1 p.m.
35 Hours until Gwen’s Birthday Wish Expires
August
I swallowed past the history gumming up my throat and offered a tentative smile. “Hey.”
Fucking hey. Three letters. One syllable. Not exactly eloquent for a guy who poured his heart into verse. Nine years of deafening silence will do that to a man, a lifetime of my favorite memories torched by one disastrous night.
And all I had was hey.
Gwen’s jaw unhinged, not a sound coming out. Mine almost dropped, too. It had been one thing watching her from afar on the field, but this? Her body was as strong and toned as I’d thought, lean muscles defining her arms. Her tank top accentuated her tight stomach, the curves of her breasts. I’d almost had my hands on those soft swells, my mouth, my tongue, my teeth.
Too bad she screwed my brother.
Except that fiasco wasn’t why I’d bailed on my soccer game partway through, why I was standing on her mother’s doorstep now, in workout shorts and a soccer jersey, sweat cooling into clammy patches on my skin.
What happened nine years ago was history. Painful history, but history nonetheless.
Curling my hands into fists, I wrenched my eyes from her body and focused on her face. Her hypnotizing eyes scattered my thoughts. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
She blinked, as though rousing from a dream. “My mother?”
“I should have called. Come in for the funeral.”
Before she could reply, the brunette from the bleachers poked her head through the door and offered her hand. “I’m Rachel, Gwen’s friend. I think you know my boyfriend Jimmy.”
Gwen had friends I no longer knew. She probably had a boyfriend, too. A life beyond the neighborhood we grew up in and years we’d shared. A sudden cramp seized my gut. Probably a stitch, after-effects of splitting on my soccer game without stretching, coupled with all things Gwen. The faster I got this over with, the faster I could breathe easier.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop staring at Gwen’s pink lips, how the lower one was slightly fuller, with that damn freckle on the left.
I shook Rachel’s hand. “I’m August. Jimmy and I played soccer together as teens. It was nice catching up.”
“Well…” Rachel glanced between Gwen’s still-gaping mouth and my divided focus. “I need to get going, but—”
“No, you don’t.” Gwen clutched Rachel’s elbow.
“Yes, I do.”
“But we have that thing.”
Rachel patted Gwen’s shoulder. “Later. Our thing is later. Meet us for drinks.” She kissed Gwen’s cheek and nodded to me as she slipped past, leaving us to stew in our tension.
Gwen wrapped her arms around her middle.
I shifted on my feet, wishing I wasn’t in sneakers and shorts. Nowhere to shove my restless hands. Hands that wanted to erase the deep furrow sinking between Gwen’s green eyes. It had always been like this with Gwen, my need to comfort her an embedded impulse. I also wanted to rail at her, our history bubbling below my skin. “Sorry if I smell,” I said, tamping both reflexes and grasping for conversation. “I was playing soccer.”
She cleared her throat. “Considering I saw you there, and you’re sweating on the front step now, I put two and two together.”
“I see your sarcasm is alive and well.” The edge to my tone was also a living, breathing thing. A sharp rasp in my throat.
The crease in her brow deepened. “Sorry. This is awkward.”
To say the least. I could have done this over the phone, called her a week ago, before my procrastination-athon had begun, but this wasn’t the type of news you dumped on someone from afar, no matter our strained past.
She peered at me intently. “Did you swap your glasses for contacts?”
“I had laser eye surgery.”
“Oh.” She looked at her toes, at my knees, at the yard beyond me. “The lawn isn’t as nice as when you lived there.”
I followed her line of sight to my childhood home. I could practically see a path between our front yards, a trail forged by memories of a giggling Gwen and water fights and nights lying in the grass, her head on my lap, my hands itching to stroke her hair. The vivid flashbacks fisted my heart and squeezed.
“The house looks smaller,” I said. Not I miss you. Not why did you ruin us? Not I did something you’ll never forgive.
She kept her eyes on the house. “You’re just bigger.”
