THE CYCLE
The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.
~ Juliette Lewis
Hunter
“ANYTHING YOU CAN tell me will help.”
Hazel hands me a plate. “Thank you for cooking?” She takes her plate to the table after I added scrambled eggs.
I snort, flipping the pancakes, and then turning off the gas knob before adding the batch of eggs to a platter. Without an alarm, my body woke up at six in the morning. I happened to find Hazel arriving with my brothers. They went clubbing after the gala. “About your sister. And you’re welcome for breakfast.”
“Wills has her episodes.” Hazel gets up and grabs the orange juice from the refrigerator. “Look, we had a strange childhood. Our parents are different.”
Fitz takes the bottle, pours juice into her glass, and then offers it to everyone around the table. “They’re eccentric,” he informs.
“They gave us no boundaries. A child without them tends to feel lost. It fucked us up.” She rubs her forehead. “Willow’s personality tends to adapt depending on where she is and who she’s with at the time. She’s only herself when she feels safe.”
Covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers, she stares at me.
“Do you think she has depression?”
Hazel shrugs. “I’m not a therapist to answer your question. Does she have issues?” She chuckles, turning to Fitz as if they share some kind of secret. “Parental neglect can cause a lot of mental damage. So, what if she has episodes when she avoids the world? It’s the way she copes with life.”
This isn’t helpful. In fact, she doesn’t recognize the enormity of Willow’s problems. Or maybe I’m making all of this up in my head.
“How do you cope with the world, Hazel?”
She laughs harder than before. “For years, I lived in a fantasy. My best friend, later boyfriend and then husband was my coping mechanism. Once our relationship fell apart, I searched for love and recognition.”
She drinks the rest of her juice. “Honestly, I wish I had dealt with my issues the way Willow does.” She shakes her head. “But we’re all different. Does she need therapy?” Rising from her seat, she kisses Fitz cheek. “Thank you for tonight, handsome. One day you’ll make someone the luckiest guy in the world.”
Fitz winks at her. “You’ll find him for me. That’s the deal.”
She smirks. Then points at Scott and Harrison. “I’ll have all the Everhart boys happily married one day.” Turning her gaze back to me, her shoulders sag. “I believe that everyone needs a therapist at some point in their lives. Willow does too. However, Willow does what Willow wants. I’ve learned that one can only change when one is ready. I don’t think that she is. But I’m not a doctor.” Inhaling loudly, she continues. “However, if you believe you need to fix her, you’re wrong,” she says. “Love isn’t about changing someone, bandaging wounds, and kissing bruises all the time. Some days you have to watch as the person learns to bandage herself and mend her bruises.”
Lifting her finger, she points at me. “If she asks for help, that’s when you hold her hand and you both walk away from the edge. Love is a partnership. It’s a mutual agreement where you learn to adapt and switch roles as needed.” She chews on her lip. “She’s starting to trust you and show you her scars. Walk away if you can’t handle when her bright light dims.”
“I vote for let’s head home and forget about Willow,” Fitz declares taking the dishes to the sink.
Hazel glares at him.
“What?” He gives her an innocent smile. “I’m worried about my little brother. Can you blame me?”
Setting Willow’s breakfast on a silver tray, I turn to him. “Wash the dishes, I fed you.”
Harrison follows behind me. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”
Turning around, I see them both, my oldest brothers—the ones who became my parents when ours died. They know me better than I do myself. I press my lips together, watching them as they glance at each other.
“We think this is a bad idea.”
“Terrible,” Harrison amends, separating his hands and then clapping loudly and making explosion-like noises with his mouth. “You’re not qualified to help her.”
“I’m old enough to know what I’m qualified to do.”
Continuing to her room, I open the door, finding her still asleep. “Morning, sunshine. It’s time to wake up and explore New York.” Setting the food on top of the credenza, I open the curtains. “Morning.”
Pulling the covers over her face, she hisses, “Let me sleep for the next three days.”
“It’s time for us to get out of bed and explore New York.”
“Go away, Hunter. I’d rather not see you until I feel better.”
“We agreed to talk about what’s going on with you.”
“You settled that without my consent,” she growls as I uncover her pretty face; smiling when I kiss the tip of her nose. “No. I won’t leave my bed.”
“What are we doing then?” I point out the lack of a television. She says if she needs to watch something there’s her laptop or she might move her pity party to the media room.
Smiling, I go to the media room with breakfast in hand. Marching back into her bedroom, I wrap her in the comforter as if she’s a burrito and transport her to the room with me.
“What are you doing, Hunter?” She protests when I sit her on the long leather couch, adjusting the blanket.
