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

  “I remember painting this. I was trying to channel Georgia O’Keefe, but with my own touch on it.”

  “You got it perfect.”

  She remained completely still, her fingers splayed on the canvas as if in some silent farewell. After a long silence, she spoke in a hesitant, reverent whisper. “It’s like me. Interrupted. Unfinished. Even if I could finish it, it wouldn’t be the same as if I’d finished it then.”

  “Ever, you have to know—”

  “I’m not that person anymore, Cade.” She let her hand drop, curling her fingers into a fist.

  “I loved the person you were then, and I love the person you are now.” That, at least, was the pure, unvarnished truth.

  “The problem is, I don’t know who I am anymore. I lost something. Some part of myself, and I don’t know what it is or how to get it back. And I know you love me.” Ever turned in my arms, brushed my hair away from my face. “And I love you. But…it’s not enough. You loving me doesn’t fix what’s wrong with me. And…goddammit—” She squeezed her eyes shut and sighed, stifling a faint sob. “You’re not the same, either. You’re broken, too, Cade. Everything…everything is broken.”

  I’d never seen this side of Ever, this raw and agonized despair. I didn’t know how to make it better. “I know.” It was all I could say. The only words that would come out. “I’m sorry. Fuck, Ever. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  For betraying you. “For being broken when you need me to be whole.” I just couldn’t get the words out; the truth was lodged in my chest. “For…for everything.”

  Her eyes searched me, and I saw the knowledge there. She knew. Not what, but that there was something to know, a truth hidden between us. A moment passed, and I met her gaze, unwavering. Pleading with her silently, begging her to demand the truth from me, to vilify me as I deserved. Instead, she clutched my face with shaking hands and drew my mouth down to hers and kissed me, and it seemed a vampiric kiss in a way, as if she was sucking strength from me, courage from me. I gave it willingly. She could take all of me, leave me limp and dead, if it would mean she was alive and happy.

  Pulling away, breathless, she stepped back, searched the room for something. Found the age-soft and paint-splattered button-down white shirt, hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. Took it in her hands and stared at it. Memory showed in the bow of her shoulders. I stood, watching, waiting. Ever set the shirt on the chair back once more, reached down to the hem of the green V-neck she was wearing, pulled it off, folded it, and set it on the seat of the chair. She didn’t spare me a glance. This wasn’t about me anymore; I was merely a witness. Her fingers shook as she unzipped and unbuttoned her jeans, put them neatly atop her shirt. Standing in gray cotton panties and a green silk bra, she was more beautiful to me than she’d ever been. Courage made her beautiful. Tenacity made her glow. To reclaim what was stripped away so unfairly took more guts than I’d ever have.

  She had to pause for breath, pause to gather her nerves. And then she reached up behind her back, freed the clasps of her bra, and hung it from the corner of the chair back. She was facing away from me, and I couldn’t breathe for the sight of the curve of her bare back. I stared, branding the image into my mind. This moment, this vignette, it was now something sacred to me. She was physically exposed, emotionally vulnerable, braving her deepest fear, and she was doing it alone. I didn’t think she was even aware of my presence any longer and, in a way, that was as it should be. She’d have to learn to live without me.

  She stepped out of her underwear, set them on the chair. Ever stood naked in her art studio, her pale skin pebbling from the chill in the air. I devoured her naked form with my eyes, buried the memory of this moment deep within me. I would need something to hold on to, when it all fell apart.

  At long last, she slid her arms into the sleeves of the shirt, buttoned it with shaky fingers, smoothed her hand down her front, over her hips, as if to press the reality into her skin, as if to tell herself that she was truly doing this, and that she could. I stood with my back to the wall near the door, willing her onward.

  She took a black Sharpie from the tray on the easel and signed her name carefully to the bottom right corner of the daisy painting, and then, beneath that, wrote: “Interrupted.” Ever heaved a deep sigh, then lifted the four-by-six canvas from the easel, carried it across the room, and set it on the floor with a stack of other finished paintings.

