Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) (29 page)

“If I’m walking into heartbreak, that’s my own choice, Eden.”
He stood up, backing away. “I’ll be there for you, no matter what. Whether you can give me what I want in return or not, I’ll be there for you.” He left then, and I was bathed in darkness once more.

mistletoe reminders

Christmas Day at the Havens’ was even more delightful than the day before. Breakfast was pancakes and bacon and scrambled eggs and waffles from a real waffle iron, toast and buckets of coffee (they even had decaf, miraculously) and orange juice and muffins and…more food than I knew what to do with.
 

Watching the family exchange gifts was…heartwarming. That was the only word for it. They had all clearly put thought and effort into buying or making a gift that suited the recipient. I loved giving gifts and I wished I’d been able to bring something for everyone, but it was nearly made up for by just watching everyone else get excited and rip open their presents. All the joyful energy of a Christmas morning.

Everyone had opened their presents, the wrapping paper was cleaned up, and then Karen reached beside her chair and handed me a slim, small package wrapped in glittery purple paper. She reached across the space between us, handing it to me.

I took it, stared at it, then looked up to Karen. “I—what? I didn’t even know I was coming until Carter brought me here. I don’t have—I can’t…”

“You can,” Karen said. “It’s nothing much. Something I had that I thought you could use.”
 

I hesitated, but everyone was staring at me and I couldn’t very well refuse. So I opened it. Inside the wrapping was a thin black case, the kind of thing a necklace or bracelet would have been in.
Jared’s
was written across the top.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t go to Jared’s,” Karen joked. “It was just what I had to wrap it in.”

I opened the case, and inhaled sharply. Inside was a silver chain with a heart-shaped pendant.
Courage
was inscribed on one side of the heart,
Trust
on the other.
 

“It was a gift from Carter, actually. For Mother’s Day. He was thirteen. He’d spent the winter shoveling snow to earn money, and he bought that for me himself. It was very sweet, but—”

“Completely random,” Carter said. “I didn’t know what to get you, and that’s all the jewelry store had that I could afford.”

I lifted the pendant. Courage and trust. Two things I didn’t have. Two things Karen Haven seemed to instinctively know I desperately needed. “Th-thank you. So much.” It was a fifteen year-old necklace that she’d probably never worn, yet it meant something to me. “I wish I’d known, I’d have—”

“Actually,” Carter said, standing up, “you do have something you could give all of us.”

“I do?”

He nodded, and then went to the closet by the front door and retrieved my cello case. “I went and got it early this morning. I know we’d all love to hear you play.”

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. “I don’t know, I haven’t prepared anything—” That was a copout, though, and I knew it. I could play fifty different pieces from memory. “Sure, I could play for a few minutes.” There was a chorus of encouragement from the gathered family, Carter’s voice the loudest. “I need a chair from the kitchen, though. One without armrests.”

Carter brought the chair, set it in front of the fireplace facing the room. I opened Apollo’s case, lifted him out, spent a moment wiping him down with the soft cloth I kept in the case. Plucked, strummed, tuned. I tried not to look at the faces watching me eagerly, expectantly. I wasn’t typically nervous in front of crowds, especially once I started playing, but this was different. I settled Apollo between my knees, having to tip him back farther than normal to take into account my huge belly. I started with a piece I knew backward and forward, the intro to Bach’s cello suite. It was like a warm-up for me, a familiar friend. Within a dozen strokes of my bow, I was lost to the music. God, Carter knew me so well. He knew this calmed me, knew I needed to play.

I went through the first suite in its entirety, and then paused. Part of me wanted to play my solo, but I knew I’d be emotional if I did. I was always a wreck after I played that. I glanced at Carter, found courage in his eyes.
 

“So…I thought I’d play something kind of special. I’ve been composing a suite of solos over the past few years. I’ve written pieces for those closest to me. My mother who passed away, my dad, my twin sister. Her husband—” My voice caught, and I forced myself to keep going, to cover over it. “Well, over the fall, I wrote a piece for someone else who has come to mean a lot to me. Carter, this is for you. It’s…it’s my Christmas present to you.”

