To Have and to Hold (19 page)

He could rest.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said. “And that feels so familiar and so new at the same time. My mother used to say—she and my father had been married thirty years, and she was this weird combination of romantic and pragmatic about it. And she said that the trick is to give yourselves new opportunities all the time. To fall in love again. And that if you can do that, it’ll last. So you fall out, because that’s the nature of life, that things get stale and time wears you down. But if you’re lucky, love renews itself. I guess this gives me faith that no matter what happens to us, we’ll fall back in.”

He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her full on the mouth, and she didn’t hesitate before opening completely to him. She was so warm and soft and giving and—

Their third passenger resettled irritably in her window seat. Hunter released Trina and shifted uncomfortably, his jeans suddenly way too tight.

It was going to be a long flight.

“You’re in big trouble, obviously.”

Phoebe scuffed her sandal on the rug in the airport.

“Both of you,” Trina qualified. “You scared years off Hunter’s life. And Nate and Jake and Griff’s, too. You would have given me a heart attack, had I actually known what was going on.”

“He was
supposed
to tell you,” Clara said. “That was the whole point.”

Clara’s face showed defiance, and something occurred, suddenly, to Trina. She crossed her arms and stared Clara down. “You didn’t really get your period.”

Clara shook her head.

“You lied to me. To get me to stay longer. Yeesh.” Trina shook her head. “This is what we get for enrolling them in theater programs,” she said to Hunter. “Actresses.”

“I’m thinking no more theater
ever
,” Hunter said darkly.

“Or softball, for that matter,” Trina said.

She was enjoying herself. They sounded like allies. Like
parents
.

They sounded like a
family
.

She snuck a look at him, and he was sneaking a look back. And his eyes held all sorts of emotions, so many she didn’t trust herself, suddenly, not to cry.

She didn’t even have words for it, for how she’d come back to life. Breathing for what felt like the first time in days. The numbness she hadn’t realized had taken over her own body thawing. Her heart beating, hard. Joy like an invader in her veins.

And the look on his face when she’d said yes. He’d lit up, all the blankness gone, a sudden vivid longing painted all over him.

This was everything she’d never dared hope for.

Her silence must have scared the hell out of the children because Clara suddenly burst out with, “It was Grandma’s idea!” like she’d cracked under intensive interrogation.

“You hiding, you mean?” Hunter said.

“Not just the hiding,” Clara said, very, very quietly.

Trina and Hunter both turned to her, and Hunter demanded, “Do you mean it was Grandma’s idea to pretend you had your period?”

The last word came out like Hunter wasn’t quite sure of it.

He’d never have been able to deal with menstruation without me
, Trina thought. And hid her smile so the kids wouldn’t see.

“You’ve been—plotting with Grandma all along? What, like on the phone?” Hunter sounded incredulous.

Both girls were nodding.

“You, too?” Trina asked Phoebe.

More nodding.

Trina finally gave up on pretending she wasn’t impressed. “Wow.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Hunter said.

“Don’t kill Grandma!” both girls said simultaneously.

“We’ll figure out some suitable consequences for all
three
of you,” Trina said.

“Grandma is grounded for a year. No phone privileges till she’s ninety,” Hunter growled. But she could see he was wrestling a smile, too. It made her heart feel two sizes too big.

It made her want to cave in every possible way, which in turn made her stand up straighter and put more steel in her spine as she addressed the girls. “You know this is very serious.” But she, too, was having trouble with the corners of her mouth. “You lied to us. Outright. You deceived us and scared us and—”

“But it
worked
!” Clara cried. “You’re going to
stay!
”

Suddenly Trina’s chest felt terribly, terribly tight and she had to blink, hard.

“Oh, honey,” Trina said. And put her arms around both girls. She snuck a look at Hunter, who nodded. “Yes. Phoebe and I are staying.”

One of the girls in her arms gave a shriek of delight, and then both of them were talking at once. “We thought you were!” “Phoebe said you were!” “It’s pretty cool that he followed you to the airport. It’s really romantic.” “Not that we like romance. We think it’s gross. But still.” “Does this mean you’re getting
married
?”

“Yes.”

There was an interval of loud hooting and hollering and quiet, tearful hugging.

