Ginger's Heart (a modern fairytale) (10 page)

Finally he pulled her through the double doors at the back of the gym, and as they slammed solidly behind them, the cool air hit her damp skin, making her tremble. Tilting her head back, Ginger looked up at Woodman, her heart pounding, her breathing shallow and ragged.

His eyes were dark but soft—the same eyes that had annoyingly tracked her for years were now trained on her with total devotion, and she found she didn’t mind at all.

“Gin.”

“Yes,” she murmured—an answer not a question.

“Yes . . . what?” he asked, his eyes both dazed and uncertain as his arms encircled her.

She flattened her hands against his chest, which jerked under her palms with the same breathlessness she felt.

“Yes . . . Woodman.”

She heard his slight gasp of breath, saw the way his eyes slid down her cheeks to rest on her lips, felt the pressure of his arms flexing, and finally, as she closed her eyes, the featherlike touch of his lips brushing hers.

He groaned softly, pulling her closer and deepening the kiss, his lips moving insistently across hers. His tongue licked the seam of her lips, and she opened for him, letting his tongue tangle with hers as he hardened between them, his erection swelling against her belly.

And then . . .

It was over.

His lips broke away from hers, skimming her cheek as he held her tightly—almost
too
tightly—and buried his face in her hair. “Gin, Gin, Gin . . . oh God, baby, I
knew
it would be like this . . . I
knew
it would happen for us.”

His voice was breathless with emotion, with wonder, low and drugged, full of manly emotion that made her shiver even as she opened her eyes wide and rested her cheek on his shoulder.

“You’ll write to me while I’m gone?” he asked.

“Of course,” she whispered.

He exhaled, kissing her temple and sighing with relief. She could
feel
his happiness. It was profound and alive—a living, breathing thing wrapped in gratitude that surrounded them.

“Can I hold you for a while?” he asked.

“Mm-hm” was all she could manage, grateful for the silence that descended between them as he pulled her close, leaning up against the brick wall of their high school gym, with his cheek resting against her hair, just behind her princess tiara.

Woodman was grateful for Ginger.

But Ginger was grateful for the external silence because inside, her heart was in chaos.

The kiss they’d just shared? It was a good kiss. A really,
really
good kiss. And if it had been her first kiss, she might have even believed that it was the best kiss that life had to offer.

But it wasn’t.

She had kissed Cain.

She had kissed Cain and she knew—the way a little girl crosses the threshold to adulthood and truly begins to understand womanly things—that as much as her mind wanted to love one man, her heart would not be so easily swayed.

Three years later

~ Cain ~

Cain sat beside a sleeping Woodman, his hands on the wheel as he drove their rental car closer and closer to home. It was a nine-hour drive from Bethesda, Maryland, to Apple Valley, Kentucky, not including stops for food, gas, and pissing, which had added another two hours to the drive. Thankfully, Woodman’s pain meds had kicked in about an hour ago, and he’d been snoring ever since. Cain checked the dashboard clock: with a little under two hours to go, he was hoping he could pull into the circular drive of Belle Royale before nine o’clock tonight and surprise his aunt and uncle with an early arrival.

Woodman muttered in his sleep, a soft, low, guttural sound of pain, and instinctively Cain reached over and placed his hand over his cousin’s, rubbing his thumb over the white, freckled skin until Woodman quieted down. It was over two months since the accident that had crushed and almost claimed Woodman’s foot, and thus far the road to recovery had been long and painful.

On their way back to Norfolk, Virginia, after a port visit in Barcelona, Woodman was on deck, acting as a safety observer, when his right ankle had been accidentally crushed between an aircraft wheel and forklift. He’d been taken by helicopter to the Morón Air Base, then airlifted to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where they’d set his broken fibula, but he’d had to wait several days for the swelling to go down on his ankle before the medical staff was able to reconstruct his ankle’s crushed talus with cadaver bone, a plate, and five screws. After three weeks, his ankle bone had started to die from a lack of oxygenated blood, and he’d required follow-up surgery to reroute his veins to feed the remaining bones. Stable three weeks later, he’d been transferred to Walter Reed hospital in Maryland, and yesterday, nine weeks after the accident, Woodman had finally been given the okay to go home. His retirement was still under adjudication, but that was really just a formality since he’d been injured after three years of a four-year, active-duty contract.

For now he could get around okay on crutches since his upper-body strength was solid. He’d require at least a year of physical therapy (which could only do so much to improve the strength of his rebuilt ankle) when he got home, but the sad reality was that Woodman would probably walk with a limp and a cane for the rest of his life.

