Chapter 5
Five
The rest of the family hovered around Brian and Carly until Carol shooed them away. “Craig and Caren, please clean up the patio.” After the others had stepped back, Carol squatted next to Carly. “Everything’s all right, honey,” she said in a soothing voice. “Everyone’s safe.”
Brian brushed his hand over Carly’s curls and held her until the trembling subsided.
Carly was mortified that she had upset everyone and furious with herself for allowing a grill to resurrect memories she had worked so hard to push to the back of her mind.
She’d been having the fire dream less and less often and had begun to think she might be getting past her fear. Now she knew that wasn’t the case.
“Are you okay?” Brian asked, his face soft with concern and love.
With a small nod and a forced smile, she let him help her up. She hated that he was so worried about her. He’d lost his brother. She should be helping him through that, not giving him more cause for concern. Getting up, she brushed the grass off her shorts and took a seat at the picnic table.
Everyone else sat down and dug in.
Still feeling shaky, Carly pushed the food around on her plate while the others ate in subdued silence. She looked up to find her parents watching her with concern written all over faces that she could now see had aged since she had last looked closely. That, too, was her fault.
Brian reached for her hand under the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
Carly noticed Caren glaring at her from across the table.
“What’s wrong, Caren?” their mother asked.
“Nothing.”
“Clearly, something’s on your mind,” Carol said. “Why don’t you spit it out so we can get back to enjoying our day?”
“Is that what we’re doing? Enjoying our day?”
“Caren,” Steve warned.
“It’s okay for you to go on and on every day about what she’s doing to our family?” Caren shot back at her father. “I thought maybe we’d get one day off from Carly and her problems, but I guess that’s not going to happen.”
“The fire scared her,” Brian said in Carly’s defense.
“Everything scares her!” Caren pushed her plate aside and stood.
“I’m so sick and tired of having to tiptoe around her like she’s made of glass and might break.
No one in our family died! Why are we acting like someone did?
” To Carly, she added, “Brian lost his brother, but you don’t see him going around like the walking dead, wanting everyone to fall all over him. ”
“That’s enough, Caren,” Carol said in a tone that left no room for argument.
Carly got up and went inside. Before the screen door slammed closed behind her, she heard Craig say, “Way to go, Caren.”
“Shut up, Craig! You don’t live here. You don’t know what it’s been like.”
Carly heard Brian following her as she went up to her room.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he reached for her hand.
She propped her chin on her knees.
“Don’t worry about Caren. She was blowing off steam.”
From out in the street, the whir of bottle rockets filled the air, reminding Carly of another Fourth of July years earlier when Pete had shot off rockets at the lake.
“Remember Pete and the firecrackers?”
Carly’s eyes widened with surprise as she nodded. She had forgotten how often they’d had the same thoughts.
Brian got up, went over to her desk, and picked up a pad. He grabbed a pen and returned to the bed. He plopped the pad down in front of her and held out the pen. “Talk to me.”
She took the pen. Nibbling on the cap, she studied his handsome face.
Usually by the beginning of July his skin was tanned to golden brown, but not this year.
Leaning over the pad, she wrote the one thing she had missed saying to him the most: “Carly Holbrook loves Brian Westbury.” She drew a heart around the words like she had for years on every notebook she owned.
He smiled. “Now tell me something I don’t know.”
She wrote, “I’m not doing this on purpose. I want to talk, but I can’t.”
“I know that, too, honey. I never thought for a minute that you were doing it on purpose.”
“But you’ve been mad at me.”
He shook his head. “I’m mad at life lately.”
“Me, too.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “There’s a new lead in the accident investigation.”
Carly raised her eyebrows.
He told her about the man he had seen in the road a couple of months before the accident and how he had forgotten about it.
“My dad started looking into it and found that two other drivers reported seeing someone lurking on the side of Tucker Road. He hasn’t found anyone who saw him the night of the accident, but he’s still digging around.
I told my dad Sam never drove the way they said he must’ve been driving before the wreck. ”
“That’s bothered me, too,” Carly wrote. “I hope your dad can find a way to clear Sam’s name.”
“People in town are talking about us grasping at straws to clear Sam. They’re saying my dad is abusing his position.”
