Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel) (40 page)

“I hope not,” he said with a huff.

“Then tell me.”
So you can ask me.
Because those were the words that had started her heart racing again, yet she didn’t want to get her hopes up too high . . .

He rolled up to sit, reached for his boxers, and pulled them on, then handed her his shirt, and while she was slipping her arms into the sleeves, said, “I told you Cheryl said if I didn’t take Addy, she was going to give her away.”

“Is that not the truth?” she asked, pulling the sides of the shirt close, her heart pounding.

“It is, but it’s not all of it.” Lying back, he tucked his arm beneath his head as a pillow and stared at the ceiling while she stared at him. “Cheryl was really prone to changing her mind. About not keeping her promises. Her word was pretty much worthless.”

“You didn’t believe her.”

“I believed her in that moment. She would’ve signed away her rights to Addy and left the line for the father on the birth certificate blank.” He snorted, shook his head. “She only filled it in when I agreed to never come to her for help. Not babysitting. Not a kidney. Nothing.”

“Wow. I’m surprised she carried her to term.”

“She was a load of contradictions,” he said, closing his eyes, rubbing them, then opening them again. “She could tell me to take the kid and get the hell out of her life, but she didn’t have it in her to abort the pregnancy. Don’t ask me why. Turns out I didn’t really know her all that well.”

“Just well enough to . . .”

He looked over and for a moment, held her gaze. “I’d feel bad about it except that’s all she wanted from me. She got the rest of what she needed elsewhere.”

“How so?” she asked, bracing herself.

“The club ran a secondhand store. Furniture, clothes, pots and pans. It was actually Lainie’s deal. She had the biggest heart. But it was also a front for the main part of the club’s business. There was a big warehouse behind the store where folks dropped off all the stuff they didn’t want. Lainie oversaw everything. The legal part of it anyway. Duke used the warehouse to store the things that weren’t. It was easy to lose things in all that space. Hard for anyone to prove it was anything but what it appeared to be.”

“The things that weren’t legal?”

“Drugs, guns. It’s amazing how much money’s to be made off what the law says is illegal. And off medicines that aren’t.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Duke sold the guns, the coke, the crystal, the H. And he ran an underground clinic out of the warehouse office. Painkillers were the big moneymaker, but he sold anything there was a demand for. Antibiotics. Cancer drugs. Shit for erectile dysfunction. Birth control. People who can’t afford the meds, or the insurance, lots of time can’t afford to travel to get what they need.”

“Mexico?”

“Anywhere and everywhere. China. Turkey. There’s always a supply when there’s a demand. Most of the meds were manufactured overseas and not FDA approved. Duke made a mint. Cheryl made a mint, too. Duke just didn’t know it.”

Uh-oh. “That doesn’t sound good.”

He rolled to his side and propped up on one elbow. “She helped him keep his books. But she was skimming, selling on the side. And I had proof,” he said, toying with the hem of his shirt where it covered her thigh. “I told her if she ever came after Addy for anything, I’d use it.”

“Good for you.”

“She didn’t believe me. She wasn’t the least bit afraid. I half expected her to laugh, or tear up the birth certificate.”

“What did you do?” Brooklyn asked, dropping her gaze to his hand, his fingers, shivering each time he brushed against her skin.

“The day I left California with Addy, I gave Duke the proof I had, even knowing what he might need to do to protect his business.”

She suddenly felt very, very cold. “Callum—”

But he cut her off. “I’ve never told this to another soul.”

“Do you know what he did?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer.

“No clue.”

Leaving him as haunted by his past as she’d been by hers. “So the motorcycle you keep hearing . . .”

“I’ll live with the sound the rest of my life, because a part of me will always wonder. But even more so, I can’t stop thinking that I’m going to mess something up and lose my girl,” he said, his voice breaking, his eyes growing damp. “Or that what I did then is going to catch up with me and backfire.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh, I did a whole lot of things wrong,” he said with a humorless laugh.

