What the Heart Wants
PROLOGUE
My eighteenth birthday
Fly Free.
I trace the two words, written in black ink by a hand more beloved than my own. The color is stark against the pale pink of the parchment paper it’s scrolled on. This was so her. Something she always did. Write letters. Mostly to my sister, Evie, and me over the years during her times away. Sometimes it would be a postcard from one of the faraway places her wandering soul would take her. Other times, it was a quickly scribbled note on a bar napkin enclosed with a ticket stub from a concert she’d seen on her adventure.
Once she sent us these incredible jeweled necklaces from a German glassworker that were blown glass and hand painted. Every time the mailman came to the reservation where we stayed with our grandfather, I’d pray there was a message or package from Mom.
From the time I could speak and understand, I’d hang on every word of the fantastical stories she’d us tell upon her return. Her stories took us everywhere from Istanbul to Iceland and all the way to a Burning Man festival in the California desert. That time, she gave us tiny finger cymbals that belly dancers used. After that gift, Mother signed us up for our first round of belly dancing lessons, something Evie and I still love doing together.
The reality in our home was that our mother, Catori Ross, went where the wind blew her.
I adored my mother and envied the life she lived. Still do, even after she left us for her final journey. Her one last adventure, she liked to call it. One she promised Evie and me would make her happy for eternity.
Never worry about me, beautiful girls, she whispered, each of her hands outstretched, my hand in one, Evie’s in the other. Her body sunken in, nothing but skin and bones, in the bed she’d not left in months. She smiled and shifted her dark gaze first to Evie and then to me. I’ve never been anywhere there wasn’t beauty. With a squeeze of our hands, she closed her eyes, exhaled, and was gone.
It was the last thing she said to us. What’s amazing, though? I believed her. Death would be Mom’s final stop whether or not she wanted it to be. Even then, I knew in my whole heart that she’d find beauty wherever her soul flew. It was her way.
The one saving grace in all this sorrow was that Mom truly lived. She never settled. Always kept one foot outside the door, hands tightly gripping the wheel of life. With every breath she took, she exhaled freedom, spirit, and love. Wanderlust oozed out of every pore. Nothing could hold her back. Not her military-driven husband or her two daughters. A fact that has hurt Evie deeply.
Me, I’ve always understood. I’m just like my mother. My feet are constantly itching to dance, to run, to fly. Which is why, scanning the last paragraph of my mothers’ words to me on this, my eighteen birthday, I’ve come to the revelation that I, too, can’t settle. I won’t be held back by obligation, responsibility, or even…love.
I shuffle through the stacks of sealed pink envelopes beside the satin ribbon that held them together when my grandfather handed these letters to us after my mother died six months ago. Each envelope carries a date or specific event in our lives indicating when we are to open them.
Evie and I share the same birthday, so she opened her first letter marked with the same date as my own. Today’s date. Her twentieth birthday, my eighteenth.
Evie sniffles from the papasan chair she’s snuggled into and folds her letter into thirds before stuffing it back into the envelope. She presses the flat of her hand along the front and lifts it to her nose.
“Smells like her.” Evie clears her throat as a tear slides down her cheek.
I sniff my letter and note the subtle hints of citrus and earth, maybe even patchouli. “Mom always said if you’re going to smell like anything, let it be natural. Fruit and spice.”
“And everything nice!” Evie chuckles, then lets out a long sigh. “I miss her. Sometimes I pretend she’s just gone off on another one of her adventures, you know? Then I can be pissed off and plan out all the catty things I’m going to say to her when she finally returns with a suitcase full of dirty clothes and presents to smooth over the hurt of her absence.”
My throat tightens, and I suck in a harsh breath. “Evie, she didn’t want to leave…”
“Not this time, Kaye, but what about all the other times? Years and years of time lost. And for what?” She huffs and stands up to pace, clutching her letters to her chest. “Fun. Wild experiences. Adventures!” Her irritation grows along with her volume. “It killed her. This need to see the greener things on the other side.” She points at me with a mighty scowl and indignation seeping from her. “Well, that won’t be me. No way. No how. I’ve got my feet firmly planted on terra firma. I’m going to finish school, get my bachelor’s in finance, then my master’s and make something of myself. And I’m going to be happy!”
