Page 116 of When We Had Forever
Yet as I roll onto my side, trying to tether myself to the sound of Grayson’s breathing, I become acutely conscious of every wound gouged into me. Of every bloodied furrow left by Michael’s lies. The enormity of his deceit tears through me, as deafening as a stampede and even more destructive.
I can hardly comprehend what I’ve lost. Or whether I can ever heal.
Beside me, Grayson murmurs in his sleep. Not so much with words as with drowsy male sounds, but it’s still enough to send the blood in my veins veering off course. I imagine him waking and turning those oceanic eyes on me, the sheer depth ofwantingthey’ll hold. I imagine him asking me what happens next.
The answer he wants exists somewhere, buried deep—some naive sliver of me that wants to lie here forever, in this unfamiliar bed that somehow feels like home. But I can’t actually reach it. Too much stands in the way, a thorny bramble of lies and betrayals that tear at my flesh.
The hotel room’s shadows thicken, trying to pin me to the mattress, so I ease from bed and gather my clothes. My body aches in all the ways a woman’s does after she’s been skillfully taken apart and put back together again, but each movement only proves how much more the rest of me hurts.
My heart. My soul.
I slip from the room. In the parking lot, I cringe at the Porsche’s full-throated roar and back out as quickly as possible. On the way to the cabin, I fixate on the glittering curtain overhead. The dash clock reads 4:30—an hour until sunrise.
Out in the darkness, bears are probably rooting through the underbrush, but the forest calls to me, promising solace. Comfort. One last chance to retreat, to make sense of this.
Because really, thisismy last chance. My four days here are up.
Time to go home.
The thought makes my skin prickle, and when I reach the cabin, I don’t stop to consider. I just layer a jacket over yesterday’s clothes and snatch the lantern from the living room without acknowledging the Monopoly money still papering the floor.
Outside, in the yard, the woods stretch like a beckoning tunnel. Starlight whirls above the treetops, but I aim for the shadows, letting the indigo trees fold me into their embrace.
The glow of my lantern bathes the massive trunks. The scene looks like Grayson’s photograph in reverse—light stretches up and up, never quite reaching the high dome of the forest. I steal through on quiet feet, not sure why I feel compelled to honor the silence, but doing it anyway. Nothing moves. Pine needles crunch underfoot, sending bursts of green into my nostrils.
In a clearing, I set down my lantern and unfurl on my back in the chilled moss, my gaze seeking the sky. Stars wink down through the sighing branches like benevolent, knowing eyes.
We see you, they seem to say.You are not alone.
I lie there, feeling like a stranger inside my own body. Nothing was what I thought. My life, my marriage... Fourteen years of memories attempt to rearrange themselves. Each snapshot moment looks different now, its angles subtly unfamiliar, like a long-lost friend greeted after a long absence, whose face has now changed.
Once upon a time, a thousand years ago, Michael’s hand curled around mine, stopped me from getting out of a car. Except it wasn’t Michael at all. That wasGrayson.Grayson whose necklace glinted against his skin. It was his smell I wanted to drown in. His secrets, told without hesitation.Hewas the one who rescued me from Patrick’s house.
Michael only came after. Now I think of him at our condo in Seattle, bloodied and bruised, and his selfish agreement when I asked to stay. I consider the lies he hid behind a wall of silence. The secrets, the scars he left behind.
A despairing laugh bubbles up. God, how many years did I spend wishing he wouldn’t shut down at the first sign of emotion? That he’d invite me to feel instead of sending me off on a run?
Now someone’s asking me to do exactly that, and I can’t manage it. Because in the end, they both lied. They both broke my heart. And some things, once shattered, can never be stitched back together.
Apparently, Michael knew that even better than I do, because once upon a time, when the woman he loved died because of him, he built his walls and stayed behind them. He surrounded himself with what had proved safest—order. Routine. And then I came along and offered to help police the boundaries of the box he’d corralled himself into.
Of course he said yes.
A branch snaps. I jerk my head up. For a moment, silence greets me, then something moves in the underbrush. Something big.
I bound upright and raise the lantern. It can’t be the same damn bear, can it?
Except Grayson emerges from the twilit vault of the forest, his hair a mess. “Mina? What the hell are you doing out here?”
I lower the lantern, the rush of my pulse subsiding, although I might actually have preferred the bear. “Me? What’reyoudoing? Did you come out here after me?”
“You were gone,” he says, his tone defensive, his expression haunted. “And I...”
I wait, but he doesn’t continue, just swallows and glances to the side, as if he can’t bear to meet my eyes, though he never once looked away last night.
“You what?” I prompt.
He swallows. “I had a dream. That you...disappeared. Forever. And then I woke up, and you weren’t there, and...” He contemplates the distance. “I just needed to see. Needed to make sure you were okay.”
