I know I can’t do a damn thing about the past but I will do whatever it takes to make sure the rest of our lives together are so magical that when we tell the story of our love to our grandkids, the part about when we were apart won’t even matter.
Chapter Nineteen
Piper
My feet sink into the cool sand with each step and a brisk morning breeze blows through my hair, making me pull my sweater tighter around my body as I walk along the beach, thinking over the past few days of our trip. Yesterday, after our little talk, Wyatt and I spent an hour lost in each other, which is quickly becoming a common theme for us, before we went to downtown Charleston to explore. Bill, the man who owns the bakery where I grabbed breakfast yesterday, recommended we check out the market so we walked through the open sheds and browsed all the vendors selling everything from soap to sweetgrass baskets to jewelry to art before we went on a horse drawn carriage ride around the city. Charleston is absolutely gorgeous and if I wasn’t “oohing” and “aching” over the scenery then I was gushing over the architecture and history. I was entranced and I really hope we can come back here often.
The sun isn’t up yet and the light is soft, making everything look and feel more peaceful but my belly flips as the nerves crash over me. I wish we didn’t have to say good-bye to this beautiful place but as soon as Wyatt wakes up, we will pack everything up and drive back to Baton Rouge to go back to our regular lives. We have been in this perfect little bubble for the past three days and I hate not knowing what is going to happen when we go back. Here, it is so easy to just be us without all the pain and drama of the past and as much as I hope that will carry over to our everyday lives, I just don’t know. Shit. I don’t even really know where he and I stand.
Are we back together officially?
Are we taking things slow and feeling it out?
Even after our talk yesterday and me telling him I wanted to take things slow, I still got the feeling that he was trying to push the issue as we were walking around yesterday. He kept picking up various decorations and asking me if I liked them. If I said yes, he would immediately buy it so I learned pretty quick to just shrug and move along. That makes me sound cold but it’s not even that I didn’t want him to buy me anything, it’s just that I don’t know what any of it means. He would show me a piece of art and I would wonder if he was asking because he wants us to live together now or he would ask if I liked a gorgeous necklace and I would wonder if he was trying to win me over to his side.
I reach the edge of the water and sigh as the water rushes around my feet before retreating back down the beach. Backing up a few steps, I sit down and stretch my feet out until the water just barely kisses them as I stare out at the horizon. Warring emotions rip through me and I shake my head. I don’t even know what I want when we get back so it is impossible to convey that to Wyatt. He wants us to be all in, I know that and there are moments when that is all I want, too, but I feel like I need to be responsible. The last thing I want is to jump in too quickly and put us in a bad place again just because I couldn’t be patient. Then again, the thought of going back to my apartment alone sounds just as bad. There is no middle ground here. I either have to risk it all or tell Wyatt to wait for me and neither of those options sound ideal if I’m being honest. My heart, the always wild and unpredictable part of me, tells me to jump in, to stop wasting time when I’ve already wasted ten years of our lives but my head reminds me of that dark awful place I was when I left last time. I shudder as the memories flood into my mind and shake my head.
I remember walking out of the house we shared on base so clearly, like I was in my right mind but I know I wasn’t because I was convinced that the man who killed my parents was coming for me and I had to run. The next thing that I can recall is pulling into Baton Rouge but I don’t remember any of the fourteen hour drive from North Carolina. All I know is that I was sure Clinton Woods was right behind me, ready to finish the job he started when he killed my parents. The next year passed in a blur. I was in survival mode, both in my head and in reality, and as more of the real world slipped away from me, the more I deteriorated. By the time Dr. Brewer found me, sleeping on a park bench during her morning run, I had lost thirty-five pounds and I hadn’t bathed in months.
Tears fill my eyes as I remember waking up in that hospital and being able to think clearly for the first time in over a year but that was soon taken over by fear. I had no idea where I was and all I wanted was Wyatt. Closing my eyes, I can still hear my echoed sobs as they bounced off the walls of my room late at night and the way my chest ached with the pain of his absence as I tried to deal with the trauma from my childhood. I suck in a stuttered breath, trying not to cry as my first session with Dr. Brewer comes back to me. She urged me to open up about what had happened to me but I just sat in silence, staring at the floor and wishing I could find a phone to call my husband. It was only when she told me that I needed to learn to talk about what happened and deal with the emotions associated with it before I could go back to him that I started to do the work I needed to do to get better.
“Piper?!” Wyatt’s panicked voice yells from behind me and I whip my head around as I frantically wipe the tears from my face. I can’t see him so he must still be back at the house, behind the dunes and I wave my hand in the air as I clear my throat.
“Over here.”
I hear him before I see him, his feet slapping against the wooden walkway to the beach as he runs at full speed in my direction. He appears over the dunes in his mesh shorts and a t-shirt and as soon as his gaze lands on me, his worried expression falls away and he stops, planting his hands on his legs as he bends over and lets out a breath. Once he has recovered enough to move, he walks over to me and plops down in the sand next to me, dropping his head into his hands.
“Jesus Christ. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
I arch a brow. “Do what?”
“Disappear,” he breathes, running his hand through his hair and my heart seizes in my chest. Reaching over, I grab his hand and wrap his arm around my shoulders as I cuddle into him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to scare you.”
Shaking his head, he hooks his arm around my neck and pulls me closer as he presses his lips to my head. “I thought you left me…”
“Wyatt,” I whisper, trying to pull away but he doesn’t let me go anywhere so I cuddle back into him and hope my presence is enough to calm his racing heart. We sit in silence for a few seconds before he reaches over and pulls me into his lap. I brace my hands on his shoulders as I straddle him and he presses his forehead to my chest as he takes another deep breath. Running my fingers through his hair, I try to get him to look at me but he just shakes his head. “Are you okay?”
He finally meets my gaze. “No, I’m not okay, Piper. I couldn’t fucking find you anywhere and all of my worst fucking fears were realized.”
“Baby… I’m sorry…”
He wraps both arms around me and pulls me closer as he sighs. “Just let me hold you for a minute.”
“Okay.”
“Why are you down here anyway?” he asks, his voice muffled by the fabric of my sweater. He pulls back to look up at me and he scowls when he gets a good look at my face. “Why have you been crying?”