“And then he’ll be my father? And you’ll be her mother? And we’ll be
sisters
?”

Phoebe’s tone was so reverent that it made Trina’s breath catch.

“He’d be your stepfather. And I’d be Clara’s stepmother. And you’d be stepsisters.”

“But good stepsisters. Not evil stepsisters.”

“Speaking of which,” Trina said. “You’re still in trouble. No electronic devices for three days. Including all telephones.”

It was a testament to the happiness of the moment that Clara and Phoebe barely even groaned.

“Shh.”

She woke to find a hand over her mouth, and she bit it, hard. The owner of the hand grunted and resolved into Hunter.

“You were making a lot of noise.”

“Because your hand is in my pants,” she pointed out. The other one was hot against the crotch of her flimsy panties, which were now
wet
flimsy panties.

“You liked it. You were rocking against it.”

She wasn’t going to argue about that. She could feel how swollen she was and wondered how long she’d been moving against him, but she put that question out of her head and resumed the rhythm she’d left off.

“You fell asleep waiting for me to finish putting the girls to bed,” he whispered. They were staying in two adjoining rooms at a hotel near the airport.

“Sorry,” she whispered back. Only she wasn’t. Not anymore. Hard to be sorry about anything when he’d found exactly the right spot to rest his palm against her. Ungh.

But it wasn’t quite enough. Not the pressure against her anatomy, not his other hand idly swirling near her nipple. She arched her back to try to get more of both, but he failed to oblige. He was doing it on purpose, the bastard, teasing her. She moaned and closed her thighs around his hand.

“Tell me a story?”

She smiled into the dark.

“Was it good, even the first time? Was I nervous? I bet I desperately wanted to completely and totally snow you. Ruin you for all men for all time. That’s how I felt the first time in the tree house.”

“I don’t think so. If you were, you sure as hell didn’t show it—either time. You were super in charge, super alpha. Sexy.” Her whole body flushed, remembering the power of
his
body over and in her.

“Make that sound again.”

“Which one?”

“The one you just made.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. Like a breath and a moan. Were you thinking about it?”

“Yeah.”

“About me
fucking
you that first time?”

Earlier that evening, while the girls had been reading in the other hotel room before bed, he’d reread all the emails they’d sent back and forth while he was deployed. It wasn’t quite as good as getting his memory back, he’d told her, but it came damn close. In one of them, she’d referenced a discussion they’d had about dirty talk, and he’d made her rehash the conversation. It had taken place early in their days together, when he’d sworn aloud during sex, then apologized, and she’d told him she liked the word
fucking
, even used as a verb. She’d told him she liked dirty talk, the way it felt in her own mouth, as if the words had weight and shape, something she could swirl her tongue over. And she liked it in his mouth, the words twining and insinuating, amping her up faster than touch.

Oh,
really
? he’d said, giving her a look that said the girls’ bedtime couldn’t come soon enough.

Really
, she’d said, smirking.

He slid a finger easily into her, then another. In. Out. A pace just slow enough to make her desperate for more. “Hunter.”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“I wanted to spoil you for all women that first night, too. I wanted to blow away your reasons we shouldn’t be together. I wanted you to forget all of them.”

“There were
no
good reasons we shouldn’t.”

“Well, except the girls. Being careful of their feelings. That was legit.”

“Which we pretty much sucked at.”

“Yeah.” His thick, strong fingers between her legs were muddling up her thinking. “We tried. Neither of us was counting on amnesia.”

“And PTSD.”

They both got really quiet then. He didn’t remove his fingers from inside her, but his movements stilled.

“You—gonna be okay?” she asked.

He took his hand away and sighed. “Not yet. Not completely. But I’m here. And I think I’ll get a little more okay each day, with setbacks. I’ll get some help. I’ve got a therapy referral, and Jake gave me some info about counselors and groups.”

“Is that—would you do that? I know guys aren’t always into that stuff.”

“If it were just me? No. But I’ve got the girls to think of, and you. So I want to do whatever I can to be okay. And if it means sitting and talking it out with someone, whatever, I can handle it. Sometimes that’s what it takes to man up, you know? Doing something that’s out of your comfort zone. Plus, it does help to talk to other people who’ve been there. Nate said some stuff to me that really resonated. He said, ‘It’s hard to be the one who survives. You’re supposed to be grateful to be alive, but that doesn’t mean you are.’ ”

His words made her heart hurt. “You feel like that? Like you aren’t grateful to be the one who lived?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like—you wish it weren’t that way?” She was holding her breath.

