Page 8 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)
Now that I knew who she was, I could see the fine features under her lank white hair and the vivid blue of her eyes, once her most famous qualities.
Otherwise, she was almost unrecognizable, frail in a way I would expect the elderly to be, not a woman who had to still be in her late forties or early fifties.
She wore clean loungewear in pale pink, but her face was makeup-free, and her hair was unstyled.
The woman who used to associate with Savannah Meyers would have never lounged about the house in less than a silk negligee and glamorously done hair and nails.
What happened to her?
Linnea noticed me then because her mother did.
“About time you got here,” Miranda told me with an imperial sniff. “You’re lucky you’re so handsome, Clark, or I wouldn’t agree to go out with a man who was twenty minutes late for our date.”
My gaze darted to Linnea, who stared at me with her mouth pressed so tightly it almost disappeared.
“I apologize, Miranda,” I said, stepping forward to collect one of her hands from Linnea’s loosened grip so I could bring it to my mouth for a kiss. “I know better than to keep a beautiful woman waiting.”
“Yes, you do,” she agreed, shooting me an unimpressed look even though her cheeks pinked with pleasure. “You could have at least brought me flowers.”
I did not mention the shattered crystal vase at the base of the wall behind Linnea or the blooms scattered across the carpet.
“Next time,” I promised.
“Freesia,” she instructed, sinking back into her chair and clasping her bony hands over her stomach. She seemed suddenly lethargic as if her tirade had eaten up the last of her energy reserves. “Don’t listen to Linnea. She’ll tell you I like orchids because they’re her favorites.”
Done with our conversation, Miranda turned her head away from us both and closed her eyes.
Silence descended.
“I’m so, so—” she started just as I said, “I am sorry, I should not have run inside. Only, I thought you were in danger.”
Linnea was already nodding by the time I finished. Her heavy sigh puffed out her cheeks, and she ran a hand through her soft halo of hair before rocking back onto her heels and standing.
“I’ll explain in the car, shall I?” she suggested with a tepid smile. “If you could grab my board from the side of the house, I’ll just text Mrs. Ramirez to come over, clean up this mess, and I’ll meet you at the car.”
She looked so young and small standing in the middle of the tiny, cluttered living room in frayed jean shorts and a tiny white bikini top.
So I didn’t resist the impulse to go to her, plucking a wilted yellow flower from her hair, dropping it to the ground before I slid my hand under her heavy hair and cupped her neck.
She stared up at me with those almond-shaped violet-coloured eyes as if she could not believe I was real.
“I’m going to hug you now,” I told her as I pulled her gently by the neck into my chest.
Her heavy exhale warmed my skin through my tee as she pressed her nose into the space between my pecs and wrapped her arms around my waist.
I held her without speaking so I could focus on the infinitesimal way the tension leeched from her muscles as the seconds passed until she was utterly soft and flush against me. She smelled of sea salt and flowers in a way that reminded me startlingly of Napoli. Of home.
When she was ready, I let her slip from my arms and watched as she moved into the back of the house.
I took another second to study the room properly, noting the shelf of daytime television awards, the movie posters framed on the walls, and the old-money furniture crammed into the small space.
A big life reduced to memories and a tiny floorplan that didn’t allow for the grandeur Miranda had once enjoyed.
I had never particularly liked Miranda and Bobbi, Savannah’s best friends in London all those years ago. They had brought out the more brittle qualities in my lover, her materialism and haughtiness, her aloof reserve and cutting judgements.
But I would never have wished this for Miranda, whose worst quality seemed only to be a Bambi-like naivety that the world would and should always work out in her favor.
I found Linnea’s board around the left side of the house. It wasn’t a new surfboard with the latest technology like the one I had strapped to the top of the SUV, but it had been lovingly tended to and was the sunny yellow color I had come to associate with Linnea.
When she got into the car, she dumped her big straw bag at her feet, kicked off her flip-flops, and rested them on the top of the dash before leaning her head back and sighing deeply.
It was a posture of familiarity, as if she had been riding in this car with me for years, and it did something strange to the center of my chest. I resolved to think about it later.
“You are too young to look so tired,” I told her as I pulled out into the street. It was still only quarter to six in the morning, but we had to make good time to get the best of the morning waves.
“I am too young to feel this tired,” she agreed, rolling her head to face me.
“Your mother is sick, si ?” I asked softly, glancing at her before I turned left to get back to the highway.
Another long, weary sigh. “She has frontotemporal dementia.”
“This is like Alzheimer’s?”
“It’s in the same family, but FTD specifically affects the personality and language centers of the brain.
Some days, she’s better than others, but she forgets about personal hygiene and eating, and she has episodes of intense paranoia or anger.
She has muscle weakness and a lack of coordination, so someone has to watch her because she can fall or drop things and seriously hurt herself.
” She paused, turning her face to look out the window before softly admitting, “Once, a few months ago, I left her alone to go to an audition, and when I came home, she’d lost so much blood cutting her foot open on a broken glass that I thought she was dead. ”
My heart ached with empathy. I could not imagine watching my mother or sisters going through such a sad and frightening disease, not to mention having to deal with it alone.
“What happened to her last husband?” I demanded. “I thought she had married again after Wyndam.”
She nodded, twisting the ends of her overlarge, embroidered white shirt above her belly button into a knot. “She was. He left when she was given the official diagnosis.”
