“You didn’t have to do this,” he said.
Even though we used the same products in the shower, the scents were so different on him, especially when he put on his cologne. My eyes closed, and I briefly took in the aromas, smells I had memorized long, long ago, but they didn’t compare to the real thing.
“Hush,” I said, my lids opening again. “I wanted to.”
I set the plates on the counter, refilled our cups, and took the stool next to his.
“Man,” he groaned. “You used to make the meanest breakfast in college, and it’s even better now.” He spooned in several bites. “These eggs are delicious.”
I remembered the meals I used to cook for him and Dylan, and the darkness started to encroach into the edges of my mind. The sadness that I constantly tried to push away.
“I wish we could eat like that again—I mean, the three of us.”
He glanced up from his plate, chewing a piece of bacon. “You have no idea how badly I wish for that.”
“Even if it was for a short time, at one point, both of us were gone.” I felt a tightening in my throat, an almost choking inside my chest. “The pain you must have felt—I can’t even go there.”
“No, Pearl …” He set down his fork. “I lost all three of you.”
Gran.
I didn’t know what their relationship had looked like after I was gone, but I had a feeling there had been one. I wasn’t ready to hear about her yet. I couldn’t even handle talking about her passing—that needed strength that I still didn’t have. But once I was ready, I knew Ashe would give me those answers.
“How are you still holding it together?”
“You.” His hands dropped, and I reached for one, holding it while he said, “You think I pulled you out of the darkness. But, Pearl, you pulled me out too.”
I squeezed his fingers, staring at them, his always so warm and kind. “Can I hug you?”
He nodded. “Hurry.”
I knew that feeling well, and I got off my stool and fell into his open arms, holding him as close as I could. I couldn’t take it away. I couldn’t even make my own pain leave. But I could sympathize, and I could make him a promise. “I’m back,” I said into his neck. I took a breath, holding it in while I let that thought settle in my head. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
Sixty-Seven
After
Ashe
It had taken almost seven hours to get here, and it had been over eleven years since the last time we’d visited, but the moment I pulled into the base of Cadillac Mountain, the landscape and details all came rushing back to me. This was a place I couldn’t forget even if I tried. And I was sure Pearl couldn’t either, just like I assumed she had known where we were headed the moment we got in the car in Boston. But she never said a word about it during the drive until we reached Trenton. That was a town about twenty minutes from Bar Harbor, where we’d stopped once with Dylan to eat lobster, and when we’d passed that lobster pound, her smile had reached as far as her eyes.
“What a day that was,” she said so softly.
This time, we drove up the mountain, and I reached across the front seat, clasping our fingers together, bringing hers up to my lips to kiss. “A perfect memory.”
As we reached the end of the road, I parked, and we got out, walking the rest of the way to the summit. Our fingers were still tangled, the heat of her hand against mine, and we found the spot where the three of us had sat all those years ago.
But now, there were many differences. I could feel them in the air. I could see them every time I glanced at Pearl’s side, the place where Dylan had landed his ass when we finished our hike.
“I miss him,” I whispered.
“Me too.”
That eager grin of his, a personality bursting with energy, fearlessness, and an equal dose of cocky and crankiness.
The world couldn’t produce a better friend than Dylan Cole.
And as I sat with Pearl on this rocky edge, the view of the islands below, the endless mountains across from us, I knew I’d been led here for a reason.
Things had a way of coming full circle.
I had survived the worst pain of my life, and this was the other side.
“I feel her.”
I put my arm over her shoulders and pulled her against my side. “That’s because being up here makes us closer to heaven.”
She rested her head against my chest. “The warmth feels like her arms.”
“Maybe it is.”
She turned her face up to look at me. “Do you believe that?”
I stared into her eyes—a miracle that I was even able to do that. That we were here. Together. “You came back to me. I believe anything is possible.”
The truth was, I felt Dylan too.
I felt him protect me every day.
I felt him when I laughed.
I felt him when things got hard.
Just because Pearl had been rescued and she was living with me didn’t mean things had been perfect since the day she had walked back in. There were moments that felt impossibly difficult, but I was gaining more strength, patience, and most of all, hope.
“Aside from your home, this is my favorite place.”
Holding the top of her arm, I pressed my lips into her hair, the cinnamon scent causing me to close my eyes. “It’s our home, Pearl.”
“No …”
I held her chin, turning it until she looked at me again. “If it takes finding a new place, one that feels like it’s half yours, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Tears began to fill her eyes the longer she stared at me. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.” The knot that had been visiting my throat lately was back, the breaking inside my chest. Both intensifying as I gazed into her gorgeous eyes. “A wise woman once told me that you were still alive, that she would have felt it in her heart if you were no longer on this earth. Therefore, I knew you would return one day. I felt it every time I took a breath. And even if you were found and you had fallen in love with someone else and I had to live with the fact that you were his and not mine, at least I would have known you were safe, you were alive, and you were loved. For me, that would have been enough.”
It took her several moments to control her cries enough to say, “I could never love anyone but you.”
Her hands surrounded my face, and I held the back of one, kissing the inside of her palm. “What I want more than anything is to one day ask you to be my wife. To hear a beautiful, blue-eyed girl call you her mommy, to wake every morning with you cuddled in my arms. I will protect you, Pearl, until I take my last breath.” Her thumbs were swiping near my lips, and I kissed one as it passed across my mouth. “We have nothing but time to make those dreams come true.”
“A child.” She swallowed, the emotion welling in her throat. “Our child.”
I wiped under her eyes as they continuously overflowed. She slid her arms around my neck, and I held her tightly on top of our mountain. Our breaths matched, emotion pounding from our insides.
I knew things wouldn’t always be easy. As the weeks passed, more challenges would arise. New fears would present themselves. Pearl’s road to recovery would be rocky as hell. But I wasn’t afraid of those unknowns. We would solve them together, and Dylan would help me with each one.