Tattooed Hearts (18 page)

He dragged the open
notebook away from her and examined
the two words
written several times on the paper. “Tattooed Hearts,” he said as realization
seeped into him.

“That’s the name of the
movie.”

She twiddled her hair in a
seemingly absent-minded way, drawing his attention to the exquisite length of
her neck.
Easily, he could close the space between
them and kiss her collarbone.

Forrest cleared his
throat. “You bid on me.”

She ran her tongue over
her bottom lip before tucking it back between glossed lips. Then she cocked her
head to one side and stared at him.
“I did.”

“Why?” he asked, eyes
locked unwaveringly on hers.

“It’s for charity.”

“That’s it?”

She licked her lips again,
drawing his gaze back to her mouth. He looked, wanting nothing more than to
slam his mouth to hers and knock all the wind out of her lun
gs.

“No,” she whispered.

She was quiet for a
moment,
then
eyes like sunlight
shining through whiskey met his. “I can’t let you go.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Every heart sings a song incomplete until another heart whispers
back.”

Plato

Forrest’s lips
twitched. Claire stared. She couldn’t help it
. T
hey
were full, firm and
wickedly sensual. He had a great mouth and she wanted to lean over and latch on
to his lower lip.

“You let me go ten years
ago,” Forrest said, snapping Claire out of her fantasy.

“Not
by choice.” But she knew better than to think such a simple
explanation would be enough.
Fight
or flight, right?

She’d run enough.
Time to come forward and put everything
on the table.

His brows knitted. “What
do you mean by that?”

“I needed to make someth
ing of myself first.” Her eyes drifted to the blank sheet
of paper. She wrote hurriedly–
It
was always you.
Can’t fight these feelings for you.

“Claire?” He pushed her to
continue.

She placed the pen in the
center of the journal and gave him her full attent
ion.
“Ten years ago, I was nothing but the daughter of a housekeeper.” Her stomach
twisted, no matter how many times she’d said the words, they were still sharp
and cut through her every time.

“What?”
he
asked,
confusion clear in his voice.

She smiled,
but her heart felt sad, shredded. The world faded away,
drained of all color except for the man sitting across the table. “The night of
my party, I overheard Victoria telling my mother I wasn’t good enough for you
and that your parents hated the idea of us
together.”
The painful memories, as raw as a howling winter wind, blew right through her.

He shook his head. “My
parents loved us. They love you.”

“I know, but…”

“Why would you believe
her?” he persisted.

Claire shrugged. She
floundered for words, somethi
ng to express the regret
that coursed through her, but nothing came.

“She wasn’t well,” Forrest
reminded her.

“We didn’t know that
then.”

He nodded. “For a long time I racked my
brain for answers. I thought it came down to your father leaving your mother w
hile pregnant.”

“My father deserting my
mother always messed me up,” she admitted. “But that night was the catalyst of
me being a broken mess.” She inhaled and exhaled. “Now you know the truth.”

 
“Why didn’t you come to me instead of
running that night?” Gray eyes, a shadow of agony, darkened behind his glasses.
“I was waiting for you,” he said in a roughened voice.

Sharp sadness stabbed her
heart. At eighteen, she had been vulnerable and Victoria
’s words fed to her weakness and insecurities. In the process, she’d hurt
the one person she never wanted to cause any pain. Guilt sat heavy and acrid in
her belly.

Her eyes suddenly swam
with tears
and she
hurried to scrub them from her face.
Tears lead
to sympathy, and sympathy always lead to
more tears. “I’m sorry,” she said in a strained voice. “I should have talked to
you, but I was young and in shock.” Quickly the feeling of security from her
decision to stay and fight died away, shame and confusion
filled in its absence. “Her words broke me that night.”

He pushed his chair back
and slid
closer into the empty
chair beside her. He caught her hand in his, their fingers becoming locked
together similar to puzzle pieces.
“No
longer hiding your tattoo.”
It
wasn’t a
question but an indication that he noticed.

“It’s permanent.”
Like my love for you
.

Forrest’s jaw ticked.
His expression, quiet and steady.
The space between them
slowly faded. As he leaned forward, her pulse raced, lips parted with
anticipation.
Looking into his eyes, she became lost
in the deep pools of gray that displayed his soul.

His lips brushed upon her
tear-stained cheek. Claire’s heart came to a halt, breath caught in her throat.
As the soft skin of his mouth left the side of her face, th
e exact spot where they came into contact burned and
tingled. A hot, blazing fire pulsed through her. Forrest pulled away silently,
but their eyes locked, having a private conversation on their own in a long
muted moment.

 “I’m sorry you went
through that,
” he said quietly. “I can’t even say I
understand how you felt that night.”

Claire lowered her gaze to
their hands still knotted together.

“But that was ten years
ago,” he continued. 

After a light squeeze, he
released her hands.
Sadness flowed through her veins, cold and unending.
Any illusion of possibly
mending their relationship fell away.

“Victoria died six years
ago,” he said, his voice perfectly even.
“Why did you wait so long to tell me all this?”

