Sweet Reunion (19 page)

She shook her head. Don't be an idiot, she told
herself. It's not like you're asking him to the junior high school dance! Just
be clear and direct. Still, in spite of herself, her palms were sweating.

She stepped up onto the small porch of the bunkhouse
and knocked on the door. Nothing. No answer.

She took a deep breath and knocked again. Still no
answer.

She felt the first fluttering of panic in her belly.
I've never gotten over the trauma of coming down here on the morning after my
birthday and finding the place empty, so of course I would feel nervous to
knock and not get an answer, she comforted herself. It doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't mean he's really gone.

However, as her nerves quickly built, completely
against her logic and will, she started to understand why she needed to guard
her heart against the assault of Justin this time around. Two unanswered knocks
and her heart was beating in her chest as furiously as if she were in mortal
danger.

In spite of everything her conscious mind was telling
her was logical and made sense, her subconscious was screaming a refrain that
her body was responding to:  HE'S GONE! HE'S GONE FOR GOOD THIS TIME!

She felt herself start to breathe harder, and began to
walk behind the small cabin to dip her feet in the cold stream. She thought the
sensory shock might bring her back down to reality.

As she rounded the side of the bunkhouse, though, she
heard Justin's voice, murmuring in low tones. Damn him for scaring me, she
thought angrily, and then almost immediately afterward – oh my God, is he with
a girl?? Is he with that bitch Kelly?

She peeked around the side of the building and shocked
herself by going weak-kneed with relief.

It wasn't a girl that he was murmuring sweet nothings
to. It was Teddy! The two of them sat on the large, flat top of the boulder
that stood behind the bunkhouse, watching the stream run by. Justin was petting
the dog's head and murmuring to him.

“...such a good boy. That's right. Did anyone ever
tell you you're the best puppy in the whole world? It's true...”

Teddy gazed up at Justin adoringly, and Amanda felt a
catch in her throat. She was overcome with a deep sense of belonging, of
protectiveness, of affection. The phrase that was running on a loop through her
brain, of its own volition, was, “My Boys.”

Overwhelmed with a sudden urge to break the spell she
was under and feeling much too vulnerable to talk to Justin at that moment, she
turned and tried to creep back around the side of the building with as much
stealth as humanly possible.

Still, it wasn't stealthy enough to escape the notice
of Teddy, who either sniffed Amanda or heard her, with his hyper-sensitive
canine senses. Ecstatic at the idea of having both of his favorite people
together at the same time, Teddy jumped to his feet atop the boulder and began
to bark at the top of his considerable lungs, wagging his tail frantically.

Justin turned and called, “Amanda? Where are you
going?”

Amanda turned, embarrassed, and continued walking
backwards as she mumbled, “Um...I just...you know....”

And at that moment, so intent was she on trying to
pull an explanation out of the air at the same time as she was beating a hasty
backwards retreat, that she didn't feel the root under her heel until she had
tripped over it and felt herself falling backwards, windmilling her arms, and
landing squarely on her ass with a sound like, “hmph!”

Justin and Teddy scrambled down from the boulder and
came rushing towards her. “Are you OK?” Justin asked, with genuine concern, and
only a hint of laughter peeking through in his voice.

Teddy barreled into her with all the force of a furry
canine steam engine, knocking her backwards again, leaving her flat on her back
in the dirt, having her face enthusiastically licked by an over-excited canine.

As moments of subtle femininity go, she admitted to
herself, it was not her finest hour.

She struggled back up to a sitting position, fighting
a joyful Teddy the entire way.

Justin had dropped all pretense of not finding the
situation funny, and was sitting on the ground next to her, laughing his head
off.

He pulled Teddy over toward him to give her some
space, and put his palm flat against her back to help leverage her up into a
sitting position. By this time, she was hindered in her efforts by her own
furious laughter.

As the hilarity died down, Justin shook his head.
“Well, whatever you came down here for, I certainly hope it was worth the sore
tailbone you're gonna have tomorrow. What was it, anyway?”

