“Don’t pull that with me! For years, I’ve been writing you, telling you how much I miss you and how much every single one of those packages meant to me, but you never said anything. I checked every single one of them for a letter, but there was never one word!”
I shook my head. “Blane, I never got any letters. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Stop! Just stop! All I want is to be beside you. I don’t even care about the letters or any of it. I figured I deserved to have you ignore me the way I ignored you. I just want to be with you now. I survived that many years without you, but I refuse to go back.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t go back.”
He stared into my widened eyes, grabbing my hand with his much bigger one. “I know you can take care of yourself. God, I’ve always loved that about you, but please, just let me stand beside you while you do it. That’s all I want because I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
He hadn’t always loved me. Why was he doing this?
“You have not always loved me. God, I haven’t always loved you either. I knew you had Franny, and I loved her. I loved you and her together, and I know if she was still around she’d still be your first choice.”
“Oh, you know that do you?”
“Well, yeah,” I said because the answer was obvious.
“I loved Franny very much. God, I really did. She was impossible not to love. But, Whit, I’ve always loved you. It was fine when I was with Franny, when she was my girl, because in some twisted way, you were still my girl too. You were always there. There was never a her without you. But there was definitely a you without her. And I still loved every minute of it. And you weren’t ready to be with anyone. So I took your friendship, and I embraced it.”
He shook his head, ran both of his hands through his hair. “God, I’m saying this all wrong.”
He took another deep breath. “The way I said that makes it seem like Franny was some sort of place holder, which she absolutely was not.” He threw his arm across in emphasis. “At the time, I didn’t know all of this. I didn’t realize. I really was just happy with Franny, willing to build a family with her.”
He softened his voice, lowering the volume just a little. “But after she died, and I cut you out of my life, I started to understand it in a different way.”
His eyes blinked rapidly, emotion very obviously nearly overwhelming him. I waited, just letting him gather his thoughts.
“I had the perfect relationship with her because I had you too. You were almost always there, making me laugh and smiling big in my direction.”
He laughed humorlessly. “It was like some sort of twisted three way, except, without the really fun kinky sex.”
“Blane!”
“It was! Even when I was in love with her, I was in love with you!” he shouted.
I took a step back, the powerful news almost too much to fathom.
He took two steps forward, wrapped his arms around me, and slammed my body into his. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ve never been able to let you go, and I’m not gonna start now.”
My voice matched his. Low and tortured. “Blane…”
“Let me in there, Elbow. Fuck, please, just fucking love me back.”
His hands came to my jaw, surrounding it on both sides while his thumbs swiped my lips from the middle outward. I didn’t wait for his thumbs to move. Instead, I spoke directly against them, unable to stop my emotion from making them tremble.
“I’ve known I loved you since September tenth, two thousand and one.” His forehead fell to mine. “Though, I suspect, I loved you long before then.”
His thumbs moved, making room for his lips as they took over, massaging and melding to mine, his tongue working its way inside immediately. I didn’t make him wait either, responding with fervor, feeling for the very first time like it was possible he really loved me too. Like it was possible we were in love with each other, and our relationship had a chance of ending in some other way than tragedy.
It was a startling, soul-shaking realization, and as a result, I kissed him deeper, longer, and sweeter than I ever had before.
His tongue retreated, but his lips stayed on mine. “I want to make love to you right here.”
I smiled, a tearful chuckle slipping out, and felt his lips mirror mine. “Gram’s not likely to wheel her way in here, but I wouldn’t put all my eggs in that basket. Knowing her she’d probably video tape it and sell our sex tape on the internet.”
“Well, I guess you’d at least stand to inherit all of her profits,” he joked, moving back enough that he could look me in the eyes, his hands moving from my jaw to my hips and pulling me tightly against him.
“Nuh uh,” I disagreed on a shake of my head. “She told me years ago that none of us familial leeches are going to get a dime of her hard-earned money.”
He threw his head back and laughed, the column of his throat working with each delicious chuckle.
“Maybe I’m in love with both of you,” he teased.
My answer was serious. “I’m definitely in love with both of you.”
HAND IN HAND, BLANE AND I left the sanctuary of the house to go out and sit with Gram on the deck. Happiness oozed out of my pores.
I was still skeptical of a real opportunity at a happily ever after, but I actually believed Blane when he said he loved me. I figured that was the first step in the journey towards true happiness.
My ass was two inches from the cushion of my chair when Blane gave the hand he was holding a tug and pulled me directly into his lap instead.
I didn’t know how I was going to meld my two worlds, the urges to kiss him and lay into him equal in their potency.
Deciding on giving in to neither, I turned to face Gram when Blane called my attention back.
“Wait,” he said as if he’d just remembered something important. “So you never got any of my letters?”
I opened my mouth to answer when Gram talked over me.
“I need to have a serious talk with both of you.”
Prepared to give her my best can’t it wait expression I twisted in Blane’s lap to face her.
