Playing for Love at Deep Haven (20 page)

“Do I? Because
it sure seemed like you were in your element tonight.”

“This is
ridiculous,” she snapped. “This whole thing is a mistake.”

She was making
him fucking furious.

“What’s that
supposed to mean?”

She threw up her
hands. “It means we’re too different. You hated that restaurant tonight, and I
hated that concert. You probably thought Jacques and
Léonard
were pretentious, and I thought Gabe, Weasel, and Flick were dreadful. I’m not
just going to mesh into your life, and vice versa. It’s not going to work.”

“Well, let me
pull over in Bar Harbor so you can find a rich frat boy to run to. That worked
for you last time.”

She pulled back
and punched his arm. Hard. It made him swerve momentarily on the dark, empty
road. “Fuck, Vile! I’m driving.”

She gasped in
the semidarkness. She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and when she
lowered it, her face was wet. She was crying. Shit.
Shit
. He’d made her cry when he’d promised himself he’d never hurt
her again.

“Listen, it
wasn’t a good night,” he said a few minutes later, as they turned into the
driveway at Deep Haven. He cut the engine, and they sat in silence for a few
more minutes.

“It’s not just
tonight. I meant what I said.” She’d stopped crying and was using that
Greenwich Violet voice that he fucking hated—that artificial, plastic voice
that was about as far from her fiery poet soul as she could possibly get.
“We’re too different, Zach. We’ve changed too much. This can’t work.” She put
her hand on the door handle. “I’m going to the White Swan tomorrow.”

“You’re running
away. Just like I did.”

“I’m being
rational,” she said, a slight waver in her voice betraying her emotion. It was
all he needed to push her.

“You’re being a
coward. Being with me makes you feel more than you’ve felt in years, and it’s
scaring you and it’s complicated, so you’re running away. What we have? It’s
beautiful and it’s real and it’s truth, and yes, it’s fucking terrifying, Vile,
but we
can
make it work. I
want
to make it work because two months
with you was worth the nine years of emptiness that came after. Two months with
you showed me there was something really fucking good that this life has to
offer. And I’ve never seen anything as good since. I want to make this work,
Violet. I’ve never wanted anything this bad in my entire wasted fucking life.”
He rubbed his wrist and tried to make his voice gentler. “All I asked for was
two weeks, and you can’t even give that to me.”

“Nothing’s going
to change in two weeks. And the longer this goes on, the more it’s going to
hurt to say good-bye.”

He turned to
her, seizing her eyes in the dim light. “Tell me how you see this.”

“See this? What
do you mean?”

“See
us
. What’s happening between us.”

“Zach, I . . .”
She took a deep breath, shaking her head, getting her thoughts together. “I
don’t know . . . We loved each other in college. We reconnected after a long
time, and old feelings flooded back. We acted on them. But we aren’t kids
anymore. Our lives are too different to build anything real together. We say
good-bye. We move on.”

His heart jumped
twice during her speech: once when she said “
we
loved” because it was the first time she’d ever admitted that
she believed he had loved her, and again when she said “we say good-bye”
because everything in him revolted against those words.

They sat in
silence for several strained minutes, rain beating on the windshield, before
Zach replied, “I don’t.”

“You don’t
what?”

“I don’t move on
from you. Ever. I couldn’t before. I definitely can’t now. I’d give it all up,
Vile. The touring, the songwriting…”

She reached for
the door handle, and he grabbed the hand closer to him, holding it forcefully,
like he’d die if he lost contact with her, and honestly maybe he would. When
she didn’t pull away, his grip gentled, and he ran his thumb in soft circles on
the sweaty skin of her palm.

It was time for
him to say what he’d never been able to tell her in college, what he’d been
trying to prove to her since the moment she walked back into his life. It was
time for her to know the stakes and that nothing else mattered to him but them.

“Look at me.”

She didn’t.

“Look at me,
Violet.”

She did.

“I’m in love
with you.” He searched her face, watching as she winced and her eyes filled
with tears. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I’ll go on loving you until
I don’t anymore.”

“Zach—” she
sobbed softly as tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I don’t care
how different we are. I’ll do anything to make this work because nothing else
matters to me as much as you. Everything else in my life is expendable except
for you. Just so we’re clear, that’s how
I
see this.”