I closed my eyes, pushed away all thoughts and all emotions. I opened my eyes and focused on Carter, seeing only him. My bow drew across the A string, sending a high quavering note into the air. I held the note for a beat, drawing the bow back across the string, and then cut loose, my fingers flying across the fingerboard, the bow slanting and diving wildly. It was a fast, hard-driving intro-- —crazy like the crazy way we’d met. The pace slowed, turned melancholy and deep, no less complex for the slower pace. There was longing in the notes, places where the shifting of the tune seemed almost discordant, reflecting my inner turmoil over Carter. It was the longest piece I’d composed, oddly, considering I’d only known Carter for seven months. But in that short span of time, he’d managed to infiltrate my life, bringing a chaotic and turbulent mix of emotions into my life, disrupting my intentional isolation with his quiet strength and consistent presence. As I thought about Carter while I played, my hands had a mind of their own. They took over the cello and seemed to go haywire, flooding my normally smooth and precise style with intensity and frenetic speed and an edge of abandonment.

When the piece was finished, the room was silent for a tense heartbeat. Karen had tears in her eyes. “My god, Eden. That was…breathtaking. Thank you for sharing that with us.”

I ducked my head. “Thank you for sharing your Christmas celebration with me. It’s been…magical. You don’t even know how much it’s meant to me.”

An hour later, Carter took me home. I paused at the front door of the Haven home, turned to wave goodbye to everyone. I got hugged a good twenty times, twice by Karen. “We’ll see you again, right?” she asked as she stepped away from me.

I nodded. “I hope so.”
 

Fifteen minutes later, Carter pulled up into my driveway and helped me into the house. He carried my cello for me, and I could tell he was nervous to do so by the way he held it and by how gingerly he set the case down. I hung up my coat, and turned to find Carter standing at the front door, watching me, staring at me intently.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“Everything? For coming over. For playing such beautiful music for my family. For the piece you wrote for me.” He paused, licked his lips. “For being you.”

I resorted to sarcasm in an effort to conceal how deeply his words touched me. “That’s a stupid thing to be thankful for. Who else would I be? Michael Jordan?”

Carter gave me a disgusted look. “Eden—”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry. Defense mechanism. You’re welcome. And thank
you
. I didn’t realize how much I was dreading Christmas alone until you showed up.”

He held out his hand, and I took it, let him draw me to his chest. “I have a gift for you, too.” He gestured at the far corner of the living room where a sculpture stood.
 

 
I stepped toward it, my breath stolen by the beauty of the piece. It was nearly as tall as I was and, at first glance, it seemed to be nothing more than two lengths of wood woven together. But as I got closer, details came into view. It was part of a tree, or carved to look like one, two trunks split at the root and twining together, wrapping around each other, tangled until they formed a single entity. Each trunk was entirely covered with an intricate array of Celtic knot work. The amount of work that he’d put into the knot work was simply mind-boggling. It was extraordinary, each knot threaded into the next, every available inch of wood turned into an myriad of interwoven lines and forms.
 

“Oh, my god, Carter. It’s…I don’t even have words.” I looked at him, my eyes wet. “How long have you been working on that?”

He shrugged. “Couple months. I was hiking with Tommy at the start of the summer--—before I met you--—and I saw this tree. Two trunks, two individual trees growing side by side, but they’d grown together until they were one. It made me think even then that it’d make a great sculpture. So when I met you and heard your story, I knew I had to make this for you. It’s you and Ever.”

“Did you use the actual tree?” I asked.

“Oh, no way. It was a huge tree. Like, forty feet tall, three feet in diameter for each trunk. That’s why it was so amazing. The tree, I mean. You see trees like that every once in a while, but they’re usually small, kind of stunted. This was literally two full-grown trees, just twined together.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d once felt that way about Ever and myself. As one. Totally joined, almost sharing a brain at times. Yeah, I had some petty jealousy issues, but she was my twin. Absolutely a part of me. I wasn’t sure what would remain, once the pieces of the wreck I’d caused were finally out in the open.

“So you carved this from scratch?”

He nodded. “Yep. It’s what I do, babe.”
He called me babe again.
It made something inside me churn; I wasn’t sure if it was nerves or desire or happiness, but it was intense, hearing that one word drop from his full, expressive lips.

