Wish You Were Here (Bluebird Basin #3)

THEN

He reminded her of the ocean. It was his hair, she thought, running her fingers through his soft, golden waves. It was his smile, so bright, like sunlight sparkling over the water. It was his body, the liquid way he moved, the warmth of him surrounding her. It was his eyes, so blue she could swim through them, lie on her back and float around them, dive headfirst and sink to the bottom of them. She loved his eyes. Loved the way he looked at her, like she was Christmas morning. Like she was the present he’d wished for all year.

“Davis,” he whispered, his breath a gentle caress, a summer breeze against her neck even though it was a strange, frozen spring night. It was too cold to roll the windows down. So they steamed them up instead with their breaths, with the heat kindled between their bodies, making the air around them glow. It protected them, the steam. Hiding them in the back seat of her car. Close, secret, tangled.

His hands branded her thighs, his need stoking a fire inside her as she rocked against him. Finally. Finally .

“Kev.” His name slipped between her lips, a prayer, a wish offered up to the stars.

Kev. Touching me. Holding me. Kissing me. Finally.

His palms slid to her hips, and flames raced along her spine, licked at her throat, seared a circular path around her heart. A lasso cinching. He can have it . “You can have it.”

“Have what?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Everything . Her arms wrapping around his shoulders. Her chest rising and falling, pressed against his. Her months of wanting, needing, loving. He could have it all. Always. Forever. Finally .

“Davis, baby.”

I love it when you call me baby.

His lips were soft on her jaw, his fingers harder, digging in, gripping . “Davis.”

Yes. Say it again. Say my name like it’s a secret. Our secret.

She reached for him, her fingers gliding under his shirt, down the firm plane of his abs, grasping the button of his jeans.

“Davis.” He caught her wrists, stilling her, holding her in place.

Anything you want. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you. I love you. I love you. God, I am so in love with ? —

“Davis, we can’t.”

“W-what?” she stuttered, forcing her heavy eyelids open.

“We have to stop.”

“We do?” No. Please. Not again. “Why?”

“Because you shouldn’t.” His head turned toward the window. “I mean, we shouldn’t.”

She sensed more than felt him pulling away. The way he always did. Any time they got close like this. Any time she let go of the last lingering thought in her head and sank so deeply into him she couldn’t see the surface. And she always let him. Always.

But not this time.

“I don’t want to stop,” she said, trying to hold him close even though he was rigid in her arms—stiff, gone. “Please, Kev. I need you.”

“I’m sorry.” He still wouldn’t look at her, still stared at the window he couldn’t see through. Why won’t you look at me? “I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”

Rushed, frantic, clutching at him like he was sand already spilling through her fingers, she kissed his shoulder, his neck, his throat, jaw. “Please.”

“I’m sorry.” So much finality in the words. So much distance. “The rules.”

Control spilled through her fingers too. Humiliation for putting up even this small fight churned in her stomach. Shame for wanting him so badly, wanting the one thing he couldn’t give her, made the cold night air finally reach her, seep into her bones, harden everything inside her.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to shut down. She wanted to be more understanding, more patient, less selfish. But she wanted him too much.

“Okay,” she said.

Only that wasn’t what you said, was it?

With an understanding smile, she slid off his lap and sat beside him, told him it was fine. Everything was fine.

Only that wasn’t what you did.

Her hurt, angry voice still echoed through the trees. The car door slamming still cracked between her ears like thunder. Like the thunder that had rumbled under heavy, bruised clouds. Even though the sky didn’t surrender a single drop of rain that day. It held it all in while she’d held her breath, held all the soft parts of herself together with her arms wrapped tightly around her middle.

The stairs along the side of the house stretched out like rotten teeth. Loose railings, chipped paint, wood so weathered it frayed at the edges. She took each step slowly, silently. The seventh stair creaked, bowing beneath her foot.

Would it break? Would she fall? Plummet through the air until she met the hard, bare ground that looked like it may have been lush and green years ago? Would she land near the rusted swing set that had been shiny and new once upon a time before this place started to die? Before it took everything she loved with it?

