Bay Song

by Noelle Adams

  They didn’t talk much on the drive back, but the trip went without incident. Holly was tense in the tunnels, but she didn’t fall apart, and soon they were back on the Eastern Shore, heading up Route 13 toward Cape Charles.

  When they were too close for him to delay anymore, he asked very carefully, “So where do we go from here, Holly?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what do you want to happen now? I can keep the rental next door to you for another few weeks, but I’m eventually going to have to head home and get back to work. So I’m wondering how you want to… how you want to handle our relationship?” He felt kind of stupid—overly earnest—asking the question, but he needed to know.

  He’d found the person who had the power to transform his world, and he wasn’t going to just let her slip away.

  “Oh. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  He felt a sharp pain of fear in his heart. “You do want us to last past the month, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.” She cleared her throat and fiddled with her seat belt. “I’m just not sure how it’s going to work. There’s no way I can live in New York.”

  “I’d never expect you to. I can be here a lot. My schedule is flexible, and my mom lives here. I…” He trailed off. He’d been about to volunteer to move back to Cape Charles full time, but that was such a commitment, such a declaration.

  He might want to, but it was too much. He’d known Holly for less than a month.

  He wasn’t the kind of man who jumped into things thoughtlessly. He needed to think them through first.

  Plus moving back here would mean giving up the successful man he’d assumed he’d become. It would mean being someone different. Someone lesser.

  The boy he’d been before.

  “Okay,” she said, her eyes lowered almost shyly. “That’s good. I’m sure we can work it out.”

  They’d reached her gravel driveway, and he turned in, driving the car up to the house.

  There, he put it in park and turned to look at her.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Holly,” he asked at last, knowing it was a risk even as he said the words. His heart was racing almost painfully. “Do you think there’s any way you could invite me inside your house?”

  Her breath hitched in her throat, and her eyes widened.

  He held his breath as she processed his question. When she hesitated for longer than he was comfortable with, he added, “I don’t want to intrude on your privacy. And I’ll wait if it’s still too soon. But I want to really be part of your life. You told me your secrets, and it was safe. You gave your body to me, and it was safe. Don’t you think it’s going to be safe for you to let me into your house too?”

  It felt important—for such a small gesture. Hugely important, like it was a symbol for the future of their relationship.

  “No one has ever been inside,” she whispered, “except me and Mom. Not since I was born.”

  “I know. I’d still like to go inside though.”

  Her face softened visibly at last. “But I do like to have you in bed with me.”

  He exhaled with a surge of relief as he could see the answer on her face. “I’m a fan of that arrangement too.”

  They smiled at each other until Cade added, “So do you think you can let me in? I can just start in the entryway. I don’t have to go anywhere else right away.”

  She released a shaky breath. “Okay. You can come in.” She slanted him a little smile. “You wouldn’t think it would take a huge effort to let someone into your house, but for me, it’s as brave as I get.”

  She was so incredibly authentic, open, sharing her heart without hesitation or the reservations most people had. She’d always been an exquisite contradiction—holding on to her secrets tightly, even as she laid bare everything else.

  It was like she was with sex—completely uninhibited, unselfconscious, until the act became genuinely intimate to her.

  They’d been intimate last night. So intimate his mind whirled just at the thought of it. He couldn’t believe he’d almost admitted he’d loved her.

  But it was true. It was entirely true.

  He started to get out of the car, and Holly did too, but her head was lowered and she was breathing quickly. No matter what she’d decided, it had to be hard—to break the habits, the isolation, of so many years.

  “I feel really nervous,” she said, her voice slightly wobbly, proving the truth of his thoughts.

  “I get that. You know there’s nothing to be nervous about though, right? I won’t go anywhere you don’t want me to go.”

  “It’s not about wanting. It’s never been about wanting.”

  He wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but she appeared to be talking mostly to herself. So he just stood by the SUV and waited until she was ready.

  When she started to walk around the car, he went to join her. She held on to his hand as she took her bag and walked to the front door.

  The house was nothing more than a rectangular-shaped box with worn cedar siding, with only a slight slope on the roof. When he walked in, the first thing he saw was a wall of windows, looking out onto the bay.

  The view was the best part of the house. The kitchen and living area were neat and simple, with outdated appliances and old furniture. He could see a glimpse of the bedroom through an open door on one side, and the other door must be the bathroom. That seemed to be all there was of the house.

  “It’s not fancy,” she said.

  “Did you change it at all since when you and your mother lived here?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t changed anything at all, except one of the rugs got messed up from water damage when there was a big storm, so I had to throw it out. Everything else is the same though.”

  “The clothes you wear,” he added, asking a question he’d always wanted to know, “were those your mother’s too?”

  “Yes. They were still in the closets when my mother left. At first I wore the clothes because it felt nice to keep her around. Now it’s just what I do.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but he stopped when his phone rang in his pocket. When he pulled it out and checked the screen, he saw it was his agent.

