Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (25 page)

Winding her hair into a bun, she stepped into the shower, lathering her body with soap, the space between her legs tender from so much lovemaking.

She’d never had sex like the sex she had with Holden. It was the kind of sex written about in the trashy novels she and Maya used to sneak off Kendra’s bedside table: tender, rough, hard, soft, fast, slow . . . heaven. All of her lived, and some of her died, in his arms, her heart swelling with the sort of love she’d barely thought possible, her soul withering with the thought that these days were finite.

But she had to face the possibility that living in a doll’s house and writing fairy tales was just a beautiful fantasy, a vacation from the real life that would start up again the moment they headed home. Their lives wouldn’t disappear just because they’d found each other. Gemma and Jonah, jobs and bosses, Clinton and Maya—they were all still there, waiting.

And Griselda simply didn’t know how to reconcile the two lives.

Here, in the woods, clinging to each other every moment, they were Holden and Griselda, who had a unique history and deep emotional attachment. But out there? In the real world? They were Zelda and Seth. Jesus, the rest of the world didn’t even know their real names. They lived two very different lives, where fairy tales and college and gray-eyed, sweet-smelling babies felt impossible.

“Gris? You almost done?”

“Almost,” she said, turning around to rinse the soap off her body. “One more second.”

One more second.

One more minute.

One more hour.

One more week . . . with you.

She took a deep breath and pushed her worries out of her mind for now. She refused to ruin the time they still had by letting her mind even consider the future. Might be they’d go their separate ways when it was time to leave the cabin. Probably, even. But for now, Gris belonged to Holden, and Holden belonged to her, and if she had to, she’d live on these days for the rest of her life.

Holden took her hand as they headed into the Food Lion in Berkeley Springs.

She’d been quiet after her shower, like something was bothering her, but she told him she was fine when he asked. Though he didn’t believe her, he decided not to press it. He knew enough about women to know that when someone was “fine,” she probably wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to tell you what was
not
“fine” until she was good and ready. So be it.

As they walked through the sliding doors, his phone buzzed in his back pocket. Once. Twice. Damn it, he’d meant to leave it at the cabin. Fucking Jonah was on a rampage today.

Griselda dropped his hand and looked up at him with wide, unamused eyes.

“Shouldn’t you answer that? Might be important,” she said all sassy, reaching for a shopping basket and charging into the store without him.

Fine. Hmm.

He caught up with her in the produce section. “Something wrong?”

“Your phone’s been fascinating you all morning,” she said, gazing at the bananas like she’d never seen one before in her life.

“We can’t afford bananas,” he said gently.

She picked one up and held it between her ear and mouth like a phone receiver. “Hello? Oh, Gemma! What an unexpected surprise. Your boyfriend? Of course. He’s right here.” She handed him the banana with a sour look, then turned on her heel and started toward the apples.

Holden stood frozen, staring at the bananas. Holy shit. She was jealous? Griselda Schroeder was jealous. He forced himself not to smile as he followed her to the bins of apples.

“How about
green
apples?” he suggested. “Like the color of your skin.”

“And sour,” she retorted, “like your girlfriend’s disposition.”

“Well, now,” he drawled, “since my girlfriend’s yelling at me in the middle of the danged Food Lion, I guess that’s about right.”

Her face didn’t soften as she whipped around to face him, one hand on her hip, mad as hell.

“Why does she keep texting you?”

“You’re assuming a lot.”

“Oh . . .,” she said, crossing her arms over her perfect breasts and raising her eyebrows in challenge. “It’s
not
Gemma who keeps texting you?”

“Among others,” he admitted, unable to lie to her, but not especially anxious to tell her he’d been trading several days’ worth of insults with Jonah.

Her eyes flared open, dropping to the tallies on his arm, then back to his eyes. “Well, don’t let me keep you from the . . .
others
!”

“F-fuck,” he muttered as she sped away from him, realizing how she’d misinterpreted his words. He’d meant Jonah and Clinton, not other
women
, for Chrissakes. He had his hands full enough with her.

