Hunting Butterflies Read online

  Table of Contents

  Part I Existing

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Two - Part II Living

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  For my mom, my rock, my best friend. Thanks for celebrating my victories, and lending me a hand when I fall.

  Part One: Part I Existing

  Chapter One

  Lily

  "Mmmm, you smell so good. Wanna go to our room and get in a quickie before I have to go to work?" Henry wrapped his arms around my waist and nuzzled my neck.

  I felt myself tense in his arms and tried to force myself to relax, unable to think of an excuse to pull away. Evidence of his arousal pressed firmly against my hip as his hands groped their way up my shirt.

  With my mind going at warp speed, I felt my hands clench the countertop while the need to get out of the situation grew. As I searched for reasons to escape, it dawned on me that I was no longer able to fake my affection for him. He deserved more than this sham of a marriage. He deserved a wife who welcomed his touch, not cringed and looked for ways to avoid it.

  "Mommy!"

  A breath of relief fell from my lips as I extricated myself from Henry's arms. I heard him groan behind me and glanced over my left shoulder at him. I could practically hear the grinding of his teeth as his jaw muscles tensed and released over and over.

  I was pulled into an emotional tug of war between going to my six-year-old son, Matty, and trying to soothe the sting of rejection for my husband. A loud clatter made the decision for me, and I turned to search for my son.

  The search didn't last long, as I discovered my little monkey standing on his dresser, reaching for a framed poster of Spiderman signed by Stan Lee hanging on the wall. For once, maybe Henry was right, one of my gifts may have been a bit extravagant. Of course, he resented any of my attention being diverted away from him and any amount of money spent on anyone except for himself. After all, as he often pointed out, he earned most of the money in our household.

  I shook off the resentful thoughts and focused on my son. "What are you doing, little man?"

  "Uhh . . . I just wanted to look at it again."

  "Can you ask me to see it next time? I know you want to draw Spiderman, but you do know you aren't him, right? Don't go climbing the furniture. I don't have a radioactive spider to give you super powers."

  Matty rolls his eyes with the drama only a child can manage. "Duh, mom."

  I helped him down, and he scrambled off, probably to climb the counters in the kitchen. My day was a trial of endurance from the moment he woke me up in the morning until the moment I fell asleep in his bed trying to tuck him in at night. Somehow I managed to work a full time job in addition to chasing after my child at home. Lately, it was difficult not to fall asleep in the middle of the day, especially since the smell of coffee started to make me gag.

  The front door slammed shut, pulling me from my reverie, and the tension coiling inside me released on a long exhale. I had time to breathe now, but tonight he'd try to have sex with me again, and I'd have to decide if I had the stomach to give in.

  How did we get here? We'd been in the middle of our destruction for so long I couldn't say when it started. Perhaps we'd been on this road since the beginning. Our first date was nothing more than my attempt to forget my first love. Not that I could ever escape Tristan Lance. When your first love became Hollywood's hottest actor, escape was hopeless.

  Everywhere I went, the ghost of my past followed. I'd tried hiding from the memories, but life doesn't have a pause button. My mom gave me a couple of weeks, but soon I was pushed back into the world to keep living. She knew heartache, a lesson learned when my father left before I could retain a single memory of him. Yet, she managed to keep moving forward. For the next few years, I patterned my life after hers, going to school, socializing with friends, but staying away from anything that looked like a relationship.

  Unlike her, I didn't have a child to fill the holes in my heart. No pieces of Tristan remained behind with me, and I eventually had to try and imagine a different future. Henry was a safe choice, or so I thought. I wasn't in danger of falling for him the way I had for Tristan, before I was even old enough to understand what love was. Once I'd given up my fantasy of Tristan ever loving me the way I needed him to, I promised I'd never suffer the agony of unrequited love again.

  There was no need to fear that with Henry. From the very beginning he'd made it clear he was crazy about me. I got swept up in the headiness of the near obsession he had for me, and I let it fill in the gaps left by my less enthusiastic feelings for him. It was easy to overlook the disparity between our affections in the beginning. He did everything possible to try and sweep me off of my feet.

  He was sweet, always leaving me notes, and spending all his time with me. We took long walks around town and picked out the kind of house we would want to buy someday. He respected me for my intelligence and always made me feel beautiful. With Henry, I felt special, and that much I did love. For a girl who'd only known rejection from men, his overwhelming feelings for me were like a drug. It helped relieve the sting of losing Tristan.

