Loving You Always (11 page)

W
hen Mama Jess had turned Walsh away a year ago, Kerris believed the months would be covered in molasses. A slow drip. In some ways it had been just like that. The days she forced herself out of bed, forced herself to be with people, forced herself to smile—those were the days she measured in slow, painful breaths and the weight of loneliness. In other ways, the minutes, hours, and days had moved at the speed of sound, thrown ahead and waiting for her to catch up.

She and Cam had lived apart for a year, and according to North Carolina law, Cameron Raymond Mitchell and Kerris Moreton Mitchell could officially dissolve their marriage. Cam’s lawyers, efficient rascals that they were, had already worked out all the details so the divorce could zip right through the system. The papers were here, already signed by Cam, awaiting her signature. They had agreed to walk out of the marriage with what they had come into it with. Cam had acquired a lot more than she had over the last few years, considering the money Kristeene had left him, but Kerris wanted none of it. It was so simple. So easy. So clean.

And yet, the typed words blurred under Kerris’s teary eyes. She saw her failure, her selfishness, her faithless heart woven between the lines of text. That kiss with Walsh had been the domino that fell and started the downward spiral of her marriage. The beginning of the end. Or had the end begun when she said “I do,” knowing she didn’t, couldn’t, love Cam the way he deserved to be loved?

She tightened her trembling fingers around the pen, blinking away the last of her tears and signing the papers. Half of her heart moaned because this was it, but the other half—those chambers she couldn’t hide from any longer—whispered one name.

Walsh.

The thought of being with him made her ache and burn, twisted her heart around itself. Though the divorce wouldn’t be official for another few months, she knew it was only a matter of time before he came to her. Would he even wait? She hoped so. She hoped not.

Kerris was still wrestling with the same riot of emotions when she entered her therapist Dr. Stein’s office later that afternoon. Dr. Liza Stein was a gravedigger, exhuming the cadavers of past hurts, starting with Amalie and working her way backward. She had been unable to fully explore what Amalie had meant to Kerris without touching on Cam. And, of course, Dr. Stein had picked up the thread of that pain, Cam’s departure, and followed it to her foster parents, and Mama Jess, and, finally, her mother.

It was hard for Kerris to accept that she had abandonment issues, but it seemed that was the case. Would she even have married Cam at all if she’d had someone like Dr. Stein in her life earlier? Immediately after the rape, or when she was a teenager? Well-meaning counselors and teachers had recommended it before, but she’d never done the interior work this process demanded, and she’d probably regret it for the rest of her life.

You shouldn’t cry over spilled milk, but there were so many innocent bystanders who had been splashed by her sloppy attempts to feel whole, to feel wanted and secure and like someone worth sticking around for. Namely, Cam and Walsh. Casualties of her insecurity and, dare she admit it, selfishness. She didn’t just cry over the milk she had spilled. She mourned it, and wondered how she could ever make amends.

Dr. Stein didn’t believe in a lot of preliminaries and pleasantries. She dove right in, and it wasn’t long before she had Kerris confessing her guilt about the divorce, which was moving ahead with speedy inevitability.

“Kerris, do you want to stay married to Cam?”

“No, I definitely don’t.” Kerris shifted on the couch, glancing at the petite therapist with her stylish auburn bob and cat-eye glasses. “But he deserved someone else. He deserved better. I married him knowing I didn’t love him the way I should.”

“And did he know that? Did he walk into this with his eyes open?”

“Well, he knew I didn’t love him that way.” Kerris hesitated, not wanting to broach a subject she had managed to avoid. “He may have even suspected how I felt about Walsh.”

“Walsh?” Dr. Stein pounced. “And who is that? Where does he figure into all this?”

Kerris laid out her history with Walsh and Cam, piece by piece, detail by detail. She searched Dr. Stein’s face for condemnation, for censure, but saw only professional impassivity, and the occasional gleam of sympathy.

“Kerris, what holds your heart back from Walsh?”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing held her heart back from Walsh. What she felt for him was tidal. It had crashed past her sense of right, had swept over her vows. He had capsized her heart.

“Um…I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“Do you love Walsh Bennett?”