I watch my sister’s golden blond hair swish back and forth down her back in a tumble of beachy waves. Her blue eyes are blazing with determination when she tosses her letters to the chair and flings herself on the bed next to me in a dramatic heap.
My sister is light everywhere I am dark. Mom never said much about my real father other than that his name was Ian and I look exactly like him. Coffee-brown hair and amber-colored eyes. Evie and I both got our mother’s Native American bone structure, including the high rounded cheekbones, thick hair, long bodies, dark golden skin tone, and warm hearts.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get her or our grandfather’s awesome, pitch-black, pin-straight hair or super dark espresso eye color. Our eyes are the same almond shape, which I’ve always thought was one of our most attractive features. Although we have different biological dads, our shared genes still make us look very much alike.
Slowly, I stroke my sister’s hair until she turns over.
“What did your letter say?” she asks.
I lick my lips, wondering if I should share. It’s hard when my sister and I have never kept secrets from one another. Ever. It’s always been Evie and Suda Kaye against all odds. Knowing I can’t hide from her, I hand her my letter.
“Suda Kaye, my little huutsuu.” She covers her mouth and closes her eyes. “Little bird,” she croaks at the endearment Mom always called me.
I smile. “Always and forever, taabe,” I use my mother’s nickname for her, Comanche for sun.
Evie quickly reads the letter, her hands shaking as she passes it back to me, her face a mask of worry. “You’re not going to do it, are you?”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek and nod.
“Kaye…you can’t do that. What about Camden? He won’t understand. A guy like that. The life he wants to give you. No way. You just…” She lets out a breath, grabs my hands, and squeezes them. “What are you going to do?”
My heart pounds inside my chest, and I stare into my sister’s eyes, my soul readying for the challenge ahead. “I’m going to fly free.”
*
“Suda Kaye, baby, are you sure? We can wait.” Camden hovers over me, his face so close to mine I can taste the peppermint on his breath. He moves one of his hands along my bare shoulder and down my arm where he laces our fingers together. He lifts and holds my hand up by my head against the blanket we’re cuddling naked underneath. We’re in the loft of the old barn on his family’s farm.
I shake my head and lift up until my lips touch his. He kisses me slowly, nibbling on my bottom lip before dipping his tongue into my mouth. We kiss until my jaw hurts and I can’t breathe. I pull my head away, gasping for air while staring into his handsome face. I’ve never in my life met a more beautiful boy. Wavy, dark blond hair, sexy hazel eyes that burn with lust.
“It has to be tonight. Now,” I urge, lifting my hips up and glorying in the naked ridge of his length along my thigh.
He takes a deep breath before nodding and shifting his hips until they fall between my thighs. The first contact of his manhood and my center is electric. Arousal and excitement rush through my nerve endings, and a fierce need throbs inside of me.
“Please…” I whisper against his cheek near his ear.
Camden is breathing heavily against my neck. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I smile and kiss his cheek. “Evie swears it only hurts for a minute, and then it’s nothing but bliss. For us both. Now, please, make love to me, Cam.”
His arms are trembling as he lifts his big body over mine and reaches for his jeans, the ones we discarded in our haste to make out. Only tonight, I planned to take it all the way and wanted to surprise him.
The blanket falls to his hips and I look down my body at his muscular form kneeling above me. The long hours he’s worked this past year in his father’s steel company, learning the job from the ground up, have sculpted his body into a work of art. I trace his box-shaped abs until he lets out a pained groan when I wrap my hand around his length and give it a healthy stroke. His penis is long and thick and glistening at the tip with his excitement. I lick my lips, wanting to put him in my mouth.
This is not the first time I’ve seen him naked. We’ve been together for four years, since I was fourteen and a freshman in high school, and he was a sophomore. The first day of school, he picked me out of a crowd in the cafeteria and asked if he could eat with me. I looked into those hazel eyes and fell in love. Right there. Back then, it was puppy love. Four years later, it is the kind of love to build a life on.
Cam’s hands shake as he rolls on the condom and strokes his length once again. I moan and lift my hips, wanting him to do something, anything to make the need stop. It’s our final step sexually, and I’m more than ready for it.
He eases his hand between my thighs and sighs when he encounters my flesh.
“Wet,” he whispers, rubbing his fingers back and forth.
“Yes.” I moan when he presses one long digit inside and uses his thumb to circle the bundle of nerves that makes me lose my mind every single time. Over the years, he’s perfected this move. Only now, it’s not enough. “Cam…please,” I beg again, needing him, wanting this one last connection to the man of my dreams.
