Summer of Two Wishes

by Julia London

  Macy shuddered at the primal sensation and grabbed his hips, pulling him deeper inside her. Waves of pleasure were already rolling through her, the crescendo building. But Finn seemed to enjoy torturing her and watched her as he slid slowly into her depths, adjusting himself to her body, then sliding deeper still with small, rhythmic movements.

  Macy’s control was almost gone; he was so hot and thick inside her, and she arched her pelvis against him, silently demanding more as she gasped for breath. Finn at last gave in. He kissed her as he began to thrust harder and longer inside her, pushing her to new heights. As the earth began to fall away from her she cried out with pleasure and lifted her body to match his rhythm. His breath was hot on her shoulder, his grip of her hand almost painful.

  The last hard wave of pleasure carried her off—he was her river. She heard the strangled groan, felt the last powerful thrust of his body as he sank his fingers into her hips.

  A moment later, Macy opened her eyes. Finn was holding himself above her. His hair dipped over one eye, and he had an unfathomably deep look in his copper-brown eyes. He carefully lowered himself onto his elbows and cupped her face in his hands. “God, Macy,” he whispered, and tenderly kissed her mouth and her shoulder before dislodging himself and lying beside her. They lay on the blanket looking up at the dusk sky, their fingers entwined, their hearts beating in unison.

  A few minutes later, Finn sat up and handed Macy her clothes. They dressed quietly, their eyes on one another, their smiles warm. When they’d dressed, Finn wrapped his arm around Macy’s neck and kissed her forehead. “We gotta get a place, and sooner rather than later. I don’t care if it’s a cracker box, and I don’t care what the lawyer says—I need to be with you.”

  “Me, too,” she agreed, and kissed his neck, tasting the saltiness of his skin. “I’ll look tomorrow. Someplace small.”

  He chuckled. “Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash. But it can’t hurt to look. I’m going to go to New York in the morning and meet this book guy,” he said. “I should be back before the end of the week. If you find something, maybe we can wrap it up then.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” she asked.

  “I’d love for you to go with me,” he said. “But I’d rather just get in and get out, and Brodie is tagging along in case I…well, flip out,” he said with a self-conscious laugh. “And besides, you need to find us a place before l lose my freaking mind.”

  Macy laughed. “Can’t have that. God, Finn…I am so ready to be us again.”

  “Me, too, baby,” he said softly.

  39

  Wyatt made a cup of instant coffee and grimaced at the taste of it. He was ashamed to admit it, but he’d never figured out how to work Macy’s high-dollar coffeepot. He sat down at the kitchen bar and pushed aside a pile of mail, old newspapers, his empty bottle of blood pressure medicine, and some fast food bags, and opened the newspaper. He skimmed the front page—a lot of politics, more trouble at the border. He flipped through the paper to the Metro section when a headline caught his eye: LOCAL HERO OPENS HEART AND LAND TO UNWANTED ANIMALS.

  Wyatt slowly put down his coffee cup and picked up the paper. There was a picture of Finn Lockhart, his hand on the bridle of a horse. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but there was a subtle hint of one. It almost seemed to Wyatt as if Finn were smirking at him.

  Wyatt quickly scanned the article. In it, Finn talked about how he’d shared his scraps of food with a starving dog while he was held in captivity in Afghanistan. “Oh, yeah,” Wyatt muttered, “a hero and a soft-heart.” Finn said he’d always had an affinity for animals, and since he’d been home, he’d learned of several big animals that needed new homes: a pair of horses, a longhorn steer, and, of course, dogs. So it seemed “only natural” to start up a rescue ranch. When asked where and how he was going to manage it, Finn said that he was in the process of selling his story and hoped to make enough to buy land and get it started. The article concluded with information on how to donate to Finn’s cause.

  When Wyatt finished reading the article, he flung the paper across the kitchen. Sheets drifted to the floor. He buried his face in his hands for a moment and wondered if he would ever be able to shake Finn Lockhart from his life.

