Page 6 of Written with You (The Regret Duet 2)
“Okay.” I ignored the disappointment that rained over me. “Just a heads-up, I’m not sure that I can sneak away to your place tonight after all. Trent was talking about spending the night earlier and—”
“No, I get it. Family first. Maybe another time.”
“Maybe?” I teased. Anything to lighten the suffocating weight hanging in the air between us for reasons I didn’t understand. “I did not face a horde of zombies to recover the last condoms in existence to hear you say maybe.”
She laughed, soft and sweet.
But there was something about it.
Maybe it was the way it slid into a pregnant silence.
Or the way she leaned into me, her breasts pillowing between us, her hands going to the back of my neck and holding me tight, as if she could absorb me.
Or maybe it was just the unexplainable string that tied us together being plucked by karma.
But whatever it was, the lull that followed that laughter was utterly heartbreaking.
“Hadley?”
“I love her,” she told my neck. “I love her more than anything in the world. Please tell me you know that. No matter what happened in the past. Please tell me you know how much I love her now. I only want the absolute best for her. No matter what that entails.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
She was leaving.
That was the heartbreak I’d heard.
Whatever had happened with Trent. Whatever had been said on that deck. She was leaving.
Again.
I took a sudden step away from her, peeling her arms from around my neck. “What’s going on?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what the fuck is happening right now?”
“N-nothing. I was going to eat cake and then leave.”
“And when are you going to come back?”
More blinking from her.
More mounting frustration from me.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “Wednesday? Unless…you need to switch the date for some reason. I’m pretty free whenever. Just tell me when to be here and I’m here.”
That was when the alarm bells started ringing in my head.
As I stared at her with her long, red hair cascading over her exposed collar bone and her plump lips parted, all but begging for my mouth to press against them, that alarm became a blaring siren. And it screamed a warning just before a tidal wave slammed into me so hard and so fast that it stole the oxygen from my lungs.
For the first time since she’d reappeared over three months earlier, I didn’t want Hadley to leave.
I could bullshit myself and say that was all about my baby girl losing someone she cared about, but the relief singing in my veins told a different story.
That panic.
That anger.
That desperation when I’d thought she was saying goodbye.
That was all about me.
“Is…that okay?” she stammered out.
“Yeah. Shit. I’m sorry,” I ground out around the knot in my throat. “I misread that situation.” I swayed my head from side to side. “Ya know. Assumption. Making an ass out of you and me and all.”
She took a step toward me, my body igniting at her proximity. “What’d you assume?”
I could have lied. But not to her.
Hooking her around the hips, I dragged her to me. “I thought you were saying goodbye.”
“What?”
“I know. I know. It was stupid, but it felt real. And…” You’re under my skin. “I overreacted. It’s been a long day. I slept for shit last night. There was this insatiable woman who kept me up late.”
I expected a laugh.
What I got was a vow.
“I will never leave her, Caven.” She held my gaze with an unfettered determination. “I don’t care what it takes. What it cost me physically or emotionally. And I don’t give a damn who tries to stand in my way. When it comes to Rosalee, goodbye is not a word in my vocabulary. She’s my family and I love her. So you can bury that assumption four years in the past where it belongs.” And then she was gone. Head held high, marching down the stairs, taking Rosalee’s hand before hitting the back door.
True to her word, she stayed long enough to eat cake and gush over some painted rocks with Q-tip legs that Rosalee claimed were llamas. She laughed with Jenn while avoiding Trent’s scrutiny, and she’d done it so fearlessly that I couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride.
I didn’t know what had happened on the deck between her and Trent.
And I didn’t know what had changed while we had been in my bedroom.
But as she climbed into her car while blowing kisses to Rosalee, I felt like I was watching an entirely different woman.WILLOWSeven months earlier…My bedroom was pitch black as I stared up at my ceiling fan. The large blades cut through the humid Puerto Rico air as waves crashed in the distance. My secluded home wasn’t on the beach, but late at night, if I opened my windows, the dull roar of the ocean would echo against my walls.