He followed in her wake, giving her a few minutes to shop solo and hoping she’d calm down. When she got to the frozen food aisle, he sidled up to her and nudged her with his hip. She didn’t turn around.

“I didn’t mean other
women
,” he said to her back.

She huffed, opening the freezer door between them and leaning inside.

“Gris, I’m not talking to any other women, but I can’t help it if Gemma texts me.”

“You could’ve broken up with her.”

He grimaced. Yeah, he could have. “Well, I didn’t. We hadn’t even spent twenty-four hours together yet. W-we hadn’t even . . .”

She drew back, slamming the freezer door, and gestured at him with a package of frozen green beans.

“What? We hadn’t even what?”

“W-well, hell, I didn’t know how things were going to go with us. I was prepared to be friends if that’s what you wanted.”

“In which case you’d be glad you held on to Gemma? As a backup? For your . . .
needs
?”

“No. Hell.” He stared at her, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t win today. You getting your period or something?”

If he’d thought her eyes were furious before, they quickly changed to glacial. “Because the only excuse for my being pissed about your girlfriend sniffing around would be hormones?”

“Gemma’s
not
my girlfriend.” Holden swallowed. “G-Gris—”

“Uh-uh. You’d best tell
her
that, not me! You freely admit that Gemma keeps texting you, and you’ve been texting all damn morning, and you’re
sleeping
with me. So pardon me if I don’t like it. Why don’t you go wait in the truck and leave me alone?”

She threw the green beans in her basket and started walking down the aisle again, and Holden stalked away in the other direction.

Twenty minutes later, she joined him in the truck. As soon as she sat down, he turned to her. “Your facts are wrong. I’m not texting her back. I’ve been deleting her messages!”

She buckled her seat belt with a loud click. “So . . . who?”

“Who
w-what
?” he spat, pissed that they were even having this stupid quarrel about nothing, as he backed out of the parking space.

“Who do you keep texting?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Eighty-somethin’ tally marks says it does.”

“They don’t
mean
anything, Gris!”

“They do to me!” she yelled.

“F-fucking Jonah! Jonah, okay?”

She froze, her whole body going still.

“What?” she said, like he’d knocked the wind out of her with a sucker punch. “Wh—? Jonah? How? Why?”

“I listened to his f-fucking messages. I know I said I w-wouldn’t. But I was curious. He’s got a f-filthy f-fucking mouth, Gris.”

He glanced at her, and she was staring at him, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

“So I texted him if he ever came near you again, I’d d-do something about it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulders relax and her body deflate. “You been trading texts with . . . Jonah?”

Holden glanced at her, then dropped her eyes. He stared out the windshield at a red light and nodded. He was surprised to feel the soft, warm touch of her hand on his cheek.

“Look at me,” she said.

He did.

He did, and this time all the air was sucked out of his lungs because this girl did things to his heart and his body with her eyes, with just a look.

“You ever going to stop protecting me?”

“No.”

“Shoot. Jonah.” Her lips quirked up a little, and she laughed so softly it was almost like a sigh. “I guess you’re trading insults.”

“He’s an asshole, Gris.”

She nodded but didn’t seem to want to talk about Jonah. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time.”

“I’m sorry I made you think I was texting Gemma . . . or any other girl.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“I’m sorry I listened to the messages when you asked me not to.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you,” she whispered.

The car behind them beeped, and Holden turned back to look at the road as she dropped her hand from his face. “We’ll be back at the cabin in two minutes, Gris, and I have some things to say. You’re going to listen, you hear?”

“Okay,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.

He pulled onto the dirt road that led to the cabin, and a moment later he cut the engine, parking in the gravel by the porch.

“Come on.”

“Where we going?”

“Come on,” he said again.

He got out of the truck and walked around to her side, holding out his hand to help her down. She took it, and he pulled her into his arms.

“You listening to me?” he asked, his lips close to her ear.

“Mm-hm,” she murmured, leaning into him.

“I need you to listen g-good, now.”

“I am. I promise.”