Cam removes his fingers and centers himself between my thighs. He leans over so that his body is hovering over mine. “You know I love you, right?” His words are guttural, as if they’ve surfaced straight from his soul.
“Yeah.” I nod frantically, lifting my hips until the head presses inside.
He firms his jaw and speaks through clenched teeth. “You know I’m going to marry you someday?”
I grin and grip his hips. “Do it. Come inside.”
He gives me an inch more while I open my legs wider, making entry easier. Instantly, I feel a pressure I can’t explain. It’s tight and hot and hard. So much bigger than two of his fingers.
“Tell me you love me?” He presses his forehead to mine. “Tell me you’ll always love me, Suda Kaye,” he demands, on the brink of losing it.
I swallow as tears prick the backs of my eyes, knowing what I’m about to do and how utterly selfish it’s going to seem. But I can’t move forward without this. Without having experienced Cam’s love to its fullest, just this one time.
“I’ll always love you, Camden. No matter what happens.” Which is the truth, just not the whole truth.
He smiles, presses his lips to mine and thrusts all the way inside. I cry into his mouth, into his kiss where he holds steady as the piercing pain shimmers through my body and steals my breath. He holds me, staying perfectly still until my body adjusts and the tension slowly ebbs away, leaving a burning, needy sensation between my thighs.
He lifts his head and peppers kisses along my cheeks, forehead, and eyes. “You okay? Want me to stop?”
I swallow down the bite of pain between my legs and shake my head. “No. I’m perfect. You’re perfect,” I assure him.
“God, so are you.” He kisses me, eases out slowly, and thrusts back in. This time it feels warm, not hot. The pain has receded and the wetness between my legs has grown, easing his way in and out more smoothly. Cam picks up a slow rhythm, and I wonder why the hell we’ve never done this before. It feels too amazing to describe.
Cam tucks his hand at the nape of my neck, the other around my shoulder while he leverages his hips in a faster, more erratic rhythm. My body is alive with sensation and tingling ripples of pleasure as our bodies mist with sweat. A buzzing feeling warms throughout my limbs and fires up from my core to my chest. I wrap my arms and legs around Cam in a fierce grip as he starts to slam his hips against mine.
He’s holding on to me so tight, his muscles and body rigid with the control he’s holding onto. “It’s so good, sweets. Baby, it’s so good,” he grinds out through clenched teeth. He presses in and holds for a long moment. “Never thought it could be this good. I love you. I love you,” he declares into my ear as he picks up his momentum.
My entire body goes electric and fills with the need to burst, to explode, to something, and then it happens. He slips a hand between our bodies and spins firm circles around my clit with two fingers. I lose all focus as I skyrocket into pure nirvana, stars flickering behind my closed eyelids and my body on a never-ending loop of ecstasy.
Three more thrusts and Cam mashes our lips and hips together as his body goes tight as a drum, every muscle I touch straining and bulging as he groans in relief at what I hope is one of the most memorable moments of his life.
It has to be. It has to last a lifetime.
I hold onto him like my life depends on it, wanting to never let go. Only I know that’s not how our story ends.
No, once Cam snuggles against my side, he pulls off of me and loops his arm around my waist. “I’m going to love you forever, Suda Kaye Ross,” he promises, then kisses the back of my neck, sighing contentedly. He removes the condom and stashes it in a paper towel nearby before coming back to cuddle next to my cooling flesh.
I wait a good twenty minutes, lying there, memorizing the feel of his arm around me, the ache between my thighs, the fullness of my heart, until I know he’s asleep. That’s when I remember what I have to do, and my heart cracks and breaks open, spilling all the love we have out into the air around us. I leave it all there, in the place where Camden Bryant made love to me inside the barn loft, the giant window all the way open so we could stargaze.
It was the best experience of my life.
Swallowing down the heartache and sadness, I quietly remove myself from his arms and slip back into my dress and panties, noting the tinge of blood smeared on my thighs. I grab my flip-flops and clench them in my hand, not wanting to make a sound. I grab my phone, lift it up, and take a single photo of my sleeping love because it’s the last I’ll ever get.
