Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ELIZABETH
My Silver-Eyed Prince
I pull into the driveway of my childhood home on Fallen Brook Drive and shut the engine off, needing a moment before I get out.
Through the front windshield, I gaze up at the house that was both my sanctuary and my nightmare. A house that has seen life and love, as well as death and horror.
The family that had been leasing it moved out a couple weeks ago, and it waits patiently for a new family to fill its walls with laughter.
I should sell it, but I don’t have the heart to do it.
It’s the only thing I have left of Mom and Dad, and I can’t bear to part with it.
Peter took so much from me, but he could never take the love that existed in this house.
My attention is naturally drawn to the old oak tree that sits between my house and the Jamesons’.
Mitch would turn on the tree lights at Christmas when I brought the kids over.
The wood swing Jayson made for me rotted after fifteen years of being exposed to the elements.
The wood became brittle and splintered, and one of the hemp ropes disintegrated.
Instead of tossing it out with the trash, I put it in a storage box that lives in the attic with a lot of other keepsakes I refuse to part with.
Pushing open the driver’s side door, I get out and walk over, craning my neck to look up the oak’s towering height.
It amazes me every single time I see it.
Almost seventy feet high, its large lobate leaves completely block out the sun and provide a sanctuary of cool shade to escape the scorching summer sun.
Mitch keeps the branches trimmed so they don’t touch the sides of either house or damage the Hardie plank siding.
Jayson, Julien, and I were insane to climb this thing all the time like we did, but we mainly kept to the branches that spanned between our bedroom windows and didn’t venture much higher than three stories up.
I remember when Ryder scaled it in the middle of the night to check on me.
Something strikes my window. Then again.
Parting the curtains, my eyes widen with shock when I see Ryder perched on the branch just outside.
Hurriedly fumbling with the latch, I slide the window open. “Are you out of your mind?”
His gaze slips downward, just for a second, and his face blanches an eerie white. “Can you wait to yell at me until I get inside?”
“Aren’t you afraid of heights?”
“Yep,” he croaks.
Oh, dear god. I lean out the window, arm outstretched. “Grab my hand and move a little closer.”
He breathes a sigh of relief when his feet hit my bedroom floor, and he folds like an accordion, sliding down the wall until he lands on his butt.
Worried, I crouch in front of him and vigorously rub his arms. “You okay?”
“I don’t have hypothermia.”
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“You do it all the time.”
“I also don’t have acrophobia.”
It was the night after one of Fallon’s parties when I found Jayson with Jacinda. I later learned what really happened, but for several agonizing hours, I thought the worst and felt like my entire world was falling apart because the boy I loved had betrayed my heart.
Speaking of hearts, I find the one Jayson carved into the trunk and lightly run my fingers over the grooves and depressions that spell out J+E .
You always remember your first love, but mine was exceptional.
Regardless of what happened between us, Jayson really did sweep me off my feet.
He had a romantic streak a mile long and was never shy about showing me his softer side.
I never doubted for a second the love we shared.
A love I still harbor, because no matter what, the boy I first met in the woods will always have a permanent home in my heart.
“Thinking about climbing it?”
I look over toward the porch of the Jameson house. Jayson is leaning against the side railing, his forearms crossed over the top, and those gorgeous pewter eyes smiling at me.
“Actually, yes.”
He looks different today. The gaunt shadows that shrouded his face last night are gone. He looks more like my old Jayson again, just older and thinner.
I cross the ten feet it takes to get to him, the distance feeling like a very slow mile as I approach. Wrapping my hand around one of the balusters, I peer up at him. “Hey, you.” I don’t know why I’m so nervous.
“Hey, Princess,” he softly replies.
My fingers flex around the wood. “So…” I puff out a breath, not knowing where to begin.
“Thank you for meeting me.”
I reach up to touch the corner of his mouth. “I’m really sorry that I slapped you…and for what Marcus did.”
He cradles my cupped hand in his. It doesn’t feel the same. More calloused and rougher.
“You don’t need to apologize for anything, Liz.”
“Where have you been?” I know I asked him that last night, but he never really gave me an answer.
I’m also more curious about why he’s here, in Fallen Brook, after all this time.
I wished so many times that he would come home, but he never did.
