Once in a Lifetime (16 page)

“He doesn’t work here anymore,” the guy at the checkout counter told her.

“Okay,” Aubrey said. “Do you know where I could reach him?”

“I’m sorry.” The clerk shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “He died last year.”

Ben was only halfway through beating Jack’s ass on
Words with Friends
when Aubrey came back to the truck, looking solemn.

“I need to go to the cemetery,” she said.

This surprised him. He knew this had something to do with someone on her list. Sometimes she was happy when she got through with one, sometimes she would cry—which killed him. He tried to remember who else was on the list from the few brief glimpses he’d gotten, and who might have died.

He had no idea.

So he drove her to the cemetery.

Once there, she again slid out of the truck. Ben watched her vanish over the hill to the right. When she was gone, he got out of the truck, too, and headed to the hill on the left. He walked about a quarter of a mile before he got to the right headstone.

HANNAH WALSH MCDANIEL
.

He crouched down and brushed some dirt off the stone. “Hey, babe,” he said. “It’s been a while.” He blew out a sigh and waited for the usual stab of pain.

But it was only an ache. Worse, he had to strain to see her face in his mind.

Her voice had faded a long time ago.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and ran his fingers over her headstone again.

He heard the crunch of the frozen ground behind him and knew it was Aubrey. She stayed back a respectful few feet, quiet, which was unlike her.

Quiet had been Hannah’s style, but it wasn’t Aubrey’s. Aubrey was volatile. Passionate.

Hannah had never fought. Never.

And Aubrey fought for everything.

“You had a good marriage,” Aubrey said.

She hadn’t worded it as a question, but he knew she was asking. And the truth was, he’d always believed he’d had a great marriage. It’d been serene, calm. He’d liked that.

But now…now he wasn’t sure whether quiet and calm would do it for him. Since that was a path he didn’t want to go down—wondering if he and Hannah would be happy today with the man he’d become—he shrugged off the unsettled feelings the question brought and craned his neck to look at Aubrey. “We were young,” he said simply.

Staring at him, she nodded. “Life sucks.”

“Sometimes,” he agreed, and rose. He searched her face, saw that she’d made peace with whatever she’d set out to do here, which he was glad for. He offered her a hand.

They walked back to the truck in silence.

S
everal days later, Aubrey sat at her desk, staring at her open notebook. Number seven on her list was weighing on her mind. She’d worked at the nursery for two weeks in her junior year of high school. The owner had never let her near the plants—he’d claimed to know after one look at someone if he or she had a black thumb, which Aubrey did—so instead, she’d been an all-around grunt, doing whatever had been required: sweeping, answering phones, running errands.

One of the other hired hands had been a special-needs teenager her same age. Dusty Burrows had been big as a horse, so it made sense that he’d been hired as the heavy lifter—bags of cement, manure, trees—whatever’d been needed.

He’d had a crush on Aubrey, which he’d shown by leaving flowers on her car and helping her with chores, all with a sweet smile on his silent face. He’d never spoken to her, not once. He rarely spoke to anyone, only when he had to.

Then one day he
stopped
smiling at her, stopped helping her, stopped leaving her flowers. He stopped being her friend entirely, and she didn’t know why.

One year later, she’d been cleaning out her car when she’d found a birthday card, lost and forgotten deep between the seats. It’d been from Dusty, confessing his love for her.

She’d been embarrassed, both for him and for herself, and she’d thrown the card away and not dealt with it.

In hindsight, she’d always known that he most likely thought she’d ignored him or, worse, laughed at him.

She hated herself for that.

The bell over the bookstore’s front door rang, and Aubrey prepared a smile. To her surprise, it was Carla. Her sister was in her usual pale blue scrubs, but looking a lot less tired than she had a week ago. “Hey,” Aubrey said.

Carla leaned against the checkout counter, her expression impossible to read.

Already becoming a doctor, Aubrey thought wryly. Carla didn’t fidget, didn’t hedge. She got right to the point. “Do you remember that time you got in trouble at the library?” she asked. “For having sex in the reference section with Anthony, the principal’s son?”

“I remember,” Aubrey said carefully. “Though I’m surprised you do.”

Carla closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and then met Aubrey’s gaze again. “I remember, because it was me.”

Aubrey blinked. “Say what?”

“It was me.
I
had sex with Anthony in the reference section of the high school library.”

Aubrey stared at her. “One more time.”

Carla’s smile was tight. “Yeah,” she said. “And it gets worse. I knew you got blamed. That you were suspended. I knew you got in big trouble, that Dad jumped all over Mom’s shit about how she’d raised you, and in return you then jumped all over Dad for being mean to Mom. It tore up the very tenuous peace between the four of us. But the only thing I felt at the time was this huge, overwhelming relief that it wasn’t me who got suspended.”