On my hand, the moonlight reflects off the small gold-and-diamond promise ring he gave me last month when I graduated high school, and he promised me a good, solid life where he’d take care of me. At the time, I wasn’t sure where my life would lead, so I accepted the ring. That was before I read my mother’s letter—the letter that changed everything.
I slip the ring off my finger and set it on top of his phone along with the small pink note I wrote him before I came over tonight. It’s only a few words, but he’ll understand their meaning.
Be happy. Love another.
Fly free,
Suda Kaye
*
With one last look back at the man I’ll love until the day I die, I step down the ladder, letting him go one rung at a time. By the time I’ve left the barn and made it to the car my mother’s inheritance bought me, I’ve already put the love for a life I wasn’t meant to live behind me. With every mile I drive, that life disappears, and new opportunities present themselves. My half of the money Mom left Evie and me will last a long time and I plan to use it to live my life to the fullest.
No settling. No laying down roots.
I’m living for the moment, not for the future.
I have to see for myself if Mom was right.
The grass may not be greener on the other side, but if you look hard enough, you can always find beauty.
Chapter 1
Present day
Wanderlust. A word for some, a lifestyle for others. Wanderlust is not something that’s easy to ignore. It lives and breathes inside you. A yearning that’s hard to describe. Once you know it’s there, alive, calling out to you, enchanting your thoughts with grand adventures and discoveries, you are driven to make one of two choices: accept its siren call or banish it forever.
Like my mother, I felt the empty hole in my gut that urged me to move on. To go. To flee. To fly. It still lives inside me, sometimes satisfied but never full, always yearning for something more.
From place to place I went. For a decade, I lived the life of a true wanderer. Slept on the couches of people I met at a concert, caravanned with other nomads, performed with a belly dancing crew all over Europe, and enjoyed all types of pleasures.
Sumptuous foods around the world.
Sensual clothing that flirted and aroused.
Visited exotic locales most people could only imagine in their wildest dreams.
Though the men I met, tasted, bedded, and experienced incredible pleasures of the flesh with, never, not once, compared with the single night I had with my first love.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. In every place my wandering soul took me, I worked hard at starting anew, leaving behind my life in Colorado. And for brief moments, I succeeded. Until that gnawing, twisting feeling in my gut would start again, and I’d have to go. Off to the next adventure, always attempting to fill that emptiness.
I’ve driven the Autobahn in Germany. Spent a month in an ashram in India, learning the art of yoga and self-love. Kissed a Frenchman under the Eiffel Tower. Eaten pasta with a stunning Italian in a small seaside town at the tip of the boot in Italy. I’ve ridden a camel through the desert and touched the pyramids of Giza. Prayed for clarity at the foot of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. Worn a fuzzy Cossack hat in Russia while twirling in circles in the snow. Ridden a bicycle in Copenhagen. Sailed the fjords in Norway. Watched the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve on my twenty-fifth birthday. Evie flew out for that one, and she was my first kiss that year.
Despite all of these wonders, this incredible life I’ve been blessed to live, the night I gave my heart and body to Camden Bryant is one I’ve never topped. It’s my most cherished memory. I hold it close, never speak of it, not to anyone. Even Evie. She knows that I lost my virginity to Cam and left town the same night, but she has never—not once—dug for more information. Somehow, maybe through our sisterly connection, she knew I couldn’t talk about it.
For years, I’ve given myself to the wind the same way my mother did, and I don’t regret it. The grass is definitely greener on the other side, only because it’s a new experience. All new things tend to come with that breath of whimsy, that moment of awe. But what I’ve come to learn is that nothing, not the Great Wall of China, not Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, the Hawaii islands, or any of the other extraordinary places I’ve visited, the incredible things I’ve done, come close to the feeling of being home.
In recent years, I’ve come to understand why Mother always came back. It wasn’t just Evie and me or our grandfather Tahsuda, the reservation back in Oklahoma, or even Colorado where we ended up. It was all of it. The entire kit and caboodle. It was the green grass of familiarity. A beauty Mom already knew existed, not one she had to search for.
I clutch Mom’s letter while the plane makes its final descent into Denver International Airport.
With shaking fingers, I open the letter and take a full breath, remembering where I was just eighteen hours ago.
Australia. My twenty-eighth birthday.
I celebrated my birthday yesterday in Sydney, but once I read Mom’s words, I packed up my things, kissed my current fling, Brody—an Australian surfer with golden skin and a bright white smile—a quick goodbye and wished him well. I had to go home for the first time in ten years. Had to. It was my destiny.