Kerris closed her eyes. She couldn’t say that aloud, not today, especially with the divorce papers just now beginning their three-month journey through the legal system.

“Well, I…I care deeply about him,” Kerris edited, hoping Dr. Stein would, just this once, leave this one stone unturned.

No such hope.

“Kerris, this works only if you’re honest with me and with yourself. You know that.”

Dr. Stein laid her glasses aside, her eyes sharper without the lenses.

“You’ve already admitted you married Cam knowing you had feelings for his best friend. And you’ve done what adults do when they realize they’ve made mistakes. You’ve owned that. Healthy people can own their mistakes and, over time, move on. You’ve taken huge steps toward that, and I applaud you. Can you own this emotion? Do you love Walsh?”

Kerris looked down at the brightly patterned sundress she wore, tracing the paisley swirls with her finger, wishing she could disappear into the design, be consumed by the color and pattern.

“Kerris, I asked you a question.”

Kerris shook her head, setting the silver bells in her earrings jingling.

“No, you don’t love him, or no, you won’t answer?” Dr. Stein leaned forward, those unrelenting eyes never leaving Kerris’s face.

“I…I don’t want to talk about this. Not today,” Kerris said. “To say it while I’m still married to Cam, it just feels wrong.”

“Kerris, don’t judge your feelings. Don’t avoid them. Own them. If you feel something, you have to voice it. Have you made any progress on the other thing we discussed last week?”

Kerris froze, unsure which poison she’d choose. Talking about Cam and Walsh or talking about…

“Amalie,” Dr. Stein reminded her unnecessarily. “You were going to finally visit her grave.”

Not a morning went by without Kerris thinking about her little girl, and some days the pain was as fresh as it had been when she woke up with an empty womb. Other days it was a dull ache, distracting, but not consuming. She’d think she was getting better, putting that behind her, only to burst into tears at the sight of a mother and child in the park, or at the grocery store.

“Have you given any more thought to that?” Dr. Stein asked.

“Um, I have.”

“You have visited, or you have given more thought to it?”

“I thought about it some more, and I will do it soon.” Kerris stood, glancing at her watch. “Looks like we’re done.”

“I say when we’re done,” Dr. Stein corrected, her voice like a hammer wrapped in fluffy cotton. “We have three minutes left. I’d like to spend these last three minutes talking about Amalie.”

“I can’t.” Kerris gulped, blinking back the tears thoughts of her baby girl often brought to her eyes. “I’m not ready.”

“You’ve made so much progress over the last year.” Dr. Stein wrote something in the margins of her notes before standing to face Kerris. “Please don’t think I’m not proud of you. I am, but there’s a next level. And to get there, you’re going to have to deal with both of these issues. Amalie, and your relationship with Walsh. If you don’t want to end up hurting him the way you hurt Cam, you need to be honest and figure out what you really want from him and for both of you.”

Dr. Stein voiced Kerris’s fear. That she would hurt Walsh. That as much as she cared for him, as much as he meant to her, as deeply as she felt connected to him, that her damaged self would hurt him. She couldn’t live with that. And yet, the thought of him made her throb. Not just him physically, but his gentleness, his intuition, his sensitivity, his intensity, his strength. Could she really do the hard work it would take for all of that to be hers? Did she even deserve it?

A week later, Kerris was no closer to peace. She’d been wrestling with the issues Dr. Stein unearthed. The past was a labyrinth she couldn’t find a way out of. With every turn she took, she hoped it would lead to an exit to a new life, a new chapter, but each turn just looped her back into old memories, old patterns, old hurts. Sometimes, alone outside, Kerris could work things out that made no sense when she was indoors, so she set out for her garden.

“Mama Jess, I’m out back picking greens and tomatoes.”

Kerris let the screen door slam behind her, stomping toward the garden. She’d spent a lot of time out there in the week since she’d sent off the divorce papers. Seemed like this garden was a form of therapy all its own.

Kerris grabbed the bucket they always left at the garden gate, and slipped on her hot-pink Hunter rain boots. She rolled up the sleeves of the men’s shirt she’d snatched up from the Salvation Army thrift store last week, the tail of the oversize shirt flowing to mid-thigh. With the shirt completely covering her tiny cutoff denim shorts, and the hot-pink rain boots covering her calves up to her knees, she didn’t want to think about the picture she made. She looped her hair up into a knot on top of her head, secured with a wooden spoon.