“You mean would I off myself? No. No fucking way. But does it feel like it’s all wrong? Hell yeah.”

“When that happens—when you feel like it’s all wrong—tell me? And I’ll—” She hesitated. “I’ll make you forget. Just for a little while. Just as long as you need to, to be glad you’re alive.”

He rolled her over, his mouth searching hers out in the dark, and when he found it he gave her the most overwhelming sensation of coming home. In the dark, he blew a breath out, and she reached for his hand and held it, hard.

“Would you do that now?”

His voice was low and a little shaky.

“God, yeah. Any time. Every fucking time.”

And she did.

She’d expected it to be more…prepossesing. It was just an office building with hundreds of small glass windows, surrounded by a not-terribly-elegant fence. She did have to give her name, and Stefan’s, at the security station in the front, but the guy in the booth reminded her more of a parking-lot attendant than the kind of high-minded caricature you’d see in the movies or…on TV. It was kind of funny that even when TV portrayed TV, it fancied it up.

Stefan stepped out of the elevator, looking—well, good. Movie-star handsome. But her heart didn’t skip a beat or clench with longing, and there was no regret left anywhere in her. He was just a man. Maybe if he’d never stood on a stage with that ferocious snake-oil salesman energy, she never would have seen him as anything other than a good friend. But then Phoebe wouldn’t have been born, so she couldn’t regret even that.

He hugged her, and she let him. And then she said, “I’m so sorry, Stefan.”

Startled, he scanned her face thoroughly but still looked puzzled.

“I can’t take the job. I can’t stay. We’re not going to stay.”

“What do you mean, you’re not going to stay?”

“I’m sorry about the bait and switch. I know you held the job for me—”

“Damn straight I held the job for you.”

“But I also know there are probably a hundred people breathlessly waiting behind me, and that it’s going to take you all of ten minutes to fill it.”

A little flicker in his expression acknowledged the truth of that. But he shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Can we go somewhere we can talk?”

He took her to the cafeteria and they sat and drank bad coffee while she told him the story. The whole story, including his unintended role in it.

“I see,” he said, when she was done.

“Do you?”

He was no longer angry. His face had sagged a little, and she could see how he’d look when he got older. She was reminded about how brutal his profession was, how unforgiving. Behind the glamour, that was the truth of it.

“He’s like the anti-me, right? He stuck it out with his pregnant girlfriend and kid. He stayed because it was the right thing to do. And I left. I abandoned the two of you, even knowing it was the wrong thing to do.”

She didn’t know what to say. Whether to argue with him, say that
wrong
was a strong word, that she and Phoebe had been okay. Or—to let him own his failure.

“From what you’ve told me, Hunter is the kind of father Phoebe deserves to have.”

There, she wouldn’t argue.

He took a deep breath. “I’d hoped for a second chance with Phoebe. But there just aren’t that many second chances in life. I can’t blame you at all for wanting to grab hold of yours. But you’ll let her visit?”

“Of course,” she said. “I do want her to know you. And get to spend time with you. She’s getting old enough that she could probably fly down here on her own occasionally. Weekends here and there. You’d buy her ticket, of course.” She didn’t even bother to feel guilty about that. Stefan could afford it, and there was that whole matter of back child support…

“Absolutely,” Stefan said.

Maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t buy those tickets, and when he disappointed them or canceled at the last minute, that would be okay, too.

She and Hunter would take the girls on a marvelous consolation trip instead.

She sat with Stefan for a while longer, talking about Phoebe, mainly; then he excused himself, saying he had to get back to the office to offer the job she’d just turned down to someone else.

Later that day, he led the four of them on a studio tour, introduced them to his stunning actress girlfriend, and took them out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, pointing out stars to the dazzled girls. But Trina noted that he never asked Phoebe anything about what she liked to do or what was important to her, and by the end of the evening, she could tell from his body language—and his girlfriend’s—that both were eager to say goodbye.

