Caven’s best friend, but that hardly obligated me to stand in the grocery store and have a chat. “Have a good weekend.”
“Willow, wait. Can we talk for a minute?”
I stilled, my eyelids fluttering shut as I internally groaned. No. The answer was no. We had nothing to talk about. Nothing left to say. No apologies left to issue. I was a horrible person. I got it. I didn’t need another reminder.
So I craned my head back, opened my mouth, and chirped, “Sure, what’s up?” Damn my manners to hell!
Much to my surprise, he smiled down at me. I’d seen a lot of frowns from that man, so the smile took me off guard. And it should be noted that it was a gorgeous smile. The kind Beth would lose her mind over, but since he was holding a basket with nothing but a box of condoms inside, I figured some other woman would be losing her mind over it later that night.
“He’s confused,” he stated, thus making me confused.
“Huh?”
“Caven. He’s confused. He misses Hadley. Well, he misses you when you were Hadley. Now, he has these different versions of you. Willow the little girl. Willow the woman who lied to him. Willow the sister of his daughter’s mother. And he can’t figure out what compartment to put you in in his head.”
I blinked at him. “What are you talking about? All of those people are me.”
“Right. But Caven doesn’t live his life that way. Ever since…” He glanced around the cleaning aisle then lowered his voice. “Ever since that day, he lives his life in neat little mental boxes. He has one for work. One for Rosalee. One for me. One for Trent. One for the mall. And every box has its place. Because inside those boxes in his head, he doesn’t just get to decide what goes in them. He decides what stays out.”
He popped his eyebrows pointedly. “But you were different. I didn’t understand it while it was happening, but when you were Hadley, Caven started this one big box for you in his head. You were Rosalee’s mom, the one thing he’d always wished he had growing up. And you knew about his past, so whether he wanted that to be in your box or not, it didn’t matter. And then there was just you. The beautiful woman who made the Tin Man feel.” He grinned. “Now those people all live in different compartments. He’s mad at the woman who lied to him. He misses the woman he was falling in love with. And he is damn near paralyzed by guilt when he’s around the girl from the mall.” He shrugged. “He’s confused.”
I shifted my eyes from side to side, waiting for the music from The Twilight Zone to start playing. “I’m sorry. Don’t you hate me?”
He laughed. “No. I hated your sister. I hated her for getting pregnant and never telling him. I hated her for dropping the baby off on his doorstep. And I hated her for never looking back after she abandoned the most incredible child I have ever met.”
I opened my mouth, but he lifted his hand.
“I read the journals. I know she had her reasons. But I’ve seen Caven with Rosalee, so I know there is a difference between struggling and giving up. Several times since she was born, Caven has needed help, but you would have to pry that child from his lifeless arms before he’d ever let her go.”
My chest got tight. He definitely had a point there. Hadley had had her problems, but she’d absolutely given up on her daughter. She hadn’t spent the four years after Rosalee was born lost in the past, unable to see through the fear. She’d laughed. She’d painted beautiful pictures. She’d had boyfriends. She’d gone to rehab. She’d relapsed. She’d been obsessed with the nonexistent woman from the mall. She’d traveled to and from Puerto Rico to visit me. She’d lived a full life, all while her child had been out there living one without her.
His hand came down on my shoulder. “You didn’t do those things, Willow. You could have come back like a raging tornado, fighting for custody, dragging Caven through the mud, and using every resource you had to take Rosalee. But you didn’t. You tiptoed in and made paper flowers at his dining room table. I don’t like the lies you told, but I don’t have any reason to hate you, either.”
I bit my bottom lip. Damn, why did