Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(15)

I nodded and clicked the button to turn the TV on, desperate for a distraction.

He plucked the remote from my hand and set it on the table. “Look at me.”

I swallowed hard.

I was Hadley.

I had a daughter who deserved a mother who loved her.

He wasn’t the boy who had saved my life.

He was just Caven. Nothing more.

I plastered on a smile that I hoped looked more genuine than it felt and turned toward him. “What kind of movie are you in the mood for? Action? Suspense? Comedy?”

“I shouldn’t have called you crazy,” he rushed out, taking my hand in his and intertwining our fingers.

I willed my smile not to falter. “You didn’t call me crazy, crazy.”

“I did and I’m sorry. You told me you were in a bad place the night we met, and I know how brutal the memories can be sometimes, and finding a way to survive is never crazy.”

I could have lived the rest of my life in complete and utter happiness if I never heard another apology from Caven Hunt again. “It’s okay. You weren’t wrong. That night was crazy.”

“Still.” He sighed and sagged against the couch. Lifting his arm, he silently invited me into his side. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

It was an offer I would never refuse. He could call me Hadley every day. But in his arms, I would always feel like Willow.

Tucking my legs up beneath me, I settled into his curve and dragged the blanket on top of us both. “You don’t have to censor yourself with me. I know we have a past. It sucks. But it exists. I’m not upset.”

“That night sometimes feels like the elephant in the room with us. I thought maybe, if we could make light of it, it wouldn’t feel so damn awkward all the time. I still remember so much from that night, but at the same time, it feels like it was a different life.”

Because it was—at least for me.

“Elephants were meant to live in the wild. Maybe we should let this one go.”

He kissed the top of my head. “I like how easy you make everything sound.”

“Good. I like the way you bring me cheesecake.”

He laughed, and it finally broke the fog of regret swirling all around us, but as I traced my fingers over the black tattooed feathers on his forearm, an awkward silence settled in its place.

We needed a subject change. Something light. Something innocuous. Something…

“Two of those are for your parents.”

My fingers stilled, and my stomach churned. I had no idea what he was talking about, but if the gravel in his voice was any indication, I didn’t want to know, either. I’d told him once that time only marched in one direction. But Caven was clearly headed back to the past.

“My mom…” He paused to clear the emotion from his throat. “When I was ten, my mom died of cancer. She knew her time was coming, so she started talking to me and Trent about it a lot. I guess to prepare us. She never used the word ‘dying’ though. She would say things like soon she was going to get her angel wings.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, dread rolling in like a thunderstorm as I waited for the part where this sad story from his childhood somehow converged with my parents and his tattoo.

“After the mall, I tried to go on with my life. Trent didn’t really understand what I was going through. I pretended a lot. Pushed the guilt to the back of my head. Compartmentalizing.” His lips curled in a devastated smile. “It didn’t work. When I graduated high school, I went off to college and met Ian. He was the first person to see how bad things really were inside my head. He forced me into a therapist’s office, and day after day, for years, he went to war with me. It took a lot time for me to be able to face what Malcom did that day, and to a certain degree, I will always blame myself for what happened at that food court. But forty-eight people gained their angel wings that day. And it seemed like a tragedy to allow guilt to steal a life that had been spared. I got this as a reminder that I have a lot of angels I need to live for.”

I physically ached, and tears welled in my eyes as I silently counted each feather, ticking off all the names I’d memorized shortly after the shooting. My therapist had told me that it wasn’t healthy to obsess about the victims. But how could I not?

Caven turned his arm over, palm up, as I gently tapped each one, working my way around.

My parents would be last. My father was the first to die in that shooting, but as a girl, when I fell asleep at night reciting that list of victims like most people would count sheep, I’d hoped that somehow, someway, when I got to the end, my parents’ names would no longer be there.

They always were.

And it was no different as I got to the last few feathers on Caven’s arm.

Robert.

Keira.

I stilled my finger, lingering over the longest feather that ran from wrist to elbow on the blade of his ulna. I’d seen that tattoo countless times over the last few months, but for the first time, I noticed that this particular feather was a deep red instead of black.

“Forty-nine,” I whispered, peering up at him in question.

His face warmed as he stared down at me, his blue eyes twinkling with unshed emotion. “That one’s for a different kind of angel.”

“Your mom?”

He shook his head. “I tried to help this little girl when the shooting first started, but she ended up saving my life. I’ve always thought of her as my guardian angel of sorts.”