Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) Read online

I pushed that thought away and kept pedaling. Finally, I saw an old white clapboard building with a deep porch, and beyond it the bones of new construction on a high knoll where it would overlook the eastern arm of Grand Traverse Bay, all surrounded by what had to be a couple hundred acres of grapevines. A vineyard, and a real winery. Which meant people, and air conditioning. And water, hopefully. I turned off the road and let my bike carry me down the gravel driveway to the foot of the porch. I wobbled to a stop, hopped off, and let the bike fall to the ground, the back tire click-click-clicking around slowly. I heard nothing except the whir of a fan from somewhere. I mounted the four steps to the porch, knocked on the door. No answer, no footsteps from within. If there wasn’t anyone here, I might just cry. I didn’t see any cars, didn’t see anyone in the vineyard. I wasn’t going to cry. It was just hormones. There’d probably be another winery in another mile or two. I could make that.

  Hopefully.

  “Hello?” I called out, loud enough that anyone inside should have been able to hear me.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me and whirled around in surprise. And then my mouth went dry. It was him, the Beach God. And again, he was shirtless and sweating, and this time he was covered in sawdust, and little curled shavings of wood clung to his arms and chest and hair. He was barefoot, wearing tattered cut-off khaki shorts, long and loose, hanging off his trim waist. Damn him for being so sexy. He really needed to wear a shirt, just to keep me from ogling him, which I had no place doing. I mean, he was nice to look at, and looking never hurt anything. It wasn’t like it could go anywhere, after all.

  And of course, he was yet again seeing me in workout shorts and a tank top, sweaty and out of breath and about to pass out.

  “You?” I asked. I heard myself making some idiotic excuses about a bike ride and the heat, and then the world wiggled and spun and tipped, and then I felt myself held aloft by something warm and slippery and strong. And he was above me, his blue eyes so pale as to be almost colorless, piercing me, but warm with concern. He was holding me. Jesus, he was strong. One arm around my shoulders, holding me easily. And he was fast. I hadn’t even seen him move, and he’d been at the bottom of the stairs, several feet away. His cheekbones were just perfect. I was dizzy, and staring at his cheekbones. They were high and pronounced, and I wanted to run my fingers over them. I wanted to just stay like this, held by him, just for a minute.

  I blinked the dizziness away and struggled to my feet, trying to wipe the stupid thoughts from my mind as I wiped the sweat from my face. There was absolutely no point in thinking about Beach God like that. Whoever he was, he didn’t belong in my life. Once he got a whiff of the mile-long train of baggage that came with me, he’d be gone in a blink. And good for him, because I wouldn’t wish my troubles on anyone.

  Embarrassment shot through me. “Did I just pass out? I did. I can’t believe I just fainted.” He edged away from me as I regained my composure. “Do you have any water?”

  He didn’t answer, which at this point didn’t surprise me. Instead, he led me inside, into a kitchen that looked as if it hadn’t changed since 1966. There were white lace curtains on the window, held up by a brass rod and sagging hooks. A green fridge the size of my Passat sat in the corner. An ancient two-slot pop-up toaster that might have come from The Brave Little Toaster was the only small appliance in sight.

  Beach God offered me a bottle of water and a bottle of Gatorade. He probably meant for me to choose one, but I took both and slammed the water so fast my teeth ached and my head hurt. Then I cracked open the Gatorade and drank that at a more sedate pace. He sipped at blue Gatorade and watched me drink. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I stuck my hand out and introduced myself. He shook my hand with a polite smile, and I thought for a split second that he might just break his code of silence and actually tell me his name, but he didn’t. Instead, he produced a business card and handed that to me. It was plain white with black letters. I read it out loud. “Carter Haven, Haven Brothers Winery.” There was an email address, the address of the winery, and the words “finish carpenter.” No phone number, which made me think this not-talking thing was a long-term issue for him.

  I felt a question bubbling on my lips, the kind that was taboo to come right out and ask a person. It came out anyway: “Okay, Carter. Are you mute?”

  He shook his head, and didn’t look as insulted as I’d expected him to.

  “So you can talk?”

  His eyes narrowed, and his lips tightened. He nodded.

