Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) (5 page)

“Damn, dude,” Kirk said. “That looks amazing.” He came to examine the front piece with the carved vines, and then moved over to the one side I’d finished, tracing the contours of the wine bottles. “What’s the other side gonna be? Grapes?”

Time to shock them. “Red wine glasses.”
 

Max was tapping at his phone when he heard my voice. He actually dropped it on the floor, then cursed as he bent to retrieve it. Kirk and Tom just stared at me.

“Holy shit.” Tom laughed, incredulous. “You spoke.”

“Yep.”
 

Kirk and Max exchanged looks. “Say something else,” Kirk said.
 

“Fuck you.” I grinned.

“That’s Carter for you,” Tom said. Then his gaze went narrow, sharp with suspicion. “Does the fact that you’re talking have anything to do with that girl who was here earlier?”

I turned away instead of answering, picking up my tools and tossing them onto the worktable.
 

“It does!” Tom slapped my back. “Did you bang her? Is that what did it?”

I shoved at him. “Don’t, Tom. It’s not like that.”

“Girl? What girl?” Max asked. Max, the oldest Haven brother, was the shortest of all four of us. He was built like a tank, hugely muscled, burly, biceps the size of my thighs and legs like tree trunks. He had the same black hair and blue eyes, but he kept his hair cropped close to the scalp and he wore a goatee. Kirk, Max, and I all tended to be taciturn, tight-lipped like our dad, whereas Tom was more like Mom, chattery, voluble, easily excited. Max, however, was the most reserved of all of us. He came across as grumpy to most people, but you had to know him to understand that he just didn’t have much to say.

I glared at Tom. “Just someone I know. Not like Tom’s thinking.”

Tom laughed at my denial, then sobered. “If she got you to talk when no one else could for a solid year, she’s something special, and I don’t give a flying fuck what you say.” He nudged me with his elbow. “Besides, she was hot as hell. You should make a play for her, if you haven’t already.”

“Back off, Tom,” I warned, my voice a growl.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m just sayin’. If you won’t, I will.”

“The fuck you will.” I turned and glared at him. The thought of Tom “making a play” on Eden made something in my gut churn. It felt an awful lot like jealousy. “Leave it alone. Leave
her
alone.” My voice and my body language were all screaming
she’s mine
, and my brothers sure as shit hadn’t missed that fact.

“Carter, come on, I’m just messin’ with you.” Tom grabbed for my arm, but I shook him off.
 

“Well, it’s not fucking funny.”

“Lighten up, bro—” He stepped toward me, and I shoved him away, hard enough that he stumbled.

“You’re gonna get decked, Tommy,” Kirk warned. “Let him go. Joke’s over.”

Tom let me go, shoving his hands in his hip pockets. He’d pushed me past my boiling point frequently enough in our childhood to know it wasn’t a smart plan.
 
And really, only Tom could get me to that point, in the way only brothers can.

Max stopped me as I stalked out of the workshop. “Seriously. It’s good to hear your voice, brother.”

I clapped him on the shoulder, then left them all in the workshop admiring the bar.

The churn of emotions in me lasted all the way from the winery to the beach. Once I stood in my shorts on the cold sand with the black sky lit by a bright half-moon and a brilliant wash of silver stars, I felt the jealousy and the anger and the confusion ebb away. The water lapped at my ankles, silence stretching and sliding around me, calming me. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with Tom. He was just playing with me, and I knew it. He was a joker, and he didn’t always know when to let the joke go. But something about what he’d said had gotten under my skin.
   

 
I had no claim on Eden. No reason to feel jealous. Except, for some reason, she
had
been the one to get me to break my silence. And she hadn’t even really been trying.

I moved out to deeper water, wading until it was waist-deep, ducking under the rope marking the designated swim area. I was about to dive under when I heard the cello. It was faint, distant. Low, sad notes rolled across the water. I stood with the water chilling my skin, listening. The sorrow was palpable, thick and raw, even from this far away.

Something in the music made me want to wade back to shore, cross the road and barge into her falling-apart little house, wrap my arms around her and tell her it would be okay. Hold her until the sorrow went away. Take her sadness into myself. Even earlier today, when she’d been trying as hard as she could to pretend she was fine, to act like she didn’t need help, keeping her emotions buried deep, I had felt it in her. She could pretend to herself all she wanted, but I knew she wasn’t fine. I just didn’t know why.

