His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia (12 page)

“No,” she answered with a kind smile. “Because you’re only here for two more weeks.”

“That’s long enough to have some fun,” he answered, all eyebrows and suggestive tone.

“Okay, I’ll see you next week, Joe,” she said, before sending him on his way.

“Why’d you turn that guy down? He seemed like your type,” a voice said a few seconds after the soldier left.

She looked up and raised an eyebrow at Sawyer’s ghost, who was now posted up against the wall he’d come through. “My type? You mean because he’s black?”

Sawyer smirked. “I mean because he’s corporeal.”

She snorted, going back to her notes. “My standards are a little higher than simply walking around in non-spirit form.”

Sawyer came over to the royal blue physical therapy table she was using as a resting place for her clipboard while she scrawled her notes.

“So you didn’t think he was as good-looking as he thought he was?” he asked, fiddling with one of the hand weights Joe had left behind.

“Oh, he was plenty good-looking,” she answered. “But again, my standards are a little higher than ‘good-looking.’”

“Care to tell me what your standards are then?” he asked. “And why that guy didn’t meet them?”

“Wow,” she said with a laugh. “You must be really bored if you want to hear about that!”

“Why don’t you just humor me, Willa?” he answered, his tone still casual but with an edge in it now. Like he was working hard to keep it light.

“Are you serious? Okay, fine…” she said with a forced chuckle. “My mom could have been a librarian for real, but she never finished her college degree because she got caught up having too much ‘fun,’ as Joe would call it, with the wrong boy. So I’m not interested in just ‘having fun.’ If I’m going to take time off from my studies and my work here to go on a date, it’s got to be for something real with someone who’s interested in something more than having some fun.”

“So you’re against fun if it’s not going somewhere real. Check. I’ll have to remember that when I wake up.”

She gave him a sharp look. Not just because of what he was insinuating, but because he apparently hadn’t figured out what would happen if and when his spirit rejoined with his body. She’d figured being in spirit form was upsetting enough for the poor guy. But should she tell him now? she wondered. About the amputation? About how he wouldn’t be able to re—

But then she saw the smirk on his lips, and realized his words for what they were. Sawyer teasing her. Again.

She turned back to her notes, her chest tight. “I know you think it’s funny to insinuate that you want to go out with me when you wake up from your coma. But trust me, it isn’t. It just reminds me of what an asshole you were in high school, and makes me feel stupid for giving you another chance.”

“Who said I was joking?” he asked beside her.

“Seriously, Sawyer, I don’t have time for this.” She picked up her clipboard and started heading for the door. Toward the hallway, someplace with people. Where she’d be safe from having to talk with him.

“Seriously, Willa,” he answered behind her. “Who said I was joking?”

Willa stopped dead in her tracks when he suddenly blinked into view in front of her. A lifetime of dealing with ghosts, and she still hadn’t learned how to not be surprised when they blinked in and out like that.

“I don’t have time for this, Sawyer,” she told him. “I’ve still got a thousand notes to type up. Plus I’m way behind on my first fellowship report.”

He just tilted his head, looking her up and down as he said, “So you think I’m joking, but you don’t have time to listen to me explain that I’m not.”

No, not even remotely
, she thought, trying to ignore the way her heart sped up at even the faintest possibility of his words being true.

“Sawyer…” she started to say with a shake of her head.

“I want to kiss you, Willa. How about that?” he said, getting in her face. “I want to kiss you so bad, I’m surprised I haven’t already gone back into my body for the wanting of it.”

She took a step back. She couldn’t bear that he was doing this to her. Teasing her again. It made her hate him, made her voice hard as she asked, “So you’re ready to talk about that now?”

His brow knitted. “Talk about what?”

“The reason you haven’t made a decision about wanting to go back into your body. I mean you seem more serious about claiming you want to kiss me than you do about actually living the rest of your life. Why is that?”

It was a sharp subject change to be sure and Sawyer gave her an ugly look. As if to say she wasn’t playing fair by asking him some practical questions, as opposed to swooning at his feet, because Sawyer Grant—the prince of Greenlee County—was pretending he could actually have feelings for Willa Harper, the daughter of The Crazy Librarian.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, cutting his eyes away from her.