Brody, being the total hippie, Mother-Nature-loving, pleasure-giving sweetheart that he is, understood. He didn’t even question me. He knew the score. Every man I spent any time with over the past decade knew the score.
Suda Kaye Ross went where the wind took her.
It was in writing. Written on pink parchment paper in words left to me by one of the two most important women in the world.
Since I left Pueblo, Colorado, a decade ago, I experienced everything my mother suggested with a flourish and desire for life that couldn’t be quenched. This last letter, though, threw all of her other teachings into the fire. It was a complete one-eighty from the letters that came before.
The letter on my twentieth birthday had told me to go to Europe and see a man named Marco in Calabria, Italy. She gave me an address and a phone number. When I showed up, Marco knew immediately who I was and welcomed me with open arms. His son, on the other hand, was even more welcoming, warming my bed and getting me over my Camden slump. We spent months in bed and working in his family’s Italian restaurant by the sea, until my feet started to itch and the pit in my gut twisted in warning. After six months, I left and headed to France, meeting up with another of my mother’s contacts.
In a letter from Mom on my nineteenth birthday, she’d given me a book, filled with names, numbers, and addresses alongside the following note:
Suda Kaye, my huutsuu,
Open this book, point to a page, and go where the wind takes you. Do it every time the urge to spread your wings comes upon you. Fly free, my little bird. Live life to the fullest. Always be honest with your intentions toward others. Never let them expect your feet to stay on the ground.
Have no regrets, my darling.
All my love,
Mom
I’ve been pointing and flying for years. Sending Evie postcards and presents from my travels but never going back home. Even the thought of being in the same place where I’d lost my mother and left the love of my life was too painful. Until now. Until my mother’s two words spirited me into immediate action.
I sigh and unfold the letter, looking at her beautiful handwriting for the hundredth time since boarding this flight.
Suda Kaye, my huutsuu,
You’ve had your adventures. Hopefully you have heeded my words and spread your wings across the globe using the money I’ve left you.
If there is one thing I could take back in the life I lived, it would be that I never had the time to share in the adventures I wanted to have with my girls. You will understand one day. Wanderlust may be inside of us, but we decide when to set it free.
Today, and for the foreseeable future, I want you to be brave, to be strong, to be everything I was never able to be.
Settled.
Fully at peace with your lot in life.
You have the ability to make that happen for you, my darling. Now is the time to set me free alongside that need inside of you to fly. Don’t clip your wings, for you’ll need them one day.
A solid friend.
A true wife.
A responsible mother.
A committed sister.
Be there for Evie. For our family. Plant the seed. Make roots. Ground yourself to somewhere and something that fills your soul with a different desire. The desire to be needed. Wanted. Loved. Present.
Go home.
Wherever home is to you, go there now.
With all the love the world has to give,
Mom
Go home.
After years of celebrating life, all the beauty that the world has to offer, my mother’s words spill into my mind like a warm ball of light. The thought of Evie, making a life near her feels…right. She’s the closest thing to home I’ve ever had.
It’s time I make peace with all that I left behind. Time that I ground myself, turn my life into something solid. Stable.
A joy I haven’t felt in ten years seeps into my bones, warming me from the inside out as the plane’s wheels touch down. I look out the window and smile at the Colorado sky.
I’m home.
*
The second I step foot outside of the Denver airport, I see a sleek, black Porsche Cayenne idling at the curb. Only that’s not what takes my breath away. It’s the stunning goddess leaning nonchalantly against it, arms crossed over her chest, long blond locks hanging over her shoulder like bushels of wavy spun gold. She’s rocking black aviators with a sweet chrome trim, a pair of tapered midnight-colored dress slacks, a silky, flowy white blouse, a sexy-as-fuck pair of black stilettos, and a black leather blazer to top it all off. My sister looks hot and expensive. It’s like she just stepped off the cover of Business Badass, the smokin’ female edition.
Her pink-tinted lips curve into a simple smirk.
“Took you long enough.” She tips her chin up before her smirk turns into a full-fledged beaming white smile as she opens her arms and pushes off the car.
“Sissy!” I squeal and take off in my cork wedge sandals, my maxi dress flying all around me, one arm holding my floppy wide-brimmed sun hat in place as I run.
