Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(42)

I rested my palm on the side of his face. “There was nothing to forgive you for. I was eight and I knew that.”

His hand slid around my back to my side, holding me where the exit wound should have been.

But that bullet hadn’t left my body at the mall.

It’d ravaged me from the inside out before the doctors had removed it.

“You can’t have kids, Willow. There’s still a lot to forgive me for.”

God, how could he be so smart and still so wrong?

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Let’s for a minute say that the bullet that you did not fire damaged one of my ovaries and destroyed the other along with the majority of my uterus and it’s all your fault. But we also have to factor in that if it weren’t for you, I more than likely wouldn’t have made it out of that mall at all. I was going to run or scream or… I don’t know. My parents were gone and I was freaking out. You calmed me down and gave me hope in a hopeless situation.” I paused, waiting for the lump to clear from my throat.

He inched impossibly closer. “You don’t have to say anything else. We don’t need to talk about this. Not now. Not ever.”

“Yeah, we do, Caven. Because no matter what happens between us, you will always be the boy I owe my life to. You don’t get to claim that I figuratively saved your life by forgiving you and then negate the fact that you literally saved my life when you chose to help a stranger, a terrified little girl, escape a madman. Last I checked, dead women can’t have babies, either.” My hands were shaking by the time I finished.

He didn’t understand what he meant to me. But how could he when I’d spent the first four months lying to him about who I was?

“Jesus,” he breathed, tipping his forehead to mine.

The tears finally escaped my eyes. “I have loved you since I was kid, but back then, it was something different. You were almost this fictional character in my head—a white knight who saved me. And there were so many times I leaned on the memories of this hero—”

“I’m not a—”

I kissed him. I didn’t think or consider the implications of what it would mean. I just did it because in my heart it would always be right.

His strong body sagged as he let out a long exhale, as if he’d been holding his breath for the last eighteen years. And maybe he had.

Because, while I’d kissed Caven numerous times, that was the first time he’d ever kissed Willow.

His head didn’t slant. Our mouths didn’t open. But there was a soulful exchange all the same.

He drew me in close, holding me against his lips and speaking silent apologies that didn’t need to be issued.

I took them.

Accepted them.

And lived inside them for every single one of those seconds.

When he finally broke the kiss, he didn’t move far before coming back in for one more lip touch.

“The elephants are suffocating us,” he whispered.

“I know. But I still love you. And not because you were that boy at the mall. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished you weren’t Caven Lowe. Because then you could be mine.”

He closed his eyes and came back for another lingering kiss capped off by another exhale ripped from his soul. “It’s a little different for me. Because if you weren’t Willow, you wouldn’t be sitting here at all. I’m so conflicted when it comes to you and all the lies because I’m so damn mad at you, but it makes me the biggest hypocrite in the world. You forgave me for the unimaginable and I can’t seem to let this go.”

“It’s because of all the boxes.”

“What the hell are these boxes you keep talking about?”

“Ian said you compartmentalize everything. And, now, you have me in three different boxes and you can’t decide who I am. Sometimes you hate me because of what I told you. Sometimes you feel guilty because I’m the little girl from the mall. And sometimes you miss me because I was the woman you were…” I paused, not wanting to say the words.

He laughed, sad and resigned. Rolling to his back, he took me with him, my head resting on his shoulder. “For the record, I currently only hate Ian.”

“Don’t be mad at him. We ran into each other at the grocery store. He was trying to help.”

He stared up at the ceiling with one arm wrapped around my shoulders, his other hand resting in the center of my chest. “I’m not mad at him. He knows me better than anyone else. And he’s right. I’m all fucked up over this. But I don’t for a second wish you weren’t Willow.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him, peering up at the underside of his jaw. “Really and truly sorry.”

“I believe you. And that’s one more reason why I’m so messed up about all this.”

I waited for him to say something else.

I waited for him to tell me that it was going to be okay.

I waited for him to leave.

But after what had to have been close to twenty minutes, all I got was his heartbeat in my ear as his breathing evened out.

Nothing had been solved.

Nothing had changed.

But we were there together.

Caven and Willow.

And that was enough to make me fall asleep too.





CAVEN


I snuck out of the guestroom around four in the morning. I didn’t want to go, but I also didn’t want Rosalee to wake up and find me in Willow’s bed.