Then he released
her hand and let himself out of the car.

***

She sat, stunned
and speechless, on her own as he unlocked the front door and entered the house.

What she’d seen
in his eyes made her want to stay, made her want to go, made her sex clench and
her heart twist. What she saw made her want to die because if she walked away
from Zach, she doubted if she’d ever, ever see it again. When he’d demanded
that she look at him, she’d braced herself for the words. To finally hear them.
To be strong in spite of them. She sensed he’d never uttered those words to
another human being in his entire life. His gray eyes were
unflinching—desperate and certain in the shadowed light of the car. He was
telling her the truth. He loved her.

But she still
didn’t see how they were possible. She still ached from what had happened
between them at Yale, she didn’t know how to trust him, and seeing him
tonight—at that god-awful concert—just confirmed the sharp differences between
them. Could she give up things she’d enjoyed about her lifestyle with
Shep
? Could she trust that he wouldn’t give in to the
temptations of women like Flick?

But then, there
was the way he looked at her, like the axis of the earth had moved just to
place her like a gift before him. The way he touched her, skillfully, with
reverence and awe, drawing emotions from her heart as he stroked the heat of
her skin. How it felt when he possessed her, moving his body inside hers and
clutching her against him like he’d die if he couldn’t have her. How she felt
as they wrote music together—the crazy, heartbreaking beauty of the two songs
they’d already written. That he’d read her book and loved her poetry and loved
her.
Loved
her as she’d never felt
loved in her life.

Her eyes
shuttered closed as her own heart swelled. He’d used her words from long ago to
tell her, and it made her own feelings precariously close to bursting forth all
over again, the love she’d been carrying for him for so many years bubbling
back up to the surface of her consciousness after surviving the darkness of the
deepest reaches of her heart.

She exited the
car on wobbly legs and walked into the house, shutting the door behind her. He
was nowhere to be seen, so she walked quietly up the stairs to her room, where
she fell on the bed in exhaustion and cried herself to sleep.

***

Zach sat on his
own bed downstairs, trembling from what he’d just said to her. In his entire
life, no one but Violet had ever uttered the words “I love you” to Zach, and in
his entire life, he’d said the words only once. Just now. To her.

There had been
no affection in his childhood, or if there was, it was long before his
memories. There were no soft “I love
yous
” and tender
embraces. There was pride and drive and ambition, but Zach Aubrey had never
known love, felt it, ached with the power of it, until Violet Smith. And time
had not dulled it, and distance had not dissolved it. A crappy dinner and a
forward groupie didn’t threaten it for him. Their reunion just served to make
it brighter and more vibrant than it had been before. So what if they had
different interests? As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter. Now that he
was near her again, losing her was unthinkable.

He lay back on
the bed, lifting his palm to his chest and placing it flat over his T-shirt as
he had that fateful Sunday night so long ago. At the time, his chest had hurt
so sharply, so painfully, he could barely take a deep breath.
Do you love me?
The third time she asked
him, he’d almost lost his mind from the pounding of his heartbeat in his head,
so overwhelmed by his intense feelings. Leaving her had pained him, but until
he got a grip on how he felt and how to express it, staying felt impossible
too.

He heard her
bedroom door close above him, and despite the way his body ached to hold her,
to touch her—hell, just to
see
her—he
decided to leave her alone for a while. He knew she was confused about
everything happening between them, and he had to admit, for all that they had
started out in a similar place, their lives
were
pretty different now. The biggest difference between him and Violet, however,
was that no matter how dissimilar their lives seemed, he didn’t care. He meant
it when he said he’d do
anything
to
be with her.

He rubbed his
lip with his thumb, wondering how serious she was about leaving in the morning,
and what he would need to do to get her to reconsider and stay.

Don’t be stupid, Zach. If telling her you love her
doesn’t work, nothing will work. You’ll just have to let her go.

His stomach
flipped over at the thought, his muscles flexing as they would if he pinned her
down physically, forcing her to stay. Growling, he sat up and grabbed the
remote, turning on the TV to distract himself from the bleakness of his
thoughts, from the sharpness of his yearning for her. As he kicked off his
boots, he was surprised by the banner looping over and over again on the bottom
of the screen: “TROPICAL STORM WARNING ON THE MAINE COAST FROM PORTLAND TO
HALIFAX. MAY BE UPGRADED TO HURRICANE STATUS. STAY TUNED.”