We collide, giggling like schoolgirls instead of a woman in her late twenties and one having just knocked on the door of thirty.
“Happy birthday!” I lean back and kiss her cheeks, then her forehead, and then her lips in a quick touch.
“Right back atcha, sis!” Evie grins before turning and looping her arm around my waist and leading me to her fancy SUV.
“Nice ride.” I chuckle.
“Better than the rickety old baby blue Beetle I was driving last time you were here, eh?”
I laugh and lug my gigantic suitcase into the back of her car with a resounding thud. My entire life is in that case, and for a moment, I send up a thank-you to my wandering mom’s juju that she must’ve passed down in her genetics since I’ve never lost the case in all my travels.
“Absolutely!” I slam the hatch down and we both jump in the car.
Once we’re on the road, I take off my hat and unceremoniously toss it in the back before digging through my giant hobo bag-slash-purse, looking for some lip balm. That plane ride dried me out.
“So, you still in Colorado Springs? Last we spoke, you mentioned the possibility of moving back to Pueblo.” I cross my fingers at my thigh in the hope that we’re not going back to Pueblo where Mom had her long battle with cancer. At the time, she wanted us to have a “regular” high school experience instead of the years of study we had on the reservation when we lived with our grandfather.
Evie pushes her long hair back behind her ear while focusing on the road for our almost two-hour drive.
“Yeah, but I visit my Pueblo office often since it’s only forty minutes away. Once or twice a week I drive into Denver to do meetings with headquarters.” She crinkles her nose.
“Bet you love that.” I smile and lay my hand over hers where it rests on the console.
She squeezes my hand and the sensation of sister solidarity shoots like lightning through my palm, up my arm, and fills my heart with a warmth I have only been able to experience with my older sister. “You know me well,” she says.
“I know that you’ve never liked to drive. I’d offer, but honestly, I love you too much, and I’m too tired. I’d crash into a girder or go down in a ditch. That flight was brutal.”
Evie laughs. “Remind me, how long were you in Australia? Sometimes your adventures bleed into one another for me.”
I shrug. “Hmm, I think three months. I was in New Zealand before that. Rode around with the rugby team there.”
Evie’s eyebrow rises over her glasses, and she turns her head, dipping her chin to give me a peek at her icy blue eyes. “A rugby team? Kaye, don’t tell me you banged an entire rugby team.”
I open my mouth half in shock and playfully smack her arm. “No way. I only bedded two…but it was at the same time, so it didn’t really count as more than one fling.”
“Seriously?” She raps on the steering wheel, sounding half scandalized and half jealous. She shakes her head. “Some life you live. Who’d’ve thought my baby sis would travel the world and fly by the seat of her pants?”
“Mom did,” I say softly, thinking about the reason I’m back.
Evie’s shoulders slump, and she sighs heavily. “Yeah, you’re right.” She clears her throat as a thick fog of sadness fills the interior of the car, both of us likely thinking about Mom.
“Well,” she says, breaking the silence, “tell me a little bit about Brady, the Australian surfer?”
I smile, recalling Brody’s messy long hair down to his shoulders, his big blue eyes and svelte body. “Brody. And he was great. A true gentleman.”
“Really? A gentleman?” Evie counters in disbelief.
I snort. “No, not really. He’s a peace-love dove, pot-smoking hippie who fucks like a god and surfs as though his legs were made for the sea.”
Evie smiles and chuckles. “And he was totally fine with you leaving?”
“It’s part of the deal. They want a piece of me, they take what they can get. No more, no less.” I run my fingers through my long brown hair, trying to work out the knots from sleeping on the plane.
“Isn’t that hard? Spending intimate moments, sharing a bed, months at a time with all of these different people, and then just walking away when the mood strikes? I don’t know how you do it, Kaye. I’ve never known. I especially didn’t understand it when Mom left us, month after month, returning for a brief couple of weeks, until she’d be off again. Stars in her eyes and the wind beneath her wings.”
Her words hammer into my chest, and that pit in my stomach twists.
Evie pulls off her glasses and looks at me, her wounded gaze piercing straight through to my soul. “We were never enough for her. And then she got sick…”
I swallow down the bile that scratches at my throat. “Evie…she just couldn’t stop. It wasn’t inside her at the time, and when she finally did—”
“It was too late.”
