Page 17 of Written with You (The Regret Duet 2)
We needed a subject change. Something light. Something innocuous. Something…
“Two of those are for your parents.”
My fingers stilled, and my stomach churned. I had no idea what he was talking about, but if the gravel in his voice was any indication, I didn’t want to know, either. I’d told him once that time only marched in one direction. But Caven was clearly headed back to the past.
“My mom…” He paused to clear the emotion from his throat. “When I was ten, my mom died of cancer. She knew her time was coming, so she started talking to me and Trent about it a lot. I guess to prepare us. She never used the word ‘dying’ though. She would say things like soon she was going to get her angel wings.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, dread rolling in like a thunderstorm as I waited for the part where this sad story from his childhood somehow converged with my parents and his tattoo.
“After the mall, I tried to go on with my life. Trent didn’t really understand what I was going through. I pretended a lot. Pushed the guilt to the back of my head. Compartmentalizing.” His lips curled in a devastated smile. “It didn’t work. When I graduated high school, I went off to college and met Ian. He was the first person to see how bad things really were inside my head. He forced me into a therapist’s office, and day after day, for years, he went to war with me. It took a lot time for me to be able to face what Malcom did that day, and to a certain degree, I will always blame myself for what happened at that food court. But forty-eight people gained their angel wings that day. And it seemed like a tragedy to allow guilt to steal a life that had been spared. I got this as a reminder that I have a lot of angels I need to live for.”
I physically ached, and tears welled in my eyes as I silently counted each feather, ticking off all the names I’d memorized shortly after the shooting. My therapist had told me that it wasn’t healthy to obsess about the victims. But how could I not?
Caven turned his arm over, palm up, as I gently tapped each one, working my way around.
My parents would be last. My father was the first to die in that shooting, but as a girl, when I fell asleep at night reciting that list of victims like most people would count sheep, I’d hoped that somehow, someway, when I got to the end, my parents’ names would no longer be there.
They always were.
And it was no different as I got to the last few feathers on Caven’s arm.
Robert.
Keira.
I stilled my finger, lingering over the longest feather that ran from wrist to elbow on the blade of his ulna. I’d seen that tattoo countless times over the last few months, but for the first time, I noticed that this particular feather was a deep red instead of black.
“Forty-nine,” I whispered, peering up at him in question.
His face warmed as he stared down at me, his blue eyes twinkling with unshed emotion. “That one’s for a different kind of angel.”
“Your mom?”
He shook his head. “I tried to help this little girl when the shooting first started, but she ended up saving my life. I’ve always thought of her as my guardian angel of sorts.”
My.
Heart.
Stopped.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My entire body felt like it was shutting down.
Everything except for my head, which was screaming for him to say my name.
But if he said it, I’d be forced to take the final plunge. Dive into the deep. Past the point of no return.
There was no hiding that my supposed sister’s name was Willow. When I’d told Beth that I wanted to come back for Rosalee, she’d argued with me tooth and nail, determined to point out every possible angle in which my plan would fail.
She came up with nothing.
But the one thing she’d repeated over and over again as we flew back from Puerto Rico was that if I went to Caven—if I became Hadley Banks—Willow would have to be gone. Forever.
And that meant, if the day came and Caven realized Willow Banks was the girl from the mall, I was going to have to sit back and lie to the only man who ever deserved the truth.
At the time, I didn’t think it would matter. As far as I knew, Caven had never thought of me again after that day in the mall. I’d spent the better part of my adolescence trying to get in touch with him, but he’d never reached out to me. I’d gambled on coming back thinking he wouldn’t even make the connection with my last name. And for months, he hadn’t.
