Page 70 of Waiting For A Girl Like You (Haven House #4)

E verything.

Laura Jean.

The air he breathed, the heart hammering in his chest, the blood in his veins—every bit of it belonged to her.

Laura Jean was everything.

The other half of his soul, she filled the blank spaces in him. Spaces created by the careful chipping away of his own doing. Dark deeds and dirty deals hollowing him into a shell that wasn’t worth anything.

A machine no one could love.

But she loved him.

She made him whole, the missing piece of his puzzle. Click. Perfection personified with the union.

It would hold him. For an eternity, the love he held for her would seal their destiny together. Tied tight like a string, knotted with one end in him and the other in her.

Forever.

“What are you thinking about?”

With her back to him and little Jamison on her hip, Laura Jean stood a few feet away on a dune’s peak.

The wind whipped about, coming off the waves and sending her beautiful blonde hair flying around her in a tornado of silky tresses.

Their other children played on the shore.

Three small figures looking for shells while he examined the remains of his family’s old beach house lying in ruins on the sand.

No.

This wasn’t right.

Jamison shouldn’t be here. The skeleton of his old beach house was long gone by the time their princess was born. The structure had been peeled from the earth when they renourished the beach to make it strong again. Strong enough to build their home here.

A castle.

He had built Laura Jean a castle among the dunes, rising high in the sky so she could see the entire expanse of white and the spectacular emerald shade of the water that matched her eyes.

“Laura Jean?”

The laughter of their children ceased, dying abruptly on a gust of salty sea air. In a panic, he scanned the beach but saw nothing. No Selah, nor Samuel, nor Evie. No Jamison on Laura Jean’s hip.

Above them, the sky turned over on itself, too fast for his eyes to track. Night entered and erased the multicolored sunset, leaving a sea of stars to carve out a place in the darkness.

Laura Jean raised her arms high, her hands clawed. “Find him.”

She whispered the demand, the night and earth pulsing with her will. The scene should scare him or, at the very least, set him on edge.

But it didn’t.

It never did.

These whispers of what the world deemed unnatural were completely natural with Laura Jean. Loving her had only made it easier to accept.

“Find him.”

Her repeated order shot through his chest, pulling at his heart with enough force that he thought the organ might shoot out the back of his body.

“Who?” He couldn’t breathe; oxygen ripped right from him. “Who do I need to find?”

Laura Jean’s clawed hands slammed down to her sides. She spun in a dizzying whirl and faced him as the wind went silent, leaving nothing but his ragged breathing. Wild emerald eyes overfilling with pain met his, and the woman he loved above all others glared at him with absolute rage.

The sight shocked him. Seeing her this way shocked him to his very core, and when another slice of her anger seared through him, it nearly knocked him to his knees.

“Talk to me,” he begged. The stars continued to twinkle, battling with the rotation of night. Comets and other celestial objects joined in on the dance, weaving through the sky as they worked to craft a screaming kaleidoscope of space. “Laura Jean?”

“Find him.” She took heavy steps down the dune, a crackle of lightning shooting out along the beach. Strike after strike, bolts of electricity rained down upon the shore, sending sand exploding into the air. “Samuel! Find your father!”

Laura Jean stopped directly before him, as heartbreakingly beautiful as the day they met. His soul sighed at her nearness, a feeling he’d never quite become used to. Maybe in a thousand years, he might, but for now, he would never get used to how his entire being sang in her presence.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she shuddered as her anger melted into agony. “You have to stay.”

“With you?” He cupped her face, wanting nothing more. “Forever. I’ll stay with you forever. You know that. We have a deal.”

“No.” Her bottom lip trembled. “Not with me. With them. This is a new deal. You have to stay.”

They struck then. The memories. The sound of the gunshots. The feel of Laura Jean taking her last breath in his arms. The vacant look in her eyes when she left him.

And the pain. He remembered the pain. The soul devouring pain. The nightmare of loss he lived day after day. He was only now learning how to hide it, but that seemed to be making it worse.

Until it became too much.

They thought he was strong, but he was nothing. Laura Jean was everything, and he was nothing. Without her, he was nothing.

The notes. The tears. The bottle of medication on his desk. The way the pills felt as he meticulously swallowed them down one at a time.