Amanda tried to look casual as she brushed her hair
back from her forehead with dusty fingers, and struggled to sound nonchalant as
she said, “Oh, that, sure. I was just wondering if you were free to go scatter
my Dad's ashes tomorrow. No pressure.”

Chapter 18

Amanda sat in the rocking chair on her back porch
early the next morning holding the carved wooden box which contained her
father's ashes and waited for Justin to emerge from the bunkhouse, barely
visible through the trees further into the property. How many nights had she
sat at her bedroom window as a teenager, gazing at that same bunkhouse door,
just reveling in the knowledge that within it lay Justin, her precious Justin.
She sighed. Had so much really changed?

Today, they were going to hike together up to her
father's favorite spot, to the base of Hope Falls, to scatter his ashes. The
last step left to be performed in the ritual surrounding her father's death.
After today, it was really over. All except for the long, arduous task of
living without him for the rest of her life. Today should be one of the worst
days of her life, but instead, all she felt was comforted that Justin was the
one performing this task with her. It felt right. God help her, it felt good,
even.

She saw the door to the bunkhouse open and Justin
stepped out, looking impossibly handsome. The air left her lungs in a rush. How
was it possible that every single time she saw him, she was all but bowled over
by his pure physical beauty, as if she had never laid eyes on him before? She
had seen him thousands of individual times in her life – thousands of times
that he had walked into a room she was in, or she had walked into a room where
he was, or they had happened upon each other unexpectedly. And every single
time, it was the exact same thing. He knocked the air right out of her.

She shook her head to clear it, and stood up to give
herself a few seconds to steady her shaking knees before he arrived on her back
porch.

As he climbed the steps, he gave her a dazzling smile,
one of those damned brilliant smiles he liked to flash, the ones that always
set her heart beating fast and turned her insides to jelly. This one was #615,
the I’m-Ready-For-Anything smile.

“Ready to go?” she asked, praying that he couldn't
hear the tremor in her voice, or – if he could – that he would put it down to
emotion over the task they were about to perform.

He nodded, looking solemn. “I'm honored that you asked
me to do this with you, Amanda.”

Amanda smiled sadly, “It just seemed right, you know?
Everything about my dad's will seemed to point to wanting to draw you back into
our lives. I know he'd want you to be a part of this.”

Justin smiled and squeezed her hand. Oh, God! He
needed to stop all of this smiling, and hand-squeezing, and...just being
gorgeous...or she was never going to survive the day!

As they strolled companionably along the flatter parts
of the path to Hope Falls, and climbed over the more challenging parts, Amanda
was hyper-aware of Justin's nearness to her, and his hands on various parts of
her body as he helped her over boulders and up steep inclines. She had to
continually remind herself to focus, or she would be in real danger of falling
off of a cliff!

Something else besides just Amanda's libido was
developing as they walked along, she realized. She was witnessing the
solidification of their old rapport, their old camaraderie, their old easy way
of being with each other. They were definitely back in sync with one another,
finishing each other's sentences, sharing the same comfortable silences,
laughing at the same silly jokes. Before Justin returned, it had been so long
since she had felt this kind of one-ness with someone. Actually, if she were to
take a hard look at all of her relationships, she realized that she had
actually never felt this in tune with another human being. She really felt a
connection with Justin, a bond so great that it felt almost tangible.

She knew he felt it, as well, knew it from the way
that his eyes looked into hers, directly into her soul. He read her thoughts so
easily. Invariably, the next words out of his mouth after one of those
soul-baring glances would reveal her precise thoughts. She had no secrets from
him. Where Justin Barnes was concerned, Amanda Jacobs was an open book. She
should feel frightened by this, by how vulnerable it made her, but instead she
felt special, valuable. She knew that Justin would never use the truths that he
read in her eyes to harm her. No. Justin hurt her by his absence, not his
actions.

