Never Let Go: Top Shelf Romance Collection 6

by Steiner, Kandi

  Crawling out of bed, I padded to the bathroom and popped two ibuprofen before attempting to wrangle my hair. As I did, I cringed at my reflection. I looked like absolute shit, and I knew I deserved it. Ethan shouldn’t have had to put up with my dramatics last night, and he shouldn’t have to be lied to, either. I hoped he would understand. I hoped he would forgive me. I hoped he would move on, finding a girl who could treat him better than I did.

  More than anything, I hoped he’d be happy.

  And then there was Jamie. My stomach lurched at the thought of him. After last night, I didn’t know if he would hear me out — if he would give me a chance to explain myself or if he’d give a shit after I did. But I had to try. One thing was certain after talking to Jenna all night — I wanted to be with him — needed it, really. I just hoped I wasn’t too late.

  I remember the next sixty seconds like a slow motion car wreck.

  Me, staring at my reflection in the mirror, planning out all the words I would say. Jenna, sprinting up behind me with my phone in her hand. Her voice, panicked. Her hair, wild. My mom’s cries on the other end, loud and jarring, pounding against my head that the ibuprofen had yet to help ease. It happened all at once — all of those things — but I remember them singularly, morphed, almost as if I’d dreamed them.

  I had everything planned out — what I would say to Ethan, what I would say to Jamie — but I never got the chance.

  In that moment, everything in my life shifted focus. What I thought was important was trivial, what was last on my mind became first.

  My dad died on the day I realized I loved Jamie Shaw.

  Love pulled my soul one way and grief yanked it another, and so it ripped in two, split into jagged, irreparable halves. One floated high, calling me up with it, while the other sank into a bottomless black hole.

  But I was too weak to fly.

  The heavier half dragged me with it and I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream, I didn’t fight. I drowned easily, staring at the floating half on the way down, wondering if we’d ever meet again.

  I felt everything alive inside of me slowly slipping away as I stared out at the choppy water. A storm was rolling in, the gray clouds lurking off in the distance as the sun began to fade. It wasn’t as cold as the night before, and I stood where the water met the sand, my board under my arm, wetsuit zipped up high to my neck.

  It was as if each time the water rose high enough to lick at my toes, it stole a little more of what was left alive inside of me, leaving dead driftwood in its place. My eyes grew hollow, my breaths grew steady, and my heart grew weak.

  I could still hear my mother’s words, and they still didn’t make sense. A freak accident, she’d said. It sounded like a horror movie, or a newspaper article about a distant human being whom I didn’t know personally. It didn’t sound like my life. But it was.

  My dad’s parents had a house on a lake in Central Florida. We used to drive up on the weekends to ride the wave runners and go swimming. Every memory I had there as a child was filled with joy. Mom said Dad was there for Nana’s birthday, swimming just off the dock like we always used to. He was just swimming, just enjoying a weekend at the lake, and then his life ended. Cords plugged into the dock and house boat had slipped into the water, electrifying it, and he’d suffered from electric shock drowning. I didn’t even know that was possible, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t process it.

  Maybe it was a combination of everything in that moment — the guilt from what I’d done to Ethan, the ache of what I felt for Jamie, the shock of my father’s death. Everything had been thrown into a blender, dial set to shred, and now it was all I could do to stand near the edge of the ocean and not wish to drown in it.

  I left Jenna in my room, packing my bags because I couldn’t, and caught a cab to the beach to try to feel. I just wanted to feel something — anything. I wanted it to sink in. I wanted to cry. I wanted the numbness to go away, but it was only plunging deeper, seeping into the cracks between my joints, settling into its new home.

  “You can’t go out there.”

  His voice was steady, low and oaky like always. My lip quivered at the sound of it and I nearly dropped my board. Fastening my grip, I hiked it higher, not turning to see him for fear of a completely different emotion sinking in. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s about to storm, and it’s getting dark,” Jamie warned, and I felt his arms hook around my board from the other side. I gripped it tighter at first, but then my shoulders fell and I released my hold, letting Jamie take it away. I instantly felt empty as he set it easily in the sand, and I kept my eyes on the swell to avoid looking at him.

  He stood beside me, gazing out at the water with me, and for a moment he let the wind and the waves be the only sound. His hand reached out, just barely, his pinky brushing mine before I slid my palm into his and held on tight.

  “Jenna called me. She… she told me what happened.” I didn’t respond, but my thumb rubbed his.

  Thunder rolled low and menacing in the distance, and I felt its cry deep in my stomach.

  “Talk to me,” he pleaded.

  A sickening ache spread through my chest and I fought against the sob. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t worry about it making sense, just talk. Just… get it out.”

  I nodded, over and over, my lips between my teeth as I held his hand and watched the sun set behind a wall of storm clouds. I didn’t know where to start, but as the last sliver of gold fell behind the gray, I took a breath, sharp and unsteady, and then I spoke.