  She considered it finished, I realized, and I understood the symbolism in her choice.

  Four-by-six was her favorite size of canvas to work with, and she had a stack of them pre-stretched. Ever chose a canvas, set it on the easel, added fresh paint to each primary color splotch on her palette. Chose a brush. Held the palette in one hand, her brush hanging at her side. Her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, nervous and afraid to begin. I could almost hear her thoughts. What if I can’t do it? What if I forgot how?

  She stood still and silent for a long time, staring at the blank canvas. I was beginning to think she’d frozen. She nodded once, and then set her brush down and chose a different one, a thick, fat brush for broad strokes. She touched the tip to the black paint, and I could see her hand trembling as she drew the brush across the middle of the canvas. It was a thick, gloppy stroke, a harsh line of black on the clean white. Another long pause, and then she flattened the brush against the black paint and spread it around, added more, and more. With every stroke she grew more confident, and soon the whole canvas was black and she was filling in missed slices of white.

  I couldn’t even begin to wonder what she was doing, and I didn’t dare ask. This was a private moment, one that belonged only to Ever, and I was privileged to watch. I crossed my arms over my chest and kept silent, making sure even my breathing was quiet.

  Ever set the black-smeared brush on the tray and picked up the one she’d originally chosen, a medium-point brush. She dabbed at the white paint, brought it in an arc horizontally across the canvas, refreshed the paint on the brush and made a mirrored arc to match the first. Slowly then, she filled in the space between the arcs, merging the black and the white so that it seemed almost pixelated, as if the black was fading to white.

  It wasn’t until she stepped back that I understood what she’d painted: an eye, opening.

  “The moment you woke up,” I said. She only nodded. “You haven’t forgotten.”

  Ever set her brush and palette down, turned in place to look at me, hesitated, and then ran and threw herself into my arms. She cried long and hard.

  “I haven’t forgotten.” Relief filled her voice. “It’s not the same, though. Even that is different. I don’t—I’m not sure I can explain it. I don’t see things the same. When I think about painting something, even the images in my head are different than I remember them being before.”

  Before.

  Her life was split into before and after.

  For me, it wasn’t so simple. There was before, and there was after, and there was the unmitigated hell of in between. During. That time, the during, that was what had broken me. I’d survived the loss of my parents, my grandparents. I might have survived the loss of Ever, if she’d actually died. But she didn’t. I’d lost her, but not completely. It wasn’t the pain of her loss, the agony of limbo, or even the uncertainty of not knowing if she’d ever wake up that had done me in, though; it was the choices I’d made. The fact that I’d lost sight, lost hope, and betrayed her. And she’d woken up. I couldn’t undo it, couldn’t take it back. And even now, I wasn’t sure if I could have done anything differently. But that didn’t change the reality of my now. It didn’t alter the fact that when Ever found out, it would gut her.

  And that would crumble even the ruins of what remained of me.

  art imitates life

  In the weeks that followed, Ever rarely left her studio. She barely slept, barely ate. She painted. She filled canvas after canvas, and sent me out to buy more, since she wasn’t up to stretching her own just yet. She painted,
and painted and painted. And from what I saw, she was absolutely correct in her assessment: she had changed, artistically. She had almost totally regained her fine motor control, could use the finest-point brush to paint delicate strokes and pin-thin lines. It wasn’t a change in skill, but rather, as she’d said, a matter of perception. She painted messily, with quick, harsh strokes. Dark colors, little white space. She’d had a light style before. Even when the subject matter was heavy or dark, she managed to make it seem bright and lively. She had a painting of a raven, one I’d seen when flipping through her old paintings while she slept. It was a week or two before the accident, and I was up early. The raven had been so lifelike that I’d almost expected it to step off the canvas. There were reflections in the raven’s beady eyes, and the sun glinted off its feathers. The piece contained all the inherent creepiness of a raven, the hint of some ancient evil in the eyes, the omens and portents of darkness in the predatory shape and black feathers. Yet, for all that, the piece had been distinctly Ever, still infused with the beauty of her style.