“Did the gutters always slant like that?” This I could do. Talk about nothing instead of our past and the reason I was here.
“Doubt it.”
“It needs an overhaul.”
“The paint job certainly needs love.”
The word love drifting from her lips had me rubbing the stitch still twisting my side.
I’d thought we were destined for each other, Gwen and me. The type of soul mates who’d gone through hardships, but could never stay apart. Her nineteenth birthday was supposed to have been the start of our time. Our new beginning. It had been the exact opposite, and I needed to remember that. Not give life to the overpowering connection tugging at me while we talked about laser eye surgery and the deterioration of childhood homes.
Her focus finally settled on me. “How’d you know I was here and not at my apartment?”
“Shot in the dark.” Wasn’t sure yet if it was lucky or unlucky, not with these confusing feelings jumbling my insides.
She didn’t invite me in, or apologize for what she’d done all those years ago, but the jade in her eyes shimmered, a hint of pooling tears. Gwen didn’t do tears. She was tough, made of self-determination and independence. Built by an indifferent mother and lack of affection. But the vulnerability behind her rigid posture was palpable…as was something else.
Her face softened, wistfulness in the lift of her brow, mixed with desire? Yearning?
If the emotion pouring from her eyes were a song, it would be titled “First Love.”
It rocked me. All our history, and it only took one look, one mundane conversation, and I was imagining my lips on Gwen’s, her in my arms, our painful past erased. Exactly why I hadn’t contacted her after receiving her mother’s insane letter. Why I’d missed the funeral. Why I’d delayed coming here: I’d never gotten over Gwen Hamilton.
That awareness didn’t erase the sting of betrayal simmering in my gut. Both sloshed together, stirring into a queasy concoction.
When it came to Gwen, I couldn’t see straight.
“Can we talk?” I nodded toward the house. I needed to move, break this spell. Apologize for what I’d done, then get away.
Arms still hugging her belly, she stepped back. I walked past her and our arms brushed. Just a whisper of skin against skin, but enough to spark each of my follicles. The Zap, I used to call it—a stupid, infatuated teen who’d go gaga, one graze from her zinging all my nerves to life. Fire. Thirst. Hunger.
Some things never changed.
I focused on her and Finch instead. Gwen the Deceiver. Gwen the Traitor.
That Gwen was familiar. That Gwen I could talk to without wondering if she felt this indelible connection, too. But the boxes filling the too-familiar space shot me with an injection of guilt. She probably did this alone, packing her mother’s life away. Unless her friends had helped her, or a man. Likely a man. My cramp knotted tighter, turning my sloshy insides into a trash compacter.
I readied to tell her about the blasted letter and get away from her and this uncomfortable ache, but she swiveled, and said, “I’m sorry about that night.”
Dammit. Not what I could handle right now. “It’s ancient history.”
If I said it, maybe my heart would believe it.
“It’s not. Not for me, at least. I was too embarrassed to contact you after. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, my biggest mistake. I don’t even want to explain it, because it makes no sense. Absolutely none. And I won’t make excuses, but I want you to know how sorry I am.”
She didn’t want to explain it? Not even try? “Why don’t you give it a shot, Gwen? Give me the abridged version. The bullet points of why you fucked Finch.”
She swallowed convulsively, and I tensed down to my toes, barely refraining from punching the wall. This was not why I’d flown home. This wasn’t about me and my bruised ego.
Why the hell couldn’t I just let it go?
She sucked on her bottom lip, a move that had more fire driving through my veins. Different fire. I couldn’t keep from glancing at her slim hips, her long legs, how the bottoms of her camouflage pants skimmed her calves, the material tough but sexy. Like Gwen. Nine years of nurtured anger threaded with remorse over what I’d done, and tangled with this thing. This gripping attraction and wistfulness—a deep missing of this woman from my life—leaving me lightheaded.