  “I’m supposed to hate him,” I started, sniffing. “I was named after the freckles on his cheeks, the same ones on mine, and I’m supposed to hate him. He raped my mom,” I choked out, and the emotion started to surface, tears welling and blurring my vision. “And I never knew. I never knew that the hands that taught me how to ride a bike were the same ones that held my mom down the night I was conceived. I never knew the eyes that cried with tender joy the day I lost my first tooth were the same ones that watched my mom beg for him to stop hurting her.” I shook my head, and Jamie’s hand gripped mine tighter. “He was always there. He was the one to buy me my first notebook and pen and tell me to write. He was the one who took me on a shopping spree the day my childhood best friend moved away. He was always there,” I covered my mouth with my free hand, squeezing my eyes shut. “And then he wasn’t, because I pushed him away, because I was supposed to. I haven’t talked to him since the day I graduated high school. I ignored his phone calls. I told him not to come to Christmas dinner for the first time in my life.” My throat constricted, and I squeezed my eyes harder, trying to block out the truth. “I didn’t talk to him, Jamie. And now I’ll never talk to him again.”

  The tears built up enough to spill, and I felt them hot on my cheeks as Jamie pulled me into his chest. My arms wrapped around his waist, cries staining his t-shirt as he held me tight. I felt the first drop of rain fall on my forehead, but I didn’t brush it away.

  “It’s okay to love him,” Jamie whispered, and another deep roll of thunder sounded with his words.

  “No it’s not,” I breathed, lifting my head from his chest. I met his eyes, their greenish-gold glow bringing me the strength I needed to say the next words. “Just like it’s not okay to love you.”

  His nose flared, and his hand found my chin, tilting it up before sliding to cradle my neck. “You love me?”

  I nodded, biting my lips together as a sob threatened to break through. A new stream of tears slid down the same path as the ones before them and he used his thumb to wipe them away.

  “Why is that not okay?”

  “Because,” I tried, my fingers playing at the hem of his t-shirt, but I didn’t have the words to explain. I couldn’t use letters and syllables and sentences to string together the thoughts in my head, the feelings in my heart. “I can’t be with you right now, Jamie. I’m going home tomorrow for the funeral and I just… I can’t promise you anything. I can’t…” My words
faded off, because speaking them out loud hurt. I couldn’t promise Jamie anything because I had nothing left to give, not now that everything had changed.

  Not even five hours before, everything important to me was centered around a nineteen-year-old girl’s universe. I wanted to declare a major, I wanted to party all week with my best friend, and more than anything, I wanted to set things right with Ethan and Jamie.

  But that universe seemed so far away now.

  Now, all that mattered was that my father was gone. He was dead. I’d been ignoring him, thinking I had all the time in the world to figure out what role he would play in my life. But I was wrong.

  Like I said, my father died on the day I realized I loved Jamie Shaw.

  It was as simple and as complicated as that.

  Jamie lifted his other hand to mirror the first, framing my face. His eyes bounced between mine, his brows bent together as he studied me, focused like always, trying to break through the wall I was slowly building between us. “Is it okay that I love you back?”

  A short cry left my lips but he didn’t let me answer before his mouth met mine. He kissed me like he was losing me, like that kiss was his last chance to keep me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it wasn’t. I broke on that day, on that beach, and though I tried to fight it, the numbness of it all had blanketed me completely.

  “Stay with me tonight,” he whispered against my lips, pulling me closer, trying to meld our bodies together. I nodded, still crying softly, and he tried with every ounce of power he had to kiss away my tears before they could fall. He kissed me all night long. He kissed me until my lips were chapped and my heart was bruised. He was desperate to leave his mark, and this time I let him.

  The next day, I left for the funeral and I never came back.

  Jenna flew with me, handling everything I couldn’t — the paperwork at school, the questions from my mom, the outfit for the funeral. She held my hand through the service, through the stream of people offering their condolences, and that night when we made it back to Mom’s house, I sat down at my computer, and I wrote.

  I wrote page after page of absolutely nothing, but everything to me in that moment. Every word made me feel better and worse all at once, and so I chased one feeling and ran from the other, round and round until my fingers ached. I think I needed that first, true heartbreak to feel enough to write the way I did that night. Words don’t get written from a heart that’s never felt. They come from pain, from love, from unspeakable depths — and they were my only release.

  That was also the night I pledged myself dry.

  With that last taste of Jamie still fresh on my lips, I shelved him, knowing I’d suck him dry if I didn’t let him go. It took writing my feelings for me to be able to name why I’d left Jamie behind. The truth was I believed him when he said he loved me, and I knew he loved me enough to let me bring him down along with me. I could barely get out of bed every day. What kind of person would I be if I let Jamie love me in my condition?

  It turned out I was water, he was whiskey, and I couldn’t dilute him — not now that I knew he loved me enough to let me. I needed to be stronger, to be ice the next time I melted with him.

  I did make one phone call back to campus, to Ethan, telling him over the phone what he deserved to hear in person. Then, I finished school at Palm South University, and always made sure to be out of town for the summers when I thought Jamie could maybe come back.

  He called me twice a year, every year — once on my birthday and once on the anniversary of my dad’s death. I never answered. And I never called him back. It seemed I was trying to let go of Whiskey and he was trying to hold on to me.