  He felt that pressure of dread in his gut, but he knew he had to have the conversation eventually, so he might as well get it over with now.

  “I better take this,” he murmured, opening the front door again so he could walk outside. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Sure,” she said, turning to gaze out on her beloved bay through the windows. “Take your time.”

  Cade shut the front door behind him when he stepped outside. Then he took several steps down the path until he was far enough from the house not to be overheard.

  Then he finally picked up the call.

  “Cade,” his agent said without greeting, “This wishy-washy crap isn’t like you. Tell me what the hell is going on.” She spoke with a strong Brooklyn accent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I’ve been incredibly frustrating lately. But I just can’t go with that book idea.”

  “Why not? It was different. It was smaller. But there’s nothing wrong with that. A smaller book might be a good way to regroup, start fresh. There’s no reason for you to give up like this. So your last book didn’t do great. It happens. The market is fickle. It always has been. You just regroup and start again. There’s nothing else to do.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? Because it feels like you’re just treading water out there when I know it’s not like you. Your last book was brilliant, and I’m not just trying to make you feel better. You know I don’t sugarcoat things. It was brilliant. An agent gets a chance to work with a writer like you maybe once or twice in a lifetime. So if you’re even thinking about giving up, I’m going to make the drive down to whatever barren wasteland you’re hiding out in and kick your ass.”

  Despite his rush of feelings for Holly, the words actually meant
something to him. They meant a lot. He laughed, surprised when the amusement almost choked in his throat. “Thank you. I’m not giving up. I promise. I just can’t go with that book idea.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I…” The person he’d been before never would have told her the truth—never would have revealed even that much about his heart—but he’d changed. Holly had changed him. So he heard himself admit, “I got personally involved.”

  His agent was silent for a minute. Then she burst into laughter. “You’re shitting me. You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  He cleared his throat, amused and embarrassed at the same time. “I’m not.”

  “You fell for the girl?”

  “She’s not a girl. She’s a woman. An incredible woman. And I’m not going to use her for a book.”

  “Damn. She must have really gotten to you if you sound so earnest and sappy. All right. Fine. You can’t write that book. You’ve got to write something though.”

  “I will. I’ve been playing with some ideas, and I’ve finally decided I’m going to go with them. It’s different though.”

  “So it’s different. We’ll make it work. As long as you’re writing something.” She paused. “Although if you send me a bunch of love poems about this incredible woman, you’re still going to get that ass-kicking.”

  So Cade was laughing as he hung up and slid the phone into his pocket. For the first time in months, the thought of his career—of writing another book—didn’t make him feel sick.

  And Holly had let him into her house.

  She opened the door as he walked back up the front path. “Is everything all right?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “Yeah,” he told her truthfully. “Everything is great.”

  She smiled back at him, and he couldn’t resist the urge to pull her into a kiss. As far as he was concerned, there could be no better use of this morning than taking Holly to bed and making love to her until she was hoarse and exhausted.

  But a random thought occurred to him as they pulled apart, and because he was feeling soft and defenseless at the moment, it came to his lips automatically. “So do you know what happened to your father?”

  He saw her expression and corrected himself before she could speak. “I’m sorry. I know he wasn’t really your father. Mason. The man who raped your mother. Do you know what happened to him?”

  “N-no. My mother heard that he’d gone to prison. That was when she moved us to Maryland and tried to get me more of a normal life. But she just couldn’t do it for long. She didn’t trust any guy I hung around with, and she was terrified all the time. So we moved back. Then she heard he got out of prison, and she couldn’t deal at all. That was why she… why she left.”

  “Where did she go, Holly?”

  She shook her head. He knew she knew, but she wasn’t going to tell him. She’d opened up to him a lot, but she might never open up all the way. His excited hope of the moment before took a nosedive at the recognition.

  She was still keeping secrets from him.

  He fought against the disappointment, telling himself that she’d open up more in time. Just think how far she’d gotten in just a few weeks.

  He was relaxing again when Holly’s whole body gave a little jerk.

  “Wait a minute.” She breathed. “Mason.”

  In that instant, Cade knew he’d made a mistake. A foolish, tragic mistake.

  “Mason?” she said again, louder this time, her voice so stretched it was almost unrecognizable.

  “Holly,” he said, reaching out a hand in attempted consolation. He was flooded with guilt now and a different kind of panic. “It’s not what you think.” This was not the way for Holly to find out what he’d been considering doing before.

  This was not the way at all.

  “I never told you his name. How did you know his name was Mason?” she asked, stepping back so he couldn’t touch her.

  “Holly, let me explain.” He reached out for her again—he couldn’t help it—but he stopped when she winced and shrank away.

  “Okay. Explain. The only way you could know his name was Mason is if you’d been doing some sort of investigation behind my back.” She wasn’t out of control. She was so cool it was chilly, almost rigidly restrained. But her skin was very pale.

