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She heads out of the room and I don’t stop her. I stand to follow her. “I’m going to take her on a ride. She’s feeling emotional, with good reason, and needs some air.” I don’t wait for a reply from any of them. Candace and I need a break. We need some us time. We need a lifetime of us time and I know she can’t be feeling like that’s possible right now. I need to change that.
I catch up with her in the living room and snag her hand from behind. God, her hands are tiny. She’s tiny and yet the impact she has on me is larger than life. And only one other person has ever held such a big space in my life. Only Candace knows and understands this. She turns to face me and I step into her, aligning our legs. “I want to take you somewhere. More like I need you to go somewhere with me.”
“Where?”
“Someplace I haven’t been in a long time,” I say. “Too long.”
Her eyes fill with understanding. I don’t even have to tell her where we’re going. She knows because she knows me. Because time knows no boundaries for us. We’re that damn connected. “You want to see your mother.”
“Yes.” Memories stir inside me and while I fight them, there’s no escaping them tonight. “I want to see my mother.” I turn her toward the bedroom. “Grab your purse,” I say, because I want her in the habit of carrying her gun but I don’t think that’s what she needs to hear right now. It’s not what I want her to hear, either. “And grab a jacket in case it tries to act like winter out there.”
A few minutes later, we’re in the 911 and on the highway. “Tell me about your apartment in New York,” she says.
“Our apartment now,” I say. “At least until you decide if you like it or not.”
“Us living together again,” she murmurs. “That would be surreal.”
“Will be, baby. It’s happening. I’ll have movers pack you up but what about work? Is there anything you can’t do from New York?”
“I have a military contract I’m working on, but I’ll figure it out.”
I pull us into the dark parking lot of the graveyard, under a low hanging tree, and kill the engine, but I don’t reach for the door. I lean over and into Candace and she’s right there with me, leaning into me. My hand slides under her hair, settling on her neck, and there is no place like this place, that reminds me more of how many ways this woman has been my rock. “Tell me you want to move to New York with me.”
“I will go anywhere with you, Rick Savage. Anywhere. Anytime.” Her fingers slide gently over my lips, stirring heat and emotion in my chest. “Anywhere,” she repeats. “Anytime.”
I kiss her, a slow, sultry dance, wind whistling beyond the window, and sending the branches of the trees into a frenzy. Thunder rumbles, promising these storms still haven’t passed. “We better do this before we get rained on again.” I reach for the door and climb out, and by the time I’m rounding the vehicle to help Candace out, she’s already standing, shutting her door.
She steps to me and catches my hand. “You ready for this?”
I brush her wind-whipped hair behind her ear. “We might need that vodka after all when we get home. Or better yet. Lots of sex.”
She laughs. “Lots of sex and no vodka. I want you to remember the lots of sex.”
“There’s no chance of me forgetting the sex, baby,” I say, and hand in hand we cross the parking lot to the grassy area that leads to rows of headstones. A low glow of dim lights guide our path, darkness cloaking our path with the limiting lighting.
The walk to my mother’s grave is short, but it’s impactful, stirring an intense sense of déjà vu in me, and I suspect in Candace as well. I’m reliving the day my mother was buried, thinking of Candace and I both dressed in all black and trudging through this exact walk, every step weighed, like my heart. I’d held onto Candace so damn tightly I must have crushed her hand but she never once complained. She held onto me and I let her go. I was such a fucking fool. We reach the tombstone and I kneel. “You send flowers every Mother’s Day,” she says finally.
Surprised at this accurate statement that I’ve shared with no one, I glance over at her. “How did you know that?”
“Because I bring her flowers every Mother’s Day. I guess you can say that for eight years, we’ve had a meeting of the hearts, right here, with your mother.”
She never let go but then neither did I. This woman never lets me down. I lean in to kiss her and pause with a jolt of memory. In my mind’s eye, I’m here, in San Antonio.