  “But you don’t?”

  This time, he shook his head. His expression was stone-hard, and when I asked if it was just me he didn’t speak to, he didn’t even have the decency to look chagrined. He did look upset, but whether it was my questioning that was upsetting him or the fact of his silence itself, I didn’t know.

  The door squeaked and the screen door slammed, and then a younger version of Carter walked in. This man lacked the power of Carter’s frame, and his hair was lighter in shade, but they were clearly related.

  “Thomas Haven,” he said, shaking my hand. His voice was smooth, not too deep, and his smile was quick and genuine. “I see you met my brother, Carter.”

  I shook Thomas’s hand, and wondered if Carter’s voice would sound anything like this. “Yeah. We were just introducing ourselves.”

  Thomas looked so shocked I thought he might faint. Maybe even a little jealous. “He introduced himself? Like, out loud?”

  So it wasn’t just me. Carter looked panicked, or as panicked as his closed-off facial expressions would allow.

  I gestured with the business card. “No, with this.”

  Thomas seemed almost relieved by this information. “Ah. That would’ve been surprising.”

  I wanted to ask why, but didn’t. I looked at Carter, thinking maybe the presence of his brother would loosen his tongue. “So, what’s your deal?”

  Thomas and I both waited in expectation, but Carter held his silence. Thomas didn’t seem surprised. “That’s kind of a complicated question,” he said, sighing. He left then, claiming to be late for a meeting, with two other men I assumed to be more brothers. As he was out the door, Thomas turned back to me and said, “Good luck.”

  “With what?” I asked.

  He pointed at Carter with a thrust of this thumb. “Him.” And then Thomas was gone, and Carter and I were alone again.

  Carter’s expression was even more shuttered than usual. He was pissed, though: his hands were opening and closing, fisting and relaxing, and his jaw was tensed, looking hard as a chunk of granite.

  I finished my Gatorade and called it quits. “Okay. Well. This has been awkward.” I moved toward the door, needing to get away from the mystery and intensity and beauty of Carter Haven. “I’ll just…be going. ’Bye.”

  I fairly ran out the door, jumped on the ten-speed, and pedaled away as fast as I could. The heat hadn’t lessened, but the rest and refreshment had restored some of my strength, so I pedaled hard. I made it maybe half a mile before I heard the distinctive leonine growl of his truck engine behind me. I didn’t stop or slow.

  As sexy and mysterious as he was, and as compelling as the question of his silence might have been, he had no place in my life, and there was absolutely no point in even bothering. It wouldn’t be doing him any favors to involve him, and it would only provide temptation for me, teasing myself with something I’d never have. So I kept pedaling.

  Only, he pulled up next to me.

  “Can I help you?” I demanded. Carter jerked his thumb at the back of the truck. He wanted to drive me home, obviously. But this had gone on long enough. He was wasting his time on me, and I couldn’t afford to let him think he had a chance. I pedaled onward, ignoring him. And then he zipped past me and skidded to a stop in front of me, raising cloud of dust. He got out and stood in front of me, arms crossed. He’d put on a shirt finally. It didn’t help much, though, not with the way it clung to his damp abs and stretched around his biceps. If anything, the shir
t only served to accentuate the power of his lean frame by hiding it. An interesting paradox.

  He just stood there, though, and I lost my patience. “What gives, Carter?” I fiddled with the brake lever, not wanting him to leave me here, not wanting to have to ride home alone, but knowing it was best for both of us. “If you want something, say so.”

  He did the thing I least expected: he wrote me a note on his phone. Let me drive you home.

  He had a cell phone? Why would he need one if he never spoke? Maybe he texted. He did have an email address on his business card.

  I told him no, and he wrote another note.

  I was exasperated by this time. How childish was this? If he wanted to talk to me, he should just talk. “This is so weird,” I said. “We’re passing notes back and forth like we’re in third grade. I’ll be fine.” I stood up on the pedal to get the bike moving up the hill, back toward home.