  His anger and frustration and sheer helplessness were getting the best of him. Even Milo seemed depressed—he lay with his head between his paws, staring at Wyatt, as if he expected him to do something. Wyatt stood up. “Come on, pal,” he said to Milo. “Let’s go get a decent cup of coffee.” He walked to the front door, his gaze moving over the big, gilt-edged mirror over the mantel. He’d thrown something at it one night in a fit of rage. The other stuff he’d trashed that night—a lamp, a vase, a picture of him and Macy—he’d picked up. Mostly. But the mirror he’d left hanging there like that. He liked it better. He didn’t like looking at himself these days.

  At the Saddle-brew, Wyatt ran into Caroline, who was a whole lot happier to see him than he was to see her. “Wyatt, just the person I wanted to see,” she said, standing too close to him.

  Wyatt looked behind the counter. “Sam’s not working?”

  “Not today. How about some coffee?”

  Wyatt looked at Caroline. “Sure,” he said halfheartedly. “Why not?”

  Macy couldn’t get hold of Wyatt. He wasn’t at the office, he wasn’t at home, and he wasn’t answering his cell. She needed to get some things from the house, but she didn’t want to go alone. She called Emma and asked her to ride along.

  “Anything to get out of the house,” Emma said. “If I don’t get a job soon, I am going to go nuts.”

  At the house in Arbolago Hills, Macy rang the doorbell twice.

  “Just stick your key in the door and let’s go,” Emma urged her. “He’s not home. Get in, get out.”

  “You’re right,” Macy said, and opened the door. “Hello?” she called out.

  Milo was there, his paws sliding on the hardwood floors in his eagerness to reach her. She squatted down to pet him, then popped up. “I’ll be just a minute, Emma.”

  “Cool,” Emma said, and went down on her knees to greet Milo.

  Macy walked down the corridor to the master suite. The door was closed, and as she neared it, she heard something like a moan. Was he sleeping? “Wyatt?” she said softly, and opened the door a crack. “Are you awake?” She pushed it open a little further. When she peeked inside, she jumped.

  “Macy!” Wyatt shouted.

  She was too stunned to move. Wyatt was in bed with another woman. Macy stared at the floor, trying to process it.

  The next moment, Wyatt yanked the bedroom door open wearing his boxer shorts. She could see the bare legs of the woman on the bed behind him. Caroline Spalding. It had to be Caroline. Macy had heard about her interest in Wyatt.

  “What are you doing here?” Wyatt asked, putting his hand to his nape.

  “I needed some clothes. I left you a message. Apparently you didn’t get it.” Or maybe he did. Maybe this was Wyatt’s idea of payback.

  “So get them,” he said, opening the door wide. Macy’s gaze flew to the bed and she gasped loudly.

  It wasn’t Caroline Spalding in bed with Wyatt. It was Samantha Delaney. Samantha Delaney, who had been Macy’s best friend, was sitting on the bed with nothing but the corner of a sheet to cover her, calmly regarding Macy.

  “Oh, my God,” Macy said. “Oh, my God.”

  “What’s the matter?” Wyatt asked. “Can’t I move on, too?”

  Macy whirled around and hurried down the hallway to Emma, who was standing in the foyer, her mouth gaping open.

  Wyatt followed her. “What about your clothes?”

  “I’ll come back another time!” she snapped.

  “Right. When you do, bring the Jeep and a ride.”

  Macy had no idea what he was talking about. “What?”

  “That’s right, I forgot to mention—I’m taking the Jeep back.”

  Macy spun around and stared at him.

  “Oh, d
id you think you could just take that, too?” he asked pleasantly. “That I’d just give you a Jeep so you could leave me?”

  “God, Wyatt,” Emma said, her voice full of disgust.

  This wasn’t Wyatt. This was not the man Macy had been married to for seven months. This was a broken man, because the Wyatt she’d fallen in love with would never sleep with Sam. Sam! A dull pain started in the back of Macy’s head. “Can I at least move my things before you take the Jeep?”

  Wyatt sighed heavenward. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said. “How long are we going to play this game?”

  “What game?”

  “Okay, maybe game is the wrong word,” he said. “But seriously, Macy, Lockhart can’t provide for you and the baby. He’s living with his parents for Chris-sakes. And he’s obviously got some mental issues.”

  “Mental issues!”

