Linc looked sad as he showed me his mother’s old sitting room—empty and barren.
“He threw away everything of hers,” he said, the pain evident in his voice.
“You didn’t get anything?”
“A few little items I grabbed. I heard him making arrangements to have it all taken away, and once I heard him go out, I packed up some things and hid them in the basement in a room I knew he never went into. Things I knew he wouldn’t notice or care about, but I knew she loved.” He sighed. “I couldn’t take her chair or the little sofa she had. She always let me lie on it while she read to me. I had to leave the pictures she loved because if he figured out that I had taken even one, he would have hunted down everything and destroyed all of it.”
I grasped his hand. “Linc, I’m sorry.”
He stared at the room, the wallpaper faded, the shadows of long-lost pictures removed and destroyed leaving their imprints. I wondered if he was remembering the sound of her voice, a time when life wasn’t so difficult for him because he had her. His voice was thick when he spoke. “It was better to have a few things than none at all, you know? A few of her books, some of the needlepoint pieces she had finished but not hung up. Her letters from her parents. Personal things.” He shivered. “I think my father would have killed me if he’d found me going through her drawers and cupboards taking private stuff.”
I recalled his sadness, then his intense panic when he realized his father had returned home early. We both knew what he would do if he found out I was in the house. Linc had rushed me down to the kitchen, and I’d slipped out the back door, hurrying down the path that skirted the house and making my way home in the dark. Linc had been upset for days that he’d made me walk home alone. I had stumbled in the dark, scraping my hand badly. He checked it every day, kissing the torn skin and worrying about infection, fretting over me needlessly.
I’d never ventured into his father’s house again with Linc.
Until yesterday.
It had been a shock to see the boy I had loved for so long standing in front of me—no longer a boy, but a man. Gone were the developing muscles and youthful, handsome face. The shy smile and the guarded expression he often had to adopt when seeing me was absent, replaced by a confident air and demeanor.
The man in front of me wasn’t shy. He was tall, his shoulders broad, his waist trim. His hair was darker than I remembered, and he wore it longer than he had when we were younger. His sharp jaw was covered in scruff, and he wore an expensive suit tailored to perfection. Something deep within me strummed with recognition at the stranger in my shop, staring at me, his body tight with tension. When he pulled off his sunglasses, revealing the eyes that still haunted my dreams, I was shocked.
Then I became angry.
Angry enough to march up to his father’s house and confront him. To hurl the furious words I had kept inside for so many years. Slapping him had been one of the most violent things I had done in my life.
What transpired afterward was unexpected, wondrous, and frightening.
To hear what he went through, what that bastard of a father had done to him. Listen as Linc told me of the years spent at what amounted to a prison for him had been like. Accept the letters he had written to me that his father waylaid. All of it difficult, heartbreaking, and almost surreal.
After we separated for the evening, I sat and read some of the letters, once again transforming into the girl he had written them to. I felt his pain, his anger, the terror of not knowing or understanding what had happened, or how he could get away. His pleas to wait for him, to know how much he loved me, how much he would always love me. His loneliness, isolation, and fear jumped from the pages. His longing for me grew with each letter, the pain he was feeling soaked into the ink on the pages.
His honest, handwritten words mended some of the pieces of my heart that had shredded the day he disappeared from my life. Knowing I hadn’t been abandoned. That he hadn’t fucked and run. The fact that his love had been real—all of it healed a part of my broken spirit I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in until now.
I stopped in confusion outside the house, staring at the bright-pink SUV. Linc had told me his lawyer was coming back today, but I doubted he drove such a feminine vehicle. The flowers and sparkle decals on the sides were not something I would associate with a lawyer. But perhaps, I told myself, it belonged to his wife or daughter and he had to borrow it.
The front door was ajar, and I followed the sound of voices to the den. I frowned at the obviously feminine-sounding tone, stopping in shock in the doorway.
Linc was holding a woman, kissing her head. Murmuring to her in a low, gentle voice. His entire stance was protective. She was wrapped in his embrace, his hand spread wide across her back. I heard his endearment as he spoke, assuring her he was wasn’t leaving her and he would protect her.
Their familiarity was palpable, the intimacy of the moment clear. This was someone very important to Linc.
How important, I didn’t know, but suddenly, the ten years we’d been apart seemed longer. A chasm of unknown questions, memories, moments neither of us knew about.
Who was this woman to Linc? What did it mean for us?
Had his response, his closeness the past hours, simply been a reaction to the memories of us and not actually real feelings? Did he already belong to someone else and was now realizing his actions had been just that?
When he looked up and met my eyes, his grew wide with anxiety, and he shook his head, telling me what I needed to know.
I had to leave. I wasn’t any more welcome here now than I had been years ago.
He didn’t have to say anything. I turned and left much the same way I had the other time.
Alone, upset, and confused.
I paced my small apartment over the bakery on an endless loop. All the things I had loved about the space now seemed wrong. The coziness was claustrophobic, the furniture uncomfortable, the sight of the town, and the large house that loomed over it, daunting. I snapped shut the blinds, but I couldn’t get the images in my mind to stop.
Linc holding another woman. Soothing her. The way his long-fingered hands drifted up and down her back in comforting, familiar touches. His voice crooning to her.
There was history. A lot of it. She meant something to him.
A voice in my head told me that was why he said he wanted me to call. He didn’t ask me to come to the house. But once I finished with my supplier, and closed the shop, I wanted to see him. I looked at the bag I had dropped by my door when I’d arrived home, breathless, upset, and tearful.
Biscuits. I had made him an extra batch of fresh biscuits, and I planned on giving them to him with tubs of jam and butter. I wanted him to eat them in his father’s den. Let the crumbs fall on the expensive rug and not clean them up. Do something silly and make him laugh in a room that had only every brought him fear.
My gaze fell to the pile of letters. Ones that had hurt me to read yet brought me a glimmer of hope that perhaps my future might look different from what it had the day before. That maybe Linc might once again be part of my life.
Now, I couldn’t stand to look at them.
I couldn’t take the apartment anymore. I needed to get out before I let my emotions swamp me. Despite what I knew the place now meant, there was only one spot I could think to go and clear my head.