Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(16)

My.

Heart.

Stopped.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My entire body felt like it was shutting down.

Everything except for my head, which was screaming for him to say my name.

But if he said it, I’d be forced to take the final plunge. Dive into the deep. Past the point of no return.

There was no hiding that my supposed sister’s name was Willow. When I’d told Beth that I wanted to come back for Rosalee, she’d argued with me tooth and nail, determined to point out every possible angle in which my plan would fail.

She came up with nothing.

But the one thing she’d repeated over and over again as we flew back from Puerto Rico was that if I went to Caven—if I became Hadley Banks—Willow would have to be gone. Forever.

And that meant, if the day came and Caven realized Willow Banks was the girl from the mall, I was going to have to sit back and lie to the only man who ever deserved the truth.

At the time, I didn’t think it would matter. As far as I knew, Caven had never thought of me again after that day in the mall. I’d spent the better part of my adolescence trying to get in touch with him, but he’d never reached out to me. I’d gambled on coming back thinking he wouldn’t even make the connection with my last name. And for months, he hadn’t.

But there it was.

A red feather on his arm.

Proof that he remembered me.

Thought about me.

Cared about me.

He thought I was his guardian angel.

A pained chill traveled down my spine.

I had known that this day would come, but I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready for Willow to be gone forever.

I wasn’t ready to lie and watch the man I owed everything mourn for the girl sitting directly in front of him.

If he said her name, I’d have no choice but to tell him. And that couldn’t happen. Though I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of my mouth if and when I opened it.

My mind told me to stay on track. To focus on Rosalee.

But my heart—it screamed at deafening decibels to confess it all.

I’m Willow.

I’m Willow.

I’m Willow.

In the end, I said nothing.

“Christ, do I know how to ruin a night or what?” He dragged me on top of his lap, cradling me as tears dripped from my chin. He lifted the bottom of his shirt, bringing it up to wipe my face. “You know, one of these days, we’re going to hang out and I’m not going to make you cry.”

I wasn’t so sure about that.

“Good tears,” I lied.

He shot me a side-eye. “Bullshit.”

“You have feathers for my parents on your arm,” I choked out. But what I really wanted to say was, You have a feather on your arm for me.

“I wish I didn’t,” he confessed with a heartbreaking regret that wasn’t even his to own.

“I wish that too.”

“You should hate me, ya know,” he murmured, nuzzling me with the scruff on his cheek.

“No more than you should hate me.”

His forehead crinkled as he screwed his eyes shut. “It’s not the same.”

Wrapping my hand around his tattoo, I lifted his arm and hugged it against his chest. “What if we let all the elephants go? The whole damn herd. What if we just become two strangers? What if you just fall in love with your daughter’s art teacher?”

His eyes flashed open. I hadn’t meant to say love. We weren’t even really dating. But as much as I wanted to take it back, as much as I knew it was an impossibility, we were wishing—and that was my greatest wish of all.

He kissed me. Slow and sad. It was moments like these where he was that teenage boy again, lost in emotion and remorse, bearing the crushing burden of a sociopath he couldn’t control.

And I was lost in a little girl’s fairytale where they all live happily ever after.

I remained in his arms for over two hours.

Part of that time, we talked.

Part of it, we kissed.

Part of it, we sat there allowing the silence to say more than we ever could.

As I cuddled in close, listening to the staccato of his heart—the very pulse he had risked in order to keep me safe—I came to the realization that I couldn’t keep lying to him.

I couldn’t tell him his guardian angel was dead.

I couldn’t hurt him more than Malcom already had.

But I had no idea how I would ever tell him the truth.





CAVEN


“Are you allowed to take things out of Hadley’s purse?”

“No,” Rosalee replied sheepishly, refusing to make eye contact with either of us.

“Go wash your face, brush your teeth, and then get in bed. No TV tonight.”

Her head popped up. “That’s not fair!”

I waved my hand out to the lipstick handprints smeared on the bathroom wall. “Need I say more.”

“Fine,” she muttered.

“Don’t you fine me,” I scolded as she marched up the stairs. “And hold onto the rail!”

She snaked a hand out to catch the wooden railing while huffing, “Fiiiiiine.”

I wasn’t going to make it through the teenage years. No ifs about it.

I looked at Hadley. She had her hand over her mouth, hiding what was no doubt an epic grin.