tinfoil.

  Needless to say, I am the horse. I’m a lazy, good-for-nothing horse that frequently loses control of its limbs, unseating its rider and causing lots of hilarity. Even when I am upright, I require lots of prodding and kicking and plying with various forms of horse feed, like magic roses.

  I trot all around the living room—er, kingdom—with Katie—er, the princess—on my back, and the princess stops here and there to note something on her map (printer paper, marked up with colored pencil), or to interact with some of her (imaginary) loyal subjects.

  Sometimes, if necessary, I fill in for the loyal subjects. Like at one cottage on the very edge of the kingdom, the whole family is sick with Ploogaciriosis, and they’re all throwing up a lot. That seems to need dramatization, so I supply it until Katie laughs so hard she runs out of the living room to the bathroom, narrowly averting an accident.

  I wish Liv were here. She would be rolling on the floor. I love making her laugh.

  Katie has stopped to kiss a whole pond full of frogs, so I take a picture of my princess girl crouched down with her lips pursed, bestowing her favors everywhere. I stand there with my phone in my hand.

  There’s no point, right? Liv was here with us, we loved her the best we could, and that wasn’t enough to convince her to stay. What good will a goofy photo do?

  I shove my phone back in my pocket, the photo unsent.

  “There are turtles, too, Daddy. Frogs and turtles.” Katie bends down to kiss the turtles.

  Turtles.

  I remember Liv and me, sitting on her bed, in the room she’d transformed. It’s something I learned from one of my foster sisters. She called it carrying her shell on her back.

  She’s not, though. She’s not a turtle. She’s a horseshoe crab. She takes a new place and makes it her own.

  And then she leaves.

  She leaves because—

  The only hard part was, I never got to stay. I’d start to feel like I’d settled in, and then something would happen…So that’s why I loved the idea so much of carrying my house around with me like a shell.

  The clockwork of the world grinds to a halt, and in the silence and stillness, I see it, what I’ve been missing.

  At the very beginning, I told her, I can tell already this isn’t going to work.

  Because I was terrified.

  Before she left, she told me, I can tell already this isn’t going to work.

  Because she was terrified.

  Because every time she’d ever wanted to stay, she’d had to leave.

  Katie is scattering something on the ground.

  “What’s that, Katie girl?” Liv’s nickname for her spills from my lips, without my intending it.

  “Bread crumbs,” Katie says.

  “Why bread crumbs?”

  “So we can find our way home. Sometimes if you’re in the woods and it’s dark and you’re scared, you need bread crumbs.”

  “Yes,” I say, although my chest feels like there is a stone on it. “Sometimes you do.”

  “Daddy, you okay?”

  “Yes, Katie girl, I am okay.”

  It’s true. I am sad. I miss Liv more than I can deal with. But I also know exactly what I need to do.

  I pull my phone out of my pocket. I pull up the photo of Katie, with her little pink lips pursed, kissing all the frogs you have to kiss before you find the frog you love best. I click to attach the photo, and then I add text:

  Have been doing a lot of thinking. And the thing is: Katie and I? We’re your friends,
and we’re your home. No matter what else happens, we’re here. That’s a promise. And I don’t make promises I can’t keep.

  Chapter 49

  Chase

  I tuck Katie in, read her the tattered copy of Hi, All You Rabbits handed down from my mother, and turn out the light.

  “Where’s Liv now?” she asks.

  That’s better than what she asked last night, which was, “Is Liv going to come in and say good night?”

  I think she’d just forgotten Liv was gone, but for a moment I thought she hadn’t understood any of what we’d told her about Liv’s leaving, and my chest fissured.

  “Liv’s probably in…” I consult the vague map in my head. “Somewhere in Utah or Wyoming, I’d guess. She’ll get to Denver tomorrow.”

  “I miss her.”

  “I miss her too.”

  “Gillian’s, nice, though!” Katie says. “She’s not the same as Liv, but she’s nice.”

  I’ve been feeling pretty awful about putting Katie through this. If I’d really thought it through, I would have hired another nanny straight after Celia. One fewer transition for a little girl who needs her life to be stable.

  Or would I have?

  Did I really hire Liv for Katie’s benefit? Or was there a part of me that had gotten tired of the walls between us and wanted more?

  I realize that this is the answer to the rhetorical question I’d asked Brooks the other night. I hired Liv because my subconscious self wanted to tie her to us as long as I could.

  Forever if possible.

  Only it wasn’t.

  “I’m glad you like Gillian,” I say, ruffling Katie’s hair and kissing her soft cheek.

  I head downstairs. I’m too mentally tired and burnt to want to do anything other than watch a movie, so I grab my iPad and open the Netflix app.

  Hey.

  My heart pounds. It’s a text from Liv.

  That’s a cute picture of Katie. Thanks.

  Not exactly the response I was hoping for…but something. You’re welcome.

  What are you doing?

  I think, Missing you. I text, I was going to watch a movie.

  Which one?

  You won’t believe it.

  Try me.

  Wonder Woman.

  Chase!

  I know, I know. But it does have superheroes and war and explosions. How’s the drive so far?

  There’s a long pause. Fine. Thinking about watching a movie, too. Maybe For a Good Time, Call…

  What’s that?

  Roommates, phone sex.

  She sends me a link to an article.

  Chick flicks guys like, huh. OK. I’d watch that.

  I was going to ask if you wanted to. Watch it with me, I mean.

  I thought maybe you meant have phone sex.

  Long silence.

  You are so juvenile. Don’t make me regret asking you.

  I chuckle. We never watch the same movie.

  I know, but this is an extenuating circumstance.

  Extenuating, how?

  I’m standing outside your front door.

  Chapter 50

  Chase

  I open the door and there she is.