He’d noticed the
rain tonight, of course, but he hadn’t realized that it was an indicator of a
storm making its way up the coast. He looked out the window. The rain had
picked up even in the last half hour, and if the branches whipping by the
window were any indication, the wind had picked up too.

He headed for the
kitchen to look out at the harbor. A bolt of lightning split the sky and lit up
the bay, illuminating the skeletons of sailboats being tossed like toys on the
rough waves, followed by a loud crack of thunder that rattled the house.

He opened one of
the two
french
doors, and it swung out of his hand,
banging against the house as the wind pushed his hair back from his face. Her
laptop still sat, plugged in and soaked, on one of the chairs, where she’d left
it this morning. He dashed out to retrieve it, putting it on the kitchen
counter before going back for the two porch chairs she’d been using, and pulled
them, sopping, into the kitchen. The amount of strength it took for him to
close the door again surprised him.

As he locked the
doors, leaning back against them, his eyes closed with relief. Never in his
life had he been so glad to have a natural disaster bearing down on him,
trapping him inside for an unknown amount of time. Because if it trapped him,
it trapped her, which he took as another sign of fate, another firm indication
that the universe wouldn’t let them lose each other again.

Chapter
15

Violet looked
out the window, cracking her knuckles nervously. It was early morning, and it
didn’t look good. After only a few hours of sleep, she’d been awakened moments
before by the clattering of her window and a loud clap of thunder. Now she sat
on the edge of the bed and tapped on the screen of her
iPhone
.
She had a barely-there signal, thank God, that allowed her to check the
weather, but her shoulders slumped as she looked at the warnings. According to
the radar, a big storm was almost here. A
big
one. They were calling it a tropical storm, but there was chatter about
upgrading it to a hurricane. She looked out the window at the gray, angry sky
and pelting rain, gasping as she watched a big branch fall from a tree over the
driveway, missing her car by a hair.

Her plan from
last night—to leave Zach and get a room at the White Swan—had been upended by
his declaration. After hearing those precious words, the pull to stay with him,
to try to find a way to make things work between them, was all-consuming,
despite her misgivings. She was grateful for the storm, for nature taking the
decision out of her hands and forcing her to stay. It was like the universe was
trying to tell her something by trapping her with Zach for as long as the storm
chose to rage. It reminded her of her third-grade teacher, who would put
quarreling children together in the coatroom and tell them not to come out
until they’d made friends.

Except she
didn’t want to be friends with Zach. She wanted more. She’d always wanted more.
She leaned back on the bed, closing her eyes and listening to the wind howl and
moan outside her window. Once upon a time, all she’d wanted in the world was
for him to love her back.

And now he did.
And he’d used her own words to tell her.

I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I’ll go on
loving you until I don’t anymore.

She heard his
voice in her head, and her heart pumped harder, the sound of his declaration
infinitely hotter than any other words she’d ever heard. She smiled at the
ceiling as a tear rolled into her hair. He loved her. Finally, finally,
finally, Zach Aubrey loved her. He’d said the words. And part of her heart—a part
that had been raw and raging and so sad for so many lonesome years—sighed in
relief and gratitude.

She flipped onto
her side and drew her knees to her chest as she stared at the drops and
rivulets making their way down the glass expanse of the large window.

He loved her.
And she could tell from his face that he meant it. So why wasn’t she rushing
downstairs to fall into his waiting arms?

Because she
meant it when she observed how different their lives were. And because he was
right when he’d said she was a coward. She
was
fucking terrified. For years she’d lived her life in a state of pleasant,
bland good-enough-
ness
. For too many years she’d been
stuck as Greenwich Violet, trapped in a safe, self-imposed state of perpetual
blah.

Trapped.

And now here she
was, trapped in a house with Zach, in a state of perpetual turmoil. From the
moment she’d found him again, she’d been
overstimulated
,
oversensitive, hyperaware of herself and him. Battling, fighting, and crying,
her senses heightened, her body constantly tingling, her brain buzzing with
ideas and creativity and hope.

Oh God. Hope.