“I’m talking about telling Duke what Cheryl was doing.”

“That makes me a rat, Brooklyn.”

“It’s not what you did. It’s why you did it.” She reached for his hand and squeezed his fingers with hers. “Addy had her whole future ahead. You did what you had to do.”

He looked at her for a long moment, searching her gaze for more than the words she’d spoken, and then he said, “You had your whole future ahead of you, too. You have it now. Do you want to make things right for a man who’ll never know, or do you want to make things right for yourself?”

She looked at him, felt his words like a vine at her ankles, twisting around and around and tightening, tugging, keeping her from running away. Keeping her here, facing her past, his past, both of their futures, but most important, facing him. It was the only place she wanted to be, and yet she could not go back on her word to Artie, even while loving Callum.

She leaned toward him, sliding the fingers of her free hand into his hair and holding him still while she kissed him. She needed him to know that her leaving was inevitable, and had nothing to do with him, but everything to do with who she wanted to be for herself.

If she couldn’t be her best for herself, how could she ever be her best for him? How could she be the shoulder he needed, the touchstone he relied on, the sounding board? How could she be his friend, his lover? How could she be anything without knowing who she was alone?

But in this moment, alone was the last thing she wanted to be, and she pushed him onto his back, braced the heels of her hands on his shoulders, and climbed over him, straddling him, looking down at the tendons and veins in his neck pop as he struggled to hold himself in check.

He moved his hands to her waist, just above her hips, gripping her there tightly enough to leave marks. She loved the idea of wearing the tattoo of this night, of being able to see for days to come the imprints of his thumbs on her skin, his fingers, even if the indentations blued into bruises in the end.

Leaning to the side, she reached down to the floor for a second condom packet, opening it and rolling the sheath down his erection while he watched. It was a strangely intimate act, her fingers working along his length to cover him and protect them both, though the idea of having a child with him . . .

She loved the thought of their creating a life from such a beautiful act—or she would were they committed and not just beginning to explore their feelings. And things for both of them would have to be so different than they were now; his focus was on his business, she was leaving, and her life was upside down because of it.

But in another time, another place . . . if the two of them were together, a couple, sharing more than a bed, sharing their lives in a way she knew so well was possible, a way she didn’t believe Callum had ever experienced . . . she wanted him to appreciate how amazing such a partnership was.

“I’m still here, you know,” he said, and she lifted her gaze to his, then lifted one wrist to backhand her tears from her eyes.

“I know,” she said, but her voice broke, and she hated the sound because it smacked of weakness, and she was anything but. Not with him. Not when she’d learned so much about herself because of him.

“Brooklyn, baby. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” she said, crying, lifting herself up onto her knees, positioning herself over him, then holding herself still. “I’m not.”

Yet her tears fell as she moved up and down, with him, against him, their two bodies one as they were meant to be. And even though she was leaving, she knew she’d carry this night with her forever, and one day she would ink it onto her skin.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Because like Poe and Annabel Lee, they had.

Brooklyn paid her cabdriver and tugged up the handle on her rolling carry-on. She’d packed as little as possible. Clothes she could easily wash in a sink and hang to dry: over a shower rod, a window balcony, a chair. Khaki and olive hiking pants that zipped into shorts at the knees. Soft T-shirts that doubled as tops for her long cotton skirts. A single pair of yoga pants that would serve as pajamas when paired with one of the tees.

It was the same with her shoes. She’d packed two pairs of fold-up ballet flats, one black, one taupe, and was wearing lightweight, slip-on walking shoes. All of her clothes had pockets that zipped closed so she wouldn’t need to carry a purse. Cash, credit card, passport, cell phone. They were all easily tucked away. Her sunglasses hung from her neck on a lanyard.

She would buy what she needed once she was settled in Vernazza, or in Corniglia, or Riomaggiore; she could easily walk between the five Cinque Terre villages, so she could live anywhere. She’d stay a day or two with Bianca, while the other woman showed her where she’d be needed, and then decide where to live.