  “Can you blame me?” he asked, his long-held frustration finally breaking out. “Something happened back then. Something that’s still hurting you. And you refuse to tell me the whole story, even now. Can you blame me for needing to find out what it is?”

  She opened her mouth to reply automatically, but then she paused, as if she were really thinking through what he said. Finally she shook her head, her mouth twisting just slightly. “That doesn’t work, Cade. You only found out most of the story from me yesterday, and you couldn’t have gotten so far in just a few hours. You were working on this before.”

  She suddenly gasped, turning away and closing her eyes. “I get it. This is your new book. It’s your new book after all.”

  He could see that he was losing her, she was slipping away from him, even as they spoke. “It’s not like that, Holly. I started thinking it was about the book—at the beginning I mean—but then it became about you.”

  The last thought seemed to have broken her. She couldn’t even look him in the eyes anymore. She was drooping as she reached back for her front door. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters.” He took a few steps toward her. “Holly, you know how I feel about you—”

  “You lied to me! If it was about a book at the beginning, but then you changed your mind, you had plenty of times to tell me. You told me it was about a series of murders in Maryland. That was an outright lie. And then you confirmed the same lie just yesterday—despite… despite everything.” She was hurt—so hurt. Broken. She started to open the door. “I want you to leave.”

  “No!” He put a hand on the door to keep it closed. “I can understand why you’re mad at me, but you can’t kick me out. We’ve come too far together. We can’t just throw it all away now.”

  “I can do anything I want,” she said, looking in his direction but not appearing to really see him. “And I’m not going to let you back in my house. Not after this. If you don’t leave, then I’ll call the police on you for trespassing.” She looked over his shoulder and gasped. “Shit!”

  Cade whirled around, convinced that some nameless monster was approaching.

  Someone he had to protect Holly from.

  There was nothing there. Nothing at all.

  While he’d been distracted, she’d yanked the door opened and slipped inside, locking it before he could reach for the knob.

  He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book—like a foolish boy.

  “Holly!” he shouted, pounding on the door. “I’m not going to just walk away from you. I’m never going to do that!”

  “You don’t have a choice,” she said through the door.

  “Holly, I love you. You know I love you.”

  There was a pause before she answered, and he could hear in her voice that she was now close to tears. “It’s only been a month. Whatever we were feeling obviously wasn’t strong enough to last through this. You blame me for not telling you everything, for keeping things from you—when you do exactly the same thing. There’s no relationship based on that.”

  It felt like the last word. He couldn’t stand there, pounding on her door for the rest of the day. For all he knew, she was serious about calling the police. With a groan of absolute frustration, he went back to his car. He had to at least get off her property. Then he’d figure out what to do.

  He backed the car onto the road and pulled over to the side. No matter what she said, he wasn’t going to leave her.

  He might have lost her. He probably had. She was still so skittish, like one of her deer, and once frightened, she’d pull back into the safety of the woods and never show herself again.

  He’d done that to her.

&n
bsp; The truth was so painful, so impossibly hard for him to handle, that he couldn’t bear the silence of the car. Before he knew what he was doing, he found himself dialing his mother.

  She picked up on the second ring. “Look, before I forget,” she began before he’d had time to give a greeting, “I’ve just baked some cinnamon bread. You should come back to town this afternoon to get some while it’s fresh.”

  He almost choked on feeling. “Thanks.”

  “Cade, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, fighting to sound normal.

  “Don’t lie to your old mom. You think I don’t know you? Did you get into trouble after all?”

  “Yes. I think I might have.”

  “You’re thirty-five years old. It’s about time you stopped doing that.”

  “I know.” He couldn’t help but laugh at her wry words, but something happened halfway through, and he remembered Holly, and the laughter turned somehow aching.

  “Oh, Cade, what’s the matter?” his mother asked more gently this time. “You found yourself a girl after all, didn’t you?”

  He swallowed. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “That should be a good thing then.”

  “I might have blown it.”

  “Whatever it was, do what you can to fix it. It took you long enough to find her, so don’t let her go, now that you have.”

  “I’m not. I’m not going to.”

  “Okay.” She paused for a moment that stretched on just a little too long. “If it’s real, she’s going to want to be with the real you, all of you, not just the man you want to show the world.”

  Cade tried to respond but couldn’t make his throat work.

  “You’ve always seemed to be running away from who you used to be, as if the boy you were—my sweet-hearted little son—was someone not worthy. He was worthy, Cade. I loved him so much. I love you. And pretending that part of you isn’t real means you’re always going to live half a life. Is that what you want?”

  He shook his head, his throat still aching. Then he realized she couldn’t see his head move. “No,” he managed to say.

  “So stop running away from him. She’s never going to be able to love you like I do unless you let her see all of you.”