The Last Treasure (30 page)

“Yes, he is.” Guilt and confusion flood her. Whit is as much a part of these walls and these floors as they are. No amount of moved beds and fresh paint can hide that. “If Whit knew we were here together,” she whispers.

“He'd what?” Sam presses. “He'd be a different person?”

She spins away from him, unable to face his question, but Sam moves behind her.

“He'd die,” she says simply.

“So where is he?” She steps away and Sam catches her hand, gently but insistently. “He had his chance, Liv. You said it yourself—he's broken your trust more times than you can count.”

What can she say to that? In the quiet, she can hear the front door open and Diane enter the foyer, talking loudly on her phone.

Liv turns back to the sea, her nerves primed, so close to the surface of her skin she is almost afraid to touch anything, but she wants to put her hands somewhere to steady herself, so she flattens her palms against the glass. The surface is cool and she's grateful for it. Time stops and collects in a single rush of images, charting her history in this house. Sam's right: Everything began here. Their first kiss. Her pencil marks on that chart. Whit barging in the next morning, spilling sunlight everywhere, slamming a door down the hall. Why didn't she realize how much Whit loved her then?

Sam comes behind her and she doesn't dare turn to face him.

“Tell me what you want, Liv.”

She closes her eyes and presses her fingertips harder against the window. When she exhales against the glass, cool air blows back at her. Why does he have to ask her this now? Doesn't he know her whole body is a propeller on a rubber-band plane, wound to its very tightest and waiting to be set free to spin?

“I just want to stop running away,” she whispers.

“So stop.” He reaches around to cover her hands with his, his fingers heavy and insistent. His breath is hot against her scalp, her neck. His body leans into hers.

“Sam,” she whispers, then again,
“Sam.”

If she tips her head back, she knows exactly where she will land, just below his chin, where she always used to rest. And she'll stretch her neck; she'll tilt her head to bare her throat to his mouth, and he'll reach down and slide her underwear to one side, wordlessly, seamlessly, because that was
always how they made love. Silently, and from behind, where she could never see his face. Whit needs to look into her eyes when he's inside her, needs to possess her in every way. Whit doesn't care that his whole face twists up, doesn't care that the craziest grunts and curses burst out of him when he comes. He lets her in, lets her know it's okay to lose control. And here she is, letting Sam's hands sweep up her body, and she is spinning, just like that propeller, but instead of flying, she feels sure she's drowning.

When his hands cup her breasts and squeeze hungrily, she slips from his grip and retreats to the other side of the room, leaving a wide berth between herself and the bed, swallowing to force moisture to her parched throat. “I can't do this now.”

“Then we'll go somewhere else,” Sam says, his voice husky.

“No, I mean I can't do this anywhere.”

He falls back against the window and drags both hands through his short hair. Even from across the room, she can see the rigid weight she felt against the small of her back bulging stiffly beneath his zipper.

“I'm sorry, Sam.”

“Jesus, stop saying that.”

His harsh tone startles her.

“What do you expect from me?” she says. “You can't just show up after all these years and make it like it used to be.”

“Hey, you came to
me
, remember?”

She claps her hands over her eyes. “I know,” she says. When she lowers her fingers, Sam is near her again.

He touches her cheek. “A minute ago you were moaning
my name. An hour ago you were telling me you didn't know if you could go back to your husband.”

Your husband
. He says it as if Whit is someone he doesn't know, a stranger, a man he's never met.

Her heart pounds; she's sure he can feel her pulse through her skin, through his fingers.

Sam tips her chin to raise her eyes to his. “You and Whit don't make sense, Liv.
We
made sense.”

Made
. He's right to use the past tense, but he's wrong in every other way.

She and Whit make perfect sense. Why has she needed this trip to see that?

“My whole life was about boxes, Sam,” she says. “About what I couldn't do, who I couldn't be. My father kept me in that box for as long as I can remember. Then I let you put me in another one, because I thought being safe would make me happy. But all I ever wanted, all I ever needed, was someone to tell me it was okay if I climbed out of that awful box. Even for a little while.”

“Congratulations, you found him.” He releases her.

So she had. Life with Whit might not have always been tidy or predictable, but unlike Sam, Whit has always known what he wants. What . . . and
who
.

And there it is, Liv realizes. The piece she couldn't make fit for so long. The only safety she ever really needed was Whit's love. It was uncontrolled, but it was unconditional. It was messy and manic and sometimes utterly devastating to be around, but it was pure, and it was steady. Maybe the only thing in Whit Crosby's life that ever would be.