“I thought you hated me.”

He exhaled, placed his
elbows on the table. “I was angry for a long time, but I never hated you.”

Neither spoke for a beat.
The silence seeped into Claire’s pores, drowning her mind in its thick
toxicity. “I should have come to you sooner,” she said
in a
low voice.
“But, I never felt good enough.”

“You were always good
enough.”

She let out a low chuckle.
“Hence all the additional things I do.
The designing, the acting.”
Her eyes, filled with
unshed tears, glazed over the two sentences she’d finally written
down. “And now I’m tired.”

“You will write the song.
Stop trying so hard. Take a break.”

“I was referring to us.”
She met his gaze and held. “I’m tired of running from you.”

“Claire.” He sighed. “It’s
been ten years.”

“Too long?” she asked in a
tone she h
oped was light.

“I gave you my heart
freely.” He smiled at her, not the warm, heart-melting smile, but one of regret
and opportunity lost. “That shouldn’t have made it worthless.” He removed his
glasses and dug the heel of his hands in his eyes then opened
them again and stared at her. “That made it priceless.”

“Your love was never
worthless.”

“I wish you trusted me
enough then or came to me sooner.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Ten years
is a long time.”

“We were supposed to be
forever.”

“You broke
the deal,” he responded after a beat.
His voice thick
with regret.

She searched his face,
trying to find if they were really hopeless. His eyes held all the longing in
her heart. “You still love me.”

“This isn’t about what I
feel, but what I can give. I can’t give you love.” He released a deep breath.
“It’s time for both of us to let go.”

She blinked. “Let go.”

“You have a life in L.A. I
live here. We’d never work.” He shook his head. “Our time has pa
ssed.” Slowly he lifted his weight from the chair. “Let’s
try to be friends again.”

Their gazes intertwined
once more,
then
he walked out of Vapor
without even a last look in her direction. The wall clock ticked like the timer
on a bomb. She couldn’t stop it, reverse it or slow it down. Each tick dragged
her forward to the here and now.
Her phone pinged
. She snatched
it
and
sk
immed through the notification
. Someone had increased
the wager on Forrest by five hundred dollars.

With nervous energy
sitting in her stomach, she tapped her fingers on the table, contemplating
whether to continue the bidding war or stop. He hadn’t denied
loving her still. Had he done so, it would have made it
easier to let him go. She increased her bid, doubling the last bidder and
raising her stake on Forrest to three thousand dollars.

Picking up the pen, she
focused her attention on the last word writte
n and
scribbled.

In the arithmetic of love, one plus one
equals
infinity, and two minus one equals nothing.
It is a cruelty of life that a heart can keep on beating even
after it has been broken in two. It can feel as though it is being gripped in
an ice-cold vice and ache as if it will implode in your chest, but still the
boom-boom continues.
I
never said what I wanted to say, but I fell for you harder than a slip on black
ice.

* * * *

Forrest’s throat tightened
the minute he pulled the Jeep into Herrin
g Creek
Farm. The place looked somber and deserted. He glanced at the yellow tractor by
the barn and could almost see his father working the land. His heart clenched.
He exhaled some of the pain from his system and continued driving to the
Victorian house.
His foot lifted off the accelerator,
the Jeep slowed, passed one of the Herring Creek delivery trucks. Returning to
the farm forced him to swim once more in the tide waters of the past, his
childhood, who he thought he was, and was no longer.

He entered t
he house and was greeted by total hush. No sign of his
mother. A combination of relief and sorrow tugged at him as he made his way
down the hall. Photographs on the wall, cataloging some of the best moments in
their lives followed him. A few were sun-bleac
hed and
a little damaged, but each was a conduit of his best memories.

His mother took pride in
framing them, and was meticulous with the way they were hung. She measured the
space between the frames so
each
celluloid
could be properly aligned and exact in
distance. She used to tell him these pictures encouraged
her to visit these moments and kept them from fading, vanish from her mind, as
if none of it ever happened. Forrest stopped to examine a particular picture of
him with his parents. His mind’s eye da
rted to that
specific period in time when Victoria captured his father turning the hose on
him and his mother. The love in his mother’s eyes, the mischievous smile on his
father’s lip stared back at him.

“Forrest.”

His mother’s voice
snatched him from the
promenade down Memory Lane and
forced him into the
chaos his life had become
. He turned and took in
her appearance. She stood, tall and strikingly beautiful, with his father’s two
beloved black Labs at her side. The dogs ran to him, tails wagging. Forrest
crouched down and scratched their ears.

She removed the woolen hat
,
sandy brown hair fell down
to her shoulders in waves. Big, bright gray eyes that typically glittered
looked washed out, like an old white shirt that had been washed with dark
colors a few
times too often.

“I didn’t think you were
here,” he said, straightening to his full height.

“I was by the lake.”

He nodded. They continued
to stare at each other. Bright, vivid thoughts of him racing down the hall with
his parents at his heels
trundled
through
his brain with no intention of stopping.