Always and Forever (22 page)

30.

T
ears started to drip slowly, silently down Lisa’s cheeks. She chewed on her lower lip, biting so hard that she tasted blood. Her eyes scanned fast through Matt’s words, then more slowly the second time she read them through.
Why hadn’t he told her more about his mom and what that had been like? Why hadn’t she asked? Why had she thought she needed to be apart from him instead of being brave enough to let him close, instead of
pushing
him away?

She wiped her cheeks with her fingers, her eyes with the back of her knuckles, before pushing her phone into her pocket and standing, needing to escape from the airless room, suddenly desperate for fresh air, desperate to get outside. She knew why; deep down she knew why. Because she blamed herself. She blamed herself for getting cancer, for ruining their dreams of having a family, for pushing Matt away when he’d tried so hard in his own way. And she’d blamed him for the decision her surgeons had made when she was under the knife, just like she’d blamed him for choosing her over their baby. Only Matt didn’t deserve to shoulder any of the blame.

The guilt that she’d broken their marriage into shards when it had been so strong hit her hard. She’d been trying so hard to put distance between them when what she should have done was hold her Matt close, cherish what they still had, the bits they hadn’t lost.

And now her marriage was in tatters.

She wanted Matt. Needed her husband. He’d started to tell her all this days and days ago, opening up to her like he never had before, and instead of responding and being a decent wife, she’d shut herself off from the world, pretended like she was okay alone. Pretended like she knew what she wanted and needed, when she hadn’t at all. The guilt she felt was hers alone, and instead of just punishing herself, she’d punished Matt, too.

You’re not an island, sweetheart. It’s not like you to be shut off like this, and it’s not good for anyone.

Her sister’s words echoed through her head, words she’d said before leaving to go back to Redding, back to her family, and before telling her that she needed to talk to Matt. Or if she wasn’t up to talking to him, an email, a text . . .
anything
. She might have been through hell lately, but it was no excuse to push Matt away.

Lisa kept walking until she was outside, surrounded by green fields, vines and a bright blue sky above. She sucked in air like she’d been deprived for hours, months. Then she slumped down, stared at the blank screen of her phone in her hand. Slowly, hand shaking, she swiped across and forced herself to touch on Matt’s last email. She stared at his name, wondered how the hell she’d managed to go weeks without him when before she’d never left him even for two days.

They were Matt and Lisa. They were a team. They were the couple everyone had wanted to be. And she’d lost sight of how lucky she was to be alive, to be in remission from cancer, which meant she needed to fight. Fight for her marriage. Fight for Matt. Fight for her future.

She’d never been a quitter, and she wasn’t about to be one now.

Matt & Lisa forever
. That’s what they’d carved into the big oak tree at her parents’ house when they were first together, and it’s what she’d whispered to him the night after they were married. She’d kicked cancer’s butt, she’d survived, and now she needed to kick butt with her marriage. Just because she’d lost one thing that was so important to her didn’t mean she deserved to lose another.

31.

Lisa,

I won’t give up on us, not now and not ever. You know what I
want? To start over on another road trip in our bright red
Cadillac
.
That and kiss my wife and tell her how damn much I love her.

Baby, come home.

Matt

32.

M
att?” Lisa’s voice, so strong in her head, so steady when she’d been imagining this call, was so shaky, so weak, that it was barely audible.

“Lisa?”

She burst into tears the moment she heard him, the second he said her name. Relief engulfed her, the grief she’d felt at being parted from him washing over her in waves.

“Lisa? Lisa!”

She sucked back her sobs, tried to force away the choke in her throat. “This is me telling my husband I love him,” she whispered. “And thanking him for the beautiful new book.”

“Damn, Lis, do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you? How worried I’ve been?” he muttered.

Lisa clutched the phone tighter, fought a fresh surge of tears as she imagined Matt standing on a building site somewhere, tool belt slung around his waist. Being without him had been a pain so raw, so real, but she’d been so sure she was doing the right thing, that she’d needed to give them both space. And maybe she had been right. Maybe if they hadn’t been apart they never would have found their way back.

“Can you meet me in Mexico?” she asked him.

“Mexico?” Mat practically yelled down the phone. “Just come home.”

She shook her head even though she knew he couldn’t see her. “I want some time together, just the two of us. Just tell me you’ll meet me there.”

“I’m there,” he said, yelling at someone to be quiet in the background. “Sorry. Where exactly do you want me?”

“I need you to get on the next flight out to Cancun,” Lisa said, the longing she felt just thinking about seeing him again making her squeeze her hand into a tight fist, nails biting into her palm. “I’ll be waiting at the Live Aqua resort. I’ve made the booking.” She sobbed again, furious with herself that she just couldn’t keep her crap together. “Just be there.”

“Lisa?”

“I love you, Matty. I miss you so bad.”

“I miss you too, baby. I miss you so . . .” Matt choked. A big sob echoed down the line, then a noise that sounded like him clearing his throat. Matt never broke down like that, had always been so frustratingly strong sometimes, and she sure as heck couldn’t imagine him crying on a building site. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Lisa held the phone so tight to her ear that it hurt, waited until he clicked off and the dial tone was the only noise she could hear.

