The Escape Collection: (The Escape Collection) (15 page)

“No plans,” I said, immediately dismissing the fact that Kat wanted to catch a movie. Suddenly the prospect of having dinner with Reid at home seemed much more desirable. “Just hanging out tonight. But I am going to head out to the backyard for a bit, so you don’t need to worry about me interrupting your jingle writing juju.”
 

He ignored my comment, but it did earn me a raised eyebrow. “You’re going outside?”
 

I blushed, realizing how stupid it would sound if I told him I was going to climb into a tree fort to write in a journal. I settled for a shrug. “I feel like being outside. And it’s a nice night.”
 

To his credit, Reid didn’t push. “Okay. I was going to make pasta tonight. Sound good?” His smile was warm and he pushed the ever-present flop of hair off his forehead. At that moment, nothing sounded better.

“Sounds great.”
 

I waited until he went back into the kitchen, presumably to write more jingles, before I headed up the stairs with a smile on my face. Maybe Grams was right. Having a roommate was turning out to be pretty good.

***

With my notebook tucked under my arm, I climbed up the wooden ladder and carefully squeezed through the hole in the floor. The treehouse was old but solidly built and I wasn’t worried about it taking my weight, even if I did have to squeeze through a hole made for an eight-year-old.
 

As soon as I was organized, I stretched out on the wooden planks and pulled out my notebook and pen. The pages were worn, just the way I liked them best. There was something about an old dog-eared notebook that held all my feelings and emotions that inspired me to write down more.

I tucked the pillow under my chest so it propped me up just enough to see my book. With the pen in my hand, I flipped to an empty page and wrote the first thing that came to me.
 

Cracked don’t mean it’s broken
 

Cracked don’t mean I’m broke
 

Maybe, cracked but I ain’t broken
 

I let the words spill out without looking. My hand moved on its own and I couldn’t be sure what I wrote was making sense. I couldn’t see it. I didn’t need to. I just needed to get it out. Every worry and thought I had about Grams. Every little thing needed to work its way out on the page until I could breathe again.
 

The pen scratched harder and soon I was furiously turning pages, letting my subconscious do the work.
 

Say the ride can make you stronger

 
Times of weakness, times of need
 

And I know you want to help me
 

Cancer.
 

My chest constricted and I scribbled faster.
 

Aggressive.
 

Slow the growth with treatment.
 

Tears hit the page beneath me, blurring my vision.
 

“No,” I heard Gram’s voice in my head. “No treatment.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and choked out a sob.
 

Realizing the pained noise I’d heard came from me, I pulled myself up off the floor and leaned back against the wall. The rough pine boards of the treehouse bit into my back but I welcomed the sensation because it brought me back into reality and the memory of the day I’d been trying to forget. But I couldn’t get Dr. Abbott’s face out of my head. He’d worn an expression on his face. The type of expression that said, I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do and it’s my job to tell you this so let’s just get it over with. It was the type of expression I would always associate with pain.
 

The type of cancer Grams had was aggressive, Dr. Abbott had said. Aggressive, but not impossible to treat. He was confident they could slow it.
 

Slow it. Not stop it.
 

“With treatment,” Dr. Abbott said, while we sat across from him and listened like good patients should, “We should be able to slow the tumor.”

I looked at Grams expectantly. Surely that was good news. I said as much, “That’s great.”

“No,” Grams said calmly. She’d wrapped her hands around the top of her purse that was perched on her lap. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

I had to shake my head, because there was no way I’d heard her properly. I glanced between Grams and her doctor, who didn’t look surprised. He’d heard this before. In that instant, I realized this meeting was for my benefit only. I turned in my chair to face her. “What won’t be necessary?” I asked Grams.

“The treatment.” She was very matter-of-fact. As if she’d been ordering the daily special in a restaurant and wanted soup instead of salad. But she wasn’t. She was deciding her fate. Her entire life.