  It was just a matter of time before we figured out who would win.

  Chapter 11

  Sober

  Even as far away from shore as I was, I could still hear the ring of my cell phone. I could still feel it vibrating like it had that morning, just like it had every year on this day since I’d left California. And just like always, I’d let it vibrate and ring, not silencing it but not answering it either. I’d stared at his name on the screen and thought to myself that I was almost there — I was almost to the point where I’d be able to answer. I was closer, but I still wasn’t there just yet, and so that phone call sat at the front of my mind while I swung my feet lazily in the water on either side of my board.

  There were only two times when I had felt okay over the past three years: when I was writing, and when I was surfing. Each of them provided their own, unique kind of solace.

  When I was writing, I was facing my fears — my anxieties, my feelings. I was putting them into words, giving them life, letting them know I recognized they existed. It was therapeutic and even if no one other than my professors had seen anything I’d written, it felt good just to get it out of my system.

  Surfing, on the other hand, was the step before writing. It was what I did when I needed to avoid a feeling, or when I needed to allow myself time to think on it before I could point my finger into its chest and call it what it was. Right now, I was taking a pulse check, celebrating how far I’d come while also recognizing I still had a ways to go to be completely whole again.

  The swell was smaller than California, but it was enough. As a perfect wave started forming, I bent forward and paddled out quickly, popping up on my board just in time to catch it and ride it back to shore. For the few moments I glided across the top of that wave, the wind in my long, wet hair, I felt free.

  Then, I paddled out a bit, sat up, and straddled my board once more, my eyes on the sun that was still struggling to wake up with me.

  It’d been exactly three years since my father’s death.

  How drastically my life had changed since that day.

  I still remembered every aching moment that lined the path of healing I’d been walking since then. I remembered the break on that beach with Jamie, the numbness after the funeral, the denial and desperation that followed me around for nearly a year before I finally started accepting and adjusting. Writing and surfing — they were my only release.

  At first, I’d driven myself mad searching online for answers about my father’s death. I’d researched everything there was to know about electric shock drowning, as if that would help, as if that would bring him back or make it any less difficult to hear those who knew him best say how tragic it was to lose him in a freak accident. I hated when they said that. I hated that stupid phrase and the fact that there was no comfort or clarity to be found within it. It was just a callous way to make sense of something that never truly would.

  Next, my mother convinced me to try therapy. She’d finally gone, after all those years of shouldering what my father did to her. It seemed like his death had killed her and freed her in equal measure, and her therapist helped her address those feelings. Still, after just two sessions, I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to talk.

  And so, I wrote.

  Eventually, slowly, writing started to really help — especially once I declared English: Creative Writing my major at Palm South University. Once writing assignments started to come and I was tasked with reading other works of fiction that made my emotions feel more in reach, everything started clicking together, and I started to feel okay.

  Mom helped, too — along with her boyfriend, Wayne. They’d met at the beach one morning when she came to watch me surf, and he’d been nothing but a positive light in both our lives. It was the first time in my entire life that I’d seen my mom in love, and I wondered if it took my father’s death for her to be able to love at all. Up until that point, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that Mom had spent nineteen years of her life in close proximity to a man who had violated her in the most personal way — all for me. She tried to keep us a family unit, to ensure I grew up with both parents in my life. Now, she was finally focusing on herself, and seeing that made me feel like it was okay to focus on myself, too.

  I’d dated, just like she had — and by dated, I mean I let
two different boys take me out to dinner and then take me back to their beds. Neither had filled the gap left by the last man who’d touched me, but they’d been a nice distraction, at least.

  Ethan called me sometimes, too. I only answered his call once, the first time he called after I’d explained why I left — after I told him the truth about Jamie and me. He called less than a week later, drunk as a twenty-one year old in Vegas, his words slurring together as he cursed me for breaking his heart. I cried with him, ashamed of what I did to him and still in pain over my father. After that, I stopped answering his calls, too.

  Three years.

  I still remembered that day, the feel of it, the pain. It was as if I was a ball of yarn, and that was the day I’d become completely unraveled, my string frayed and worn. Over the past three years, I’d slowly pulled myself together, forming the same ball of yarn I’d been before yet one that was wound differently. I was almost okay again.

  Almost.

  In just two months, I’d be graduating college and heading to Pittsburgh, ready to start the next chapter in my life. I rode in one final wave with that thought reverberating through me. When my feet hit the sand again, my board tucked tight under my arm, I had an overwhelming urge to face one last challenge before graduation.

  I dropped my board into the sand next to my beach towel and rifled through my bag, searching out my cell phone. It was hot in my hands, the sun warming it even through the cool February chill. I thumbed through my missed calls log and hovered over his name, finger shaking at the thought of dropping just a centimeter more to dial his number. Was I really ready to talk to him? What would I say? What could I offer?

  I didn’t have the answers to any of those questions, so I sighed, flipping over to my voicemail log instead as I fell back onto my beach towel. I clicked on the message saved from my first birthday after I’d left California, my favorite message from him, and put the phone on speaker as I laid back and gazed up at the pinkish-blue sky.