  And, yet again, he leapfrogged me in his truck, skidding to a stop in front of me, blocking my path. I was out of patience by this time. “What, Carter? What do you want? I said I’m fine. I am. For real. I’m tough, okay? I don’t need your help. And, to be honest, the whole not-talking thing? It’s weird. A little creepy. No offense. Maybe you’ve got a reason for not talking.” I pushed my sweat-damp hair away from my eyes. “I don’t know, some trauma or something. But I’ve got enough of my own trouble to deal with yours, too, okay? So…’bye.”

  I didn’t wait for him to not answer. I kicked the bike into motion, figuring my rude response would ensure that I’d never see him again.

  Only, it didn’t quite work that way.

  “Wait.” His voice. God. It was raw and rusty with disuse, and exactly as rugged and imperfectly perfect as the rest of him.

  I was in so much trouble.

  CADEN

  brushstrokes and ruins

  Except for the months of pleasure I’d known with Ever before the accident, it seemed as if my entire life had been nothing but pain. I knew, intellectually, that wasn’t true. Mom had died when I was fourteen, and life had been great up until then. Mom and Dad loved me. Grams and Gramps loved me. I spent summers at the ranch, and had my art at home. I’d had fourteen years of happiness. Now I was nearly twenty-three. That translated into not quite ten years of hell.

  But never had pain felt like this. Ever needed me. She refused to face the truth I knew she saw in me. I knew she’d seen the guilt in me. I’d nearly told her the truth a few times. But I always chickened out. Justified it by telling myself Ever needed more time to heal, to recover, to regain herself, her life.

  So months passed, and my guilt ate me alive. I loved her as fiercely as ever, but it was overshadowed by the lies, the guilt, the agony of knowing I’d betrayed her. I wasn’t sleeping more than a few hours a night. I woke up tormented by nightmares, wracked with guilt. I woke up and stared at Ever, asleep in our bed next to me, clinging to me, her sweet soft arm across my chest, her breathing soughing in the darkness. I wanted to shake her awake and tell her to leave me, to find someone worthy of her perfection. I wanted to confess, so I could be free of the secret, rid of the weight of my silent sin. It festered within me, rotting and acidic, poisonous.

  I couldn’t eat. I worked, went to the gym, tried to chase my demons away. Tried, and failed.

  I felt weak. I felt as if life was passing me by, and I was missing it. Ever was getting better every day. She was speaking normally, moving around on her own. Dressing herself, eating by herself. She wasn’t an invalid anymore. I didn’t have to take care of her, much. She needed me for things here and there, but overall she was making almost miraculous progress. Which meant the day I told her the truth was growing closer. And that meant I was that much closer to letting her go. I’d tell her the truth, and then I’d leave. She’d be heartbroken, but it was better than this web of falsehood I was caught up in.

  She made love to me with wild abandon. Kissed me as if she was drowning and I was her air. I had been that once, but only I knew I couldn’t be that person any longer. I kissed her back, because she needed me to, and I couldn’t help but kiss her back. But I felt as if each kiss was tainting her with the venom of my guilt. As if she could taste the truth on my lips. As if she’d kiss me, touch me, hold me, make love to me, and look at me and know. Divine the truth of my sick sin and confront me before I could tell her myself.

  It was my nightmare, waking me up every night. Caden, she would say. Her mouth wouldn’t move, but I would hear her words tolling like bells in my skull, and her eyes would be sad and tearful and angry and confused and lost. What did you do? Why? Why her? Why couldn’t you wait for me? Why couldn’t you have faith that I’d come back? WHY HER? And I wouldn’t have any answers. I could only offer apologies, and those were useless. They were as pointless as the condolences at a funeral. “I’m sorry for your loss,” people always said, as if that had any power to soothe the grief.

  Just the same, “I’m so sorry, Ever,” couldn’t possibly contain any salve for the ruin of her heart when she found out what I’d done.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Four months after she woke up, Ever came to me one day as I was making lunch for us. “I want to paint again,” she said.

  She hadn’t so much as looked at her paintings since coming home. She hadn’t gone into the studio, hadn’t attempted to draw, hadn’t even mentioned her art. It was too painful, I suspected. It was probably the hardest thing for her to have lost. Any other pain she could have faced, if only she had her art. But with that ability taken away, she had no way to cope. I didn’t think she had the courage to face the studio, and to face the loss of the one thing that made her her.

