Page 100 of Bring me Back

We moved together, him from there and I here. My hands running on the heavy, red curtains dividing the offstage, his steps full of meaning. He was following me, hunting me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The words he wrote in his letters came to mind, every little detail repeating in a loop. Heartfelt, silly. All the times he gave himself to me.

The man across the stage wasn’t anyone’s but mine.

We reached the end of the stage, where the trees he built were the thickest, where the light shone bright green. He stepped forward first. I frowned. Wasn’t he afraid to be seen? Could the trees completely hide upstage? But Dan didn’t even glance in the audience’s direction. His eyes were glued to me. His certainty made my feet move. Copying him, I got through the fake trees behind the big ones, avoiding the light.

In a minute, we were in front of each other. I craned my neck to look at him, shooting an inquiring look.

He shook his head. “No one can see it. I created this so they could walk from left and right offstage.”

“A secret tunnel?” I whispered.

“In the woods.” He smiled.

Out there I heard Delilah, her voice all melody and fierceness. My hands trembled and Daniel took them between his.

“I got your letters,” I said.

“I meant it.”

“That you were called Jell-O in college?”

His mouth opened in that delicious boyish smile I loved so much. “And other things too.” He sobered up a little. “Can I keep writing to you?”

I licked my lips, my head bobbing in acceptance before the word yes even formed in my tongue. His thumb played circles over my wrists, his eyes down, watching our hands joined. A labored breath left his lungs, and it squeezed my heart.

“Dan?”

“Yes, Cricket?”

“When you sent me the notes, you said they were pieces of your heart.”

He nodded. I gulped. “You said there wasn’t much left now.”

“Hallie…” he breathed, coming closer and taking my face between his palms. I fought the tears on the corners of my eyes as he darted his gaze along my face like he wanted to remember my features forever.

“Everything is yours. I gave everything to you. There’s nothing left.”

This time the tears shed unbidden. Dan wiped them with his thumbs, so delicate it took my breath away.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he rasped. “I can’t read you this time.”

I opened a watery smile. “I’m thinking you’re mine. Just mine and never anyone else’s.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Cricket, in a room full of people, it’s you who I hear the loudest.”

And he took my mouth. Slashing with a force and passion I craved, his hands grabbing my hair and keeping me in place like he was scared I’d disappear through his fingers. I ate his desperation because it matched mine. I missed his cedar scent, his rough fingers roaming my skin, the bites he chased away with kisses. Tongues fighting, my breathing caught in my throat as somewhere out there on the main stage, I heard the line about lovers in the woods.

Ablob of warm, wet sand flew to my leg, splashing right on top of my knee. I raised on my elbows arching an eyebrow at the pair who were trying hard to hide their grins.

“It was Cece,” my husband told me, pointing to my two-year-old.

“Are you telling me that my toddler is attacking her mama?”

Dan shrugged, but Cece didn’t look guilty at all. No, she was all smiles, sand everywhere, from her little chubby legs to her rosy cheeks and on top of her thick black hair. That girl needed a bath ASAP. I sat up, extending my hands to her. “Come here, you’re going to get sand in your eyes.”

Cece agreed, telling me a long, toddler version story of the castle she was making with her daddy, and I ate it all up. Moments like these were the ones I looked forward to the most. Like Daniel promised once, our lives were full of normalcy.

Messy babies, improvised dinners, bad movies he convinced me to watch. I loved the sleepless nights right after Cece was born, the bad diapers when she started teething.

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