Just like Fallon. They may think they are worlds apart, but they are more similar than they realize.
Jayson’s grin disappears. “That’s part of the reason why I wanted to talk to you in person. I owe you the truth.” He turns his head and looks over his shoulder. “But I think Mom is going to have a conniption if you don’t come in and say hi first.”
I peek around him, and sure enough, Freda is quietly standing in the open doorway, a smile gracing her face while she nervously wrings her hands.
Now in her mid-seventies, her hair is as silver as her eyes, but she’s just as beautiful as the day I met her right here on this porch.
I remember thinking she looked like a queen from one of the children’s fairytale stories Mom would read to Hailey and me at bedtime.
I hurriedly walk up the porch steps and engulf her in a gentle hug. “Hey, Mama J.”
It’s something I started calling her a long time ago.
Growing up, she and Ryder’s mom, Faith, were always like second mothers to me, even more so after I lost Mom and Dad.
And though Marcus, Christopher, and Charlotte are not her blood-related grandchildren like Elizabeth Ann, she and Mitch love them like they are.
She gives me a watery smile that deepens the crow’s feet crinkling her eyes. “My boy came home.”
The punch of emotion I feel when she says that steals my breath. I don’t know what I would do if my children left and never came back. She and Mitch would travel to California to see Jayson as often as they could, but it’s not the same as home or the hometown you grew up in.
I kiss her wrinkled cheek. “Yes, he did. Where’s Mitch? Is he here?”
Mitch loves to play golf. He says it keeps him young.
“Inside making coffee. Will you join us?”
I’m about to accept when Jayson interjects, “We’ll be there in a minute. I need to talk to Liz—in private, if that’s okay.”
She wrings her hands again, her eyes worried. “Of course.”
Going to her, he stills her fidgeting, then leans in and kisses her temple. “We’ll be right back. I promise.”
She gives a few shaky nods.
“Come on,” Jayson says, offering me his bent elbow. I immediately slip my arm through his. After descending the steps and turning the corner of the house, he slows our walk to a meandering stroll. “It’s surreal being home again.”
“How so?”
“Same but different.” He gazes down at me. “Jules came by the hotel this morning. We talked. It was a hard talk. But a good one.”
I hadn’t wanted to pry, but I was going to eventually ask. “I’m glad.”
“Had basically the same talk with Mom and Dad a few hours ago. You’re next, I guess,” he adds, trying to infuse a little humor into what sounds like a really bad day of back-to-back confrontations. He must be emotionally exhausted.
A few butterflies flutter from flower to flower in Freda’s garden as we make our way across the backyard to the forest beyond. Through the thick bramble, I spot the remains of my old fort. The plyboards have been eaten by termites and are pockmarked with chew holes.
“Jayson—” I say just as he says, “Liz, I?—”
He lifts his chin. “You go first.”
“You can go first,” I insist, suddenly forgetting what I was about to ask.
Gesturing for me to sit on one of the stumps Dad had cut for me and Hailey to use as stools, he picks another one off the ground and sets it upright, then takes a seat.
He looks around, breathes in. “There’s so much I want to tell you, I don’t even know where to begin.”
I bite my bottom lip and chuckle. “Same.”
He digs the toe of his sneaker into the detritus-littered dirt, raises his eyes to mine, then lowers them to my collar. “You still wear it?” he says with a tinge of awe when he notices the quartz heart hanging from the necklace with the locket.
“The locket never leaves my neck. And I thought the heart was appropriate for today.”
He smooths his middle finger over the polished pink stone. “You’re not making this easy,” he says.
“Am I supposed to?”
His grin flashes wild and beautiful. “Christ, I’ve missed you.”
Not holding back the truth, I tell him, “I’ve missed you, too.”
He reaches around his neck and slips off a gold chain. Guiding my hand toward him, he drops the necklace into my open palm. “That’s where I’ve been the last three years, and why I haven’t come to Seattle for Elizabeth Ann’s birthday.”
When I see the round, coin-shaped charm, I know exactly what it is. A sobriety chip. Tears sting my eyes as I trace the edge of it with my thumb, and pain lances my heart with a thousand knife wounds when I realize its significance.
“ Oh, Jayson ,” I whisper. I clutch the medallion tighter, like I can absorb some of his pain and carry it for him.