“At least we had those years with her. We should be thankful for that.”
Evie huffs, not seeming at all thankful. More like she’d rather scream her frustration at the top of her lungs, but she’s too cool a cucumber to explode. Too reserved. Proper. Put together.
As I watch the simmering anger cool in the silence between us, I vow to help my sister bring those emotions she’s suppressing to the surface. No one should live their life holding any piece of themselves back. Putting on a mask to hide the sorrow underneath. It’s not healthy.
I’m smart enough to know this is not the time for that. Not when I’ve just made it back home after a decade.
Evie sucks in a full breath and offers a pitiful, fake smile that I see right through. “So, how long are you staying? When’s the next big adventure and where is it taking you?”
I grab my sister’s hand, bring it to my lips, and kiss the top. “I don’t know. My heart and soul brought me home.”
“Oh yeah? Does that mean I may get you for two weeks? A month? Three? Like sexy surfer Brady?”
I giggle and hold her hand. “It’s Brody, and no, I’m not putting a time frame on it.”
“Well, you know you always have a home with me. No matter when or for how long.”
I smile. “Good. I’m counting on it.”
Evie hums a long “hmmmmmm” so that it extends for a full breath.
“No hmm, just home. I felt the need to be home,” I insist with a finality I’m trying to believe myself.
“Yeah? What did Mom’s letter to you say about that? Have you opened it yet? Last one told you to jump off a cliff in New Zealand, which is how you first met sexy surfer, the one who saved your ass from drowning, if I remember correctly.”
I touch my lips and shrug. “Totally true, but that’s not what Mom’s letter to me said this time.”
“Oh yeah? What did it say?”
Biting into my bottom lip, I turn sideways so that I can look right at her. She turns her head to glance my way and then back at the road.
“Am I going to hate this? Every letter Mom writes stresses me out even though I can hardly wait to read the next one in the stack,” Evie confides.
I know the feeling. It’s like Christmas, New Year’s, and every fun holiday rolled into one every time the date of the next letter comes around.
“She told me to spend some time at home. With you.”
She narrows her brow, her lips twisting into a pout. “So, you just dropped everything and got on a plane back home. After ten years of being away?”
“Yep. Exactly.”
“Kaye, do you realize how freaking crazy that sounds? Are you listening to yourself? I appreciate having Mom’s words, too, especially after losing her, but…” She blows out a breath harshly and then pushes her long swooping bangs over to the side of her face. “Huutsuu, they are not the be-all, end-all. You need to live for you. Do what you want with your life, not what our mother said you should do.”
“And where would I be right now if I did that?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Married to a great man, probably Cam, with a couple of towheaded babies on your hip and a truckload of money in your bank account from his steel empire?”
Hearing Camden’s name steals my breath. I run my hands down my neck and quickly tap the button on the car door to lower the window for some fresh air. “Not cool, Evie. Not cool.”
She sighs and reaches across to rub along my arm. “I know, I’m sorry. But honestly, I don’t even know why talking about Camden is off-limits since you’re the one that left. You never even told me what happened between you. All I can remember is him showing up at our house brokenhearted and you being long gone.”
I hold up my hand. “Just stop. I can’t talk about him. It’s ancient history. Just know that I’m here now with no plans to leave.”
“I’m sorry if I don’t believe you, Kaye.” Evie’s tone is tortured. “I just can’t get my hopes up.”
“What will it take for you to believe I’m staying? A promise? I’ll promise you. I’m staying.”
“For a year. No, two!” she fires off, but it’s the desperation in her words that slithers around my heart and squeezes tight.
She needs me.
Evie continues undaunted. “The Ross sisters have been apart for too long. I don’t want to have to hop on a plane to see my sister in some random location. Traveling is not my thing and you know that.”
“Oh boy, do I know it.”
“Then promise me. Two years. Give staying in one place a shot. For me. For us. We need this.” She grips right above my knee. “I need this. I need to not worry about you dying on some mountain in China or in a shady biker bar. Give me some peace of mind. Give me your time.”
“On one condition.”
“Name it,” she offers instantly.
“You’ll help me figure out what the hell to do with my time for the next freakin’ two years.” I beam and cover her hand, giving it a squeeze.
Evie smiles so huge it’s as if the clouds have parted, the sun started shining brighter, and the heaviness in the car lifted, filling the space with happiness and love.
“Deal.”