“What about alimony? Surely that should cover the cost of full-time care.”
I did not know why I asked when it suddenly seemed obvious that Miranda required full-time care.
“The prenup stipulated that she wouldn’t get anything if they divorced before two years had passed. He left two months before their second wedding anniversary.”
I winced. “ Cazzo , what a stronzo .”
Her laugh was brittle, cracking at the edges. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“So you moved to Los Angeles to take care of the mother who was rarely a proper mother to you,” I summarized, looking over to see Linnea twisting one of the chunky gold rings she wore around one finger. “That is incredibly good of you.”
She snorted. “Don’t make me out to be some kind of saint, please. There wasn’t really a choice, you know? Her husband left her, her friends in this cesspool of an industry basically fled as if FTD is contagious, and Miranda needed someone. I was the only option.”
“There is always a choice,” I said because I had learned that the hard way.
Sacrificing came so easily to me that I didn’t realize how many pieces of myself I had given away until Adam and Savannah cast me out.
I’d given so much to them, so much to my family to make sure they could have a better life, and for what?
For a horrifying moment after the break-up, I couldn’t find the answer.
But then I went to New York and saw Elena and Mama set up in Little Italy. Elena had enrolled in law school, and Mama was working at an upscale Italian trattoria, as they'd both always dreamed of.
As they had both always deserved.
And I knew what it was all for, all the pain and the perpetual grind and the aching loneliness.
It was for them.
The people who meant everything to me.
“You’re a good person, Linnea Kai,” I murmured, reaching over to take one fidgeting hand in my own. Without hesitation, she flipped her palm up and linked our fingers together. “She’s lucky to have you, even if she doesn’t say it.”
She laughed again, that hard cough that didn’t come from a pleasant place.
“She certainly doesn’t say it. I think even when she’s lucid, she hates me for seeing her like that.
She’d hate anyone for seeing her like that, but I think it makes it worse that it’s her daughter taking care of her.
The one she never made time for and not the men or friends she devoted so much of her life to. ”
“How does it make you feel?” I asked as she pulled our hands farther into her lap and started to trace the veins on the back of my hand and forearm.
It was an intimate touch that warmed me through to my bones, especially since she didn’t seem to notice she was doing it.
She was so natural and unaffected, our closeness entirely unmanufactured.
It made my throat hurt and my stomach ache.
“It makes me feel sad for her,” she admitted softly.
“It makes me feel lonely, too, I guess. Just the two of us, her so alone and me, too, because even though I take care of her, even though I always wanted us to be, we aren’t a team.
I just…I don’t want to end up like that.
More than my dreams of fashion design or acting or traveling the world, I just don’t want to end up alone. ”
My lungs contracted, trapping the air in my chest until it was so full I worried it would burst.
Yes , I wanted to say, I understand completely .
Yes , some inner voice screamed, my nightmares all find me alone in the cold dark and when I wake up alone in bed, it is too close for comfort to feel good .
My hand tightened in hers, probably painfully. It drew her gaze back to me, and even though I was driving so I couldn’t look at her, I could feel the weight of her regard like sunbeams against the side of my face.
“You won’t,” I promised. “I’m sorry we haven’t seen more of each other the past few years, but I promise you, there will never be a day when you are not loved by me. D’accordo ?”
There was only silence as I pulled off the highway and navigated the streets of the Pacific Palisades and finally pulled into the car park at Topanga Beach.
When I cut the engine and turned to look at her, Linnea was already twisted my way, her expressive features arranged into a soft smile.
“I missed you, you know,” she told me baldly, and her frankness was so different from Adam and Savannah, both so much on my mind after yesterday, that it almost alarmed me.
“I’ve kept every single postcard you ever sent me, but they weren’t the same as this.
Being with you? It feels as natural as slipping into the sea—a refreshing, comforting embrace. ”
The effect of her sincerity, combined with her stunning beauty was almost too much to comprehend. How was the woman single? How hadn’t she found a good man to sweep away her worries and show her just how wonderful life could be when you were in love?
Maybe because none of them were worthy of basking in her light.
Spending time with Linnea felt like swallowing sunlight, the warmth of her presence brightening the empty, echoing corridors of my lonely heart.
“I feel the very same,” I told her solemnly, raising our joint hands to my mouth to kiss her knuckles. “I am glad we have found each other again.”
For a moment, a promise hovered in the air between us, a sultry whisper in my ear urging me to lean forward and capture those full lips with my own.
Only one thing held me back.
I wanted to be a source of goodness in Linnea’s life.
If I gave in to my base urge to strip her out of that little white bikini and taste the sun-kissed skin on the inside of her elbows and inner thighs, I would never want to stop.
My desire for her went beyond her beauty to the radiance of the soul shining out at me from those unusual purple eyes.
I wanted to devour her, eat her up, and swallow her down like some ancient pagan god swallowing the sun, as if her light could eradicate the dark blemish of heartbreak on my soul.
But that wasn’t fair.
What did I have to offer her when I knew in my bones I would never fully recover from the loss of the Meyerses?
So I flashed her my trademark grin and teased, “I hope you are ready for me to kick your ass, trottolina . I have improved much in the years since you taught me to surf.”
Her laugh was loud and belly-deep, head tipped back so her gold hair streamed over her shoulder, pooling in her lap.
And I thought, Yes, this is enough to fill me up.