Page 60 of Written with You (The Regret Duet 2)
And, now, she was standing in my bedroom, her shattered heart all but on display because I’d unwittingly found the chink in her armor.
The vulnerability that had been right in front of me all along.
The one that had brought us together.
And the one that had the ability to ruin us both.
And she wasn’t even alive anymore
Hadley.WILLOWI watched as he walked toward me. His steps were calculated, as though I might spook at any minute.
“I didn’t know Hadley well, so you’re going to have to help me out here. Okay?”
I shook my head and backed away. I didn’t know what he was about to ask, but I knew with an absolute certainty that I didn’t want to help him out. I didn’t want to talk about her at all. This was our night—our date.
She had no part in that.
But she did.
And because of the little girl fighting sleep just down the hall, she always would.
However, talking about Hadley meant thinking about Hadley. And, with Caven, it meant thinking about her in past tense. That was not a task I was ready to tackle.
For the majority of my adult life, I’d only seen Hadley in sporadic bursts. She’d wandered in and out of my life based on what she’d needed at the moment. I’d just wanted a family. So, when she’d come knocking on my door at three in the morning, I’d let her in. Sometimes, she stayed for a few days. Sometimes, a few hours. Occasionally, a month or two under the promise that she was getting clean and back on her feet. But it never lasted.
At Beth’s urging, I moved to Puerto Rico to escape the constant need to stress about where she was or who she was with. It was killing me. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, an ocean between us could solve, but it did wonders for my mental health. And, for Hadley, finally knowing there was no one she could fall back on seemed to serve as a reality check.
For two years, Hadley settled down. We started R.K. Banks. I emailed her photographs. She printed them and then painted over them. Most, she’d mail back to me, and some, she’d ship to the customer herself. What she did at night or on the weekends, I didn’t know. But when I called with a question or a custom piece for a client, she’d always answer the phone. And we’d talk. Without fighting. Without name calling. Without…all the other bullshit that seemed to get in the way. It was one of the best periods in my life, and even though I only saw her a few times during those years, I was genuinely happy to have my sister back.
However, as the old adage states, all good things must come to an end. At some point, Hadley got back into drugs. And stealing. And obsessing over the woman in the picture from the mall. She stopped answering my calls. She stopped laughing. Ultimately, she stopped painting.
I sold off whatever inventory we had left, except for a few I kept for my personal collection. And then Beth and I did what we could to just keep her alive. The longest I’d ever gone without seeing Hadley was six months.
It had been over eight now, and the time had been weighing on me. I missed her fiercely. But it was easy to pretend she was still alive. To imagine she had a new boyfriend and was out wreaking havoc with him. Maybe she was high and happy, bouncing from house to house, and I was letting her go, tough-love style. Maybe she was pissed at me again for something completely out of my control. But in the back of my head, even as I was pretending to be her and cleaning up the mess she’d left behind, she was always somewhere living, breathing, and not gone from the Earth forever.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Caven’s large hands landed on my hips. Pained as I was, the way my pulse immediately slowed was almost laughable.
A chill prickled my skin as his mouth came down to my ear, his warm breath fluttering over my neck. “I think we have to talk about her, babe. She might be the only elephant we haven’t set free yet.”
“I thought we were trying to set me free. Get me back to Willow. Erase Hadley from our lives once and for all.”
He moved closer until my only choice was to look up or face-plant into his chest.
Reluctantly, I gave him my eyes. “Just drop it.”
“I’m not trying to erase her. This shit with us… It’s difficult. It’s going to take a lot of work and tiptoeing through the hard stuff on both of our parts to start a relationship with a solid foundation. But hear me when I say this: We are going through this. Not around it. Yes. I want you to be Willow. But that’s not completely selfish. A man put his hands on you because he thought you were Hadley. The type of man I am, I expect the worst to happen at all times, and thus far, life has not let me down. When that asshole attacked you, it didn’t matter that we’d been having problems. It didn’t matter that I was supposed to be trying to perform the impossible and forget everything I’d ever felt for you. All that mattered was that you were safe. And I’d really like to keep you that way. It’s not about forgetting Hadley. It’s not about erasing her. It’s about solving a problem head on. And our current problem is I don’t think you’re ready to say goodbye to her.”
