She whispered, “I do. It's called betrayal. And blame. That fence we have between us, that we can't ever seem to cross."
Seeking the sofa by the fire, wishing it could carry her away like a magic carpet, she added, “Sit down. Let's try to talk calmly for once."
But her own heart pulsated toward an attack, and the cabin's usual sweet fireplace smell only burned at her throat and the lump in it. They settled in, each at opposite ends, with a cushion of space between them. An invisible wall.
Scared at the sight of her shaking fingers, she clutched them into a fist on her lap. “I can only begin with, I'm sorry. What I kept from you, was awful."
He grabbed a pillow and crushed it between his hands. “I wanted to pull out every damn one of those stinking geraniums you planted. I wanted us to take it all back, to go back in time."
“It was a nightmare.” She swallowed hard.
Lunging up again, he tossed the pillow behind him and took up a poker to stir the fire to life. “Get mad at me, damnit, because I'm mad. I want to yell and scream at you and I can't when you look at me like that!"
With his back to her, how did he know she was looking at him with eyes that registered and shared all the hurt in his sagging shoulders? Why was he always able to read her so completely? Why wouldn't he tell her why he'd abandoned their love back then?
“Cole, I'd do anything to make you not hurt. I used to think it would be good to see you in pain, just as I was. Thoughts of revenge felt good for a long time. But I have to face the truth. You even told me that. And the truth was, we didn't love each other enough. You left me because you didn't love me enough, and I didn't love you enough to run after you."
“Stop it!” After slamming his fist against the mantle again, he swung around with eyes glazed, but rimmed with shadows. “This wasn't your fault."
With her mouth gone dry, and her heart stuttering faster in fear, she asked, “What are you talking about?"
“Why I really left. Why I didn't come back. It was your father. It was more than just his intercepting my phone calls to you. He made sure I couldn't come back."
“Why?"
“Because of my careless actions. When I was about to leave, he made it a point to come find me out at my aunt's place."
“He was still mad about the car we wrecked. He could never stop talking about it."
“It wasn't about the car anymore.” He limped to the edge of the fireplace mantle and rested an elbow there. His shoulders visibly shuddered. “He was waving his rifle around, pointing it mostly at me, telling me never to come back. My aunt came out of the house then, scared him and a shot went off."
“Oh no.” Her heart turned to ash.
“He narrowly missed her. I charged him, ripped the rifle out of his hand and pointing the thing at him, I told him he was a fool. I told him he didn't own you, that what we had was special, that you had a mind of your own and he should listen to you.” He shook visibly, wrinkles carving deeper into his face. “I let fly with a shot over your father's head. Just missed him."
It was her turn to shudder.
The fireplace embers crackled. A flicker of flame came to life next to Cole.
Rubbing his furrowed brow, he continued, “It was quite a scene. He didn't like it at all, and when he came at me, I ended up punching him to the ground and we got into a regular fight. Enough to draw blood. I busted your father's nose."
Her body curled in on itself, heavy as stone. She could only look at him, stalking the shadows thrown by the fireplace.
“Evidently my aunt had called the sheriff at the sight of the rifle and pretty soon I was handcuffed and facing charges that could have sent me to prison."
Rippling with cold disbelief, she sunk deeper into the sofa, holding onto her temples before her head exploded. “Nobody told me about this."
“Because that was the deal. Lawyers huddled over the phone lines that very afternoon, and if I left that day and never came back, charges would be dropped and everyone would get on with their lives as if nothing happened."
Staring at her, leaning back against the corner of the fireplace, he tucked his fists in his pockets. “I'm sorry,” came the hoarse whisper. “If I'd have known about the baby, I would have stood by you. I told you that when I thought it was Kipp's."
Her calm finally exploded, her hands growing into tight fists of her own when she stood. “Penance is why you'd have come back, out of your guilt. You're doing penance now for not raising your son Tyler yourself! Look what you're doing now to your own living son! He's in hiding and growing up without you. It's guilt that drives you. Not love. I want no part of that guilt from you."