Cain, who’d taken several days of liberty at various ports of call over the past three years, hadn’t actually taken an extended vacation since his enlistment. With seventy accrued days, he’d used ten of them to be with Woodman at Landstuhl and asked to use another thirty days to accompany his cousin home to Kentucky. It was unusual for a man of Cain’s rank to be given a full month of liberty, but exceptions had been made based on his cousin’s condition, which found them—here and now—speeding down Interstate 71 toward Cincinnati with the dying sun out Woodman’s open window and the open highway up ahead.

Cain rolled down his window and leaned his elbow on the sill, his mind shifting to the moment he’d heard that Josiah was en route to Morón. Without a full account of his cousin’s injuries, Cain had been almost paralyzed by the fear that Josiah’s wounds were mortal, and had headed straightaway to his commanding officer, demanding, with all the composure he could muster, to be released from duty immediately so he could follow Josiah’s transport. He’d be forever grateful for the compassionate calm that Lieutenant Carlson had shown, directing a distraught Cain into private quarters to explain the extent of Woodman’s injuries and assure Cain that, while his foot was in grave danger, his life, most likely, was not.

After a full report on Woodman’s condition later that day, Cain had formally requested leave and headed straight to Germany, where he spent a few hours every day keeping Woodman company. When Woodman wasn’t totally out of it from the constant drip of pain meds, they’d play cards or swap stories about their shared childhood and their past three years in the service. The rest of the time, Cain’s German came in handy as he caught up on a couple years’ worth of sex with many a Rhineland Fräuleins.

Woodman’s injuries notwithstanding, it was a strange and unexpected time of mending and healing for the cousins. Cain’s priorities had shifted while they were away from home, his experiences in the Navy molding him from an unruly lump of clay, little by little, into the man he wanted to be. He’d learned loyalty and discipline, brotherhood and responsibility, and tied inexorably to this experience and growth had been Josiah—his cousin, practically his brother, and the best friend he’d ever known. He wanted and needed his cousin in his life, and he was determined not to act with the same selfishness he’d exercised as a teenager. Now that he felt the full measure of Josiah’s camaraderie restored, he never, ever wanted to lose it again.

Prior to his transfer from Germany to Maryland, Woodman, who’d held out hope of making a full recovery, was advised that his career as a damage controlman was over and that his file had been remanded for retirement approval. Cain watched in horror as his cousin’s indomitable spirit dipped dramatically, his eyes filling with uncharacteristic tears at the terrible finality of naval retirement at only twenty-one. In a sudden act of solidarity, Cain found himself promising that he’d meet Josiah at Walter Reed so they could drive home together. His cousin seemed encouraged by the idea that he’d have a wingman for the transition home, and Cain kept his promise, strolling into Woodman’s hospital room three days ago and flashing the keys to a rental car.

“Hey, cuz! Ready to go home?” he asked with a grin.

Woodman lifted his eyes, and Cain worked hard not to register the surprise he felt at the changes in his cousin’s appearance. Sitting in a wheelchair by a window, he looked like a caged animal who’d given up the hope of returning to the wild. He still had the muscle tone he’d built up over the past few years, so his chest was wide and strong under a thin blue hospital gown, but his face was bony and sallow, his eyes dull and discouraged, his beard shaggy.

“Cain,” he said softly, mustering a small smile. “Good to see you, man.”

“Josiah.” Cain had sat down in the chair beside his cousin. “You look . . . rough.”

“Don’t lie to me, huh?”

“I’m not a good bullshitter.”

“Since when?”

Cain scoffed softly. “You workin’ out?”

Josiah’s eyes narrowed. “I’m crippled.”

“One foot.” Cain slid his eyes to his cousin’s other foot, which was bare and in perfect condition. “Other one looks A-OK, sailor.”

To Cain’s horror, Josiah’s lips trembled. “I’m not . . .” He cleared his throat and continued in a stronger voice. “I’m not a
sailor
anymore.”

“Stop talkin’ crazy. You’ll be a sailor until you die.”

Looking down at his lap, Josiah muttered, “Part of me sorta wishes that day would come sooner’n later.”

The rest of Cain stiffened except for his left hand, which darted out and slapped his cousin’s face hard enough to leave a red handprint. Staring at each other in shock, Cain mumbled, “You talk like that again, I’ll break your neck.”

Josiah’s lip started trembling again, but to Cain’s relief, his cousin was on the verge of laughter, not tears. “Well, that’d hurry things along!” he finally said between gasps of mirth.

Cain joined him, laughing along, but inside he was deeply troubled by Woodman’s despondency and made a silent promise to do everything he possibly could to get his cousin back on his feet, proverbially and actually, before Cain had to return to his post.

Over the past three days at Walter Reed, slowly but surely, Woodman brooded less and laughed more in Cain’s company. But in every quiet moment, Cain saw the profound change in his cousin—the frustration and anger brimming just beneath the surface, the fatigue and despair—and he hated it. Of the two of them, Woodman had always been the golden boy, kind and smart, decent and popular, destined for great things. Even in high school, when his torn ACL had sidelined him from Annapolis, Woodman had managed to pick up his spirits, rehab his leg, and find another path for his life. With gusto. But now? He just seemed so goddamned hopeless, and it worried Cain.