  “Everyone is talking about it,” Wyatt said with a shrug. “How long do you possibly think it can last? You’re living in a fairy tale.”

  “And what are you living in, Wyatt? How does sleeping with my best friend help matters in the least?” Macy exclaimed angrily. Over his shoulder, she saw Sam appear at the threshold of the master bedroom, wearing one of Wyatt’s shirts and apparently nothing more. “I’ll have someone bring the Jeep back,” Macy said.

  “Great,” Wyatt said.

  “Come on, Macy,” Emma said, and opened the front door.

  Macy had one foot over the threshold when Wyatt said, “Macy, wait.” She looked over her shoulder. He was standing in the foyer, his expression angry. But it was his eyes that seared into Macy’s head. His gaze was incongruently forlorn. “I shouldn’t have slept with Sam, but she was there, and I—”

  “I’m sorry, Wyatt,” she said, cutting him off. “I will go to my grave regretting how much I have hurt you. You better go now. Sam is waiting.” She walked out with Emma’s arm around her waist.

  Wyatt watched Macy drive away in the Jeep. In a moment of incredible stupidity at the grocery store, where he’d run into Sam, he’d made a colossal mistake. He would never be able to say why he’d done it. Because he missed Macy? Maybe because he missed sex. More likely he needed to hurt her like he’d been hurt. Whatever his reasons, Wyatt had ruined any chance of getting Macy back. He knew that. She would never get over it, and he…he’d only made it worse by taunting her.

  With a sigh of resignation, he shut the door. Sam was standing behind him, wearing his shirt. “I think you should go now,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, looking at the door. “I think I should.” She retreated down the hallway, and Wyatt understood that somehow, Sam had also gotten what she wanted out of this tryst.

  He followed her down the hallway. “Why, Sam?” he asked as she picked up her clothes.

  “Why what?”

  “Why this?” he said, gesturing to the bed.

  Sam shrugged and slipped on her bra.

  “She was your best friend.”

  “No, I was her best friend,” Sam said angrily.

  Wyatt was starting to get it. “She was your only friend after Tyler died,” he said. “You told me that yourself. You told me more than once how grateful you were to Macy for her friendship!”

  “Oh, get off your high horse, Wyatt! Why did you do it? She was your wife!”

  As much as he despised Sam in that moment, she was right. Wyatt felt like the scum that he was. “Go home, Sam,” he said, and turned away, striding down the hallway. What a colossal mistake.

  Wyatt never made it into work that day. And when Jesse Wheeler turned up later that afternoon with his Jeep, Wyatt told him he didn’t want it.

  “Dude,” Jesse said. “I’ve got to give it back. I’ll just leave the keys in the driver’s seat,” he said, tossed them inside, and strolled down the drive to a friend who was waiting.

  Wyatt had never felt so defeated in his life. His wife didn’t want him. Sam had used him. He had turned into a man he truly did not like.

  That night, as the sun started its descent, Wyatt and Milo walked out of his house and got in his truck. He didn’t lock the door of his house. He didn’t take anything with him. He put his arm around Milo and drove down the street, away from his home.

  40

  Finding a place to live with no income was a difficult task. Not that people weren’t sympathetic, but as one woman put it, “Rules are rules.”

  After a couple of days of looking, Macy went to a Realtor on the town square, thinking that she might find a small house she and Finn could rent. She was standing outside the Barbara Sullivan Realty office looking at pictures of homes for sale when Linda Gail Graeber interrupted her. “Macy, I am so glad to see you,” she said, looking a little frantic.

  “Hi, Linda Gail,” Macy said warily.

  “Have you seen Wyatt?”

  Macy blushed. She could not erase from her mind the image of Wyatt and Sam in bed together. “Not for a couple of days.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Linda Gail said. “He didn’t come to work yesterday or today. I went by the house this morning and it’s standing wide open, but there’s no sign of him.”

  “Did you ask Sam Delaney?” Macy asked.

  “Sam?” Linda Gail said, confused. “Sam’s working. She hasn’t seen him.”

  Linda Gail was obviously flustered, and Macy had to agree—this wasn’t like Wyatt. But then again, Wyatt had hardly been himself lately. “What about Milo?”