Aubrey was so stunned about the whole confession she could hardly speak. “
Why?
”

Carla looked pained and embarrassed, both new expressions for her. “I had a crush on him. I thought I loved him.”

“No: I mean why did you let everyone think it was me?”

“Yeah. Well, that’s a lot more complicated.” Carla paused. “I’m not proud of it,” she said quietly. “But the best I’ve got is that I really wanted to be brave and strong and independent—like you.”

“Me,” Aubrey repeated.

“Yes. I wanted to not care what people thought of me,” Carla said. “I wanted to be…” She smiled sadly. “Well,
you
, Aubrey. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything close to you. I could only wish I was.”

Aubrey stared at her. “Seriously?”

“Hand to heaven,” Carla said, and bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I was rude when you tried to apologize to me, and that was guilt. You’re forgiven for that stupid internship thing;
of course
you’re forgiven.”

Aubrey felt a weight lift. “Yeah?”

“
Yeah
. And thanks for bringing me food and watching out for my plants. You went over and above, and I’m so grateful for you.” She drew in a deep breath. “And now…well, I’m sort of hoping
you’d
forgive
me
. For not owning up to my mistake and letting you take the fall.”

“It’s ancient history,” Aubrey said honestly. “And anyway, I did plenty of stuff in that library I shouldn’t have. Karma was bound to come around and bite me on the ass at some point.”

“You’re not mad?” Carla asked softly.

“Trust me. In the grand scheme of my life, that incident was nothing.”

“But you were grounded for three months,” Carla reminded her. “And Dad…well, he never let you forget it. You took it, though—you took everything he dished out to you, always.”

Aubrey shrugged. “I had Mom.”

Carla hesitated, and then nodded. “So we’re good?”

“We’re good,” Aubrey promised. And then the two of them shared what might have been their first genuine smile.

The next evening, right after the bookstore closed for the day, Ben went to work on paint touch-up. He’d spent the last few nights painting walls, and the place was looking brand new.

Aubrey came down the stairs from her loft. She was in her coat and boots, her purse over her arm, and he nearly opened his mouth to ask if she’d consider modeling just those boots again. Clearly the paint fumes had gone to his head. “Going out?” he asked.

She faltered briefly. “Yes.”

He took in how carefully made up she was, and his stomach clenched. “On a date?” Not that it mattered, he told himself. He
hoped
she was going out on a date, because then it would prove that they weren’t anything to each other.

Which is what he wanted.

Totally.

Completely.

Yep—that’s what he wanted, all right. To be free…so it made no sense at all that he held his breath for her answer.

“Not a date,” she said.

He didn’t want to think about the relief that hit him like a Mack truck.

She moved to the door and then hesitated, her hand on the handle, her back to him. “I don’t suppose you sabotaged my car again?”

“Nope,” he said. “If she doesn’t start, it’s because she’s a piece of shit.” He put down his paintbrush and made an executive decision. “How about a ride, Sunshine?”

She glanced back, and he was quite certain she didn’t realize that she looked hopeful. “You have more ass-kicking to do to Jack on your phone?” she asked.

“Always,” he said. “Give me a minute to wash up.”

“It’s okay,” she said, in motion again. “I’ve got this.”

He caught up with her. She’d been good with makeup, but he could see the faint smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping. She was worried about something, probably whatever she was going to do tonight. “A minute,” he said again, and, to be sure she didn’t leave without him, dragged her with him to wash up.

The bathroom was tiny, but he nudged her into it and then crowded her up against the sink as he cleaned up.

“I could’ve waited out there,” she said, sounding a little breathless.

He reached around her for a towel, and she sucked in a breath and then licked her lips. Ben put a hand on either side of her hips and caged her in between his body and the counter.

“What’s with the he-man act?” she whispered, her gaze on his mouth.

He smiled. “You think I’m acting…he-man?”

“Yes. What I don’t know is why. You trying to impress me, Ben?”

“You’re already impressed.”

She let out a low, almost reluctant laugh. “You think so?”

“Uh-huh.” He leaned in so that they shared their next breath. Her eyes drifted closed, and her lips parted, waiting for a kiss.

But he didn’t kiss her.

Her eyes flew open, and he laughed softly.

“You’re such an ass,” she said with no heat. “And to think I almost admitted that I was going to sabotage my own car so you’d have to give me a ride.” When he laughed again, she gave him a push so she could get around him and out of the bathroom. He followed, grinning, enjoying the fact that he’d coaxed her out of her melancholy mood.

It’d started to rain as they dashed out to his truck, and he grabbed her hand to steady her. “Where to?” he asked when they were inside, shaking off the rain.

“Kingsbury.”

Kingsbury was a town about twenty miles northeast of Lucky Harbor. She gave him an address in an upscale neighborhood, where the houses were big and bigger and the yards were all cared for by hired hands. “Someone from your list?” he asked.

