“Take what you can get,” he muttered, calling up the memories of how it felt to have her resting against him on the couch. Waking up to the scent of her hair. The little noises she made when he pulled away, how she reached for him in her sleep. “I’ll take it. Sweet. Beautiful.” The softness of her lips when he kissed her in front of the Christmas tree and her excited man-boy. I nearly forgot who she is, he thought, remembering the pictures on her wall. Who I am. He saw the clubhouse in Little Rock in his head, long bar stretching out, stools inhabited only by men like him, lonely ones without family. Glad she cut the ribbons quick, before anything tied us together.
Leticia’s voice slipped through his head, sounding somehow fainter than the last time she spoke when she said, You’re selling yourself short, my love.
His steps faltered and slowed as his thumb absently rubbed across his lips, feeling the ghost of a touch there. He didn’t think he’d imagined Leticia for months now. It’s time for you to find someone you can let in, Peter. She’s a perfect fit for you. I see good things.
“You saw good things everywhere you looked, Tish.” He had stopped walking, a breathing statue in the little woods between Vanna’s house and the one he had purchased sight-unseen from an old friend.
Only because there were good things to be seen. You. Our friends. Our life. Does it surprise you I still see good things? Like the possibility of a new life for you, one that doesn’t come with loneliness as its only companion? Her voice was inside his head and he didn’t even have to answer her, he knew she’d heard his rejection of the idea when she laughed, the sound as light and easy as moonlight on a field. Peter, I want to see you happy again. Can’t you get that through your thick skull? I want that for you, want you to feel alive, feel love. To feel treasured. That woman needs something to treasure, why would you want to deny her that?
Leticia had been his girlfriend, once upon a time. Theirs hadn’t been a fantastical love story, made up of incredible coincidences and circumstance, but a normal boy-meets-girl moment in a bar that led to a night of satisfaction, which in turn led to what should have been a lifetime of the same. “I loved you.” I know you did. You do, or you wouldn’t be doing this to yourself.
Her death had been sudden. Shocking in its swiftness. Two years they’d been together, a year of her living with him. Working long hours, she wore herself out and caught a cold. She had a stupid common cold, went to bed feeling like crap, and never woke up. Nearly twenty years ago, he had gone in to wake her for supper to find her cold and still, resting peacefully, head on the pillow and covers pulled to her chin.
Her death was what led him to the life of a wandering outlaw and eventually brought him to the Rebels. He counted himself lucky that he had found a club like them on his first go-around. “I miss you.” I know you do. There’s a hole in you that needs filling, Peter. See if this woman can help fill it. Right now, she needs you more than ever.
With a sigh, he shook off the stillness that had settled on him and started his legs moving, striding forward and away from Vanna. Tromping through the woods, he was muttering to himself about fools and their feelings when he heard shouting coming from behind him.
The shouting came again, and he recognized Vanna’s voice, fear threading through him as he heard her yell, the words terrifyingly clear. “Kitt, where are you?”
Anxiety jolted in his chest, squeezing his heart, and without hesitation he turned and ran back the way he’d come. Through the trees and towards the sound of her voice. His long legs ate up the distance as he dodged around trunks and jumped over deadfalls. Kitt, he thought, skirting a tree to see a path crossing from left to right in front of him and he quickly veered to run along this open space. What the hell did you do, boy?
Vanna’s shout was much closer when it came a second time, and as he rounded the next muddy corner he saw her standing in the middle of the path. Still in her pajamas, her feet bare, she looked frantic. Hands cupped around her mouth, she was swinging in a circle, her eyes wide and frightened, calling for her son. “Kitt! Where are you?”
Within a heartbeat he had reached her and gripped her shoulders, turning her to face him. He was about to give her a little shake when her face began to crumple, eyes clenching tightly shut, lips pressed painfully together. Instead of shaking her he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. “Darlin’, talk to me.” He dropped his chin, mouth beside her ear, firmly urging her, “Tell me what happened.”
“He-he-he ran out-out of the ha-house.” Voice hitching, her shaking words were hardly loud enough for him to hear. “He was so ma-mad.” Shoulders shaking, she sucked in a hard breath and he squeezed her.