Nerves burning, she slammed back down into the sofa, punching at the tufted arm of the furniture, then picking at the nap, hating the feel of his eyes roving over her.
“I would have married you,” he said, showing her the full force of his deep pools. They held fast, not a flicker. “Married you for real."
A flush heated her cheeks.
An ember snapped, fire sizzling in his eyes, dredging guilt out of her.
She rose to meet the truth sullying her, but paused to slake her thirst with the tea. “You would have been a caged animal, with marriage to me like some trap on your paw that you were doomed never to shake off. A wild animal always looking to the horizon, pacing, waiting for escape."
“We could have made it work."
She came back, picked up the afghan, hugging it with fists. “Even if I'd caught up with you in Florida, I would have resented being dragged away from my family. All that strife to live with, it wouldn't have worked. And we were young, awfully young."
“I thought of that, too, when I got back to Miami. Shock set in. I may have been eighteen, but I was fresh out of high school. Time to figure out what to do with my life. You still had a year of high school left. I reasoned my guilt away by thinking we weren't ready. I thought I was helping you, by making the clean break. By keeping your father's secret about me. About what might have happened.” He drew in a long breath. “You didn't deserve a stupid punk like me who couldn't control his temper."
The fire spit sparks. Tossing on another log, he glanced back at her. “I've never had such a hard time talking with you,” he ventured.
“Because this is about more than truth. It's about us being adults and admitting to things. That takes courage I've discovered.” Sinking back, she smoothed the dent in the upholstery she'd punched.
His eyes, framed by the wildness of his dark hair, crackled with energy. “It's hard admitting to mistakes that alter people's lives forever."
He stood tall, menacing almost, his muscles filling out an old denim shirt she'd bought way oversized because she liked them that way. But then he slumped down on the hearth, watching the embers, the firelight assigning a vulnerability about him. “I ache for the loss of our son, for you, for what I missed."
And the way he turned to her, with his face haunted, brought tears ebbing down her cheeks, a freeflow for both of them.
Coming over to her, he sunk to the floor at her knees, clasping hungrily at her hands. The warmth of his firm, strong fingers spiked through her.
“Tell me about him,” he said, rubbing his thumbs over her fingers, the reassuring ministrations helping to stop the tears. “I missed everything about him. He was part of me, but I never had a chance to touch him, to smell his baby sweet smell, to press him against my cheek, to lay down next to him and you in the hospital bed and count his toes."
She almost couldn't bear seeing the despair in his eyes.
“Laurel Lee,” he whispered, a hand brushing her hair back off her face, drying her tears in the wake of his gentle heat.
When he rose, she followed him, seeking the solid wall of comfort his chest provided.
Then her tears came again, ancient ones, saved up all the years for this moment, mingling with his, with one cheek held tightly against the other, him cradling her head against his sturdy muscles, a hand burrowed into her hair, both bodies trembling in unison.
“All right,” she managed in a whisper, feeling a sense of relief pouring out of her, a cleansing. “I'll tell you everything. You deserve to know it all."
* * * *
THE FIRE ROARED behind them, its pungency soothing. Cole clung to Laurel, wishing he could change the world for her, glad that she accepted his comfort now.
He held her like he'd held the baby rabbits, trying to warm them, make them whole again. He was beginning to understand what peace the animals brought to her heart.
Breaking from him, she led them outdoors, out onto the steps where they could sit side by side to look past the garden and the pines, and view Spirit Lake. Her misty emerald eyes reflected the specks of sunlight glinting off the water.
Confusion and pain welled up in her eyes. “Mother and father sent me away."
“Because of me."
She nodded. His gut wrenched. Lines furrowed her face, and it pained him to see what she'd come to because of him.
“I had a year of high school left,” she said. “But I knew by September I was pregnant. That's when I wrote to you."
“And your father found out when he intercepted the letters."
“Yes, but I told him we were married.” Her attempt at a laugh fizzled on the breeze. “That we'd promised ourselves to each other in a church already. He had choice words about our promises."
When she closed her eyes, Cole swallowed down the sudden chill of fear. “What did he do? What did you do?"