It was in there.
In the bursts of happiness she felt in his arms, when he touched her, when he
moved inside her. In the way she felt when she looked at him, at
all
of him—his indiscriminate piercings
and gaudy tattoos that she was growing to love for their edgy beauty and
heartbreaking meaning. It was in the way she panted when his eyes slid across
her body, undressing her. Hope that flared up when he said he wouldn’t hurt her
or couldn’t lose her or would always love her. Hope in the way her heart had
snapped in half yesterday morning when she thought he was gone, and knitted
itself back together when he returned. Hope because after a long, cold,
sterile, nine-year winter, Zach made her feel messy and hot and alive. Hope
because even after hurting her so deeply at Yale, Zach was somehow able to
arouse in her a love so big and so bewildering, it frightened her to the point
of running away. Because she could either run or she could surrender, and she
was perilously close to yielding.

She sat up as
something occurred to her for the first time since that dark Sunday so long
ago: was this what Zach had felt that dismal evening at Yale—the fear of
surrender? She took a deep breath, remembering his intense eyes holding hers,
his
untattooed
, inexperienced, pale-skinned body
facing hers, staring at her, right before he left the room. Here she was, a
mature twenty-eight-year-old woman, and the feelings she had right now
were
leaving her breathless. Is that why he’d run from her?
Because he couldn’t handle them? Because they frightened him to the point of
running away? Her heart softened, remembering the panic in his glistening eyes
as he covered his teenage heart with his hand.

She stood up, grabbing
her brush to pull her hair back into a ponytail, but it was so wavy and wild
now, there wasn’t any point. She shook it out instead, then pulled it back,
braiding it loosely, letting tendrils fall around her face at will. She took a
deep breath, looking at herself in the mirror.

Regardless of
her feelings for him, telling him she still loved him was another story
altogether. In all her years with
Shep
, Violet had
never once—not once—uttered those words. The last time she said “I love
you”—the last time those words had passed her lips—was to Zach Aubrey nine
years ago. From then on, she’d regarded them like a curse, as if saying them
would lead to immediate heartbreak and pain. It didn’t matter if she had those
feelings for him. Those words were buried so deep down in her heart, she didn’t
know if she’d ever be able to say them again.

But certainly
before she did, before she could, there were so many questions that still
needed answers and couldn’t be glossed over with his impassioned declaration
last night. By giving things a try—a deceptively casual phrase, which belied a
host of risks—she was opening herself up to unbelievable pain. She’d lost so
much of herself in the first round. She shuddered to think of what another
broken heart by Zach Aubrey would do to her this time.

What she needed
to understand most of all was why he had never returned to her. Why had he
never come back to claim what belonged to him? Unless she understood the answer
to that question, she’d never be able to trust him completely. She’d never
trust that he’d always return to her, and she needed to believe that. She
needed to know that he’d always, always find her again, or they could never
have a future together.

***

Zach stared at
the ceiling until dawn, gray and angry though it was, listening for the sound
of her feet on the stairs, for any indication that his words had meant
something to her, that there was still room in her heart to love him. He hoped
that she believed, as he did, that whatever they had between them was worth
fighting for—that it was worth figuring out a way to reconcile the differences
in their lives.

At five o’clock,
with his thoughts still driving him crazy, he had to talk to someone, and the
only person he trusted enough—and who would actually pick up the phone at such
an ungodly hour—was Cora. Not that she’d be very pleased.

“What the
fuck
, Zach! You better be dead or
dying!”

He tried not to
laugh. He didn’t want her to hang up, but just hearing his sister’s voice made
him feel better. “I need to talk.”

“Apparently.” He
heard something clunk on the floor and roll away, and then a man’s voice asking
gruffly what the fuck was going on. “It’s my brother. Don’t worry about it. Go
back to sleep.”

“Who’s that?”

“None of your
business,” she whispered angrily, and he knew she was getting out of bed to go
somewhere quieter to talk.

“Where are you staying
anyway,
Cor
?”

“The restoration
committee got me a place in Alex Bay.”

“So who’re you
hooking up with?”

“I know you
didn’t call me at five in the morning to talk about
my
love life, Zach. If that’s the case, I’m hanging up.”

“Don’t hang up.
Turn on the coffeemaker, and tell me when you’re ready.”

After a few
minutes, he could tell she was settled somewhere. “Okay. Fine. Now, what’s so
important you dragged me out of bed at the ass crack of dawn, and why am I sure
this has Violet Smith smeared all over it?”