“You want to spend the day doing nothing? How about watching more musicals?” I pick up a napkin by the tip, shake it, and place it on her lap. Then hand her a plate with pancakes and bacon and finally a glass of orange juice.
Glaring at the plate, she drops her shoulders. “This is the moment when you disappear from my life.”
“Why?” I slide in next to her with my own plate. I pop a piece of bacon into my mouth, then feed her some. “If you tell me more about what’s going on, we can adjust.”
“Adjust to what? I don’t know what I have.”
“Depression?”
No one believes I can handle whatever it is going on with her. I must look like a pathetic idiot. Telling her my story is working against me. I never should have told her I can’t handle shit. Well, maybe I could deal with the emotional baggage now.
“Trust me a little, gorgeous.” I feed her a pancake since she’s ignoring the food on her lap. “Yes, I was shallow with the others, but you’re different. We’re both trying to get out of our comfort zone. You let someone into your world. I get to know you before we . . .”
I move closer, my lips almost touching her beautiful neck. Her breathing hitching. “Make love.” I nibble her lobe before I find her lips and kiss her. “For days at a time.”
“When I disappoint you, you’ll leave me.”
Moving the plates to the end table, I push her to the corner of the couch. Hugging her with both arms. “Nothing you do will push me away unless you don’t want to be with me. We both fear being left behind. If anything, I think we’re perfect for each other.”
“How?” She places both hands on my face, holding me still. Staring deeply into my eyes, I feel our souls touching.
“You should communicate what you feel, I will do the same. Like last night,” I blurt without thinking about the consequences of my words. “If you are done or overwhelmed, you just need to tell me and we can leave the event.”
“I don’t belong in your world.” Her tone is low, almost a whisper. “I feel anxious when I think you’re going to find out who I really am. What will I do then?”
“You are becoming my world, Willow,” I respond. I take her hands off my cheeks and kiss the back of each finger, pressing one of her palms onto my heart. “It’s beating for you.”
She puffs her cheeks, wrinkling her nose. “You’re idealizing someone I’m not. There will be days I can’t go out because I hate everyone, myself the most. I ruin everything I touch. The hardest are those days when I don’t see the point of going on.”
A chilling thought strikes me. “Not continuing?”
Her eyes concentrate on the carpet. “It’s a cycle, a rollercoaster. My only stable relationship is with my sister. I can’t hang on to a friendship for long. When I feel like someone is rejecting me, I want to give up . . .” She finally looks up, finding my eyes. “I fall apart.”
I run both hands through my hair, trying to absorb what she’s saying.
“In my experience, no one wants to stick around,” she continues. “Why would they? They don’t care to understand.”
Would she believe me if I tell her I can see the ache in her eyes? Her agony hurts me as well. It devastates me not knowing how to help her, how to reach inside her soul and comfort it. Is it her soul, her mind? What is it that makes her so miserable and unreachable?
“I want to be with you any day of the week. In your darkest as much as in your brightest days.”
She tosses her head back, closing her eyes for several breaths. Then, opening and straightening herself lightly she throws a curve ball. “So, I get used to you, what will happen to me when you leave?”
Running a hand through her hair, I understand what’s happening. The same doubts I have. “We don’t know the future. Maybe you’ll be the one who leaves me.” Please don’t leave me. Yes, I’m already licking the wounds as I imagine her shutting me out of her life.
“For now, we have to enjoy what we have.” Sprinkling kisses on her face, I give her a quick peck. “Life is a sequence of breaths. You can’t live worrying about what will happen next between us.”
“Then, why continue?”
“I’d rather have my heart broken than miss the chance to be with you.” She shivers. I caress her shaky limbs. “We can make it work. There’ll be mistakes. Neither one of us knows how to be in a real relationship. Give us time.”
Mistakes? You have no fucking idea of what you’re doing with her!
“Time for you to reject me?” she questions. “I harbor these feelings of worry and mistrust under my sleeve. What’s their motive to be around me? When are they leaving?”
“You’re expecting me to leave?”
She bobs her head, redirecting her eyes to the side.
Her response angers me, but I swallow it. “I’ll prove you wrong. Two blind people, you help me, I help you. My only motive is to be with you for as long as you’ll have me.”
So, what if I bluff my way through the conversation. It sounds like the best thing to say. According to the manual of common sense, the following phrases are a big no.
I am fucking scared of how I feel about you.
You are going to shred me to pieces if you leave.
I’ll die without you.
And my favorite, please marry me before you disappear from my life.
Fuck, yes! I am fucking in love with this woman. Is it sudden? Maybe. But life happens in an instant. One second you’re alive, the next one you die. Will she see it the way I do? I just have to time everything right. First, convince her that I’m safe. Second, make her fall in love with me—that’s what will take the longest. She only trusts her sister, but Hazel’s attitude earlier today has me worried about her support. Once Willow has fallen in love with me, I have to convince everyone that marrying her is a natural step.