She’d done it. She’d told him she loved him, and he was coming to meet her.

In less than twenty-four hours they’d be together. Now all she had to hope for was that they’d be able to find their way past everything and start over, for good this time.

33.

M
att?” Lisa had been sitting in the lobby of the resort for at least an hour. She’d checked in, paced around the pool for a while, then decided to sit with a glass of cold water and face the entrance, wanting to see Matt the moment he walked in.

“Lisa,” he called back.

“Matt!”
Ohmygod, it was him
. She jumped up and ran, not sure whether to wait for him to react first or whether to just throw her arms around him.

“Hey, baby,” he said when his eyes met hers.

Lisa couldn’t contain herself. She opened her arms and crashed into him, desperate to feel his body against hers, to inhale the smell of him, feel him, just be with him. They’d never been truly apart, and after weeks without him, she was ready to grab him and never let go. Maybe they should have spent more time apart instead of being joined at the hip. Maybe then she’d have known what she stood to lose.

“Hey.” He smiled, looking down at her. “You’re the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.”

Lisa suddenly felt shy, more self-conscious that she’d ever been with Matt. And then Matt grinned and she melted. He was gorgeous. Just the most incredible man, and she didn’t even know where to start on her long list of apologies. His smiles and easygoing way had been so frustrating when she’d been in so much pain, but it was just his way of coping, of getting on with life. She could see that now.

“Matt, I’m so sorry. There are so many things I need to tell you, too . . .” She didn’t even know where to start. “I’m sorry I pushed you away.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

She shook her head, leaning back to look up at him. “But I do.”

“I know why you did it, Lisa. You lost a baby, you had cancer, you went through so much and you just needed to check out and be alone for a bit, without me making things worse when you needed to figure it all out on your own.” His eyes were shining, tears visible even though none had fallen from his lashes yet. “I should have given you more space.”

“But I am sorry. I’m sorry for not being me all that time, for pushing you away.”

“I think the time apart was good. Made us realize what we could come back from,” Matt said softly, rubbing his thumb across her jawline. “It sure as hell made me realize I can’t live without my girl.”

She still loved when he called her his girl. She’d loved it when she was eighteen and she loved it now.

“I keep thinking back to when we first met,” she said in a low voice, still with her arms around him but leaning back now so she could look at him. “You made me so aware, so in love. I felt so different around you, and being without you showed me why I can’t live without you.”

“Baby, it was you who made me aware. I could have ended up dead with my car wrapped around a lamp post,” he said, shaking his head. “Drunk, stoned, dead . . . It wasn’t looking good for me.”

She disagreed. “You were friends with Kelly. She was sensible enough; she wouldn’t have let that happen. You weren’t
that
close to going off the rails.” There were so many things she wanted to ask him, wanted to say, but this was what she needed him to know now.

“Still, she wasn’t exactly going to tell me to stop drinking or smoking weed. Although she did kick my butt when I drove drunk one night, told me she’d phone the cops next time I even thought about doing it.”

“We changed each other,” she said wistfully, thinking back to happier times, before being a mom had even crossed her mind, before cancer was even on her radar. “And I don’t want that to stop.”

She had a lot to explain and a lot more to tell him, but he was here. And right now that was all that mattered. That and the fact that she finally had the time to make things right, to be with her husband and enjoy every day she had with him. She might feel like she wasn’t the whole woman she’d been before, but she was here and alive and in the end she’d fought damn hard to get to where she was. She deserved to be alive, to be having a second chance with her husband.

“Lisa?” Matt said.

“I’m here,” she replied, grabbing his hand as he held it out, knowing that he’d thought she was slipping back into sad memories.

“I love you,” he mumbled.

“I love you, too,” she said as she walked alongside Matt. It had been too long since she’d held his hand and told him those three little words, but damn, everything about it felt right now.

“Come on, let’s get rid of my bag and then you can take me down to the beach or to the restaurant so we can talk properly.”

Lisa grinned up at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Fancy fried calamari?” she asked with a laugh. “I’ve been wanting to order it for over two weeks now but just thinking about eating it made me feel like I was being unfaithful to you.”

Matt wrapped an arm around her and she tucked tight into him. Back in her happy place. “I say that sounds like the best damn idea I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Would you have forgiven me?” she asked with a laugh.

“Sweetheart, I’d forgive you a lot of things, but eating calamari without me? Not a chance. Definite grounds for divorce.”

Lisa laughed. “I guess you’ll have to take my word for it that I kept my mouth shut, then.”

They sat in the poolside restaurant, the air warm and balmy as the waiter brought them both beers.

“I don’t want to ruin the moment, but there’s just so much I want to say,” Lisa told him. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, it’s definitely okay.”

She was craving a fresh start, wanted to get everything out in the open.

“Can I start though?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around herself as she sat back in the chair, eyes never leaving his.