  Now, her paintings were…almost grim.

  She painted a lamp, one that sat on our bedside table. It was an ordinary lamp, silver and straight and modern, with a pull chain and white trapezoidal shade. In the painting, the lamp was on, surrounded by shadows. The outline of a moth was silhouetted on the inside of the lampshade. The sense of entrapment was palpable. The moth seemed caught mid-motion, as if banging against the shade, drawn by the light but burned by the heat, unable to fly away and unable to resist.

  She painted a still life of a bowl of fruit, but the apple was bruised, flattened on one side. It was true to life, an accurate representation of the fruit that sat in the bowl on our dining room table. Yet the painting seemed bleak. The sky in the window in the background was gray and overcast. The banana was flecked with black spots, looking soft to the touch.

  She painted me from memory, and the look in my eyes was haunted. My face was shadowed with the stubble of a beard, and my forehead creased with worry lines. But my eyes…god. If the painting was any reflection of me, she could see my secrets, and saw that they were bearing down on me. I looked old in the painting. Tired.

  I realized then that I hadn’t touched a pencil or pen to draw since the day she woke up, if not long before. With Ever in her studio, warring with her demons and seeking herself in a thousand blank canvases, I brought out my sketchpad and pencil case and sat at the table with an empty page before me.

  I drew Ever, in that moment of vulnerability, her back bare and curved slightly to the left, her shoulders bowed under the weight of her fear. I wondered, as I drew, if she had shed a tear. Private. Unseen.

  My drawing did nothing to alleviate the torture within. I tried again, and I drew Ever once more. This time I drew her in profile. Yet, as the drawing progressed, I realized it was Ever in the hospital bed. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were still and thin on the sheets. I drew, and I could almost smell the antiseptic and sickness of the hospital.

  Hours passed, and my hand cramped, and the pages of my sketchbook were filled, one after another, with drawings of Ever. In therapy, struggling with a pencil. Just her hand, clutching awkwardly at the pencil. Dozens of images, yet none of them quieted the ache inside me.

  Finally, I drew Eden. Just her eyes and the tangle of hair by her cheekbone, a hint of her mouth. It was the moment I’d walked away from this very condo. The moment I’d known it was over, for better or worse. There was both relief and sadness in her eyes, and a huge amount of pain. There was no way to know it was Eden just by looking at it. Not unless you knew.

  I closed the sketchbook and sat at the table, my head pounding, my eyes burning, my hand cramping. The condo was silent, and I wondered what Ever was painting.

  I wondered where Eden was. Why she’d left.

  I wondered why any of this had happened, and why my life seemed so cursed.

  slide show

  I found her asleep on the floor of her studio. She’d forgotten to wash her brushes, so I washed them, and put them away.

  A painting sat finished and drying on the easel. Two doves, flying side by side. They were barely outlines on the canvas, dappled with hints of ivory. Wings were spread, faces turned upward, seeking the sunlight.

  One of the doves cast a shadow on the ground below.

  One did not.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  She enrolled in classes at Cranbrook and began attending three days a week. She found a job answering phones at a physical therapist’s office Monday through Friday.

  She was establishing a new normal. I continued working at UPS, and found another job as a janitor at a local middle school. We both did our art, woke up and ate breakfast, had dinner together when our schedules allowed. We seemed, if seen from the outside, to be an average young married couple, making their way through life.

  What you wouldn’t see was the chasm growing between us. Was it me? Was it my guilt, pushing her away? Was it her knowledge of that guilt, combined with our mutual agreement to pretend it wasn’t there? I didn’t know.

  The days passed almost as in a slide show.

  We even made love, clinging to each other in the darkness of our bedroom, sweating together, skin sliding in a nearly silent susurrus. She told me she loved me, and I told her the same.