“Okay, so let me get this straight….” She folded her arms over her clipboard. “You expect me to believe you about wanting to kiss me, but then you go’on ahead and lie straight to my face?”

This time it was her turn to stare him down. And she could tell he didn’t like being on the receiving end of such scrutiny. He kept his face turned away from her, his fists bunched at his sides, and something seemed to tick violently inside his jaw.

But then he turned back to her, his swamp mud eyes glittering with anger. “You know how I know I really want to kiss you? Because when you first told me about undecided spirits, you know what I thought? Good, I’ll just let go. Live another life as somebody else, instead of the one my dad has planned out for me. Naval Academy at eighteen. One deployment—just enough to seem credible. Then law school. Then I run for his old representative seat. Which I’ll carry for exactly four terms, just like he did. Then I’ll run for senate. But only for two terms, because eventually, I’ll need to run for President of the whole damn United States.

Somewhere along the way, I’ll get married—probably to someone he introduced me to: an influential businessman’s daughter, with money even older than my dead mom’s. Someone like that. That’s what’s waiting for me when I come out of this coma. And I know it. I should be long gone by now. Rolling the dice, so I can actually have my own life, maybe this time with a mother who doesn’t drink herself to death, leaving me with someone everybody, including his own two sons, call The Admiral.”

Sawyer took a step closer, getting right up in her face as he said, “But something’s been keeping me here. And trust me, it ain’t a deep desire to live. It’s you, Willa,” he snarled. “I want to kiss you. So bad, I’d be willing to come back to my shitty, completely planned out life just to do it once.”

Willa didn’t realize her heart had stopped beating inside her chest, until it came back on line with a painful thump. Only then did she get that she’d gone a short time without getting the proper amount of oxygen to her brain.

Lack of oxygen to the brain. Later that would be the only excuse she could ever come up with to explain what she said next. What she did next.

“Sawyer…” she said on that released breath. “The people walking through you part, you should know that’s not necessarily because you’re a spirit. They’re only able to walk through you because they can’t see you. Does that make any sense?”

Another knit of his brow. “Kind of.”

She went on, trying to think of a better way to explain it. “I don’t know how much physics you learned at the Naval Academy, but there are all kinds of theories and experiments around the relationship between the observer and what he or she is observing. Kind of like, ‘if a tree falls in the forest,’ but more like ‘can and does something exist before you observe it with your eyes.’”

From the confused look on his face, she could tell she wasn’t making much sense. “Anyway,” she rushed on. “In your case—in the case of all ghosts—folks walk through you because they can’t see you. Therefore you don’t exist in their observed universes.”

But this explanation only made Sawyer look even more confused, and now a bit angry.

“I just told you I want to kiss you. So bad, I’m starting to seriously want to come out of this coma, and your answer to that is a physics lesson?”

“No, please don’t call what I just said physics. Because it totally isn’t. I’m simply trying to explain that you exist in my universe. I can see you.”

He inclined his head like maybe now he was wondering how far Willa’s apple had fallen from her mother’s crazy tree.

“I can see you,” she repeated, her voice husky with emotion. “And that means something. That means, I can…”

She took a deep breath and did something she’d never ever in her life done with a spirit who wasn’t some kind of relation to her. She reached out and touched him. Before she could stop herself, she laid her hand on Sawyer’s cheek.

Sawyer didn’t have lungs. Not really, but the sound that came out of him could only be described as a sharp inhale, followed by his hand wrapping around her forearm as his whole face filled with something akin to reverence.

“Willa…” he whispered her name like a prayer.

And then slowly, oh so slowly as if he were scared she would disappear if he went too fast, he drew her to him, cold arms wrapping around her body.

“Willa,” he whispered again, a cool breeze against her lips.

Then his lips were on hers. Delving, exploring her mouth with the same reverence she’d seen on his face when he touched her for the first time.