“I begged him to help me find you, to bring you back so that you could marry me for real. I thought you would."
Launching off the stoop, she poked around at the nearby garden, pulling at quackgrass, tidying up the earth by her cabin.
“The marriage couldn't have happened anyway,” she muttered, tomato plants bending to her touch. “Not with your ... with your marriage coming at you so soon and with your son Tyler coming along."
Straightening and looking at him with eyes a vibrant hue that made him pay attention, she added, “That's the irony here, isn't it? I wanted something, and it was for the best that I didn't get it. You may not have ever had Tyler..."
“Don't make it sound like you were selfish. You weren't. This was our child you were carrying.” Beads of sweat popped onto his forehead. “Once you knew about the pregnancy, where did you go?"
She went back to tending the sturdy tomato plants. More weeds flew. “My mother has a cousin in Phoenix. I went there after Christmas, when I began to show. I finished high school there. I hated Arizona. No grass and the lawns were made of painted rocks."
Cole couldn't imagine Laurel surviving in such an environment. “And the baby?"
She straightened to gaze at the lake. “The baby, our son, was born during Easter break. I was alone. My parents didn't even call."
“I'm sorry.” He limped to her, drew her against his chest and into his arms. She didn't resist, and together they looked at the lake, listening to its ripples slapping gently against the dock.
He dropped a kiss on her warm hair. “What happened?"
“I could never eat. I worried."
It registered with him that she needed him. That he knew how to keep her from worrying all the time, that he wanted to scoop her up and carry her onto a cloud. They would fly forever. What a thing to do for a woman.
But she continued, not in the clouds at all. “I searched for answers, who to blame."
An ache swelled in his chest. “I would have given anything to have been there."
Stroking her hair, turning her toward himself, looking into eyes gone dim, Cole felt a purpose rise inside him. To rekindle the light in Laurel. In himself. To build something together again. Even a family. But his breathing grew uneven, doubts crowding him, telling him to listen first to Laurel.
“My aunt was by my side.” She burrowed against him, needy as her little rabbits. “The baby, our baby, was born in a Phoenix hospital on a hot day in April when I would have rather smelled the fresh hint of maple and pine trees budding around Spirit Lake. Three days later, he died."
Holding her tightly, Cole suffocated himself in her hair. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
“They said he had breathing problems. But I knew what they wouldn't tell me. They thought I was too young to understand. I knew what had happened to our son. It was the horrible way I handled my life. I let it happen."
Pressing her against him even harder, Cole squeezed his eyes shut against the vision of her alone in the hospital room. “Don't blame yourself. No teenager should face that kind of stress."
Suddenly piercing him with vacant eyes, Laurel said, “I don't have any pictures of him for you."
A storm blew through Cole, drying up his soul, his heart.
She closed her eyes. “When I need to remember him, I squeeze my eyes shut real hard, and I can visualize his tiny face. He's round, pink as clover in the meadow, with a button nose like my bunnies, with a wisp of dark fuzz for hair."
Cole sucked in, closing his eyes as well. Dark hair.
He had my hair
.
She sighed, limp against him. “My only fear is that someday I won't be able to see him in my mind. Time fades everything."
His gut twisted.
They peered into each other's eyes, lingering in the depths.
A shadow flickered across her face. A doubt? He assured her, “I'm glad you brought him back here for burial."
“I need him here with me. It's all I have left.” Then she relaxed into a soft smile, one that soothed the ages and the savage gulf between them. “I need to be held. All the rest of the day and through the night."
“So do I.” And Cole drew her under his wings, understanding fully for the first time her need for solitude, wishing he had a way to make this feeling of completeness and peace permanent.
* * * *
COLE WOKE IN the middle of the night to inky etherealness, disoriented. Deja vu scuttled in.
He lay in the basement of the old mansion, cold, weary. Sweat popped onto his forehead as he listened to the rolling, rising beat of his heart. His eyes probed the still blackness, searching for escape. About to flail against the weight of something holding him down—the cardboard, yes, the boxes—he caught himself, halting his breath to listen again.