CHAPTER TWO
Gabe
I pull slowly around the cul-de-sac and park behind a silver Toyota Camry I don’t recognize from similar drive-bys. It’s an older car, but in good condition, with Florida plates and a bumper sticker that reads “Progress not Perfection.” The driver’s side door opens and a feminine foot wearing a shiny white sandal emerges.
Not wanting to get caught spying on the Cooney house, I’m about to start the car and pull away, when the rest of the woman emerges, and the world tilts on its axis.
I’m certain that it’s her—Caitlin Cooney, alive and well. The long blond hair is the same shade of honey and caramel, and the slim build achingly familiar. For a moment, relief floods through my body, turning my insides to liquid, but then the woman turns, and my hope goes swirling down the drain.
The hair is the same, but this woman is taller, with an oval face instead of the heart-shaped one I was expecting. She is beautiful, but she isn’t Caitlin, and judging by the wedding ring on her finger and the baby bump beneath her flowered sundress, she’s not a candidate for my Summer of Blondes, either.
Still, as she turns to look at the Cooney house, there is something in the slope of her nose that is so familiar I feel compelled to learn who she is.
I pull the keys from the ignition and step out of the car. When my door slams, the woman’s head jerks in my direction, but the anxiety in her expression vanishes when our eyes meet. I may secretly be a monster, but good looks, charm, and an expensive haircut ensure I’m not the sort who frightens women when I show up behind them on the street.
“Hi,” she says. “Are you here for the wake?”
I shake my head. “No, but I’m a friend of the family.” I hold out my hand. “Gabe.”
“Aoife,” she says, one hand fluttering to her chest before she takes mine and gives it a quick squeeze. “I’m the kids’ oldest sister.”
I nod, concealing my surprise. So this is the older sister who ran off with her drug-dealer boyfriend, leaving her two-month-old baby behind. This is the woman whose disregard for her responsibilities forced Caitlin to drop out of school, lose her scholarship to an exclusive college preparatory program, and take over raising her niece and three little brothers when she was only seventeen years old.
And now Aoife is back, pregnant again, and wearing a wedding ring…
Getting to the bottom of the prodigal big sister’s sudden return would have been enough to convince me to stick around for a few more minutes, even if, at that moment, a van hadn’t pulled into the Cooney driveway and slammed on its brakes.
Aoife and I both turn toward the new arrival as the driver’s door slams with a sharp whump, and a redhead, with wild curls and wilder eyes, rushes around the front of the vehicle. She makes it halfway across the patchy grass of the front yard before she staggers to a stop, her jaw dropping as she shakes her head slowly back and forth.
The girl looks familiar, and I’m about to say hello, when she shouts—
“Holy fucking shit!”
Aoife jumps, startled, and I take a step in front of her, not sure what’s wrong, but certain it must have something to do with me, since this woman can’t pull her eyes away from my face. I’m assuming we must have a past—maybe I had a thing for redheads before Caitlin and I got together—when the woman lets out a hysterical burst of laughter.
“You’re alive,” she shouts, pulling in a breath that emerges as a sob. “You’re fucking alive. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.”
The van’s side door slides open, and a sleepy voice from inside asks, “What’s wrong, Sherry?”
I hear that voice, and my heart stops.
Time slows to a crawl.
It feels like it takes hours to turn my head, an eternity for my gaze to shift from the redhead’s face to the face of the woman emerging from the van. And then I meet her eyes—pale green eyes above a freckled nose and full lips I’ve dreamed about kissing too many times to count—and I forget how to breathe.
It’s her, standing on the cracked driveway in wrinkled khaki shorts and a pale, yellow tee shirt. It’s Caitlin. She’s here. She’s here and real and beautiful and alive. So alive, I can smell her smoke and spice scent drifting across the yard, and swear I hear her pulse race as she meets my gaze and a hundred emotions fly across her face.
Shock is followed closely by confusion, pain, and then a look of joy so naked it feels like an invasion of privacy to watch it light up her features. I should look away, but I can’t. I’m afraid to look away, afraid to blink, for fear that by the time I open my eyes, she will have vanished all over again.
“Gabe?” The word bleeds hope, her voice so raw it’s painful to hear.
Yes, I want to say. Thank God you’re okay. But I can’t seem to force my lips to move.
“Gabe?” she repeats before I can recover the ability to speak. “Please, say something.”
“Yes,” I say, voice breaking in the middle of the word.
I know I should say more. I should tell her everything I’ve thought and felt and feared for the past year, but I don’t know how to start. I should go to her, pull her into my arms, and show her how fucking relieved I am to see her, but I can’t seem to take a step forward. All I can do is stand at the edge of the street, staring, feeling like my heart is splitting open and Caitlin is rushing in to banish the emptiness that’s been with me since the surgery.
Only now, looking into her eyes, do I realize that the hole inside of me is in the exact shape of this girl, and that—even more than my lost memories—it is the loss of her that has made me feel so incomplete.
“It’s really you,” she whispers after a long, silent moment, shaking her head back and forth like she still can’t believe it. “Oh my God. Oh…my God.”
Her hands fly up to cover her mouth as she bursts into tears. She cries like a dam breaking, like a tidal wave rushing toward the shore. Her tears are terrifying, and some part of me realizes they’re dangerous, even before she starts gasping for breath.
“Caitlin, are you okay?” The redhead starts toward Caitlin, but before she takes two steps, Caitlin’s eyes roll back and her knees buckle. She hits the ground with a muffled thud that is apparently what I needed to jolt my body into action.
I lunge forward, jumping onto the sidewalk and sprinting across the grass. I kneel next to Caitlin and gather her limp body into my arms, heart slamming against my ribs as a dark voice inside my head insists I’ve killed her.
I know it’s not true; I know she’s only fainted. I know it the way I know that fairy tales don’t come true, and a kiss never brought a beautiful girl back from the dead. But still, I’m terrified that I’ve lost her all over again, and the only thing I can think to do is kiss her, so I cradle the back of her head in my palm, and press my lips to hers.
For a long moment, there is nothing but softness, and the faint pressure of her teeth, firm against my lips, but then her breath rushes out. Her eyelashes flutter against my cheek, and her arms twine around my neck. She pulls me close with a strength that’s surprising, and kisses me with enough passion to light a city through an endless winter.
She kisses me, and I am the one brought back to life.
The moment her tongue slips between my lips, I remember the way it was with us, the way she made me feel so fucking alive, vibrating at a frequency so high and sweet it can only be heard by magical creatures and people who are purely, desperately, endlessly in love.
At that moment, sitting in the dust and brown grass, with her warm in my arms, I make a vow that I will have it all again.
I will have Caitlin and magic and the life we dreamed of together, back before something ripped us apart.