The idea of renting rooms in one of the pastel-colored houses, the windows looking out over the sea, the breeze off the Mediterranean cooling her as she slept, the sun sparkling off the blue-green water and greeting her each morning as she indulged in a deep, dark espresso . . . she’d call it
bliss
, but that word would forever belong to Callum in her mind.

She’d traveled often enough with Artie that she was a pro. And though she hadn’t traveled since, and this was the first time she was traveling alone, little about the process was unknown. None of which explained why she had yet to take her place in the security line. She wasn’t in danger of missing her flight; she’d arrived plenty early to make sure that didn’t happen.

The danger keeping her from committing to the next step of this journey was more personal. She feared she was making a mistake, running from her future instead of toward it. She’d planned this trip for so long. She’d been so very certain this was what she needed to do: for Artie, for his family, whom she loved as if they were her own. For herself.

But she wasn’t doing it for Artie at all. Artie was gone. He’d told her not to stop living her life because he’d lost his. And yet here she was, doing what she thought would make him happy. What he would want. Yes, she was doing something meaningful, something that mattered. She was giving of herself in a way that would leave her fulfilled. But it wasn’t what she wanted. Not any longer. And that was the bottom line.

The airport wasn’t particularly busy, and she found a seat in one of the small eateries after ordering a coffee she didn’t need. The caffeine would only make her more jittery, when she was already dealing with a terrible case of nerves. Not about the trip; flying had never bothered her, and she had an entire library of books downloaded to her fully charged Kindle Voyage. She could read for the whole of the trip, lose herself in another world instead of thinking about the one she was leaving: the one where Callum Bennett Drake lived.

The one where his daughter lived. The one where he made the most exquisite chocolates, and rode a bike too loud for words, and made love to her as if she were the only woman in the world whose bed he ever wanted to share. How in the world could she walk away, when he was now her life, just as Artie had been during their time together?

She dug out her phone, her heart racing, and took a deep breath as she scrolled through her contact list and dialed. She hated doing this, but she had no choice. Callum was her everything, and the idea of leaving him, when she didn’t have to go to Italy to do what Artie had asked of her, was more than she could bear.

“Pronto?”

“Bianca? It’s Brooklyn. Did I wake you?”

“No, no, I’m awake. Are you on your way?”

“I’m at the airport, yes,” she said, closing her eyes as she blurted out, “But I may not be coming.”

“Is it the plane? Will you be delayed?”

“It’s not the plane, no.” She took a deep breath and shuddered. “It’s . . . a man.”

The silence on the other end went on longer than the normal delay of a transatlantic call, and guilt assailed her. Why couldn’t she have made this decision before now? “Bianca—”

“Brooklyn, I am so happy for you! I have waited what seems like an eternity for you to find again the absolute perfection you had with Arturo. He was taken from us too soon. You lost years you should have had to share with him. Do not think twice about coming here until you can bring this new man with you for me to meet.”

“You’re not angry?”

“How can I be angry about my dearest cousin falling in love?”

“I will come. And I will bring the Bible, of course,” she said, feeling giddy. “And I will send the vase, and the mortar and pestle, and everything else I’ve found.”

“And Arturo’s ashes?”

“He told me to scatter them in a place he loved. He loved so many. I chose the vineyard and the olive groves, but there’s a river near our home that he spent hours and hours rafting on.”

“That sounds absolutely perfect. I can imagine him floating there forever, enjoying the sun and the wind, though I’m making all of this up, having never visited your Texas.”

“You must come. Seriously. You must.”

“I will come for your wedding. I promise.”

“You will be my maid of honor?” she asked, getting so far ahead of herself and jumping without thinking, but knowing having Bianca at her side when she married Callum—because she would marry Callum, she knew this with more certainty than anything in her life—would make the day perfect.

“I absolutely will. But what is this most fortunate man’s name?”

“His name is Callum,” she said. “Callum Bennett Drake. And I love him.”