I WOKE TO A NOTE on the bed next to my pillow.
At the lake. See you soon, beautiful.
I grinned as I stretched, and then sat up. Even the sun seemed to smile, the glittering light streaming through the window, warming against my skin. Being in his arms, I didn’t get a good look last night at the place he rested his head each night. There was a certain thrill to being in his bed in a room I’d never slept in before. A newness I loved the taste of. He was as simple as I pegged him to be from the beginning. Dark gray sheets. A black comforter. Walls painted a calming shade of muted gray. A small desk near the circular window overlooking the lake out back. He had a wooden dresser and a closet with no more than a handful of shirts and pants.
Other than that, it was bare. Walls empty. Desk free of clutter, as if he didn’t want to fully tie himself to this place.
I could still smell him in the sheets. Salt and wood. The memories of last night rolled over me in pleasurable waves. How could I feel so close to someone I was still getting to know? What were these dusty feelings yawning awake inside me? It was his capacity to care that brought them out. To pay attention to the small details most would overlook in the beginning.
He was deep and vast, and I was in over my head. Life was so much easier when I kept moving. When I shielded my heart from all the color in life.
But he was breaking through my defenses, one hue at a time.
After slipping into one of his T-shirts that hung past my knees, I wandered down the stairs into the kitchen, toward the scent of coffee. There was a pot freshly brewed with another sticky note on the counter from him. Like leaving breadcrumbs to my final prize.
I hope you like the strong stuff. Cream’s in the fridge and sugar’s next to the pot. Damn, you’re beautiful.
Problem number one—he was good.
I thought about his hands and his lips, and the way his eyes never let me go. Not for a second last night.
Problem number two—he was really good, and that was new territory for me. Words like boyfriend and love found their way into the forefront of my mind. The mushy stuff. The kind of feelings that no matter how hard they tried to find their way into my heart, they were drowned by the past.
Love.
I was sure I’d felt it a time or two with past lovers. But ultimately, I left because they could never stick to my condition that I didn’t want anything serious. I never believed in that expression we should love unconditionally. What about self-worth? What about my own wants and needs and desires? I liked my freedom to come and go as I pleased. I liked knowing I could rely on myself. That I didn’t need anyone to hold me at the end of the day. We were taught at a young age that we had to grow up and find a man to take care of us. But my mom and I survived fine without one. If I lived for the past fifteen years without one, I could go another fifteen more just fine.
Right?
After drinking a cup of coffee, I headed toward the back door, passing through the office. He was standing exactly as he said he liked to, shin deep, staring at the vast, smoky horizon. The mist was a thin, silver thread across the still water. There was a solace in the quiet, dew-laden morning which brought a peace over me that reminded me of my childhood before the mess happened. When I’d wake to music playing in the kitchen, and that meant Saturday pancakes were being made. When I’d draw chalky rainbows on the sidewalk while my dad raked the leaves.
If only we knew the value of a moment when we were in it.
Hudson must have heard me coming because, when I was close enough, without turning to see me, he said, “When it’s quiet enough, you’d be amazed at the truths you learn about yourself.” He twisted a long blade of grass between his fingers. It was another thing I’d learned about him. He had to have something in his hands or his teeth.
I moved closer, standing on the edge of the bank, wishing I had my camera on me. “What are your truths?” I asked, surprised by how much I wanted to gobble up his past and pain. Being with him like this, new and fresh, made me feel stiff and tight. Not quite broken in.
“I haven’t seen him in seven years. He left the day after he turned eighteen without a goodbye, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
My stomach twisted for him as I took a few steps forward, wanting to reach out to him, the water swallowing my shins. Was that who he was stuck waiting for? Who he flew to California to find?
“What happened?” I asked softly, stopping in front of him as it clicked into place.
When he met my gaze, I finally understood the pain that haunted his eyes, and it nearly stole the breath right from me. “I happened.”
Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around him. He clung tighter than I had ever been held before. Like if he let me go, he’d be letting a whole world of opportunities go.
I buried my face in his neck, kissing his skin in feather-light kisses as our chests collided with every rapid breath. His pain was mixing with the sexual tension that had grown between us, building like electric currents in the air.
“I have all these feelings inside me, and I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know how to let them out. I don’t…”
I trailed my fingers up the back of his neck, whisper soft, stopping on his cheek. He turned as I did, his lips closing over mine in a demanding way. I melted into him as he parted my lips with his tongue. As the world fell away and left us suspended in a galaxy of our own making. I felt his pain in that admittance. The way he walked beside loneliness as if it were his friend.
Seven years without his brother. More without his mother and father.
When he finally let me go, he guided me back to the bank, and then we sat on the dock, side by side, our toes skimming in the cool water. “After my mother died, things changed between Silas and me. My brother was only fourteen when it happened, and I was three weeks away from leaving for college.” He paused. “I chose to stay.”