She started down a row of tomatoes, bucket in hand, squatting to inspect the first bushel, not turning when she heard Mama Jess come up behind her.

“I think you were right about these tomatoes, Mama Jess.” She tossed the words over her shoulder, moving onto the next bushel. “Still a lot of green. We do have a few in the house, though, right? I was gonna make a salad tonight for myself since you’ll be off playing bingo.”

Kerris stepped across a couple of rows, careful to avoid the still-growing vegetation. She reached down to caress a collard green leaf.

“These are ready, though,” she said to the still-quiet Mama Jess. “I’ll pull some of these and we can have them for dinner tomorrow night. How’s that sound?”

The woman wasn’t this quiet even when she was asleep.

“Did you hear—”

Kerris turned, and the words froze in her throat and then melted under the heat of Walsh’s gaze. He was still on the tomato row, a few feet behind her, incongruous with his tailored slacks and his expensive shoes planted in the dirt of her garden.

“Walsh.” She dropped her bucket.

“Kerris.” The brewing storm in his eyes said the evenness of his tone was a lie.

“Why are you here?” One hand flew up to her messy hair and the other tugged the tail of her Salvation Army shirt.

“Somehow I thought that would be obvious.” Walsh took the steps necessary to bring him to her row.

“I’m not— My divorce isn’t final yet.” She took a step back and over into a row of peas. “Cam and I have lived apart for a year, but we still have a few months before things are final.”

Walsh followed her, stepping over a row of collard greens. He reached out to capture her hand. She tried to free herself, but he held firm.

“Stop running from me.” His soft words were an entreaty, a command, and a caress all bundled up in one unavoidable knot.

“I’m not running.” She knew it was a lie, but she couldn’t help it. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here…yet.”

“And I’m tired of waiting,” he whispered, taking another step forward, using his index finger to tilt up her chin. “Don’t send me away again. I’ve missed you.”

She nodded, closing her eyes in the sweetest torture. His mouth brushed hers lightly, once and then again.

“Don’t do this,” she said, his breath hot against her parted lips.

His traced his tongue across her bottom lip.

“Do what?”

“That.”

She shook her head, helpless, sure that he was going to kiss her and certain that she would not be able to send him away.

Walsh dipped his head, hovering over her open mouth for a few seconds, and she breathed him in before he possessed her mouth completely. He nudged her lips open wider, dipping his tongue into her mouth. He groaned at the shy brush of her tongue against his. He slid his hands down to her waist, pulling her close until her body’s soft curves melted into the harder lines of his own. Desire simmered between them, a slow burn that steadily licked away at their control until there was nothing left but an open flame.

Kerris leaned into him, her hands plowing their way up his chest and around his neck. Lips, tongue, teeth, famished and feverish. She was lost in him, oblivious to the world, pulled into the vortex of a kiss deeper and hotter than any she’d had before. His large, warm hand slipped under her shirt, stroking the naked skin of her back. He left her mouth long enough to scatter kisses down her neck and into the open collar of her shirt, whispering across the bones.

“A year. You’ve made me wait a year.”

“Walsh, we—”

“And I’d wait another year, if I had to.” He firm lips curved against her mouth. “But don’t make me.”

“Thought I told you to take it slow,” Mama Jess said from the screen door.

Kerris tried to pull back, but Walsh trapped her against him, looking over Kerris’s shoulder at Mama Jess with both brows raised.

“I
have
been taking it slow,” he said.

“Didn’t look slow to me.”

“Why are you watching?” He laughed, pulling Kerris to his side and heading back toward the cottage.

“I gotta keep an eye on you with my girl.” Mama Jess frowned, but her lips twitched with a smile she wouldn’t give in to.

“I’ll take care of
my
girl.” Walsh looked down at Kerris, his eyes going a little softer and hotter. “Don’t you have a bingo game or something that would take you away from the house for a few hours?”

Mama Jess laughed outright, placing a hand on her hip and sticking a stern finger in Walsh’s face.