I dove in before my feet could betray me and carry me back to shore. The swim home was long, and hard, and cold. I crawled onto the deck, shivering and gasping for breath, dragged myself inside, grateful for the exhaustion.
 

The last thing I needed was to get involved with Eden, to get caught up in her drama. I had to focus on the winery. Get the bar finished. Get the new building finished. Make the tables and lay the floors, sand and polish everything, paint, hang artwork, make it perfect. Get the offices up and running, give Kirk and Max a beautiful place to do business. I couldn’t afford time for a distraction. Not for a girl, not even one as gorgeous as Eden. Especially not one with such a visible burden of trouble.
 

Yet, as I fell asleep, I knew I’d be at her house bright and early with a truckload of shingles. And I knew I’d get involved. For better or worse, I was getting involved.
 

I was an idiot.

EVER

learning to live; the importance of a kiss

I could make a fist, but I couldn’t squeeze it. I could wiggle my fingers, but I couldn’t grasp a glass. I could mumble a word or two, sometimes even three in a row, but I couldn’t string a coherent sentence together. I could see and hear and smell and taste and feel. I could think. I was me. But…who I was had changed.
 

Eden had vanished. No one knew where she was. Caden said her phone was off, going straight to voicemail, and eventually her mailbox filled up. No one had heard from her in two weeks. She’d withdrawn from Cranbrook. Everything she owned was gone from her dorm. Her roommate said she hadn’t left an address or a destination. Nothing.

I’d sensed the farewell in her last visit. I hadn’t been able get out the words to demand she tell me where she was going, or why. I couldn’t get out
any
words. Barely her name. I could sometimes repeat words like a parrot. I knew them, heard my thoughts in my mind, but my mouth wouldn’t translate them.

I missed Eden. I needed her, and she was gone.
 

I couldn’t make my hand hold onto a tennis ball, much less use a pen or paintbrush. I might never make art again. I might be trapped in this useless body for the rest of my life. I wanted to cry at that thought, but I refused to let myself. I had a routine. I only cried after Cade had gone home. I cried in my bed, alone. I never let Cade see my secret despair. He had to hope, because his hope was all I had getting me from day to day, getting me through each therapy session. Each grueling, agonizing hour of trying to merely grip a tennis ball in my fist. To wiggle my toes and straighten my leg on my own. To repeat single syllables: “Ball. Call. Wall. Fin. Tin. Bin. Much. Such. Touch.” Over and over again until even my tongue was tired and my lips hurt from trying to make them form intelligible sounds.
 

All that pain and effort, sheer exhaustion from the simplest things, when inside, in my mind, I was me, I was Ever Eileen Monroe, the girl I’d always been. The woman I’d become, with Cade. But she was trapped in silence.
 

The one triumph I had, the one thing I’d managed, was to tell both Eden and Caden that I loved them. That was important.
 

 
I couldn’t ask him what was wrong. I couldn’t talk to him. That was probably the worst part of it all. He was in pain. I knew his Grams and Gramps had both died just before I’d come out of my coma. That had to have been the final blow for him, for my poor sweet man. He’d endured so much. So, so much hell.
 

But it was more than that. I knew it. There was something else eating at him. Something he wasn’t telling me. There was a
lot
he wasn’t saying. Maybe he was protecting me. Forcing me to keep focused on recovery. But there was a new darkness to him, my Caden. I hated it. More than anything I needed to banish it. To exorcise his demons, to kiss away the lines of worry and pain etched into his features. They hadn’t been there, just yesterday.

Or, what felt to me like yesterday. It had been nearly two years, I’d been told. Christmas Eve, I was twenty years old. I remembered the screech of tires and weightlessness. Then darkness. I woke up, and I was twenty-two, almost twenty-three, and trapped in a useless, weak, skin-and-bones body. Atrophied muscles. Art gone. Speech gone. The cruelty of it was unbearable.
 