“Mrs. Monroe.” Dr. Abbott cleared his voice and shuffled his papers. “You do understand that by not doing anything, the cancer will spread?”

“I understand.”

“Which is why you’ll need treatment,” I said.

“No.”

“Grams.”

“Whitney.” She was calm. Too calm, when she turned to me and held my hand. “Why would I want to do that to myself? Dr. Abbott said himself the cancer couldn’t be stopped. Only slowed. So I go through treatment, and spend my last days in pain or terribly sick from the medicine, or worse, I lose my memory the way Clarice did. Do you remember Clarice Matthews?”

I nodded. “But—”

“I won’t do that to myself, Whitney.” She squeezed my hands. “I won’t do it to you.”

That conversation was only hours ago, and yet, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Tears blurred my eyes and I looked back to my notebook. Opening it once again, I started to furiously scribble. Desperate to get everything out of my head and heart and onto the page. I didn’t bother to swipe at the tears as they poured down my face. I continued to write until the last few pages of the old worn notebook were full, and only then did I let myself pull my knees into my chest, drop my head and for the first time let myself cry.
 

Chapter 8

Like a country flower in bloom

When you walked into the room

With that smile upon your face

The lyrics popped into Reid’s head the way they had been ever since he’d moved in with Whitney. He left the sauce simmering on the stove and grabbed his notebook to quickly scratch them down before he forgot them.
 

 
Lyrics hadn’t come so easily to him in months. Reid chewed on the end of the pencil and gazed out the window at the quickly darkening sky. “What is it about
 
you, Whitney Monroe?” he wondered aloud and scanned the yard.

Whitney was lucky to have a house in an older development. A leftover from the era when they still had backyards of a decent size, instead of the postage stamp lots they were building new construction on. His eyes landed on a large tree at the back of the yard and the wooden structure nestled in its branches. It was the type of treehouse he’d always wanted when he was young. The type any kid would die for.
 

Earlier, right before Duncan had left, he’d watched Whitney cross the lawn and climb up the ladder inside. He probably should have thought it was strange for a grown woman to hang out in a treehouse, but hell, if he had a treehouse that cool, he’d be hanging out in it, too. He watched for a minute before letting his gaze drift back to his notebook.

He re-read what he’d been working on. It was good. Better than good. He hadn’t written anything of any substance for months, but in only a few weeks of living with Whitney, the words kept coming. And they were pretty damn good words, too. At the rate he was going, he should have some real songs to pitch.

There was definitely something about Whitney, and it was more than just the inspiration she gave him. His eyes kept drifting out the window to the treehouse. She was tricky to figure out and there was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She was complicated and complex, and exactly what he didn’t need to muddle up his life. With a sigh, Reid jammed the tip of his pencil into the notebook and pushed up from the table. Maybe he didn’t need the complication, but he couldn’t help but want it.

The sauce on the stove bubbled and thickened. He gave it a quick stir and stuck his finger in for a taste. Thick. Creamy. Perfect. Reid wasn’t lying when he’d said he loved to cook. He did. But the whole truth was that he wouldn’t normally go to so much trouble for a simple weeknight dinner. It was Whitney. Despite being complex and complicated and way too much work for him, she was also cute and sweet and maybe a little lost, too. And all Reid wanted to do was be with her. Talk to her, make her laugh, and get to know her.
 

And the sooner he finished dinner, the sooner he’d have an excuse to be with her again. Reid chopped the lettuce and finished preparing the Caesar salad, gave the sauce one more stir and put the garlic bread into the oven to broil. When everything was ready and Whitney still hadn’t appeared, he turned the oven off and headed out to the backyard to get her.
 

There was probably some unspoken rule about bothering a woman in her private hideaway, but Reid’s curiosity won out. He had to know what the coolest treehouse he’d ever seen looked like on the inside. Especially if it held a gorgeous, interesting woman. Reid didn’t exactly tiptoe, but he took his time walking cautiously across the yard, trying not to make much noise. It was only when he was halfway up the ladder that he said anything. “Whitney? Are you up here?”