“You don’t want me to fight? I won’t fight. You want me to break up with Gemma? She’s gone. You want me to quit my shit job, give up my apartment in Charles Town, and move to Maryland? Done. You want to go to college? I’ll make it happen.

“I’ve been half d-dead for ten years, Gris, but then you walked back into my life, and I came alive again. You make me want to live. You make me want to be a better man.

“I love you, and when I say that, I mean that you’re my reason for breathing, for eating, for drinking, for sleeping, for
living
. I will
never
hurt you. I will
never
leave you. I will
always
protect you. There is no one more important to me than you, and as long as I live, there never
w-will
be.”

Her shoulders were shaking when he finished. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his face close and pressing her lips to his, her salty tears mixing with the taste of him. This was a different kiss than the others they’d shared—it was sad, yes, but it wasn’t tentative. In its own glorious way, it felt like a kiss of surrender, of Griselda finally believing that he belonged to her and only her, and that she could start to trust her feelings for him, and their commitment to each other.

She rested her cheek on his shoulder. Her face turned into his neck, her lips close to his skin.

It took him a second to realize that she was saying something very low.

“What, angel?”

“I got into the truck first,” she sobbed so pitifully it was almost like a child’s terrified whisper. “I got you abducted, and then three years later, I left you there while I escaped.”

“No, baby—”

“I deserve every bad and dirty thing I get. I ruined your life. I did that to you, Holden, and someday when the shock of me being alive wears off, you’re going to look at me and hate me for it.”

He held her closer, tighter, until he could feel her heart thrumming against his, the short sobs of breath fanning his neck as she wept. As clear as day, he heard his own words from long ago in his head,
I w-won’t ever hate you again. I p-promise, G-Gris.

“I can’t hate you. I already promised.”

She sobbed harder, taking a ragged breath that made him clench his jaw, scrambling for a way to make her see that whatever bad had happened as a result of getting into Caleb Foster’s truck so long ago, it didn’t matter. The good in Griselda, in them together, outweighed the bad one million to one.

“Gris, listen,” he said, leaning back to look at her. She kept her eyes down, tears of shame and sorrow streaming down her face. “You gotta hear my w-words.”

“I just . . . I’m so sorry, Holden . . .”

“Listen to me, because this is the truth, Gris.” He tilted her chin up with his finger, capturing her eyes and making sure she was focused on him. “You saved my life.”

“No—”

“You saved my life,” he said firmly. “Four times now, you’ve saved me.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It does.”

She shook her head in defeat, so he continued.

“You saved my life at the Fillmans because, for the first time since my g-gran died, I felt connected to someone. To you. And pressing my arm against yours in that stupid station wagon made me feel . . .” He shook his head, searching for the right words. “Alive.”

“That’s not—”

He cut her off. “I wouldn’t have survived the cellar without you.”

“You wouldn’t have
been
in the cellar without me.”

“Woulda coulda shoulda,” he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I
was
in the cellar, and you were there with me, and having you there k-kept me alive.”

“Holden, you’re twisting—”

“No, I’m not. I’m telling you
my
truth, the truth of my life as I see it. Third time? When you ran, we both survived. Gris, think back. Think back to that day in the garden right before we escaped. We were sure he was getting ready to k-kill us. And if you hadn’t run, if you’d come back with us, he probably would’ve, because he could see what we meant to each other and he hated us for it. Instead, you ran . . . you got away, and he believed I was saved. If you hadn’t run, good chance we’d have both been dead a long time ago. You ran, and it saved b-both our lives. Certainly saved mine.”

She was still shaking her head, so he cupped her wet cheeks, smiling into her face tenderly as his own eyes welled with emotion. “Stop shakin’ your head, Griselda Schroeder, because this is my truth, and I am sharing it with you, and you need to respect that.”

She looked up at him with wide, glassy eyes.

“Four times. The Fillmans’. The cellar. The river. And you saved my life again on Saturday night, when you showed up at that fight. You saved it when you walked into my apartment building on Sunday afternoon. You saved it when you agreed to stay with me for a month . . . because my life was a dead thing, Gris, and you made me want to live again. You came back from the dead and brought me back from the dead w-with you.