We will be as happy as my parents were up until . . . I still remember them holding hands. Dad bringing Mom small presents to celebrate their relationship. They did everything together. We were a happy family. I want that again. I’ll have it soon—happiness with this woman.
“What movie do you want to watch, gorgeous?”
“Are you listening?” she frowns.
I shrug and give her a “what can I say, I’m stubborn” look.
Setting the television, I start playing Chicago. It is the first one of our Sunday marathon. One movie at a time, I cheer her up and bring her back to the light. By dinner time, she’s cooking by my side. This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say we are perfect together. We already complement each other. I’ve watched more musicals since I’ve met her than I have in my entire life. Spending time with her is the goal. Once she trusts me, I can push things further. We are going to be so happy.
Happiness is subjective. It’s been two days since we started the movie marathon and nothing I’ve done has improved her mood. That’s incorrect, everything you do changes her mood every two seconds. Two fucking days and things haven’t turned around. Hazel left Monday night, her grandfather is working, and I’m the only one paying attention to Willow.
So far, I haven’t found a manual that can walk me through what’s happening. Being with her feels like living inside of a snow globe. At times, everything is calm, and we laugh. In a matter of hours or minutes something triggers her emotions, and she switches drastically. She’d be bawling or asking me to leave her since I am not interested in her.
Earlier, she accused me of flirting with Fitz’s assistant over the phone. A few minutes later, she’s balled up in my arms, mumbling nonsense and begging me not to walk away.
Incoherent or not, being the center of her life is everything to me. We are finally in a place where we can openly hold onto each other, where we can kiss and enjoy our relationship. It was during the last day when I begged her to tell me what was going on that we had a breakthrough.
“Don’t speak, write everything down.” Handing her a pen, I took off my shirt.
“You simply don’t understand.” Her hands fluttered as she held it, swallowing hard. “I already shared too much.”
“I thought you said you wanted me to be a part of you.” I lowered myself onto the bed, resting on my stomach. “We have to start somewhere. Write your thoughts.” Resting my chin on top of my folded hands.
“Trust me this once.” I stared into her eyes as I looked over my shoulder, begging her soul to listen to me this time. “Share your secrets. Everything you feel, everything you think, every disappointing moment, every joyful period will be written on my skin. My soul will be reading and listening if you have anything to say.”
She scribbled from left to right, in every space she could until the sun went down. Spent, she collapsed on top of me, kissing my neck. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me.”
Finally, I was on top of the world. She was trusting me, opening up to me.
“What do you want to do, gorgeous?”
“Can we wash them?” she runs her tongue over her lower lip. “The words on your back.”
“Wash them?” I moved from underneath her, tucking her in close to me. Her bright eyes studied me under her long, thick eyelashes. “Why, gorgeous?”
“Maybe they’ll go away forever?”
My mouth found hers, and my hands ran up and down her body. She mirrored my movements on my bare skin tracing my muscles, her eyes following her index finger. My breath hitched as she ran it so close to the elastic of my sweats. Controlling my lust, and the awareness of how close she is to my already pulsing dick—the hammering noise inside my chest was so loud I feared she’d hear it and stop.
Fuck, I wanted to strip her of my dress shirt. The same one she’d worn on and off since Saturday night. I caressed her jaw as I pushed her lightly, lowering my mouth and kissing the hell out of her. She melted under me—our bodies grinding, the friction creating a different kind of heat I’ve never experienced—heat that became an intense fire. Fuck, I wanted her so much, and the way she responded with the same need was sending my entire body spinning out of control.
“Do you think we know each other well?” she gasped between words catching her breath, flushed. The things I could make her feel if only she’d let me. Those eyes filled with uncertainty answering the silent question, are we stopping for the night?
Fuck, I didn’t want to stop. I wished she would let me go down to her core and drive her mad with pleasure as I licked her, over and over again. I wanted to consume her, own her, and have her legs wrapped around my waist. I craved having her nails dig into my back as I slammed myself inside repeatedly.
I met her eyes, trying to read her. She was burning just like I was, yet her words told a different story. “What happened to dating? Getting to know each other while hanging out around the city?”
I brought my hand to her chin, tipping her face lightly. “If you allow me, I’d love to go out with you for as long as you’ll have me, Miss Willow Beesley.” I brushed my lips across hers.
Her eyes brightened, and her lips parted.
“It’s a date,” I said as I took her lips and kissed her more, hoping I continued being the person she trusted, and maybe become the center of her universe, as she was becoming my entire world.