“Grief joins you closer to another human being more than love.”
“Yes,” Warren shouted, eyes closing tight, “but grief hurts less.”
“I know that.” I touched Warren on the back, careful, slowly and the man did not jerk out of my reach. Warren kept his eyes on the ground. “It’s a burden I’ll carry with me, always.”
“Words. Those are only words,” Warren said.
“But I mean them.” Warren didn’t want to believe me, I knew that. He only wanted my blood on his hands and his daughter back at his side. But I couldn’t give him what he wanted and I wouldn’t live in the past. Not anymore. “Mr. Warren,” I said, holding his gaze again, “She…she was my first love, no one else will ever get that.” I swallowed, wishing that my voice didn’t break, that I could clear that clot from it. “Part of me died that day too. I…I wanted to die, I prayed so hard it would be me instead of her. I wanted it to be me and I…” I sniffled, encouraged by how Warren’s features began to relax. “I am so sorry I took her away from you. I am so…so unbelievably sorry.” And right there, standing on that perfectly manicured lawn, I cried in front of Pat Warren because I had loved his daughter more than breath. I cried because I had let her die. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do to bring her back, but if there was, I’d do it. You could kill me if you want but that wouldn’t bring her back and it would only reap more sorrow on the family you do have, which is the last thing Emily would want. But Mr. Warren, with everything I am, everything I’ll be, I’m so very, very sorry.”
When I couldn’t see anything for the tears clouding my vision, I wiped my eyes, covering my face in my hands.
Warren knelt down, picking something off the lawn that shined and glinted in the sunlight. “I…I can’t ever forgive you.”
“I never expected you to.”
“I’m just not that good of a person, Ransom,” Warren said, staring down at Emily’s chain. I looked up at him, but didn’t say anything. Forgiveness had nothing to do with whether a man is good or bad. If Warren needed to hold on to his anger, I couldn’t argue with him. It was his burden to shoulder.
It was only then that I noticed the people on the front porch—a boy with Warren’s mouth and long nose and Emily’s mother, a picture of what the girl I’d loved would have looked like if she’d survived that day on the lake.
Warren didn’t seem aware of either of them until his son met him at the bottom step and took the necklace his father offered him.
As I got back in my car and glanced in my rearview mirror, they disappeared inside and I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of my own heartbeat and the traffic up ahead. Nothing else would battle for space in my mind. Not anymore.
That was the day I silenced the voice forever.
26
Ransom watched the boat speeding by the lake house. He barely blinked when it passed and I wondered if he was thinking of the last time he’d been out on that water. It was nearing sunset and the lake dwellers were returning from their day in the sun. Their loud shrieks of laughter and the heavy thump of distant music disturbed the song he picked out on the Hummingbird and kept his attention long enough that I nudged his foot to bring him back.
He moved his chin up as if to ask “what” then smiled at me when I glanced at the strings. “You stopped playing.”
“Sorry, baby,” he said, leaning over in his chair to kiss me. “You wanna stay here tonight or go back to your place?”
“I don’t care. Up to you.”
Ransom grinned and that sweet smile transformed when I licked my lips. “Don’t say shit like that, sweetheart. ‘Up to me’ could get you into a lot of trouble.”
“I like trouble sometimes.”
“Really Miss Dean’s List? I don’t think so.”
I pulled on his neck when he came closer, setting the guitar in the chair as he left it. “I remember a couple of weeks back, I showed you just how much trouble I could be when I got out that corset and mask…”
That vivid image shown in Ransom’s face, in the quick roll of his eyes and the low muttered groan. “Jesus, baby, don’t remind me,” he said, kneeling in front of me to get closer. “My parents are inside.” I nodded, but didn’t stop running my fingers along his collarbone. Ransom kissed me, let his mouth linger on my bottom lip. “With my baby sister and brother.” I nodded again and brought my foot up to the inside of his thigh, just beneath his cargo shorts. “And Leann and Will and…shit…”
Ransom’s tongue met mine and he held my face as he took my mouth. I’d never get tired of his kisses or how every touch he gave came with an effort that was fierce. We were getting just a little carried away, him sliding against me, me slipping my fingers under his shirt and then suddenly a cold spray of water doused us.
“Motherfucker…”
“Ransom!” I heard Keira shout, but her son ignored her, jumping up from the ground to chase after Tristian, who had chucked a dripping water hose against the patio tile.
“I am going to throw you in the damn lake,” Ransom shouted after him.
“Catch me first, asshole. You linebackers have zero speed,” Tristian taunted, jumping around the fence, moving quicker than Ransom who got his shorts hung up on the gate latch. Tristian laughed as he headed back toward the patio, looking a little too smug, not paying attention to where he was running, more focused on keeping out of Ransom’s reach. He didn’t see me step away from the patio or pounce when he got close. But Tristian went down, landing flat on his back and I moved quick, pinning his arms flat against the tile with my knees.
“Aly, sugar, I didn’t know you wanted me,” he joked.
“Non,” I said, putting more weight on my knees so that Ransom’s cousin couldn’t move. “You wish. I’m just holding you until Ransom gets here.”
“What? You got no spunk? Gotta let your man handle things for you?”
“Oh, I got plenty of spunk.”
“I don’t know, you’re kind of little…”
“Keep talking…”
“Sometimes I wonder if Ransom crushes you when he bends you…”
When I flicked Tristian’s nose he struggled, still unable to get his lanky frame even an inch off the ground. And when he laughed, looked far too smug, I pinched his nosed and covered his mouth. “Why don’t you save your breath and just say ‘Aly, will you kick my ass now?’ That would be less of a hassle.” I had a hell of a lot of lower body strength and Tristian was no match for the hold I had him in.
“Is he dead?” Leann asked from the open patio doorway. Keira stood next to her with a five month old Makana on her hip, smiling at me sitting on top of her little cousin.
“Not yet. I’m working on it, though,” I told her, hearing Ransom laugh behind us.
“Okay. Just…I don’t know, no blood.” Leann’s wave was dismissive, like it didn’t bother her that I had her son pinned to the ground. “I don’t clean up bodily fluids.”
“See?” I told Tristian, batting my eyes when he glared at his mother. “She likes me more.” I’d told him that two months ago when Tristian had returned from his semester abroad. He hadn’t believed me.
“You gonna stop with the water attack anytime my boyfriend kisses me?” I asked him in a faux threatening tone. Tristian mumbled something against my hand. “Oh, sorry, forgot.” I lifted my hand a miniscule amount from his mouth and leaned down so I could hear what he was saying. “What was that?”
“I said, if you two stop making out all over the place, maybe I’ll stop hosing you down. I mean, Kona and Keira are bad enough, but you two? It’s embarrassing…Jesus.”
When Ransom finally made it back to the patio, he helped me up, brushing a hand over my ass, and beaming at me, proud that I could hold my own with a trickster like Tristian.