I was such a mess around her. “Forget I asked that. I don’t want to know. The reason—”
“Because I was lonely, August. That’s the abridged version. The ugly truth.”
“Jesus, Gwen.” There was no couch to fall onto, unless I wanted to scale boxes. Nowhere to brace myself for the conversation we’d avoided for nine years.
“I know. I’m an idiot. But I saw that stupid Facebook post, the ring on Kayla’s hand, and I freaked out. I’d just admitted I’d had feelings for you—all those years and I finally found the courage to tell you. I couldn’t face you after that.”
“So you sought out Finch? To hurt me?”
“No, God, never.” She reached for me, but curled her hands into fists. “I was hurting back then. Like really hurting—sad and lonely, about you and my mother. I had no one close in my life, and I chose the wrong way to self-medicate. It’s a childish excuse, but it’s all I’ve got. Everything I did that night was wrong.”
Understatement, but I’d thought I’d dealt with it. Yet here I was, the wounds feeling fresh once more. “All you had to do was wait. I was ready to forgive you for cutting me from your life for a year and a half. Why couldn’t you have waited one fucking night for me?”
“I don’t know. I was a stupid kid with no real family and few friends, and enough self-loathing to keep half the therapists in the country employed. I didn’t think you’d ever feel what I felt. And you and Finch looked so much alike. I wanted to pretend, even for a moment, that you were mine, which is really warped. It just got so twisted.”
Beyond twisted, and my head spun.
For nine years I’d believed her texts that night had been lies. She’d ghosted on me our last year in high school. Had ignored me until her birthday messages. Then she’d slept with my brother, as though she’d gone out of her way to toy with me. I’d assumed her actions had been a form of retaliation—a way to punish me for who the hell knew what? For having loving parents? A scholarship? More friends?
“Not sure what to do with that,” I said, my voice scratched up. I wasn’t sure what to do with any of this.
Her chin wobbled. “I don’t expect your forgiveness. I know there’s no chance for us. It’s done. I just wanted to apologize. I should have said it back then.”
No chance for us. Her words were threaded with such loss, like she’d toss a penny into a pond and wish for it to be otherwise. Like she’d take me now if I offered myself up. The regret pooling in her glistening gaze was enough to fill the Pacific.
All I’d ever done was try to make Gwen happy. I’d taught her guitar, to touch her and sit close, but a creative outlet was valuable, something to distract her from her cold house when I wasn’t around. I would invite her to my family dinners. We’d sneak into each other’s rooms, to play cards and backgammon and argue if Superman or Wolverine would win in a flat-out brawl. We had spent endless hours together, searching for clues to find her father.
Then she tossed me and our history away like it had been nothing.
Not an easy pill to swallow, but I’d coped by believing everything had happened for a reason. Walking in on Gwen and Finch had led to more hours writing music, less studying. Deferring my courses. Traveling. Putting everything into song. Without that devastating blow, I could be living in San Francisco, working some nine-to-five, ass sore from warming an office chair, singing karaoke instead of originals.
But if fate had guided my folly in showing up at Gwen’s that night, then why had it brought me here now, after what I’d done? Why was I feeling this intense longing when the information I came to share would shatter her?
She was shaking slightly, gnawing on her lip like it was her job. I jammed my hand through my hair. All this time, all this pain, and she’d slept with my brother because she’d been irrevocably lonely. Not to hurt me or push me away. She’d done it to cope with her abandonment issues.
It still stung…but less. I was also tired of holding a grudge.
“Apology accepted,” I said, ready to leave our past in the past. “The history isn’t as ancient as I let on, and it would do me good to put it to bed.” But the comment had me picturing Gwen in a bed, in the present, those strong thighs around my waist, my cock buried inside her. Lust tapped a beat up my spine.
Tainted history and all, my attraction to her hadn’t lessened, and delaying my reason for being here only made it worse.
She stepped closer. “Do you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“You can move on from what I did? Forgive me?”