For all of Sam's caution and protection, for all of his evenness and order, he'd never made her feel safe about his love for her. How many times had she hoped he would ask her to marry him, gently pressed him only to have him change the subject? She's not even sure she can count on one hand the times in four years he said he loved her.

“Why did you lie about the chart?”

He stares at her. “What?”

Her heart races, so fast she worries it will push through her ribs. “You said Whit didn't want it after we left this house—you said he wanted to throw it away.”

“Jesus, what difference does that make now?”

Only all the difference in the world.

She takes a seat on the bed, its power suddenly gone. It's just a big, empty bed. In a big, empty house.

“This trip was never about the diary or me, was it?” she says. “You came back to punish Whit. To take me away from him, just to prove you could.”

“I asked you to come to Chicago with me, Liv. You were the one who said no.”

She shakes her head. “You knew I couldn't leave my father. You knew I had to stay. You could pretend all these years that it was me, that the reason we didn't work out was
me
, but it was you, Sam. You never wanted me to come with you. You never knew what you wanted. Only what you
didn't
.” She watches him a moment, seeing him so clearly now, and a thread of sadness stitches its way up her throat. “I did love you, Sam.”

Even now she can say it, and even now he still can't.

He folds his arms. “But you ran to Whit.”

She smiles. “Not right away.”

“Yes, right away. From the start, Liv.”

And this time, Sam's right. Even when she'd been standing still and alone, she was running toward Whit Crosby. He'd been her beacon before she ever knew she needed one. She'd been so sure a heart as wild and big as his would sink her, would leave her to drown.

But all these years later, she understands Whit was never the one who'd needed saving.

Amazing what treasure you can find when you scrape off years of crud, isn't it?

The clack of heels grows louder and Diane appears in the doorway.

“So, lovebirds . . .” She looks between them, wearing an impish smile, her pink lipstick gleaming with a fresh thickness, shiny and sticky like hastily chewed bubble gum. “Will we be putting in an
offer?”

Eight years earlier

L
iv had vowed she wouldn't hunker down at the café for so long this time, wouldn't turn on her laptop, wouldn't spread out her papers, but here it was, almost noon, and she'd covered the round table so entirely that there was barely any sign of the lacquered wood underneath. Worst of all, in the three hours she'd been there, she'd nursed one damn cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. If there was a minimum purchase requirement for hogging a table for four, she wasn't even close. When her friend Rachel had texted to invite her to the beach, Liv begged her to stop by and fill a chair for a good cause instead. Not that her offer of sand and sun wasn't a tempting one. It had been such a busy spring trying to complete her course work that Liv had barely been to the water at all in April or May.

Most days it just blew her mind that she'd graduated at all.

When she'd enrolled—or reenrolled, depending on how you looked at it—at UNC Wilmington, Liv had been so sure the bottom would drop out of her plan, that she'd be sitting in class and the teacher would point to her and tell her to leave, that there had been some dreadful mistake and her hope of finishing what she'd started had only been a dream.

Not that the first few weeks of school weren't without hiccups. Student loan paperwork had been held up, credits improperly transferred, add/drop deadlines missed.

But eleven months later, at twenty-six, she was finally a college graduate. There'd been barely enough time to think about what she'd do next before “next” had arrived. The lure of boat work remained—God knew she still had plenty of contacts at the marina and in the salvage world who would gladly have brought her back into that particular fold. But she'd promised her father—and maybe herself too—that she would at least try for a job with benefits and regular hours, a job that didn't leave her sun-kissed and salt-licked, her hair constantly thickened with sea spray and wind. Not that she had minded those unconventional perks. Truthfully she missed the chalky feeling of dried sea on her skin, her toes and fingernails always so clean from the water. Most of all, she missed the excitement of the hunt, of knowing that a shipwreck might be just beneath her, that a few seconds of hand-fanning could yield unimaginable treasure.

And she missed Sam. And she missed Whit. It had been so long since she was truly alone.

Not that she
was
alone, she had to remind herself. Her friend Rachel was proof of that. Liv had rarely had girlfriends growing up, rarely had friends of any kind—who could with
such an overprotective father who feared the possible dangers of after-school playdates and sleepovers? Her years with Sam and Whit had been so deeply inclusive that she'd barely formed any relationships outside of their trio. But in the days following Sam's departure, the void had been unmistakable. Until she had returned to classes that fall and found herself seated next to a bubbly brunette with a nose ring and a great story about changing majors, Liv had genuinely feared she might not even know
how
to make friends, as ridiculous as that sounded. Two weeks later, she'd met Rachel in her seminar and they'd connected over a shared love of Michener's
Hawaii
. Like her, Rachel had recently ended a long relationship—hers with a high school boyfriend back home in Georgia—so the two had navigated the waters of singlehood together, and, with the exception of a few ill-advised affairs, painlessly.

