26
AUSTIN
I used to think I wouldn’t do laundry for any woman but my mother. It’s a pain in the ass, and one of the household chores I hate most.
But here I am, unloading the Bridger washing machine because the housekeeper is busy making dinner. Carly doesn’t have any clothes here, so I put her dirty stuff through a cycle while she showers.
I thought about joining her, but we both decided she needed to relax alone for a bit. We’ll have plenty of time for lovemaking later. Once I get her beneath me, I’m not letting her up for a good long while.
Maybe not even a lifetime.
I pull her damp clothes out of the washing machine and throw them into the dryer, and then I join her out on the deck. Alone. I don’t know where my brothers are, but I’m thankful they’ve made themselves scarce.
She’s sitting in an Adirondack chair wearing only one of my large T-shirts. Her hair hangs in wet waves around her shoulders, and her skin is scrubbed clean.
I’ve been thinking while she showered—thinking about something I’d rather forget.
But I can’t.
I called my mom and she’s doing fine. In fact, she begged me not to return to Seattle, not to give up my inheritance, for her. She has friends who are checking in, and she’ll be in rehab soon with all her needs met.
But God, the guilt…
My mom was always the one constant in my life, and now I can’t be the constant in hers.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” she said to me on the phone. “This is your time to shine, Austin. I’ll be okay. The business will be okay because I have a shortlist of pilots I can call who wanted the job. I’m sure one of them will take it. So don’t even think about giving up on your inheritance or more importantly, your chance to fall in love. I want grandkids.”
Her words still hang in my mind.
My mom means so much to me, and I’d feel awful if we were at odds.
So I have to have a tough conversation with Carly.
As much as I loved that she came to me at the station, that she left with me instead of her family, she’s in the middle. Pulled in two directions. Her family is important to her as much as my mom is to me. I can’t have them be at odds. I won’t.
I’d love to have her here with me—as much as I yearn for her constantly—but she needs to go home. She needs to make things right with her father. I won’t be able to have her completely happy if she has to choose. I don’t want her to do so.
With my mom in the hospital, I recognize the feeling of having to choose between who you love and who to be with. But Mom and I aren’t fighting.
Carly smiles and looks up when I settle in the chair beside her. It’s dark out, but soft lights are built into the underside of the deck’s railing. I can see her clearly, but nothing beyond the golden glow.
“Hey, baby.” I take her hand. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay.” She sighs, playing with the bottom of my t-shirt that rests mid-thigh. I feel like a caveman seeing her wearing it and I wonder what she has on beneath. If anything. “Really. I’ve been through much worse.”
I tense, as I do whenever I think about what she experienced. But I, like she, must come to terms with it and move forward. As much as it pains me to know what she’s been through, if she can move on, I must as well.
I draw in a deep breath. “You have, and you’re amazing.”
She shrugs her slim shoulders. “It’s nothing anyone else couldn’t do.”
“Give yourself credit,” I tell her. Nothing anyone else couldn’t do? Survive being kidnapped and shipped to a sinister island where she was used and abused? “You have so much inner fortitude. You deserve everything good. Which is why—”
“I have to go home.” Her voice is soft. Her gaze drops to my chest. Nervous, or shy. Or afraid.
I drop my mouth open. She was pondering the same thing as I was. “Baby?”
“I’ve been sitting out here thinking, Austin. I don’t regret coming with you, and I’d do it again. I showed my parents what you mean to me, and that neither of them can control me. But…”