They’d left the door at the top of the stairs cracked, like they knew she’d followed them. Even though she knew they hadn’t. They never would have let her come. She wasn’t supposed to be here. It was wrong of her to be here. But it was wrong of him to be here too.

Everything is wrong.

The room was dark, silent, cold. No heat. No steam. Nothing glowed. Naked walls, cigarette smoke thick in the air, something else. Vinegar. Burning her eyes, her nose. A mattress on the floor.

Kev.

Adrenaline blurred her vision, making his pale skin flicker. Here and then gone, here and then gone. His hand resting limply on his bare chest sparked like a severed power line with every racing beat of her heart.

Kev. Sprawled across the mattress. In another woman’s arms. Turned away. Eyes closed. Sleeping. Just sleeping. He’s only sleeping.

“You’re okay,” she tried to tell him through vocal cords that wouldn’t work. Only a useless rasp, a fist closing around her throat. “Don’t go. Stay with me. Please stay with me.” No sound. No movement. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.

That broken-down house with its bare walls and creaking steps. The acrid smell she’d never get out of her hair or her clothes. Madigan on his knees beside the mattress, his blood-shot eyes flashing from panic-stricken to outright terrified when he noticed her. When he held out his hand, shouting at her to stay back while Cole wrapped her in his arms, spinning her, making her look away.

She didn’t struggle then. She didn’t struggle now as the room faded to ash, every sight and sound and smell floating to the ground like curled leaves from a burning tree.

Except for Kev. Kev stayed.

He sat up. Turned his head. Finally looked at her through hollow, empty eyes. And told her what she already knew. He told her the truth.

“This,” he said, “is all your fault.”

Her world heaved, a scream clawing its way up her throat before her hands covered her mouth and shoved it back down. Her stomach roiled as she climbed out of bed, stumbled to the toilet, fell to her knees.

That dream. Every night for the last two weeks the nightmare had haunted her. Jolting her awake to scream silently into the darkness. Making her race to her bathroom, making her sick until she couldn’t breathe, until her ribs ached, until there was nothing left. Every night.

This is all your fault.

Cool porcelain against her cheek had become her only real comfort. And she knew this wasn’t healthy. The way she couldn’t eat wasn’t healthy. The way her clothes hung from her shoulders and her hips wasn’t healthy. Fighting to stay awake every night, terrified of the moment sleep would win, wasn’t healthy. Staggering through her days numb, scared, only half alive, wasn’t healthy. She was not healthy. She was sinking, falling, vanishing. Nothing. Nothing but dreams and memories and questions with no answers.

“I can’t,” she told her cold, empty bathroom, her voice a broken rasp. But at least it was her voice. At least she could hear it. So many nights since he’d left, since he’d started fading away, she couldn’t. Couldn’t find her voice. Tonight was different. Tonight she was too tired, too sick, too empty. Or maybe the pain was finally too loud. “I can’t.”

Pushing herself up to her feet, she staggered into her room, tore a piece of paper from the pad on her desk and uncapped a pen.

I love you, she wrote, her hand trembling, the letters barely legible . But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be this nothing anymore. Not for you. Not for anyone.

As soon as she saw the words on the page, she knew. The fight was over. She’d tried. She’d lost.

So she did what she couldn’t do that frozen night in her car. What she couldn’t do all those weeks she’d stayed by Kev’s side, watching him pull away, absorbing his silence, becoming someone she didn’t recognize. Convincing herself it wasn’t her fault, even though she knew it was. She did what she couldn’t even do when she found him in that house, on that mattress with that woman clinging to him. What she hadn’t been able to do any night since. Every night he didn’t write her or send a message for her or maybe even think about her. Every night he slept while she couldn’t.

She crumpled the piece of paper in her fist, closed her eyes on the hot sting of fresh tears. And while her heart shattered into so many unrecognizable pieces she knew they’d never fit back together again, leaving her with sharp, jagged scars for the rest of her life, she whispered the one thing she knew was true into the darkness. The one wound that would never heal. “You never loved me anyway.”

And then she let him go.