There was a scuffling inside, so he hurried up the last few steps and poked his head through the opening.
 

“Hi,” he said with a smile, trying to pretend like he hadn’t just barged in on her private space. “Dinner’s ready.”

Whitney shoved something under a blanket, flipped her hair back off her face and tried, without much success, to act natural. “Great,” she said. She swiped at her eyes and even in the dimming light, Reid could see they were red, like she’d been crying. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”

“I wanted to.” Reid desperately wanted to know what was hiding under the blanket, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out a way to ask without being blatantly rude and he was afraid he might be venturing dangerously close to overstepping roommate bounds as it was. He tried a different tack. “To be honest, I’ve been dying to see this place. I always wanted a treehouse when I was a kid and I guess I’m still kinda a kid.”

That brought a smile out of her and Reid watched her relax. “Well, what do you think?” she asked.

“It’s awesome,” he said. And it was. It was obviously built with care and attention to detail. It wasn’t huge, but he figured they could both fit inside without too much trouble. “Lizzy and I would have gone nuts over a place like this.”

“Lizzy?”
 

He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud.

“Your sister?” Whitney asked.

There was no point denying it. He knew she’d heard at least part of the phone conversation earlier. “Yes.” He nodded but didn’t offer any more information. “We always talked about having a fort or a special place where we could hide out. This would have been the coolest thing ever. Did you love it as a kid?”

“Of course. It was my private little hideaway. I guess it still is.” She blushed. “This is going to sound really stupid, and you’re probably going to think I’m totally lame.” Reid doubted that very much but didn’t say so. “But I used to come up here and play pretend,” she finished.
 

“That’s not stupid,” he said.
 

“Even when I was too old for make believe,” she said. “Up here I could pretend my life wasn’t my own and instead I had a totally different one, a normal one.” She looked up to the roof and kept talking. “With a mom and a dad and…you must think this is all pretty crazy.”

Reid shrugged. He didn’t think it was crazy at all to wish for something you didn’t have. He actually thought it was pretty cute and just one more thing that made Whitney just as interesting as she was beautiful.

“Can I come up?” He asked the question gently, because as much as he wanted to get off the ladder and be closer to her, he wasn’t stupid and even if she was acting like everything was okay, he could tell something was wrong. But she nodded, so Reid hoisted himself through the hole and up onto the planks.
 

He pulled his knees up so his legs wouldn’t bump her. Being so close together in her special place felt very intimate and they fell into silence for a few moments. Finally, knowing he was pushing the boundaries, Reid asked, “Can I ask you what do you do up here? Besides make believe, of course.” Alarm flashed across her face, so before she could answer, he added, “I know what I’d do.” She relaxed a little and looked at him, waiting for the answer. “I’d write,” he said. “There’s something about the energy up here. Maybe it’s being off the ground. Maybe it’s you?” He raised his eyebrow, and felt a glow of satisfaction when she laughed a little. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She’d been sad when he interrupted her, and whatever it was, he longed to make it go away for her.
 

He reached out to touch her denim clad knee and bridge the slight gap between them but before he could, she turned abruptly and reached under the blanket, producing an old notebook. “I write, too,” she said. “But not anything important or anything really good, even. Just sort of poems. Sometimes it helps to get my feelings out.”

“You write?” His heart sped up, which had been happening a lot around Whitney, and he had to physically hold back from reaching for the notebook to see what beautiful words she’d undoubtedly put on the page. “Sort of poems?”

“Like I said, nothing like you. It’s just a hobby.”
 

He shook his head. “Somehow I doubt that very much.”

“Why would you say that?” She held the book to her chest, which only served to make it more enticing to him.
 

Reid shrugged and wrapped his arms a little tighter around his knees. “There’s something about you, Whitney. Something I couldn’t figure out. Until now. It makes perfect sense that you’re a writer. You—”