I couldn’t even kiss Cade. He’d lean down, and his lips would touch mine, and I knew he was desperate to feel my lips respond to his, but I couldn’t. I tried. So hard. I practiced when I was alone. I tried to purse my lips. Tried and tried to kiss the air so that when he showed up at seven the next morning, and every morning, I could kiss him back. That was my next goal. Using my hands again, talking, walking, those were all eventual goals. I’d achieve them. There was no other choice.
 

But before any of that, I had to simply kiss Caden.

Today was a good day. I’d slept through the night without nightmares of never walking again, never talking again, never kissing Cade or making love to him again. Those were the worst dreams, the nights I woke up alone, tears trickling down my face, sobs trapped in my chest. Sometimes I dreamed he got tired of me, sick of waiting for me to get better. In those dreams he’d leave me without a word. Or just not show up. Just vanish like Eden had and I’d be alone in life, and then I’d wake up with screams trapped in my gut, panic eating at me like a bird trapped in a house, banging against windows and walls.
 

Today, though, I woke knowing I’d slept without any of that. I felt hopeful. I practiced pursing my lips, imagined Cade’s lips against mine and pictured myself kissing him. I could do it. I knew it. I felt it. Today would be the day.

I watched the local news while I waited for him. He always showed up at seven exactly. Today, he didn’t arrive until almost seven-thirty. He looked haggard, exhausted. Bags under his eyes. Thinner than he’d ever been. Sad. Haunted. His eyes flitted around the room, taking in the walls, the bed, the side table, searching, and it seemed as if he was seeing something not physically there. It was as if he was seeing over and over again the heartache that had been in this room over the past year and a half. I could see the memories in his eyes, the pain…and that something else.

Guilt? Yes, that was what I saw in his gaze, in his posture, in the set of his mouth and the shifting of his eyes.
 

I pushed it away, the knowledge that he felt guilty. I couldn’t take that. Couldn’t handle it. He loved me, and he was here with me. That was all that mattered. He was here.
 

He perched on the edge of my bed, his thigh nudging mine, leaned down and wrapped his arms around me. I fought myself, strained, forced my arms up, up. Touched him. Hands on his biceps, trembling with the effort to keep them there. Something that should’ve been easy, but was anything but. I managed to hold on to his arms for almost thirty seconds before they dropped back down. He touched his forehead to mine, and I felt his breath on my face. He smelled so good, so familiar, and I pulled in his scent, drawing strength from him, from his nearness. He pulled back and kissed my forehead. He sat back then, his hands on mine on my lap.
 

“Hey, babe.” He leaned in again and kissed my cheek.
 

God, that was awful. A kiss on the cheek. It felt like an insult. Why not the lips? Did he not want me anymore? I was sick, I knew. I was all but useless. Skinny, pale, and weak. Unable to hold a conversation or do much of anything. But I was still his wife. He loved me. I knew he did.
 
But did he still
want
me?

I focused, concentrated. Lifted one hand up, touched my fingers to his cheek. Traced the stubble on his upper lip. Ran my thumb along the crease of his lips. Stared at his mouth, at his lips, which had once kissed me so easily, so passionately. As if he couldn’t get enough of me.
 

I needed that.
Please
, I wanted to scream.
Kiss me!
Love me! Hold me! Touch me! Remind me who I am to you.
 

I made the words come out, but they stuttered and stumbled, tripping. “K-ki—Kiss mmmm-me.” I scrunched my brows with the effort needed to focus. “Please.”

He held my palm against his cheek, kissed my thumb where it touched his lips. His gaze locked onto mine, wavered. I thought for a moment that he might cry. Slowly, slowly, he leaned in. My heart thudded crazily in my chest, and I wanted to weep with pure joy when his lips touched mine. I shifted my thumb away, felt the stubble at the corner of his mouth. He tasted like toothpaste and mouthwash and faintly of coffee. Like Cade.
 

His kiss felt so right, so beautiful, so warm and soft and delicious that I couldn’t breathe for the ecstasy. It felt like a first kiss somehow. I remembered what I’d practiced, and made my lips shape against his. He breathed in sharply through his nose, a gasp of surprise. I wasn’t breathing, but I was kissing him, and that was better than breathing. He moved his mouth against mine, and I felt his tongue slip gently against my teeth, and I opened to his tongue, felt him taste my teeth and gums and lips and tongue, and felt him kiss me like he had been dying as much as I.