It helped too that Liv had found herself a new coffee shop to haunt, a place with no ties to her life with Sam, no memories attached to its benches or wall hangings.

Rachel pushed through the door carrying her bike helmet. Liv waved her over.

“You didn't go as short this time—it's good,” Rachel said, sliding into her seat and pointing to Liv's new bob.

“I missed being able to put it up,” Liv said. “How was last night?”

“Terrible, but it's done, so that's a relief. I didn't want him coming with us to Wilson's opening anyway. You
are
coming, aren't you? Because I told Wilson you were and he lit up.”

“Oh God, you didn't.”

“He's adorable. What's the problem?”

“The problem is I'm not looking for anything serious.”

“And you think Wilson
is
? By the way, Moondance is doing the catering.”

“I said I'll think about it.”

“And did I mention the open bar?”

Liv smiled. “Only ten times.” Her phone hummed with a call, saving her. Just an automated message from her father's facility updating their new emergency notification system. A year after Sam had left, still a tiny part of her always imagined it might be him when she heard the chime. She'd called him several times, usually late at night, but he'd never answered. E-mail was his communication of choice. She'd received a few messages early on, most of which were to share news of revised loan repayment schedules from their folded business, another to tell her the
Phoenix
had been sold, which had sent her into a crying jag in the middle of the quad.

But oddly enough, it was Whit Crosby, not Sam, she most often believed she spotted in a crowd. Sometimes it was a laugh, loud and exploding; other times a flash of rumpled bronzed hair on someone unusually tall.

Not often, just sometimes. The way objects dance into the peripheral vision when a person has been looking straight ahead too long without blinking.

•   •   •

S
he had nothing chic to wear—that was her first excuse for not going to the gallery when Rachel called at seven. Parking would be impossible on a Friday night—excuse number two. And never mind that she had wanted to fill out that
online application for the job at the Historical Society. And of course there was her father. . . .

No, not really. But years after she'd moved him into Sunset Hills, Liv still found herself unconsciously building his possible needs into her plans. What if he heard something outside and needed her to come over? What if the TV remote needed programming? The idea that he was being cared for, monitored—it had taken so much getting used to. It did still.

“Come over now,” Rachel said. “Or I'm sending Wilson to pick you up.”

Liv doubted he would leave his own opening, but she didn't care to risk it.

“Fine.” She hung up, missing the satisfaction of heavy receivers that could be slammed down into cradles.

•   •   •

C
repe myrtles lined the street, at their ripeness peak in clusters of scarlet and pink blossoms. Liv found herself dusted with petals cutting through a hotel courtyard to reach Front Street. The gallery was busy and loud and hot. She managed to secure a square inch of peace on the second floor and looked down at the crowd. Somewhere in the soup was Rachel, who'd promised to wear her turquoise top to be easily spotted, but all Liv could see were shades of black and red.

This had been a terrible idea. The very worst. She'd put off finishing her online application for this. Not to mention now she remembered why she'd never worn these heels for any length of time. Admittedly they made her feel utterly statuesque, but no amount of added height was worth the pain to her littlest toes.
She scanned the floor again, deciding she would give the swarm one last search and if she still didn't see Rachel, she'd leave as she'd come in, unnoticed—

Her gaze snagged. The profile was right, but the hair was wrong. Too short. Still. It looked an awful lot like . . .

She drew closer to the railing. Her breath caught.

There was no way he would hear her over the roar of the crowd and the thunder of music, but she leaned over and yelled anyway. “Whit!”

To her shock, he looked up and around, and then saw her. His hand rose and he pointed at her. “Stay there!”

Whether it was his height or his powerful strides up the stairwell, somehow he cleared the space around them enough so that as soon as he was within range, she was able to fling herself into his open arms and lock her fingers behind his neck. He smelled different, she thought, something missing. When she let go, it hit her: no smoke.

She felt breathless, as if she were the one who'd sprinted up the steps. “What are you doing here?” she cried.

“I know one of the guys in the show.”

“No, I mean
here
. In Wilmington.”

“I came back to check on a few friends. What gives? I went by the old apartment, but there was some crabby guy living there.”

She smiled. “I moved out when Sam left. I'm living near campus now.”