Added to his worries about Woodman, he wasn’t that excited about going home after three years away. Things in his life had changed quite a lot since he’d left Apple Valley, and he wasn’t sure of where he would fit in or—in light of his behavior in high school—what his welcome would be like.

Foremost in the changes at home was that the week after Cain left for boot camp, his mother had remarried and moved to Frankfort, almost an hour away from Apple Valley. The timing of her impromptu nuptials suggested that she’d known her new husband, Jim Johnson, for quite some time, and Cain couldn’t help wondering if Jim Johnson had been partially responsible for his parents’ divorce. Either way, he wasn’t particularly eager to meet him.

Klaus, on the other hand, from whom Cain had felt such distance throughout his adolescence, had become Cain’s most loyal correspondent, writing to him once or twice a month faithfully while Cain was serving. And it meant something to Cain. It meant a lot. Yes, his letters were filled with boring news from McHuid’s—descriptions of new foals, favorite mares, and Ranger’s exquisite taste in the latest farm equipment—but sometimes, occasionally, like a nugget of silver on a bed of sand, there was a brief mention of Ginger. And Cain just about lived for those blinding flashes of rare and unexpected beauty in his father’s otherwise humdrum letters.

Glancing over at Woodman again, to assure himself that his cousin was asleep before giving himself permission to think about her, Cain took a deep breath and pictured her face. Having known Ginger all his life, he could flip through slides of her in his mind at will: little Ginger in pigtails following him around the farm . . . the day she came home to the manor house after her heart scare, looking as goddamned plucky as ever . . . her arms spread wide every October as she stood above them in the hayloft giggling . . . her body, softening into womanhood, as he checked her out covertly . . . her lips, parted and willing, waiting for him to claim them.

She was a constant, dull ache in his heart that throbbed like an open wound whenever he heard about her. And between his father’s occasional mentions of her and the regular letters she sent to Woodman, from which he read aloud from time to time, that wound had never been able to close.

A thousand times it had occurred to Cain to write to her and apologize for standing her up the night of that homecoming dance three years ago. He had a million regrets in his life, but that cowardly fucking move was on the top of the list. He should have had the decency to cancel. Hell, he
should have
had the decency not to kiss his cousin’s girl.

But in his dreams, he heard her sweet voice saying
I still want that first kiss.
God help him, the memory of her lips beneath his would be the last thought he grasped for on the day he died. The sweetness of her surrender to him, the trust, the fucking fireworks behind his eyes that had blown any other kiss out of his head and left hers glowing like magnesium in his heart.

He longed to apologize to Ginger with every fiber of his being. He longed to show her the man he was trying so desperately to become since leaving home. He longed to see the softness in her eyes, feel her body pressed against his, hear her voice near his ear whispering tenderly,
I’ve always known. It’s always been you.

He glanced at the lights of Cincinnati up ahead, then at Josiah sleeping peacefully beside him, hating himself for such weakness.

Cain set his jaw.

He needed to stay away from her.

Because no matter how much you longed for them, some things simply weren’t meant to be. The one person—the one conversation topic—that brought a genuine smile to his cousin’s dull, dejected eyes was Ginger, and Cain would sooner die than take that glimmer of hope away from him.

Ginger belonged to Woodman, not to Cain, and Cain intended to respect his cousin’s claim.

Earlier today, he’d asked Woodman, who’d been slumped in his seat, his expression a mask of quiet anguish as he toughed through the pain of his foot, “Excited to see Ginger?”

Josiah’s entire face had transformed at the mention of her name, softening, looking younger and more like his old self. But little by little it crumbled until he stared down at his lap despondently.

“Sure. Always,” he said softly. “But I can’t expect a girl like her to love a cripple.”

“Then we ain’t talkin’ about the same girl,” Cain said, his heart aching as he pushed all thoughts of her into Woodman’s arms. “Girl I know wouldn’t give two shits about your bad foot. In fact, with her in nursin’ school? Bet she loves it. She’ll have her own personal patient.”

“I don’t want to be her fuckin’
patient
, Cain. Don’t want to be some half man who she feels sorry for, who can’t do for her, who can’t . . . can’t . . .”

“Uh, did I miss somethin’ here? Did your balls get crushed instead of your ankle?”

“Cain—”

“No, I’m serious, son. ’Cause it seems to me you still have a workin’ pair.”

“Shut the fuck up about my balls, huh?”

“I’m just sayin’,” he continued, ignoring the cries of his own heart, “that you
can do
for her.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” said Josiah, but he wore a grudging smile, his cheeks turning pink, no doubt from thoughts of being intimate someday with Ginger.