Stefan didn’t offer to take Phoebe out for lunch or do anything else with her, and in the hotel room afterward, Trina sat with her almost-full-sized daughter curled up in her lap while Phoebe sobbed her hurt out.

“Not everyone is cut out to be a dad,” Trina said quietly. And felt grateful that Stefan had known that about himself at age seventeen, long before she’d been willing to accept it about him.

A few minutes later, the tears having subsided to occasional hiccups, Phoebe said, “I’m glad we’re not staying here. I’m glad we’re going home.”

The word
home
cut a warm swath through Trina’s chest. The ease with which Phoebe said it.

“Hunter is a good dad. Don’t you think?”

That took Trina’s breath away. When she could speak again, she said, “Yes. Yes, he is.”

“Do you remember when we had the stomach flu?” Phoebe asked.

It had been awhile since she’d looked, really looked, at her daughter. There was a smattering of small pimples at the side of Phoebe’s nose, and her eyebrows had darkened from baby strawberry blond to a more adult color. Her expression was older than her years.

Funny that she was asking about that night, which had been a turning point for her and Hunter a year ago. “Yeah.”

“Hunter held my head the first time I threw up.”

Of course he had. It had never occurred to Trina to ask what had happened before she’d arrived at Hunter and Clara’s that night, but of course he had.

Her heart filled with love for him. Her heart would always be filled with love for him.

I promised my feelings for you wouldn’t change. And, Trina—they never really did. Only how hard I tried not to feel them.

“Hunter is the best man I know,” Trina said quietly. “Stefan—he’s not perfect, but he’ll be a friend to you, if you let him, and that’s worth something, for sure. But you can let Hunter be your family. And your home.”

Phoebe sighed, the soft, yielding sigh at the end of a good cry, and settled more thoroughly against her mother, and Trina held her tight and felt her heart overflow with gratitude.

The four of them drove out to see Linda and Ray, who had a lovely, immaculately kept double-wide in an beautiful park north of L.A. Ray was a short, bald retired Coast Guard admiral who appeared to be a decade younger than Linda; Hunter couldn’t bring himself to ask. The introduction between Hunter and Ray was awkward, since Ray had met Hunter once before and Hunter couldn’t remember one fucking thing about the guy, but he’d just have to get used to the occasional mental blank along those lines. There were little scraps here and there coming back to him from the past, but he wasn’t putting his life on hold to wait for everything to return in a rush. Not gonna happen.

He let his mom take the girls for short motorcycle rides. Trina couldn’t even watch; she had to go inside, and afterward she said she’d covered her ears. But both of them agreed that there was a fine line between protecting against risk and depriving kids of experiences, and a few hundred helmeted yards on a Gold Wing on deserted roads with a grandmother at the handlebars was a pretty low-risk proposition.

Afterward, Hunter and Linda went for a walk, and he told her what had happened, the whole story, from Clara’s disappearance to the proposal on the airplane.

“Thank
God
you came to your senses,” Linda said.

“I heard you played a role.”

She ducked her head.

“Mom.”

“I might have made a few suggestions here and there.”

“
Fake
her
period
?
Go missing
?”

“You’re not mad, are you?”

“Of course I’m mad,” he said. “You manipulated two little girls to get your way. You manipulated me and Trina. That’s not acceptable, and I don’t want anything like that to happen again.”

She gave him a look. It was the same look she’d given him countless times over the course of his life when he’d broken a rule or come home after curfew or talked back to her. “Someone had to get you to see the light,” she said sternly. “And who else, if not your mother?”

They were rounding back on the trailer now, and Ray was showing Clara and Phoebe something in the motorcycle engine, while Trina watched. The expression on her face—

She was glowing. He’d never seen her that happy. And while he watched, she looked down at her hand and turned his ring this way and that, admiring. He almost couldn’t stand the rush of love he felt; it seemed to want to knock him off his feet.

“Besides,” his mother said, and he looked up to see her watching his family—his
family
—with an expression not unlike Trina’s. “You have to admit, it worked. Right?”

He didn’t have to answer that, because she looked up then and saw the expression on
his
face, and she said, “Oh, Hunter, that’s all I ever wanted for you,” and burst into tears.