Bedful of Moonlight - Raven Held (best love novels of all time txt) 📗

get your family back again? But how is that supposed to work, really? Your mom doesn’t even know –”
“And she never will.”
“What exactly happened? Why was Gareth in jail?”
He started walking away. “It doesn’t matter. Come on, we should start setting up. I told Aunt Belle we’ll go fetch the boys after we’ve set up the stalls.”
By the time we went to pick up Oliver and Sawyer, Oliver had just woken up. As I watched Caleb pour milk into a bowl of cornflakes, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Caleb was Oliver’s half-brother, not just his cousin.
“I dreamt that grandpa came back,” Oliver was saying, seated at the kitchen table. “He was riding on a dragon. But the dragon was so big it couldn’t get through the door, so grandpa had to get down its back and let it go and play in the bookstore. Only it was too big and it knocked over all the books…”
“You can never hope for him to stop talking,” Caleb said to me. “Kids at his age love the sound of their voices.”
Oliver was still going at it. “And then, just as they were picking up the books, Uncle Gareth comes in and –”
“Uncle Gareth?” Caleb repeated, in a tone so sharp Oliver shrank back slightly. “I’m sorry. I mean, who’s Uncle Gareth?”
“It’s the man who came by the other day. He gave me a piggyback ride and helped me climb a tree.” Oliver grinned through his milk moustache.
“Dammit,” Caleb muttered.
“Dammit,” Oliver echoed. Then he looked up from his cereal with a grin. “You swore.”
“So did you,” I said.
He grinned more broadly. “I did.”
Caleb wasn’t grinning.
“Doesn’t he know of his father?” I asked.
He shushed me and then shook his head. “They’ve never met – until now, apparently. I swear, the next time he risks exposing himself again, I’m just going to stand back and watch.”
All I thought was, No, you won’t.