“Holy shit . . .” He reached out and cupped a handful of her hair, fingering the short red curls that she'd tacked back with combs. “What the hell did you do with all of it?”

His touch sent sparks of heat circling her scalp. “Me? What about you? Did you really have to go all the way to Australia to get a proper haircut?”

“I fell asleep on the lid of a can of marine paint. Had to buzz it all off. I almost looked presentable for a while. You should have seen me.”

Whit with a flattop? She couldn't imagine it.

“Damn.” He took her in again, longer this time, his gaze so baldly admiring that she felt the urge to laugh. Or maybe it was to cover the irrepressible blush that crept up her neck. “How come you never wore this outfit on the boat?” he said.

“You know, I tried but I could never get my fins over the heels.”

“I bet you have to beat the boys off with a stick.”

She grinned. “A chopstick, maybe.”

His teasing smile relaxed. “It's good to see you, Red.”

God, how she'd missed that name. To think there had been a time she'd bristled at it, at
him
. Impossible. She couldn't remember ever being happier to see someone.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“A friend of Wes's lent me his place on the Riverwalk for a few days. Why don't you come over later when you're done here?”

She smiled. “I'm done now.”

•   •   •

O
ver the years, they'd passed this stretch of apartments many times strolling along the Riverwalk after beers at the taproom or crab omelets for Sunday brunch. She'd wondered what it would be like to eat out on one of their balconies, how beautiful the river would look from above.

She followed Whit up the stairs and into a lushly lit apartment with gleaming wooden floors and a gas fireplace.

He went straight for the galley kitchen. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” she said.

“I have some shrimp. I could make us a quick stir-fry.”

Since when did Whit cook?

“Wine or beer?” he asked.

“Wine's good.”

He poured her a glass of white and she carried it over to the French doors that looked out onto the Cape Fear River and the bustling boardwalk below. She stepped out of her heels, resisting the urge to fling them off the balcony, and padded back across the cool hardwood floor to the kitchen, her short self again but immeasurably comfortable. Or maybe her comfort wasn't just from being free of her shoes.

Whit leaned down to retrieve a wok and spun it easily before landing it on the range top.

“Okay, what gives?” Liv said. “Last time I saw you, you were reading the directions for microwave popcorn.”

He laughed. “I learned some moves from the guys on the ship. They'd pull up this crazy-looking fish and we'd have to make it ingestible. It's amazing what enough lemon pepper and soy sauce can do.”

She settled onto one of the barstools to watch him work. “So tell me everything.”

“Not until we eat.” Whit winked. “Patience, lass.”

Liv eyed him dubiously. Since when did Whit Crosby know anything about
that
?

•   •   •

T
hey ate on the balcony under a full moon. The shrimp was cooked perfectly, flavorful and moist. The wine tart and cold. Even the salad dressing was just the right balance of tangy and sweet. Liv couldn't stop marveling at each bite, each sip. Who was this man who cooked, who didn't smoke, who had reign over a sexy apartment on the Riverwalk and hadn't filled it with underwear models and vats of liquor?

Whit leaned back and stretched out his legs under the table, brushing Liv's bare feet.

“Wilmington must feel tiny to you now after being all over the world,” she said.

“Not really. I missed it.”

“Oh, please. Excavating ships that Caesar himself probably sailed on, and you missed our little steamers?”

“I didn't say I missed the wrecks.”

A sparkle of affection flashed back at her, scalding her cheeks. She was suddenly aware of their bodies touching, the cool cotton of his khakis brushing against her ankle.

Whit reached for his wine. “So, now what, Graduate?”

“I've applied for a few things. There's a position with the Historical Society that sounds promising.”

He frowned, looking skeptical. “Sounds like a desk job.”

“What's wrong with desk jobs?”

“Nothing, except you have to do them
at desks
.”

The wind kicked up, bringing with it the smoky smell of
river traffic. A group of women spilled out of the restaurant below and rushed loudly to the edge of the railing to wave at a passing tour boat. Liv watched them a moment, enjoying their mirth, before she said, “It could be a good thing. A way to combine my degree and my work on wrecks. It would make my dad happy. Before he forgets me completely.”

Liv regretted the confession immediately and took a long sip of wine to wash it away.

“How's he doing?” Whit asked.

“He has good days and bad days.”

“Don't we all?”

While Whit emptied the bottle between their glasses, Liv watched him, still grappling with his curious evolution. He looked like the same Whit who'd left her life three years earlier. Maybe he was a bit tanner, a bit leaner—he'd never be as slim as Sam—and his hair was shorter, but these were fine details. It was the differences below the skin that startled her.