Carly shook her head.
“If there’s a chance, even the slightest chance, it wasn’t Sam’s fault, don’t we have to do all we can to get to the truth?”
“Of course you do,” she wrote. “Don’t worry about what anyone says.”
Brian held out his arms to her.
She put down the pen and reached for him.
“Before everything happened, if you’d asked me when I was happiest with you, I would’ve said it was when we were doing this.
” He pulled back to kiss her and smiled when he added, “I would’ve said we were at our very best under the willow tree.
” He ran his lips over the pink blush on her cheeks, his voice going soft and thick with emotion.
“But after not being able to talk to you during the worst two months of my life, I have a whole new perspective on what I love best about you. I can talk to you about anything and everything. I never realized how important that was to me until I didn’t have it anymore. ”
Her eyes shimmered with tears as she caressed his face.
He held her close to him for a long time. “Do you feel like taking a walk?”
She shook her head.
“We won’t go anywhere near Tucker Road.”
Ashamed to admit that the only place she felt safe anymore was at home, the idea of leaving the house made her feel sick and panicky.
Once she had made it as far as the gate, fully intending to walk around the block, but her heart had pounded so hard she’d thought she was having a heart attack.
She’d had trouble breathing and had vomited right there in the front yard.
She’d felt like she was losing her mind, and it had scared her so badly she hadn’t tried it again.
Brian and her family had been so focused on her not talking, they hadn’t figured out yet that she couldn’t bring herself to leave the house.
And after what had happened earlier, she wasn’t prepared to add to the pile of “problems” her sister had referred to.
Brian sensed her hesitation. “Never mind. We’ll do it another time.”
After her sisters took off to meet their friends, Brian coaxed Carly out of her room. They spent the rest of the day with her parents, Craig, and Allison. Brian’s parents stopped by to have a drink, and after sunset they left with the Holbrooks to watch the fireworks at the town common.
“You’re sure you don’t want to go see the fireworks?” Brian asked for the tenth time.
With a smile and the wave of her hand, she told him to go on ahead if he wanted to.
He pushed off the floor to get the porch swing moving again. “Not without you.”
Carly could tell she surprised him when she turned and pressed her lips to his.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with two months’ worth of pent up desire and frustration.
His tongue tangled with hers, reminding her of the passion they had shared from the first time his lips had tentatively touched hers at an eighth grade dance.
Nothing, not time nor maturity nor even tragedy, could dampen it.
She drew back from him and wondered if she looked as dazed as she felt.
“I’m sorry, honey. I don’t mean to push you.”
Carly stood and held out a hand to him.
Startled, Brian laced his fingers through hers.
She tugged him to his feet.
“Carly?”
She led him inside and started up the stairs.
“Where are we going?”
She smiled over her shoulder. In her bedroom, she turned to him and slid her hands under his T-shirt.
He shuddered. “Carly, honey, this is not a good idea.”
She raised an amused eyebrow and reached for the button on his shorts.
“What if your parents come back early?”
She crossed the room and flipped the lock on the door.
Brian groaned. “This is insane. We can’t.”
Returning to him, she backed him up to the bed and tugged the shirt over his head.
“Oh God,” he said. “Are we really going to make love in a bed?”
Carly smiled as she nodded. They’d had that luxury only one other time, when they’d gone to Michigan to tour the campus and find a place to live. With just one night to spend in a hotel, they’d made the most of it.
He brought her down on top of him and untied her halter. Cupping her breasts, he said, “I love you, Carly. I love you forever and ever.”
Carly wanted so badly to tell him she loved him just as much.
“I know, honey,” he whispered. “I can see it in your eyes.”
When she bent to capture his bottom lip between her teeth, he gasped.
He got rid of their shorts and held her tightly to him. “Are you still taking the pill?”
She nodded.
“Were you hoping we’d be together like this again?”
Her eyes shimmered as she nodded again.
Easing her legs apart, he slid into her. “No, don’t close your eyes, Carly. I need you to look at me.” He held her eyes for several long minutes before he dipped his head to graze his tongue over her nipple.
She came apart under him, silent even in the throes of passion.
He managed to hold on to his control long enough to urge her up and over again. This time he joined her.