*

It is unbelievable how many people can wake up especially early just for a craft fair.
Granted, the stuff on sale was really pretty, and sold for prices that were, as everybody said, too low for such exquisite items. Still, there was no need for the rush.
My mom was one of them at the pottery booth. She held up a miniature painted pot with a fake miniature tree stuck in it when I arrived by her side, as though expecting me all along. “Isn’t this just so precious? And it’s only two dollars for one of these! What a steal. I just have to get more.”
“Mom, you’re not even into gardening,” I said.
“These are for aesthetic purposes, aren’t they? So as long as they’re pretty enough for decoration, I’m buying them. I’ll get one for you too. And one for daddy.”
“Dad won’t appreciate it.”
“It goes with his study.”
“What study? The house is gone. And it doesn’t go with his room now, too.”
Mom stopped reaching for another pot. She withdrew her hand and looked at me properly. “You really hate me now, don’t you?”
“No, mom, I don’t.” This was wearing me out already.
“What do I have to do to make you believe I won’t leave you both again? I know I left you at a bad time, honey, but I didn’t know. And I never would’ve left you if I’d know –”
“That Blake would die the next day?” It sort of surprised me how I was able to string that sentence now without wincing. It terrified me how used to the idea I had gotten.
“Kristy…”
“Never mind. Just do what you want. Buy all the pots there are. Maybe they’ll make you feel better.”
Then I turned to look for Caleb. I passed by the shoes booth, where at least twenty ladies were gushing over the sequinned sandals or beaded flats and trying them on; I passed by the soap and candles stall, where Marilyn watched anxiously, ready to catch anything that might fall, as people proclaimed how cute the jars were.
“How many quilts does one person need?” Caleb said, staring as two elderly ladies grabbed an entire stack of folded patchwork quilts and tossed them into their already-overflowing basket of craft items.
We started walking towards the back of the photo frames booth, where there were less people. People, it seemed, needed photo frames less than they did quilts or shoes.
“A great many, apparently,” I said.
“One for each day of the week.”
“For every day of the month.”
He grinned. “I got something for you.” He handed me a box wrapped in light blue paper. “Got it from the ceramics stall. Open it.”
It was a mug.
“Not just any mug, mind you,” he said the minute I took it out of the cardboard box, as though I had already made a dismissive comment. “Read what it says.”
“I traded my bed for the moonlight,” I read. It was printed on the navy blue mug, the words written with stardust on the canvas of the night. The handle was a crescent moon, with the man sitting at its bottom end. I raised my brows. “How very apt.”
“Jess made this when she was pregnant, I think,” Caleb said. “She said her son kept her up almost every night, so she thought of making this.”
“I’d have kept it if I were her,” I said. “It’s too pretty for sale.”
“Ah, then we wouldn’t have the pleasure of drinking our Earl Grey from it.”
“True.”
Somehow, while we were talking, we had leant so close to each other I could feel his breath on my cheeks. I knew what this might lead to, but I did not pull back. For once, I did not, just to see how things might end up.
When he kissed me, it was slow, gentle and tentative. I could sense he was the one holding back, unsure if I would start crying for Blake again. But I held his face in my hand, the other one cradling the mug, and he did the same.
The kiss held promise, and a quiet patience, but already I could feel time slipping between my fingers. Any moment now, he would break away and tell me he didn’t mean any of this, that this was not what he wanted at all. And I would be left hanging there, bereft again.
And then I thought of the way Blake had looked at me as he held on to my feet, how I didn’t know which way to go, in my dream. What was I doing? We all knew how this would play out. Didn’t I make a promise to myself? Didn’t I swear never to put myself in that position again, where I had given all the power over myself to someone else? Hadn’t I seen enough proof that no-one could promise you forever?
It was not me who broke away, but I realised I had stopped kissing him.
“Kristen?”
I opened my eyes, and a warm tear slid down my cheek.
“Oh, crap,” Caleb said, taking one look at my face. “I swear, if I’d known you didn’t want it, I wouldn’t have done that.” He gently swiped a finger below my eyes. “Sorry, I don’t have a tissue or anything.”
“That’s fine,” I said, leaning back and wiping my eyes vehemently. Talk about spoiling the moment.
“Come on, let’s find somewhere to sit,” he said, taking my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, just feeling the need to explain, “it’s not that I didn’t like that, it’s just … I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He smiled. “Let’s sit down first.”
We came to a wrought-iron bench under a tree a few feet away from the fair. The day was growing warmer, and dappled sunlight edged through the tree leaves.
“I’m sorry,” we both said the minute we sat down. He chuckled. “Okay, now that that’s out of the way, would you mind telling me why you’re crying?”
I laughed a little. “It’s not you –”
“It’s me,” he finished. “Uh-huh.”
I stared at him.
“Sorry. I’m being rude,” he said with a smile. “But I actually enjoyed that. I like you, Kristen, and I’m not going to drag my feet about this. I know you were probably thinking about Blake the whole time, but –”
“That’s the problem. I wasn’t. It was you I saw.”
His face scrunched up slightly. “And that’s … bad.” He raised his brows.
“No,” I said, placing my hand on his. “No, Caleb, it’s not. I just think that I should have been thinking about him, but I didn’t, and that’s not fair to him – or you to hear this. And I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m going to lose someone I love again, and now I’m rambling and I just basically said I love you and I don’t know why I can’t seem to stop talking.”
There was a beat of silence as he watched me gather my breath.
“There,” he said. “See? You’ve stopped.”
I laughed again, as another tear rolled down my face. What a wreck I was.
He held up my face and looked me straight in the eye. “First off, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being afraid to lose someone. But you shouldn’t shut yourself off from everyone just because you’re afraid of getting hurt. Do you trust me?”
I could only stare at him, unwilling to tell the truth.
“Do you trust me?” he repeated.
“I don’t know.”
“I know.” An apology sat on the tip of my tongue, but he went on, “But there’s nothing to be sorry for. And I won’t hurt you.”
“You might. You might leave, just like everyone else. I don’t expect you to understand. It’s just easier not to compromise at all, sometimes. Call me a cynic, I don’t care.”
We watched as a little boy about six, and his sister, chased each other around the tents. How would either of them feel if one of them was not around anymore? Wouldn’t it have been easier not to have known each other?
“That,” Caleb said, when I told him that, “is just such a messed-up thought.”
“What, you don’t think so?”
“Not at all. I mean, if that’s what you think, then we should all just live our lives avoiding everyone so that we’d be able to protect ourselves, is that it?”
I nodded, but my confidence wavered under the distilled version of my plan.
He stared at me. “Seriously?”
“Okay, maybe not that drastic.”
He leaned back, one arm placed casually behind me, and watched the children playing for a while.
“Tell me about Blake,” he suddenly said, in a voice so pleasant he might have been talking about Philly cheese-steak sandwiches for all anyone knew.
“Seriously?” I volleyed back at him.
He nodded.
“I don’t know how else to say this other than he’s a lot like you. He loves to run, he loves Hemingway, he is unbelievably optimistic … He’s not an insomniac, though, and when he’s nervous or worried, he lights matches.”
“Matches?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it calms him down. He’d let the fire burn till almost the entire match is spent before extinguishing it. It used to freak me out, but I later learnt I could just blow it out. He’d get annoyed by it.”
Caleb was listening, really listening. I had never been able to talk about Blake to anyone since that day, and even if I did, I was sure no-one would be interested to hear what I had to say. After all, I had no right to – I was the one who killed him.
“Did you drive the van into him?” Caleb asked when I told him so.
“Well, no, but I didn’t have to be