“Hudson…”
“The house was left in our names, and the only option my brother had was to move across the country to live with our uncle. I couldn’t do that to him. He had a life here. Friends. He was on track for a scholarship with football. I had to. It was what was best. I couldn’t sell the house. My mother spent her whole life working for it. And I couldn’t abandon Silas. So I became his guardian.
“I don’t think we ever adjusted to the switch in roles. I had to look after him and keep him on track. He wanted to rebel. Silas was a free spirit. He was unruly and emotional. No one understood him the way I did. Mom would tell us that I was the river, and he was the forest. I was the constant, and he was the adventure. And when it came time for him to graduate, after I’d already taken out a second mortgage on the house to pay for his future, he decided adventure was worth more than the constant I’d provided.
“Everything I gave up… I did it for him. For his dreams. Only to find out that those were never his dreams.” He stopped. Sucked in a deep breath as his head fell forward. “That night, after he told me his plans to leave, I did what I do best—I hurt him. I blamed him for our mother’s death. For pushing and demanding her to be there for every sporting event when her hands were tied. He left after that fight, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
I covered his hand with mine. He raised his head, eyes haunted. “Have you tried looking for him?”
“Everywhere. I even tried searching on that Facebook thing, but there isn’t a profile with his name that’s him. It’s like he vanished off the face of this earth, and it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t… if I didn’t…”
His face contorted with pain, and I pulled him against me as he struggled with his emotions. It made sense now. His distance. His boundaries that kept anyone from getting too close. How could he let anyone in if he feared they’d leave? How could he let me in knowing I was only there temporarily?
“I can’t leave this house. I can’t move forward with my life, because if Silas can ever forgive me and come around, he knows this is where I’ll be. And I’ll wait until I die if it means I get a chance at telling my brother how sorry I am for saying what I shouldn’t have said.”
My fingers wove in his hair as he breathed through his troubles, staring out into the vast silver horizon. There was a deep unspoken truth in his admittance that I didn’t want to hear. A thorn digging into our hearts. Even though what we shared was new, it was different and we both understood that. There was a bone-deep connection between us that couldn’t be denied, and he basically told me that he wasn’t willing to leave this area for the sake of his brother. My job functioned around my availability to come and go.
We were already doomed before we started.
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “He’ll come around, Hudson. Sometimes it takes some people longer than others,” I said, offering the only advice I could think of. Trying to push away any thoughts of the dismal future.
He grunted a little, as if he knew the likelihood was less than ideal.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. The truth was I didn’t know his brother. I didn’t know if he was the type who came around. But I did know what regret and hurt felt like, and sharing that with Hudson might make him feel less alone. I just had to step out of my comfort zone and open up.
He twirled the blade of glass between his fingers, shoulders weighted forward, eyes leaden with sorrow.
Something told me he was worth letting in.
“I know what it’s like to feel trapped by your own mind. To feel like you’re your own worst enemy. To feel like you’re too much and yet not enough, all at once.”
That got his attention.
“When my dad left, he never looked back. He only called when he wanted something. Never checked in on me. It was like I never existed. And then he found a new family.”
It was his hand squeezing mine this time.
“It’s been years since I’ve spoken to him. Longer than that since I’ve seen him,” I admitted, feeling the wound inside my heart splitting open again. “For the longest time, I told myself I was fine. I used my anger and disappointment as a shield to block out the pain until I thought it was gone. It was just a nightmare. A bad dream I’d finally slayed. But then I realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“Pain isn’t loud. It doesn’t barge into the room. It’s sneaky. A criminal, hoarding all your happiness. It’s like our shadow, silently following us wherever we go. Jealous of the light we stand in. So maybe… maybe every once in a while, we should try to stop and acknowledge it.”
We sat there for a while as the sun crawled its way up the sky, holding hands, letting our truths sink in as our shadows rested beside us.
“Do you have to work today?” I asked some time later, watching a flock of ducks chasing each other across the water, bills dipping in every now and then.
He glanced over at me, a small grin brewing. His smile was art. A perfect masterpiece I wanted to collect. “I’m off until Monday.”
“Three days?”
“A perk of being the owner. I called Martha earlier to let her know I’d be taking some time off. She was more than happy to oblige. She’ll do just about anything to get me out of there so she can have the place to herself for a bit. She says I’m a loomer.”
“I can see that about you,” I said with a small laugh, nudging my shoulder into his. “A brooding loomer.”
He chuckled. “Maybe. If you’re free, I was thinking I could show you around town. You can’t become a local if you don’t know all the secret hangout spots.”
“Really?” I asked as my heart did a small flip.
He nodding, smiling. “How about you change, and then we can head out?” He paused, studying my profile. “Although, you in that shirt is doing something to me we might have to handle first.”
I grinned like a fool. Straddled his lap, heat already spreading between my legs. “I think I feel what you’re talking about,” I said as I ground against him, pressing my lips against his. He was intoxicating. Thrilling. Delicious.
He groaned against my mouth, and then lifted me up, carrying me back to the house.