When I found her head prone, resting in the swallow of her hand, I didn’t argue.
“What’s going on Gram?” I asked, rising off of the hard muscle of Blane’s thighs as I spoke. “Do you feel okay?” I added when she didn’t look up, taking two quick steps to the front of her chair.
“That’s just it,” she murmured without lifting her head.
I shot a look at Blane who asked, “What can I do?” the concern making the wrinkles around his eyes stand out in a much different way than his laughter.
“No,” Gram said, looking up from her hand and clasping the aged set of them in her lap. “Both of you sit.”
“Gram if you don’t feel good—”
“NeeNee. Sit down.”
I did, backing up until the back of my knees his Blane’s and his hands clasped onto my hips to help me down.
“I’m dying.”
The impact of her words forced me backwards like a blow.
My head shook back and forth slowly and Blane’s hands, still seated snuggly on my hips, grasped tight. I couldn’t have heard her right.
“Yes,” she said with a nod in response to my head shake. “They diagnosed me with cancer about a month ago, and it’s everywhere. That combined with the fact that I’m no spring chicken means that the sands in my hour glass are about to run out.”
“No,” I refused. This was not happening. “We’ll take you to the doctor.” Looking behind me, I sought support. “Right Blane?” I didn’t wait for him to answer as he wrapped a protective arm around my torso and leaned his forehead into my back. “You can get better,” I pleaded, a stupid fucking tear tracking its way over my cheekbone.
“You think I don’t know when my time is almost up?” she asked quietly, her warm eyes as soft as I’d ever seen them.
Blane lifted me to my feet and pushed me forward, and I went.<
br />
Straight into Gram’s arms, my flowing tears the least of my worries.
“I’m not ready,” I told her as I tucked my head into the protection of her chest.
“I am,” she whispered into the hair at the top of my head.
My arms tightened along with my jaw as a sob lodged and swirled in my throat.
“Seeing the two of you together, I can finally relax.”
Shimmery and shocked, I jerked my eyes up to meet hers.
“This is everything I’ve ever wanted for you,” she continued on a whisper, the rough concrete biting into my knees while her words chomped on my heart.
“Gram,” I choked, shoving my face back into her throat. “Please, I don’t want you to go. I’m not ready to lose you.”
“My sweet Whitney,” she murmured. “I would do anything for you. But I can’t do that.”
As usual, my mind worked overtime with questions demanding answers.
“What about Mom? There’s no way she knows.”
“She knows,” Gram disagreed.
“What?!” I shrieked. “How could she agree to let you move up here, to be away from you?”
Her hand cradled my cheek. “I asked her for this. And she loved me enough to give it to me.”
“I would never have agreed to leave you alone,” I swore vehemently, angry at my mother, angry at Gram, and really angry at cancer.
Gram protested in my mom’s defense. “She didn’t really, NeeNee. She’s coming up as soon as I give her the okay. I wanted to tell you myself, and I wanted to do it like this.” Tucking my hair behind my ear, she said, “You and me, we’ve always been a pair.”
She was right. From the beginning, even when I’d had no one else, Gram and I had had each other.
I hugged her tighter. “I hate this.”
Wind whispered through the trees and caused the quiet tinkle of someone else’s wind chime.
Blane’s warm hand settled solidly on my back.
“I know, Whit.”
Sniffles made my bottom lip quiver. “I love you.”
A sweet smile softened the jaggedly wrinkled lines of her face. “I know that more.”
“A PASSING PARTY,” I SCOFFED. “That’s what she’s calling it.”
“I think it’s great,” Blane commented, looking out the window of the train and watching the state fly by. The scenery was still overwhelming green, but I knew it wouldn’t be long until the trees were shouting their brilliance through color.
“You what?” I snapped, drawing the attention of several passengers around us.
He turned and smirked, lacing his fingers together with my unwilling ones. “Sheath your claws. The passing part isn’t great. Obviously. But this screams of your grandmother. It’s perfect for her.”
“You think I want to stand around making sure everyone gets their pigs in a blanket while Gram lays in a bed and dies?” My tone was bitter with acidity.
His other hand grabbed our already clasped ones, making a sandwich and then bringing it to his lips. “I think this is what she wants. Look at it from her perspective. She can pass peacefully knowing the people she loves most are happy, healthy, and all around her.”
My chest expanded, the air from my exasperation overfilling my lungs momentarily.
I looked at our hands, now tucked against the cotton covering Blane’s chest, and admitted, “I think she’s trying to teach me a lesson about laughter and life and sadness and death and how none of them are specific to the other.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Probably.”
My nose stung. “What am I going to do without her lessons?” I whispered.
Blane’s expression was gentle. “Start living them.”
“That’s probably some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten.”
“Someone taught me that lesson a while ago,” he murmured, turning his head to look back out the window.
God, that William Hunt was one badass father. He’d had a limited amount of time, the length of years he’d been gone climbing dangerously close to the amount of years Blane had had him, but his values and character still lived and breathed in Blane.