“So, tell me more about Alaska,” Amanda said, curious.
Now that she was feeling the full force of their old connection, it suddenly
felt nothing short of bizarre that there was a huge chunk of his life that she
knew almost nothing about.

“Alaska,” Justin replied thoughtfully, “Let's see.
It's easy to get lost up there. Nobody asks too many questions.”

“Why were you trying to avoid being asked questions?”
Amanda inquired, “It's not as if you were running from the law.”

Justin considered, and then responded, “That might
have been easier. More clear cut. Reason for running: broke the law. Objective:
stay free. As it was, I had no easy answers about why I was there, so it was
better to not be asked the questions in the first place.

“Also, not having to come up with an answer for
someone else meant that I never had to put too much thought into untangling my
motivations in my own mind, either – and believe me, it was a mess in there.”

Amanda walked on in silence for awhile, absorbing
this. It was the first time that she had ever considered that Justin may have
been suffering, as well, in their years apart. Somehow she had always envisaged
him carefree, dancing through life without her, possibly having completely
forgotten that they ever knew each other. That was a masochistic way to
multiply her own pain, and she shamelessly indulged in it.

But, now, faced with direct evidence that contradicted
her many-times-replayed fantasy of all the good times Justin must be having
without her, she found that she didn't revel in his misery. No. It made her
sad. She would rather him have spent ten happy, contented years than ten
confused and miserable ones, even if those years were spent without her.

The remainder of the trek to the Falls was made in
contemplative silence. Amanda was doing a reset of her conceptions of Justin's
state of mind, both in the past and the present, and she wondered if he was
doing something similar. It was amazing to her how two people could be so
simpatico, and yet on some issues, have absolutely no idea whatsoever what was
going through the other person's mind.

She was still somewhat in a state of mental flux when
they rounded the last corner and the majestic sight of Hope Falls opened up
before them. Amanda had been here many times, but never failed to be struck by
the beauty of the waterfall from which the town of Hope Falls had taken its
name. Intertwining ropes of water rushed around boulders and down the side of a
lush green slope, coming together finally into one single vertical stream,
which emptied straight down into the furthermost corner of Hope Pond.

This spot had been a favorite of her father's, in
fact, Amanda couldn't count the amount of times that they had picnicked here.
Some of their best talks had been here.

Especially in the painful weeks and months after
losing her mother, this place had been a healing balm to Amanda. Amanda was not
the kind of person who opened up easily about her feelings as a child, even to
her father. She still found talking about painful emotions to be uncomfortable,
but as a kid that quality was even more pronounced. When she felt hurt or
threatened, she would retreat inside of herself, like a turtle, protected by
her hard shell.

However, Parker, in his wisdom, knew how dangerous it
would be to let her keep her grief bottled up inside, how poisonous it would be
to her if she continued to only internalize it. So he had gently prodded, had
kept up the campaign for months, never pressuring her, but continuing to nudge
at the door that she kept firmly shut on her emotions, little by little,
prodding it open.

The hikes to Hope Falls had been an important tool in
his ongoing attempts to get little Amanda to talk to him about what she was
going through. Because of the fact that it was a more than a two hour hike each
way, plus the time that it took them to set up the picnic lunch that Parker
would have packed with all of Amanda's favorite things, and to enjoy it
thoroughly, it gave them plenty of time to talk. Time that was uninterrupted,
and where Amanda could not retreat into her room, or into a book. It was what
finally let Parker wear her down enough to open up to him, and in truth, it was
the beginning of what became one of the hallmarks of their relationship – the
fact that she could say anything to him, and never feel judged, only supported.

Now, as an adult Amanda made this trek in the wake of
her father's death, she was struck by something that had never occurred to her
before. Her father must have been grieving horribly for her mother in those
early days following her death – but his focus had been on Amanda, on her
feelings. Judging by how difficult the past week and a half had been for her,
she didn't know how she could have been nearly as strong as he was, given the
same circumstances.