Random Acts of Hope (34 page)

Authors: Julia Kent

Tags: #BBW Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Fiction, #General, #Genre Fiction, #Humorous, #Literature & Fiction, #New Adult, #New Adult & College, #Romance, #Romantic Comedy

BOOK: Random Acts of Hope

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The band split all the money, and between what we’d made from the concert, the spike in sales of CDs and mp3s online, and what we knew was coming in from the ad money, it all meant
I didn’t have to work right now.

Which meant I was with Charlotte
most
night
s
.

And no more climbing through windows.

I couldn’t officially live with her—we had to be married for that to happen. When—not whether—we’d marry was a question that was on hold for now.

We had deeper issues to consider.

I parked and we walked down the sloped trails, tree roots jutting out under burnished leaves, the cool November air making the end of my nose sting.
Charlotte hung back from the water, the empty, abandoned lifeguard chairs a little too desolate, the boarded-up ranger cabins like something from a horror movie set.

Our horror, our danger, was over. We knew who we were, where we stood with each other, and no more miscarriages if medical science had any say in it.

And some of my swimmers worked.

What more could a man ask for?

I slipped the stone out of my pocket, its absen
c
e suddenly a bit off-putting. The smoothness made it seem bigger than it was.

That’s what
she
said
, Dad’s voice invaded. This was not the time for jokes, but my mind grasped at anything to stop thinking about the pain this entire trip represented. Pain we were supposed to release, to move on from, to…

What?

I wasn’t sure anymore.

I dropped to my knees, the cold sand cutting into my kneecaps. I
t
felt good to feel real, physical pain, like it neutralized some of the ephemeral ache that I couldn’t touch. My arms wrapped around Charlotte’s hips and she jolted in surprise.

“What are you doing?”

I unbuttoned her red, wool coat with the big black buttons from the
bottom
, one thick button at a time, until I reached her waist. Then I gently lifted her sweater, pulled her turtleneck out from her waistband, and pressed my cold cheek against the creamy skin of her belly.

“
Oh, Liam,” she whispered, knowing exactly what I was doing. I felt a drop fall on the top of my scalp. Then another.

It wasn’t raining.

“
I wasn’t there the first time,” I said to the soft flesh of her navel, speaking to a visitor who was long gone. “I was so, so stupid.” My own tears choked my throat and wet her belly button, but she didn’t move away. Instead, her hands slipped softly through my hair.

“But I was there the second time, and I’ll be there for the third. And the fourth. And for all the babies that will come. And for the two of you who we miss so much, maybe some day your spirits will come back. And the door is always open.”

Charlotte’s legs buckled and I grabbed her, helping to lower her to the ground, her body racked with sobs.

And then I showed her my stone. I’d written only one word:

Hope.

Charlotte

“So many people told me I was overreacting,” I whispered between hiccups, hoping that I could say what I needed to say, worried until this very moment that perhaps Liam was one of them. “You feel it, too?”

He nodded, his head down, eyes away from me.

“Not overreacting,” was all he said.

The placid
pond
waters seemed deceptive. A raging storm sending waves that topple ocean liners churned between us, yet feet away the water barely rippled.

“I thought I’d lost my friend forever,”
I
said savagely. “When you left, and then when I bled out. And getting a second chance with you was like a cosmic joke.”

He jerked his head up, eyes streaked with red amidst the impossibl
y
clear blue,
chameleon eyes that reflected his emotional state
. “Joke?”

“It was everything I wanted for all these years, and nothing like I’d imagined. And that you thought you were sterile…and now it turns out we both have issues that make the two we just lost that
much
more precious to me.” My final words came out in a series of gasps and sputters.

He held me tighter.

“We’re not supposed to be like this,” I said, sniffing and staring up into the cloudy sky. “We’re twe
n
ty-three and twenty-four, and we should be partying and being wild and having the time of our lives.”

He smoothe
d
the hair off my fevered skin, tracing the line of my brows with tough fingertips forged by guitar strings.

“I am having the time of my life. Right now.”

I wiped my nose with a shaking hand and opened it, showing him my stone.

I, too, had written one single word:

Hope.

He pulled me to my feet and we faced the water, my body screaming with a thousand cries of unfinished business, his ha
n
d steady on the small of my back as we made our way. Birds cried out in the sparse outline of trees gone dormant, their leaves dropped, waiting for a new season for life to bloom once more on their delicate branches.

And then he raised his hand, encouraging me to do likewise, and without needing to count—just knowing—we released the rocks into the mirror-like water, letting
our release of
hope ripple out
and spread
to shores unseen.

We walked hand in hand to the car, pausing as he unlocked it, my hitched sobs slowing, winding down. I reached into my pocket to warm my hands and felt a familiar object.

“Wait!” I told him. “I forgot something. We need to go back to the pond.”

His eyebrows knit
ted
in confusion.

“Why?”

“When I told Darla and Amy what we were doing, Darla came to me later with this
and asked me to release it into the water for her
.”

I pulled the ragged, egg-sized piece of granite out of my pocket.

It had one word on it:

Mavis.

THE END

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