It would be my responsibility to respect my grandmother the same way.
“Are you nervous?” I asked tentatively, knowing he would know what I meant.
He shook his head and sucked the pillows of his lips inside his mouth. “Nope. Just ready.”
I couldn’t believe this was the first time he was visiting the September eleventh memorial. When I’d asked him about it, he told me he didn’t need to be there to know his dad was with him.
He felt him every day in each and every one of his actions, good and bad, whether he felt like he was in a place resembling Heaven or Hell.
Leaning forward, I touched my lips to his rough cheek, letting my eyelids flutter closed as I lingered. His hand spasmed in mine, the muscle of his thigh under their joining hard.
Everything went dark as the train entered the tunnel, our final approach into Penn Station imminent. I pulled back, looking as the lights of the tunnel streaked by in a flash until Blane’s lips found mine. They moved languidly, and his free hand reached around to hold onto my hip.
A tingle worked it’s way from my mouth to my stomach, causing it to flip and flutter when it got there.
We sat connected, our lips perfectly intermingled, his slight suction pulling my bottom one out just a sliver further, until we pulled into the station, the hustle of exiting passengers finally pulling us apart.
We made our way off the train, through the station, and onto the bustling street to get on the subway before he spoke again.
“I’m glad I’m doing this with you,” he told me easily, pulling me to a stop so that he could look me in the eye, the raw honesty of his emotion settling deep into a place I didn’t even know existed inside of me.
“Me too. Really, I’m honored.” I hesitated, considered whether or not I wanted to mention something. “But didn’t you want to ask your mom to come?”
“She comes every year, once a year, on the actual anniversary. She doesn’t like to come any more than that, and I didn’t think I could do it on that day.”
“Fair enough,” I conceded.
It wasn’t my place to tell him he should have made her come anyway.
“What?” he asked with a tilt of his head.
“What what?” I really didn’t know what he was asking.
His eyes narrowed almost comically. “I can see it, boiling under the surface.”
“You can see what?”
He laughed, stating, “Your desire to tell me that I’m wrong, maybe even call me an asshole.”
“No,” I protested, shaking my head.
“Yeah,” he said with a nod of his. “You think I should have talked her into coming anyway.”
I shrugged. Opened my mouth and closed it. Tilted my head to the side and scrunched my lips and admitted, “Maybe.”
“Come on, say it like you would normally say it if you weren’t worried that this was a sensitive situation.”
“This is the kind of thing that you should do with your family.”
His eyes tapered just a touch. “What if I told you that’s what I already thought I was doing?”
My heart flipped over in my chest. “Well, I’d probably take just a minute to be wistful about how sweet that is, and then I’d tell you that we should have brought your mom too.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Should we just go home, come back some other time?”
“No,” I told him seriously. It'd taken a lot out of him to decide to come. No way was I going to let him back out because of me.
He bit his lip and nodded, turning to head for the subway station.
But as we walked, I couldn’t help but add, “But you should come back on the eleventh with your mom.”
Time stood still around us, amidst one of the busiest cities in the world, as he wrapped me up in his arms, brought his lips down on mine, and bent me all the way back over h
is arm.
When he set me back on my feet, he told me something I already knew. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
STANDING AT THE MEMORIAL, THE cascading water of the reflecting pools seeming to sing in the background, he carefully ran the tips of his fingers over the rough etching of his father’s name.
The footprint of the South Tower dwarfed us, vying for supremacy only with the notability of its absence.
I stood invisible, letting him have his moment, but available for whatever he might need.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Reverent. “Even without him, I still have more than most.” He forced the air from his lungs. “He told me he loved me that morning. He told me he was proud of me every day. And he made sure I knew, no matter my mistakes, I was the man he wanted me to be.”
Blane’s words penetrated the years of cynicism that coated my skin, the reality that a man who had literally lost so much could see himself as a man who held onto even more almost enough to bring me to my knees.
“Baby,” I started shakily, the tremor of the truth racing from my vocal chords to my lips, “You’re the kind of man anyone would want you to be.”
Reeling me into his arms slowly, he hugged me tight to his front but didn’t let me hide my face in his throat or chest. To my horror, sitting there staring at his handsome face, a tear managed to fight its way free.
He laughed, an actual soul-filled chuckle, even as the cascading water in front of us made the absence of his father’s life all the more obvious. “Look at you. Now you’re crying because I’m awesome. What am I gonna do with you?”
“I still blame you for this,” I said with an accusing point, moving my loaded finger to clean up my face.
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s just that you have things that are worth crying over.”
Man, he was really something.
Running my hand through his hair, I looked into his eyes and let it all in. The love and heartache, the unswervingly powerful character. It was all there, bright and brilliant and ripely awaiting my taking.
I hoped his dad could see us there, thinking of him and thanking him for his love and wisdom.
I hoped he could feel the pride that pulsed out of Blane like a life of its own as he reflected on the names that escaped the same memorialized fate thanks to his father.
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