“I’m sorry.” He cried with her. “I’m so sorry.”

Way down at the edge of the beach where the forest met the sand, a pinprick of light erupted in the darkness. A cry of relief burst from Laura Jean’s lips, and she laughed through her sorrow .

“He found you. Samuel found you.” She reached for his hand, cradling it in her palms. The size difference between them had always been amusing, but seeing it again made Ben feel her loss all over again. “Ben, we have to make a new deal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Stay.”

“Where?”

“Stay for them.” Licking her lips, she glanced over her shoulder as if expecting something to rush upon them. “Give our kids a good life. Stay for our babies.”

Miranda and Devon appeared to his left, materializing out of thin air. Neither spoke nor came any closer, giving them privacy. Devon had a soft smile for him, the gentle kind Ben had never been able to master.

But Miranda.

It had been so long since he’d seen her this way. Beautiful. Healthy. Glowing. There was no smile for him. Only bittersweet sadness. She missed Josie. Devon missed Simone. He could feel their pain as much as he could feel his own.

God, how selfish he had been. Swallowing those damn pills. A fool. Throwing it all away, and squandering what he still had.

“Make this deal with me,” Laura Jean pleaded, the swirl of light in the distance growing. “I’ll wait for you. You know I’ll wait for you, but you have to stay behind. It hurts. I understand. But you have to live for as long as you can. Live to be a hundred.”

Time was a beast. A monster ticking away the seconds without her in his head.

It played with his thoughts, driving him into madness and making him think she was still near.

A shadow on the wall that resembled her shape, a whisper on the wind carrying her voice.

Idle time and empty memories were nothing but torture devices created by an unforgiving universe.

“I’m sorry I did it.” He allowed his tears to fall. They came so easily now whenever he was alone. “I’m drowning in this fucking hell without you, and then my mind…it tricks me into thinking I see you. Everywhere. I fucking see you everywhere.”

He placed his hand against her cheek, and she leaned into his touch, her eyes closing. “It is me. I wanted to remind you that I’m still here. I’m waiting for you to come home at the end of it all. To me. I’m your home, Ben, but so are they. Our kids are your home and your responsibility.”

“I’m so scared.” Who better to confess his fears to than her?

Whether they were ridiculous or not, who better to hear the inner workings of his mind?

“I’m scared I’ll lose my memories of you.

Time passes, and the years are eating away at the little things.

Sometimes, I forget the exact shade of emerald in your eyes or the way you sing off-key in the shower. ”

Laura Jean’s lips parted in shock, her eyes opening to stare at him in disbelief. “I’m an excellent singer.”

“Oh, baby , no, you’re not.” He laughed through tears. His Laura Jean could always make him smile. “I just never had the heart to tell you.”

“Well, that’s your opinion.” Planting her hands on her hips, she stuck her nose in the air. “Opinions are like buttholes—”

Wrong or right, he couldn’t stop himself. Whether they were in heaven or hell, he couldn’t stop himself from snatching her to him for a kiss and groaning when the feel and taste of her brought as much pain as it did pleasure.

“Don’t leave me.”

Begging. He was begging.

And he wasn’t at all ashamed.

“I’ll stay,” he whispered. “I’ll give them a good life. I’ll make sure everyone is taken care of, but in the end, I want to find you waiting. I want to find my girl waiting for me so we can watch eternity go by together.”

She kissed him again, clinging to him as much as he was to her, both desperate for a second more together. “Deal.”

Pain flared through his body. With a groan, Ben jerked awake. The dream was always the same, coming to him night after night since the night he made the stupidest mistake of his life.

Suicide?

What the fuck?

Shifting slightly, he fought against the sheets. Josie had tucked him into his old suite at Parkland Grounds, the room acting as a time capsule of the years he’d spent living a lie here.

Josie and the boys had brought him home from the hospital days ago, keeping vigil in shifts as though he were going to break again. The pills had fucked him up pretty good, but he was finally regaining some semblance of strength.

He absolutely hated this. The inability to care for himself was one thing, but seeing those haunted looks in Selah and Samuel’s eyes had the power to make his heart stop all over again.

What he’d done wasn’t fair, and while he might not be much of a father anymore, he loved them with every ounce of his being.