  I set the wooden spoon down on the stove and turned to look at her. She was holding on to the post at the entryway to the kitchen with one hand, the other fidgeting with the hem of her T-shirt. She was watching me intently for my reaction.

  I stepped toward her, wrapped her up in my arms. Her hair smelled like coconut shampoo, a different scent than I was used to. She still used the vanilla lotion, though, and I could smell that on her. That smell, the vanilla sugar lotion, had the power to wreak havoc on me. I pressed my nose into her neck and inhaled, catching the scent of the lotion, and I was torn out of the present, thrown back two years to the moment when she opened her studio door and let me in, and I kissed her, smelling this same lotion on her skin, wafting from her in waves of seductive sweetness. And I was thrown back as well to the months of her coma. I’d stand at our dresser, holding the bottle of lotion. The cap would be open, and I’d squeeze the tube, just enough to let a current of the scent hit my nostrils, enough to torture me with missing her. And now I smelled it all over again, and it was really her, yet I’d destroyed us. She just didn’t know it yet.

  I inhaled again, seeking courage in the pain of her scent and her arms around me, so trusting and so innocent and so needy. “You’re going to paint again?”

  She nodded against me. “I have to try. I’m just warning you. I’ll probably have a nervous breakdown. So just…just be ready.”

  I took her face in my hands, brought her chin up, met her vivid, fear-fraught green gaze with mine. Tried to seem steady and strong and loving. Tried to hide the guilt, which was an every-moment-of-every-day labor. “If you have a breakdown, I’ll be there to hold you.”

  “That’s all I need.” Her eyes shone with faith.

  The horrible thing about this guilt was that I still needed her, still loved her, still wanted her just as much as I ever had. More, perhaps. I would take as much as she would give me until she knew. Her faith might have been misplaced, but I would do my best to be there for her, for as long as I could. Time was short. Soon, everything would change. I knew it, and I was pretty sure she knew it as well.

  Ever lifted up on her toes to kiss me, and her lips were gentle on mine, yet still demanding. I kissed her back, because I couldn’t do otherwise.

  She backed away from me, and I followed her to the closed door of her studio. I wondered if she
knew I’d seen her standing here, late at night, her hand on the knob, her shoulders shaking. I watched, and she never turned the knob. Never went in. So now, the scene was familiar. She stopped at the door, her hand on the knob. Her shoulders shook. I stood behind her, slid my arms around her waist. Kissed the back of her neck.

  “What if it’s gone forever, Cade?” Her voice wasn’t even a whisper. It was…shreds of sound, ripped from somewhere deep within her.

  “You’ve learned to walk again. You’ve learned to talk again. You can eat, dress, write. You can do this, Ever.” I had to give her hope, had to give her everything I could, while I was still here to give it to her. Even the hard truths. “It will probably be hard as hell. You’ll think about giving up. But you won’t. You’re too strong and too courageous to give up. Art is in your veins, Ev. It’s who you are. And if you can’t paint, by some strange fluke, you’ll find some other way of making art.”

  “I’m scared.” She leaned back against me, and I took all of her weight.

  I crossed my arms over her chest and stomach, kissed behind her ear. “You can do it. Just go in, Ev.”

  “Baby steps?”

  I chuckled. “Baby steps.”

  She twisted the knob and gave the door a gentle push. It swung open on silent hinges, bumped against the wall, and shivered to a stop. Everything was just as she’d left it. I hadn’t dared touch a single thing in this room. An unfinished painting waited on the easel—a piece that reminded me of something Georgia O’Keefe might have painted. A gerbera daisy, seen from up close, an almost unlikely shade of violent orange, each petal seen in dramatic detail. The center of the flower dominated the piece, a ring of orange-red, each tiny fiber looking soft and real enough to touch. Only the edges of the painting remained to be finished, the outside of the petals. Ever stepped into the room, her eyes focused on the easel, on the painting. She walked to it as if in a trance, feet shuffling, one hand extending to touch the surface of the canvas. Her finger stroked the center of the painting, nail skritching on the dried oil paint.