  She is holding her iPad and she looks so beautiful it makes my heart stop. Her hair is a cascade of copper and her smile, even though it’s tentative, is better than sunshine and—

  “You better be naked under that trench coat.”

  She laughs. “Mostly.”

  “Jesus, Liv, you look good enough to—”

  The animal half of me wants to kiss her stupid and get her out of her clothes as fast as possible. The other half of me wants to make this moment last forever. That half wins. I cup her head, feeling the smooth silk of her hair slip through my fingers. I touch her cheek—soft and smooth as satin—and I draw her close, slowly, slowly, slowly, until I can feel her breath against my lips. The burn of our chemistry works its way under both of our skins, and she sighs and slips closer so I can feel the length of her against me, all curves and softness, and holy shit, she feels so good. We both groan at the contact, and my cock hardens, fast, between us, and she presses herself close, closer, wiggling.

  I step back, holding her at arm’s length.

  “You’re here.”

  “I woke up in the hotel in Boise. Checked out. Hit the road, started driving toward Denver. And I realized, I wasn’t getting any closer. I was getting farther away. Farther and farther. Each mile. Farther from Katie. Farther from you. Farther from—”

  Tears spill down her cheeks.

  “Farther from home.”

  Her lower lip trembles as she says it, and I think she’s never looked stronger or braver or more beautiful.

  I tug her inside and take the iPad out of her hands and shut the door behind her. Then I push her up against the door and kiss her, not able to get enough of the wet heat of her mouth or the taste of her or the slide of her tongue against mine. I open the coat and—

  “Did you drive all the way from Boise in these?” I touch the peach lace of her barely-there bra and panties.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  I kneel and taste her through the lace, salty and familiar, and I bite and lick, groaning into her sex and reaching up to cup her fucking amazing breasts and doing my damnedest not to come all over myself. I straighten up and pull the panties down. She’s grabbing for my belt and my jeans button and the zipper, pushing my clothes out of the way faster than I can, and when I’m bare she tries to wrap a hand around me but I push her out of the way because I’m that frantic for what I really want.

  The first slide almost ruins me because she’s so wet and so tight and so hot, but I wrap a hand around the base of my cock and take a few deep breaths and find my second wind. I thrust into her over and over again. The angle is phenomenal, and watching her head loll back against the door, watching her eyes glaze, watching the heat rise in her face, takes me to the edge so fast that this time I can’t do anything to stop myself from going over. “Fuck!”

  “It’s okay,” she says, and then at the end of the deepest of deep thrusts, “Oh, oh, me too, me too, me too, me too, Chaaaaaaase.”

  When I can see and walk and all that stuff again, I pick her up and carry her into the living room, where I lay her gently on the couch.

  “Welcome home,” I say.

  Chapter 51

  Liv

  “I had some other things I meant to say before we had sex.” I wrap the trench coat around me, hugging myself. I don’t bother trying to put the panties back on. They were honestly pretty damp even before Chase licked me through them. Anticipation. I mean, not that I was sure how this would go. I wasn’t. I was terrified. But I thought there was at least a decent chance that sex would happen, and I was more than ready. Plus the lace and the satin and the trench coat kind of did it for me. There was also my first sight of Chase in forty-eight hours, broad, cocky, amber-eyed, a little scruffy…

  He raises his eyebrows. “Well, me too.”

  “When I told you I didn’t think you could change, I realized I did exactly what your parents did. And Thea. I assumed I knew who you were and what you’d do in a certain situation, without giving you a chance to prove yourself.”

  He opens his mouth, but I keep going, because I need him to know. “The truth is, I’ve never seen you be anything except exactly what I want. Honest and loyal and a terrific friend and an amazing father and—” I bite my lip.

  “—seriously, seriously hot in bed,” he supplies, crossing his arms.

  I smack him.

  “I am, though, right?” He does that patented Chase eyebrow waggle that should make me cringe but actually makes the pit of my stomach squirmy. Not that I want him to know that.

  “You’re supposed to let me say it, asshole.”

&n
bsp; “So say it,” he challenges, leveling me a dark look.

  “Best ever. So good. You’ve spoiled me for every other guy in the universe, and in any parallel universes, and—”

  He makes a face. “Don’t overdo it. I won’t believe you.”

  “In all seriousness, Chase, if you’re serious about asking me to stay, I’m serious about staying.”

  “Hell yes, I’m serious.”

  “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I was looking up job listings in the Seattle area.”

  He shakes his head. Hard. “I’ve got a job for you. At the store. I bought the store from Mike. That is, I still owe a lot of money, but I signed the contract to buy it. Not for you,” he says, as I try to protest. “For me. Because I thought about it, hard, and I realized: I don’t feel the way I used to. I don’t feel claustrophobic when I think about it. I feel excited. And I think it’s because when I used to think about it, the first thing I always thought was, ‘I can’t do it. I’m going to fuck it up.’ But I don’t feel like that guy anymore. I feel like the guy you see when you look at me. A guy who’s good at stuff that matters.”

  My chest aches and my eyes are all misty. I reach for him, and he pulls me close and clutches me hard against his chest. “I want to stay,” I whisper. “Right here.”

  “Good,” he says. “This is where you belong.”

  He smells like cotton and sweat and I breathe him in, gloriously happy.

  “What about the Denver job?”

  “I told them it had been a mistake for me to leave Seattle, that I had fallen in love…”

  I peek up at his face, not sure what to expect, hoping for the best.

  He’s smirking. Just a little, just enough. “Say that part again.”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  “Again.”

  “I love you.”

  He takes a huge breath and sighs it out.

  “I love you, too,” he says.

  Then he bends his head and we spend a few long minutes not being able to get enough of each other.

  But I still haven’t told him all of what I realized.