He held me, just held me. Threaded his fingers through my hair, smoothed his hands on my back in circles. I inhaled his scent. “Thank you, Carter. It’s perfect.”

When I moved away, he didn’t let me go. Instead, he looked at me, meaningfully. “I did one other thing while I was here grabbing your cello.”

I didn’t want to look up. I had a feeling I’d know what I’d see. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” He smirked at me. “Look up, Eden.”

“No.” I shook my head against his chest. “You’re making me want things I can’t have.”

“Who said you can’t?”

“I did.”

He breathed out, a long, slow, sad sound. “The only way you’ll ever really take your life back is to forgive yourself.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You fucked up. Everyone fucks up, Eden. You know my story, what I did.” He put his palm to my cheek, turned my face up to his. “It doesn’t have to define who you are, or determine the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you have to live a life relegated to misery.”

“What if she doesn’t forgive me?”

“You won’t know till you ask her to.”

“What if I ruined their marriage?”

He pushed my hair behind my ear. “That’s between them. He messed up, too. That’s not up to you.” Carter touched my chin with his index finger, tipping my face up. “
Look
, Eden.”

I looked. He’d hung mistletoe from the lintel of my door. My heart stuttered, maybe even stopped for a split second, and then resumed beating with a thundering frenzy. His face was suddenly closer, his eyes palest blue and fiery, intent on mine.

“Just once.” His voice was a whisper, a plea.

God
damn
, I did want to kiss him. But the question was, could I kiss him just once? Or would I feel his kiss and crave it again, and again?
 

He was waiting for me to say yes. He wouldn’t kiss me if I didn’t want to. He held my face in both hands, thumbs brushing my cheekbones.
 

“Once,” I agreed.
 

He took a deep breath, and I watched his tongue slide out to run over his lips. My hands were trapped between us, my palms against his chest, and I could feel his heart beating beneath my right hand. Hammering, hard and loud, just like mine. That--—the thunder of his heart—that gave me courage. He was scared, too. Nervous. Maybe he was also
 
if he could kiss me just once.
 

And then thoughts were banished. His lips closed in on mine, his eyes open. And then he stopped, his lips just barely brushing mine. “You’re supposed to close your eyes,” he said.
 

I breathed a laugh. “But yours are open, too.”

“Because yours are.”

“So let’s both close our eyes at the same time,” I suggested.

He chuckled, a low rumble. “Okay. But for the record, I don’t think you’re supposed to laugh before a first kiss.”

“Oh, yeah?” I wondered if I’d messed it up somehow. I fell back on sarcasm. “And you read this in which rule book?”

“Good point.”

As quickly as it had come, the humor was gone, and the air between us crackled. Sizzled. Taut as a tightrope, fraught with all the electricity of a lightning storm. I slid my hands up, snaked them over his shoulders, clutched his neck and the back of his head. Applied the gentlest amount of pressure, a subtle encouragement. It was all he needed. His lips descended to mine, touched, shifted and moved, a whisper of mouth against mouth. My eyes were closed, and all my senses were afire. He smelled like Carter, sawdust faintly, cologne, a hint of coffee. His body was hard, filling my space, his hair soft and his chest moving against mine with each breath, his hands on my face so gentle and far too tender, and his breath was warm and his lips were warm and moist and perfect. His thighs brushed mine, his toes touched mine.
 

Slow and questing, the kiss grew like ivy on a wall, strong and sure.
 

I fell into the kiss, felt myself drowning, felt my heart opening, blooming like a rose seeking the sunlight.
 

We might’ve kissed for only a moment, or for hours. I didn’t know, and didn’t care.
 

A part of me was torn away when Carter broke the kiss. I was left on my tiptoes, eyes closed, waiting for another kiss, for more. “Once.” Carter breathed the word, a reminder of his promise.

“Damn you.” I went flat-footed, fisted my hands in his shirt, and rested my forehead on his chest, inhaling his scent. “You say once, and then you kiss me like that. Not fucking fair.” I stepped away, forcing my feet to take me backward, deeper into the living room, farther away from him. As if to remind me of the reason why I couldn’t keep kissing Carter, the baby kicked me so hard I gasped and flattened my hands on my belly. “Shit, that hurt.”