  And we both meant it.

  Yet that didn’t banish the space between us.

  Once I heard her crying in the bathroom, late at night.

  Time congealed and stretched and slipped away, minutes becoming weeks, becoming hours, which became days…which became months.

  And nothing changed. I withheld the truth, too cowardly to speak it, too afraid of hurting her worse. And Ever? She painted dark and compelling images, passed her classes, and seemed to hold a part of herself removed from me, as if she was learning to be herself once more—or all over again—and asking if the person she was becoming included me.

  I felt the end approaching.

  PART TWO

  CARTER

  a story told; a story withheld

  Eden was playing her cello when I arrived at seven-thirty the next morning. I parked my truck, hung my tool belt around my waist, and stood on the rotting porch, listening through the screen door. She was bent over her instrument, her hair in a blonde wave over one shoulder, swaying with the motion of her body. The piece she was playing was one of longing, slow and high, endless wavering notes that curled one after another. Her features were pinched, her eyes shut tight, her lips pressed flat together, lines of pain etched into her face and the corners of her eyes.

  I wondered who or what had caused her such pain, and how I could take it from her. Then I shook the thought away. I couldn’t do that, and I don’t think she wanted me to try.

  When she stopped playing and rested the bow on her knee, I cleared my throat.

  She started violently, gasping. “Holy shit, Carter!” She pressed her hand to her chest and laughed. “You scared the hell out of me!”

  “Who is it you miss?” I couldn’t help asking.

  Her expression shuttered closed, going carefully blank. “My sister.”

  I think she expected me to pry further, but I didn’t. “You play beautifully.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She stood up, and I realized she was wearing nothing but a white T-shirt, “CRANBROOK, est. 1932” written in crimson on the front. It was sized to fit her, which meant everything from her waist down was on display for me. She had on a pair of red boy-short underwear, cut high across her butt. I’d seen her in a bikini, but this was somehow different. More intimate. Her legs were long, and thick with muscle, strong, sexy, and perfect. Her ass was a firm, perfect, round bubble, and her hips were generous, seductive curves. I hardened just looking at her, and had to forcibly rip my gaze away from her body. I focused on the wood planks at my feet, at the bottom of the screen door. Anywhere but on her, because she didn’t deserve to be ogled and I was better than that.

  “I…I’ll
just get started. On your roof.” I turned away, down the top step.

  “Want some coffee?”

  I moved back up and turned toward her. Meeting her gaze was a challenge. She wasn’t wearing a bra, either, and her nipples poked the thin white cotton of the shirt.

  “Sure,” I said, but didn’t make any move to open the door.

  She pushed the screen door open and let me in, and I couldn’t help stealing a glance at her chest. She caught the look, and seemed shocked to realize she wasn’t dressed. “Shit! Sorry, I—I wasn’t expecting you. I know you said today, but—” She crossed her arms over her chest, clutching her biceps. “Give me a minute. I’ll put on some clothes.”

  I stood in the kitchen, assessing what had to be done to the inside, and trying not to watch through the bedroom door, which she had mostly closed, but not all the way. Through the crack, I could see her step into a pair of yoga pants, and then pull her arms out of her shirt to put on her bra. She turned around after she’d tugged the shirt back into place, and her eyes caught mine through the partially open door. She knew I’d been watching her.

  There was palpable tension between us as she entered the kitchen. She set a clean mug on the tray of her Keurig coffee maker, and put a fresh pod in to brew. In seconds, I had a mug of coffee, which I drank black and scalding. She made herself some as well, adding a ridiculous amount of hazelnut creamer, stirring until her coffee was nearly the color of her skin: pale white.

  She saw me eyeing her coffee, and I must’ve been making a face, because she wrapped her hands around the mug defensively and frowned at me. “Shut up. I’m a girl. I like my coffee with a lot of creamer, okay?”