I didn’t recognize the hesitancy in her voice. Teenage Gwen hadn’t had a tentative bone in her body. “It’s been nine years. I’m not holed up in my apartment, wallowing in self-pity.”
She tilted her chin down—eyes wide, head cocked—giving me her don’t bullshit me expression. This Gwen, I knew. “‘Girl with the Black Heart’?” she said.
Busted. Writing an album full of hate songs had been excellent therapy. The fact she knew it also meant she’d been keeping tabs on me. “Have you been listening to my music?”
She shook her head quickly. “No. Of course not. I’m more of a metal girl. I just read the song titles somewhere.” But her nose twitched. The same tic that followed a Gwen fib.
“Liar.”
“Says you.”
The idea of her lying in bed, my music filling her room, pleased me more than it should. I shouldn’t be joking with her, either. Or were we flirting? Nothing was going according to plan. Including my bitterness that resurfaced. “You should give it a listen. It’s a how-to on dealing with a broken heart.”
She inhaled sharply. I expected her to bite back, the way her sarcasm used to match mine blow for blow. Her tone quieted instead. “Since when does mending a broken heart involve dousing a girl in gasoline?”
“Not a girl. Her shadow. It was about torching history you can’t shake. And I thought you hadn’t heard the song.”
“I maybe saw the lyrics online.”
“Which line is your favorite?”
She opened her mouth, likely to tell me off, but she flattened her lips. A twinkle backlit the wariness slitting her eyes. “It’s tough to decide between the part where you stomp on my ashes or the line where you say my soul is black.” She punctuated the gibe with a shaky grin.
There was nothing amusing about that dark song, or my state of mind when writing it, or how I wanted to tear Gwen’s clothing off now and release this tension and attraction for good. “I like the part where I watch your shadow burn.”
Her nostrils flared. “You should write Hallmark cards.”
I barked out a laugh, so loud and sudden we both startled. This acerbic bantering was unexpected. I didn’t think I was capable of banter with Gwen, brusque or otherwise. We’d excelled at mocking each other back in the day, jabs that had been more sweet-natured than this barb-laced jousting. Still, that nostalgia returned with a vengeance, reminding me of our once-easy friendship.
As though reading my mind, she pressed her hand to her breastbone. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
An ache spread through my chest. “It’s been a long nine years.”
An eternity. So much had changed, yet so much hadn’t, our past still between us, but less potent. If I’d come for a different reason, maybe we’d have a chance at friendship. A chance to unleash my lingering angst a different way, a wicked voice murmured. But her mother’s letter had been burning a hole in my wallet for two months, that fragile paper folded and unfolded so often it threatened to rip.
Not that I needed to read it again. I had the damn thing memorized.
Dear August,
I am dying. As a dying woman, I have a request. Below is the name of Gwen’s father. She has always wanted to know who he is. I ask that you be the one to tell her, be there for her when she finds him.
It had seemed like a simple request, but nothing with Gwen was simple. Not the way reading the letter had made me want to hop on a redeye and fly home and scoop Gwen into my arms to hold and protect her while she finally met the man she’d searched out her whole life. Not the way I’d stuffed the note in my wallet and had skipped Mary’s funeral, hoping the sudden pain of missing Gwen would disappear. The final line had made it so much worse:
Remember what I told you on Gwen’s nineteenth birthday.
That’s how she’d ended the letter, as though I hadn’t lived the last nine years wondering why she’d said what she had that day. I’d called her for Gwen’s address, and she’d given me more than I’d hoped to hear. An earful that had made me believe Mary Hamilton had cared for her daughter more than she’d let on.
Gwen stood before me now, one hand still on her chest. So many emotions—affection, shame, every secret and hope we’d ever shared, and something like uncorked desire—swirling in her green eyes. Unless I was projecting my overwhelming feelings onto her.
Ignoring the cocktail of emotions shaking me up, I dredged up my fortitude and prepared to admit what I’d done.
But someone knocked on the door.