“I told her I
loved her,” he blurted out.

“Oh,” she
groaned. “Oh, Zachariah. Oh no. Why did you do that?”

He considered
pulling the phone out of the wall and chucking it across the room. Goddamn it,
he hated telephones. And he hated Cora a little bit too.

“Because I do. I
love her.”

His twin sighed
dramatically. “Okay. Lay it on me.”

He told her all
about Violet’s troubles with her book, his suggestion that they write the four
songs for Malcolm, and running into Mrs. Smalley. He told her about
Léonard’s
and the concert and Flick and Violet’s insistence
that they couldn’t work out. He found himself talking about their physical
relationship until Cora yelled, “
Ew
!” and threatened
to hang up again. He told her how much—surprisingly—it still hurt him that
Violet had moved on so quickly sophomore year, and how much he hated
Shep
Smalley, a dead man, for touching the woman he loved.

“Which part do
you hate the most?” interrupted Cora. “That she changed for him or that she had
sex with him?”

“Fuck, Cora!”

“I’m just
asking. It’s a fair question.”

“When I think of
her
with
him, yeah, it makes me want
to—” He clenched his fists until they shook, then relaxed them. “But I fucking
hate it that she changed for him.”

“Try to let those
two go, Zach. She had a right to be with someone. Lord knows you were with a
bunch of
someones
too.”

“It still bugs
me.”

“Get over it.
Your rival’s dead.” Cora sighed. “As for her changing? Sort of sounds like now
that she’s away from the Smalley’s, she’s changing back into who she used to
be.”

Zach thought of
her at the concert last night. She’d kept an open mind, even though she’d ended
up hating it. Greenwich Violet wouldn’t have even considered going with him.
Cora was right.

“Okay,” said
Zach. “But what about the other stuff? How quickly she moved on?”

“You hate it
that she didn’t wait for you. So is that what you wish? That you could go back
in time and she’d wait for you?”

He took a deep
breath and looked out the window, where the murky dawn illuminated the beating
rain that fell in angry sheets.

“Yeah. I guess I
do.”

“Well, I think
that’s your answer then. She told you she loved you, you ran away, she didn’t
wait for you. Speed up ten years: you tell her you love her, she threatens to
run away, you . . .”

“Wait for her,”
he sighed.

“You’re going to
need to give her the space to figure out what she wants. I am positive, from
everything you told me, that she wants you, Zach. But, you have to give her the
space to figure it out for herself. Don’t force it. Just wait for her. Back up
a little, and she might just step forward.”

It sounded good
to him. It made sense. It even appealed to him in some sick way that their
history was returning only to invert itself. There was something comforting
about it.

“But Zach,” said
Cora, with uncharacteristic gentleness. “You
are
very different now. I mean, from what I can tell. You’ve changed. Both
of you. I’m just worried—”

“About me?”

“I don’t want
you to get hurt.”

“It’s worth it,”
he said softly. “The way she writes, the way her eyes flash, the way she fights
with me. Even in the few days we’ve been together, I see her coming back to me.
It sounds stupid, but she stopped blow-drying her hair all straight and sleek.
She’s . . . she’s coming back to me, Cora. I know it. No one has ever made me
feel as much as she does. She’s like a drug to me. I can’t get enough of her. I
can’t lose her again. I can’t.”

“Go big or go
home, huh?” He heard the wistful tone in his sister’s voice when she finally
answered. “I hope it all works out. God knows you deserve a little happiness.”

“You too, little
sister.”

“Six minutes
older and he can’t let me forget it.”

“Go find your
happiness, Cor.”

“Yeah,” she
said, and he could hear the wry amusement in her voice. “My happiness just
farted so loud in my bed, I heard it from the kitchen. I don’t wish you my kind
of happiness, big brother. That’s for sure.”

***

Zach looked up
as Violet walked into the living room a couple of hours later, relief making
his blood course faster, hot and furious and pounding in his ears. She looked
completely beautiful in black leggings and her oversize Yale sweatshirt that
swam on her small frame. Whether or not he had a right, he took it as a good
sign that she was wearing that sweatshirt. She’d pulled her unruly hair into a
loose braid that looked so sexy, he felt all that blood rush south. It was
ridiculous what she did to him, how much he wanted her. All the time.