“There. Park there,” she said instead of answering, gesturing to a spot across the street and halfway down the block from the address she’d given him.

It was dusk. In Lucky Harbor, dusk lasted about two minutes, and in those two minutes between light and dark, everything turned a pale blue. When he’d been a kid, he’d always thought it was a magical time, when anything could happen. As an adult, he knew there was no magic.

Aubrey was studying the house intently, not giving much away. But he knew she knew the truth as well—that nothing happened unless you
made
it happen.

In fact, she was working on just that—working hard—and it touched him. Much more than it should have.

As dark settled around them, a car pulled into the driveway of the house. A man got out from behind the wheel and came around to the passenger side. He opened the door and assisted a woman as she got out of the car. For a moment, the man’s face and the woman’s face were highlighted by the porch lights.

Beside him, Aubrey gasped.

“What?” he asked.

She put a hand to her mouth and shook her head.

“It’s something,” he insisted.

The couple ducked through the rain together, laughing.

“Who are they?” Ben asked.

“Professor Stephen Bennett,” Aubrey said, her voice soft, almost as far away as she seemed from him right now. “He was my English professor.”

Ben got a very bad feeling in his gut. “And you came here to what—thank him for teaching you the classics?”

The couple had made it to the covered porch, where Professor Bennett pulled the woman in close to him and was kissing her with considerable heat.

“Time to go,” Aubrey said tightly.

Ben glanced at her. She wasn’t looking at the couple but rather out into the dark night, her expression pensive. “You okay?” he asked.

“I want to go home.”

Ben started the truck and got back on the freeway, but he exited before Lucky Harbor, taking a winding road. When the road ended, he drove a little bit farther on a dirt fire road until he came to a small clearing. Turning off the engine, he got out and came around for Aubrey.

The night was a dark one. It’d stopped raining now, but the ground was soft and wet and smelled earthy. The trees were still laden and heavy with water, and whenever the wind kicked up, more water fell from them. “You warm enough?” he asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“Up for a walk?”

“Here? In the dark?” She looked around. “Where are we?”

“You’ll see.”

She stared at him for a long moment and then put her hand in his. He led her to what looked like a thirty-foot rock, then pulled his keys from his pocket and flicked on a small penlight he had attached to them. “Watch your step,” he told her, but quickly realized that was impossible in her high-heeled boots. “Never mind.” Taking her arm, he lifted her and twisted himself around so that he was carrying her piggyback.

“Ben,” she gasped, throwing her arms around his neck so she didn’t fall. “Put me down.”

Ignoring that, he took the steep hill in front of them.

Her breathing hitched. “I’m wearing a skirt!” she said, sounding panicked.

“I know,” he said. His fingers were intimately wrapped around her thighs, which were in turn wrapped around his waist. Mmm. He let his hands slide northward until she squeaked.

He laughed, but stopped moving his hands.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “I’m flashing my goodies to the world back here.”

“It’s dark, and there’s no one out here but us. But if you want me to keep you covered…” Once again his hands went on the move, sliding upward until he squeezed her sweet ass. The only thing between his palms and her skin was her panties, which—God bless them—felt thin and skimpy. His very favorite kind.

“Ben!” She squirmed, nearly climbing over his head. “I’m serious!”

“So am I. Are these lace?”

“Stop it!” She wriggled some more, still trying to climb out of his reach, which only made him crack up again. But he stopped copping a feel. Mostly because he was going straight down the incline now, and concentrating was a good idea.

Worried noises were still sounding in his ear from the anxious Aubrey, who was gripping him for dear life. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, dropping her head to his shoulder. “
Oh, my God
.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I hardly ever fall here. Of course I haven’t done it while sporting a hard-on before…”

She bit his ear, and he groaned. “I like that,” he said. “A lot.”

She blew out a breath.

“And that…”

“Oh, for God’s sake. You like everything.”

“True.”

A few minutes later, he let go of her legs, letting her slowly slide down his back.

She quickly straightened her skirt. “You’re impossible,” she said.

“So I’ve been told.” Taking her hand, he tugged her close, showing her the view in front of them. They stood on the top of the bluffs, on the far east side of the harbor. From here they had a perfect postcard view of the little Washington State beach town, cozily nestled in the rocky cove. The main drag—a quirky, eclectic mix of the old and new—was lit up. Looking at it from here never failed to be a comfort for him.

No matter how far and wide he’d traveled, this was home.

He could see the pier, also lit, jutting out into the water, lined with more shops and outdoor cafés. And the Ferris wheel. He’d loved that damn thing as a kid.

He and Aubrey sat side by side. Eyeing their scenic view of the Pacific Ocean, swirling and pounding the rocky shore three hundred feet below, Aubrey shook her head. “It’s so gorgeous. I’ve never been up here.”