She kissed him back, surprised at how good it felt, how right she felt in his arms. The Stuttering Stork no longer, but a swan made beautiful by this man’s kiss.

It was a pretty kiss. A romantic kiss. The kind of kiss featured at the ends of movies in which the hero and heroine have traveled a great distance to finally reunite.

And then it wasn’t.

The kiss took a turn somewhere, with Sawyer’s lips no longer sipping but gulping. She gasped when he abruptly lifted her off her feet, carrying her to the nearest surface—the royal blue physical therapy bed. Small weights and resistance bands went flying with one slash of his arm as he set her down. He quickly stripped her out of her pants before unzipping his jumpsuit, and positioning his cold waist between her warm legs.

“So much wasted time,” he growled as he pushed into her. “Why didn’t you tell me, Willa? Why?”

He sounded on edge. Like a man betrayed.

But he didn’t give her any chance to answer. As soon as he was inside of her, his hips began rocking into her with urgent thrusts. He kissed her everywhere as he claimed her, on her lips, her face, her neck, the little bit of chest inside the V of her scrubs. Any bit of skin he could find.

She could only imagine what this would look like to anyone who might walk in at that moment. Her half naked on the counter. Hips jutted forth on the table, eyes closed, head thrown back in ecstasy. Her body jolting upwards every time her unseen lover shoved himself between her legs.

But all she could do was moan, spreading her legs wider to receive him even deeper. Something was happening inside her now. A quickening she’d never known with the few guys she’d dated seriously during her undergrad years. And she didn’t want it to stop. Didn’t want him to stop.

“Fuck, Willa,” he said, voice tight with raw desire. “This right here is everything I ever dreamed about.”

His words sent her over the edge, and the climax caved her shoulders, pressing her even further into him.

“Ahh,” he yelled out, as her sex squeezed his tight. “Fuck, yes! This is so perfect. You’re so perfect, baby. Even better than I thought you’d be.”

His body tensed between her legs, his hip thrusting forward one last time as he yelled out.

His icy release sent a chill through her entire body. But she’d never felt so warm in her life. Or so alive.

As if reading her thoughts, he looked at her in wonder. “I’ve been faking it all my life, but I never felt as real as I do now. With anybody ever, Willa. Baby, you make me real.”

She could still remember smiling back at him with the same wonder. Only to have that wonder shatter inside her heart when the portal suddenly blinked into existence behind him.

“What?” he asked, following her gaze over his shoulder.

Then he saw it, too.

The portal…and inside its oval, a hospital room.

She easily recognized the unconscious man in the hospital bed. Someone had been taking pains to keep him well-groomed. His hair was clean and lay upon his head in combed waves. His handsome face remained beard-free. He still looked exactly like the man standing in front of her, except there was now a small smile on his face and….he only had two-thirds of a left leg.

Sawyer pulled out of her and zipped up his jumpsuit as he turned to look at the man in the portal. “I don’t understand. How are we seeing this? What happened to my leg?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, behind him. Now thinking of all the things she hadn’t told him. “I should have told you, but I wasn’t sure…what you’d decide.”

“What’s going on?” he demanded again, his eyes now wide with fear as he stared at the man in the hospital bed.

The time for keeping secrets was over and she told him it straight. “That’s you Sawyer. Your leg was too far gone. They had to perform a below the knee amputation.”

The portal kicked up a wind. One she could only vaguely feel. But she knew from her experience with Trevor’s ghost that Sawyer would more than feel it. The wind would be stronger for him. Sucking him in.

“No,” he said when it started pulling him back, grabbing on to her hands. “Not yet. We just started…!”

“It’s okay,” she said to him, her heart squeezing with sadness around his words. But she reassured him as best she could. “Your body is calling you back. And for what it’s worth, I think you made the right decision.”

He continued to hold on to her hands, even though the wind was pulling on him hard now. “This means we’ll be together for real when I wake up, right?” he asked.

“Sawyer…” she squeezed his hands. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “But that’s not how it works. When you wake up, you won’t remember anything that happened to you while you were in spirit form. We’re not designed to remember what happened to us in spirit form. It’s better that way.”