Page 16 of Written with You (The Regret Duet 2)
“Have you always been like that?”
I shrugged. “As long as I can remember.”
His lips twitched as he crowded me in the best possible way. His hand went to my hip. “Ice cream is the only exception, huh?”
“Nope. I use pretzels for that too.”
He gave me a squeeze, a shadow fluttering across his face. “You didn’t seem to have a problem while we were sharing that carton of Ben and Jerry’s back in the day.”
Oh, shit.
Oh, fucking shitty shit.
And this was precisely the problem with giving him Willow while pretending to be Hadley.
Hadley had always gagged at my crazy food combinations. She was a simple girl who ate meat and loved ice cream. I had been a vegetarian since I was ten and a salt and sweet mixer since…well, forever.
I picked up my bowl of pretzels, stacked the box with the cheesecake on top, and carried it to the coffee table in front of my couch. “Well, I wasn’t about to expose that level of crazy on the first night.”
“You were naked and planning to steal my computer. Pretzels and ice cream would have been a drop in the bucket.”
My stomach rolled. It was a joke, and I applauded him for his ability to even speak about that night without seeing red. But he was teasing me about the night my sister had gone above and beyond to shatter my heart. It was the reason we had been fighting when she’d sped off in my car, ultimately hitting a tree and losing her life. And it was the reason the last thing I ever said to her as I screamed into her voicemail was, “You were wrong. I will always I hate you.”
I didn’t know if she ever heard that message.
But I’d said it. I’d left those words dangling in the universe just moments before she took her final breath.
Maybe I deserved the slash through the heart he’d caused with his little stroll down memory lane.
I avoided his gaze by retrieving my remote from the drawer and then a blanket hanging on the ladder across the room. “Anyway. You want to watch a movie or something?”
“Shit. Hadley.”
God, I’d have given anything to hear Willow roll off his tongue. Just once. But that was the price I had to pay to keep Rosalee.
She was worth it all.
He set the tiramisu on the coffee table and sank beside me on the couch. “You know I was kidding, right?”
I nodded and clicked the button to turn the TV on, desperate for a distraction.
He plucked the remote from my hand and set it on the table. “Look at me.”
I swallowed hard.
I was Hadley.
I had a daughter who deserved a mother who loved her.
He wasn’t the boy who had saved my life.
He was just Caven. Nothing more.
I plastered on a smile that I hoped looked more genuine than it felt and turned toward him. “What kind of movie are you in the mood for? Action? Suspense? Comedy?”
“I shouldn’t have called you crazy,” he rushed out, taking my hand in his and intertwining our fingers.
I willed my smile not to falter. “You didn’t call me crazy, crazy.”
“I did and I’m sorry. You told me you were in a bad place the night we met, and I know how brutal the memories can be sometimes, and finding a way to survive is never crazy.”
I could have lived the rest of my life in complete and utter happiness if I never heard another apology from Caven Hunt again. “It’s okay. You weren’t wrong. That night was crazy.”
“Still.” He sighed and sagged against the couch. Lifting his arm, he silently invited me into his side. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
It was an offer I would never refuse. He could call me Hadley every day. But in his arms, I would always feel like Willow.
Tucking my legs up beneath me, I settled into his curve and dragged the blanket on top of us both. “You don’t have to censor yourself with me. I know we have a past. It sucks. But it exists. I’m not upset.”
“That night sometimes feels like the elephant in the room with us. I thought maybe, if we could make light of it, it wouldn’t feel so damn awkward all the time. I still remember so much from that night, but at the same time, it feels like it was a different life.”
Because it was—at least for me.
“Elephants were meant to live in the wild. Maybe we should let this one go.”
He kissed the top of my head. “I like how easy you make everything sound.”
“Good. I like the way you bring me cheesecake.”
He laughed, and it finally broke the fog of regret swirling all around us, but as I traced my fingers over the black tattooed feathers on his forearm, an awkward silence settled in its place.