  “The dog is gone, too.”

  Macy pushed down a tic of alarm. “Maybe he’s out looking at land?” she suggested.

  “No,” Linda Gail said. “The newspapers are in the yard and he won’t answer his cell.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Oh, I told Chief Ham, but he said Wyatt is a grown man and no family had reported him missing. I’ll be honest, Macy—I am really worried about him. He hasn’t been himself since…since all this happened. He just loves you something awful.”

  Exactly what Macy was thinking. Her tic of alarm grew to a spasm. She could not forget the look in his eyes when she told him she was pregnant but leaving him for Finn. It haunted her, made her doubt herself. What had she done? In making sure she was happy, she’d pushed Wyatt to…to what? To harm himself?

  Linda Gail was right—this wasn’t like him. He hadn’t been himself in a month all because she had knocked the foundation out from beneath him. He needed her. He’d been there for her, but she hadn’t been there for him.

  Everything will be all right.

  Macy thought of his blood pressure medicine. Reminding him to take it was one of the things she always did for him. She thought of all the things he’d done for her. Could she have been so wrong?

  She looked at Linda Gail. “Let’s go make some calls,” she said.

  At JFK Airport, Brodie came back from the gate and told Finn the flight had been delayed indefinitely. Again.

  “Maybe we could rent a car and drive somewhere—Philadelphia, maybe?” Finn suggested.

  “No,” Brodie said. “We can’t get out of there, either. There’s a huge storm between us and Texas, and flights all up and down the eastern seaboard are delayed or canceled.”

  Finn nodded and clenched his jaw. He felt anxious in the crowded hallways and looked around for an escape. Any escape.

  “Hey,” Brodie said. “Nothing’s going to happen here. Breathe, remember?”

  Finn tried very hard to do just that, but it seemed like more and more people were streaming into the halls and milling about, and he felt utterly and helplessly exposed.

  In the summer heat, sitting around the campfire in Pace Bend Park, Wyatt felt like he was sitting at the gates of hell, which he thought was an appropriate way to describe his life. And it was the best way to keep mosquitoes off of him. Not that Wyatt really felt the mosquitoes anymore—he was drunk, had been drunk the last couple of days.

  Wyatt had hooked up with a merry little band of hippies at a Texaco station. He’d had a flat—probably from som
ething he’d run over while driving all over Cowboy Bob’s ranch—and D.J. had offered to help. He later learned that D.J. and Mariah, and Phil and Wendy, went back and forth between Hippie Hollow, where they would swim, and Pace Bend Park, where they camped. “It’s a mellow existence,” D.J., a small man who favored bandanas, had said. “Come eat some dogs with us, man.”

  That’s exactly what Wyatt did.

  The little group lived out of an old van and camped out. Wyatt had the impression they were all determined to be unemployed, but after the last couple of days of just hanging out and drinking, he was beginning to see the appeal.

  They talked about moving southwest, to Garner State Park. “More for the kids to do,” D.J. explained. D.J. and Mariah had two kids under the age of ten, Serafina and Apollo. Phil and Wendy had a baby that never cried, which Wyatt thought was a little odd, but every time he saw the little thing up close—Rocky, they said his name was—he looked happy and healthy. The two families were related somehow. Wyatt was certain they’d explained how, but he didn’t remember.

  Wyatt and Milo slept in the back of his pickup with a borrowed sleeping bag. He’d made a couple of runs into a convenience store for beer and food. “Great!” Mariah had said, as if the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, hot dogs, and breakfast tacos solved some serious supply dilemma.

  What Wyatt liked about the hippies was that they didn’t ask for his story. They were content to let him just be, for which he was grateful. They could sit for many hours smoking pot. Wyatt wasn’t a pot smoker, but he’d become one over those two days. He found that when he was stoned, his anxiety about Macy faded quietly and smoothly into the background.

  On the third day, Wyatt was sitting next to D.J., watching Phil down at the water’s edge with the kids and Milo. Mariah and Wendy were putting together the meal for the night. Wyatt and D.J. had smoked “a little weed,” as D.J. put it, but Wyatt wasn’t feeling quite so tranquil. He was feeling antsy and paranoid.