“I’ve kept so much inside, locked away from you,” Matt told her. “When my mom died, I went running into the hospital, and it wasn’t until I saw her body and touched her that it hit me. I’d thought that she was going to be okay, even when her hair fell out and she started to get so small because she’d lost so much weight. I just wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, accept it.”

“I wish I’d asked you about this. I wish you’d confided in me,” Lisa said.

“But I didn’t want to talk to you about it. I wanted us to be happy, and when I was with you I could forget about all that and it made me feel good. I felt better that way. It was like you were this beautiful, passionate, fun girl, and everything about you made me want more out of life, because I wanted to be with you. You were the best thing that happened to me and I didn’t want to burst that bubble by thinking about what I’d lost.”

“I wish I’d known more, though,” she said, blinking away tears. “I can’t believe I never asked you more, that after all this time we never talked about how you felt when you lost her or what you went through.”

“You were so young when we met, Lis. And we had so much fun. We always have,” Matt said. “I’ve been carrying around so much guilt for the way I treated my dad, but I just never got the words out to tell him I was sorry. I tried to make up for it, but I never said it. And then you got cancer and everything I felt with Mom came back, only a hundred times worse.”

Lisa thought about the way he’d held her hand in the hospital, kissed her and smiled and tried so hard to act like everything was okay. The way he’d refused to accept that she might not make it, that there was any other option other than to save her life.

“You must have been so scared when I went into surgery,” she said.

“Yeah, I was.” Matt said, voice husky. “I’d seen someone I love get taken by a cancer so similar to yours, and it was killing me to see you like that. That very first day we were told the news, I was terrified of losing you, because I knew what that kind of loss felt like and I didn’t think I could survive it again.”

Lisa filled her lungs, breathed deep over and over, the pain hitting her in waves. “That’s why you said from the very beginning that you’d do anything to save me, that it was no choice to you.”

Matt nodded, pain etched in his face. “I couldn’t lose you, Lisa. I couldn’t go through that again. I couldn’t lose the person that had made me happy again. Not for a second time.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, throwing herself against him, holding him tight, her arms wrapped around him. “All I could think about was the baby and all you could think about was losing me. And the more I think about what our child could have gone through, knowing he’d effectively been my death sentence? It’s horrid.”

“I wanted him, Lis, you need to believe that. I wanted to be a dad so damn bad, but not if the price was you.” He was stroking her head now, his fingers running through her hair. “Never if the price was you.”

“How do we move forward? How do we deal with never being parents?”

Matt’s breath was deep; she felt the rise of his chest against her face. “We just take it one day at a time.”

“Really?” she asked, pushing up so she could look at him.

“Really.”

“I don’t want you to blame me—I don’t ever want you to wish that you’d left me for someone you could have a family with.”

Matt laughed, a quiet, warm laugh that sent goose pimples across her skin. “Baby, I don’t want to leave you now and I doubt I ever will. The time apart was good for us because we both lost a lot this year, but one thing I don’t want to lose is you.”

Lisa tucked into him again, cocooned against his body. “I’m sorry I shot you down so fast about adoption. I just . . .”

“It was way too soon. I don’t care about all that—I was just trying to make you happy, to make you see that we still had options. To try to help you see that you could still be a mom if you wanted it.”

“Is it okay if we don’t?” she asked quietly. “I just want to be the two of us for a while, maybe forever, to just be us and start afresh. I don’t want to talk about what else we could do.”

“Yeah, that’s fine by me,” Matt said, dropping a kiss into her hair that felt so warm and comforting. She’d missed his touch. He might not have opened up about his feelings a lot before, but he’d always touched her, always made her feel loved. “All the more of you for me to enjoy without sharing, right?”

She smiled. “I just want to be me for a bit. To remind myself how lucky I am to be alive, to enjoy hanging out with you. I need to make peace with what happened before thinking about anything else. Or any
one
else.”

“I do have one confession to make,” Matt said. “And I can’t go back on my word, so you have to say yes.”

Lisa groaned. “What? Please don’t tell me you’ve gone crazy buying anything for the house or . . .”

He held up his hand, interrupting her. “While you were gone, I promised Blue a sibling. A four-legged one.”

Lisa burst out laughing and Matt joined in. She loved that they could be so serious one minute and he could make her laugh the next—it might have annoyed her when she was wallowing in her grief, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything right now. But a sibling for Blue? “I guess as long as it’s a rescue pup. And you’ve already told me that I don’t have a choice in the matter, right?”

Matt tipped her face up, his fingers nestled beneath her chin. “I love you, Lisa. I love you so damn much. And not just because you’re letting me get a puppy.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered back. “Although you’ll have to love me from the floor when we’re back home, ’cause there’ll be no room for you in the bed between Blue, me and the new pup.”

Matt groaned. “I knew there was a catch. No puppy then!”

Lisa knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but she felt more at peace with her life and within herself than she had in longer than she could remember.

“Tell me we’re going to be okay?” she murmured, gazing up at him.

Matt held her close, one hand stroking up and down her back. “I promise you, we’re going to be okay.”

She had a feeling this time that it was a promise he could keep.