  I met Tristan in elementary school, and I think I loved him from the first moment I saw him. He was my world, until the day he tossed me aside when life offered him a brighter future than the one he saw with me. The experience left me guarded.

  Henry's attention eased the fear that I wasn't worth sticking around for. I tried to convince myself to love what was good for me. We got along, seemed to want the same kind of life, we shared friends, and my mother adored him.

  We talked about almost everything. I never told him about Tristan. I opened up about the few failed attempts I'd made at dating since coming to college and just allowed him to believe I didn't have much relationship experience. Before long, Henry had become one of my best friends. Sure, he didn't make my heart race, and seeing him didn't unleash a swarm of butterflies in my stomach like Tristan had, but look where that had gotten me. Alone and broken, definitely nowhere I wanted to return.

  Two weeks into our relationship, Henry told me he loved me. I panicked. How could he know after such a short time? I didn't want to lose him, but I knew I didn't feel the same way. Still, the fear no man would ever love me choked me.

  I lied, and told him I loved him too. Something inside of me shut down, and I detached while he touched me. He kissed a sloppy trail down my neck, groped me roughly, and never once noticed my lack of response.

  My mind screamed at me to move, to leave, to stop him, but I was frozen inside myself. I was tired of being alone, but I hadn't decided if I could be with Henry romantically. In the end, my indecision won out against the revulsion I felt by his touch. I hadn't mentally prepared myself for having sex with him w
hen he clumsily shoved his cock inside of me. The hastiness of his invasion, before my body had much of a warning, burned, but he still didn't notice.

  He pounded into me at a punishing pace, grunting and groaning with each plunge. Inside, I fought the urge to shove him off me, disgusted with his lack of concern for my enjoyment. After a couple more minutes, he stilled and dropped his sweaty body on top of mine.

  The need to run away almost won out, but I forced myself to stay still. All I wanted to do was stand under the spray of a scalding hot shower and cry. I hated the idea of hurting Henry, but I couldn't be what he wanted. I thought I could convince myself to be with him, but in my efforts to heal my broken heart I shattered what was left of it.

  Chapter Two

  Lily

  I hated Henry as much as I once wanted to love him, but it was only a fraction of how much I hated myself. Every time I let my mind ponder the state of my marriage, the facts barreled into me rapidly, nearly knocking the breath from my body.

  Matty was happily occupied with a bowl of cereal and cartoons. He'd climbed the counter and served himself a breakfast filled with sugar and food coloring. Watching him shove spoonfuls of marshmallows in his mouth made me feel like a horrible mother. Since I was already feeling down, I allowed the television to steal his attention as I continued torturing myself with memories I couldn't change. Seven years later, and I could see every wrong turn, every weak moment.

  After my first night with Henry, I'd decided to end things. I couldn't return his feelings, and it was unfair to lead him on. I knew exactly how it felt to love someone that would never love you back. Our university was very small, but at least after graduation next year we wouldn't run into each other all the time, and he'd get over me.

  God, I wished I could get a chance to forget about Tristan. Of course he didn't know anything about my life now, not like I knew almost everything about him. I wasn't a stalker or anything, but it was hard to escape news about Tristan Lance since his face was everywhere.

  A few weeks after he left, I overheard his mom, Iris, tell my mom that he went to California and got a job doing construction. Soon after, the company that he worked for landed a contract with a Hollywood studio to build a set for a sci-fi blockbuster. When one of the producers visited the set to inspect the progress, he saw Tristan and offered him a role in the movie adaptation of a paranormal romance. He's been Hollywood's favorite heartbreaker ever since. It was really shitty luck for me because I longed to forget, but his fame guaranteed I never would.

  The only thing I could do was run away from all the people and places that brought back memories. The only people I kept in my life from back home were my mother, Dee, and Adam. We never talked about him, and I never went back to Roslyn.

  I didn't even return when his dad passed away a few months after his movie released. I'd avoided his mother, and I certainly didn't need to watch him take comfort in the arms of the latest starlet the tabloids reported was sharing his bed.

  Missing my hometown was another thing I blamed on Tristan, but it was purely cowardice on my part. I'd struggled in the years since we'd split to keep my head up and not wallow in the despair I felt from losing him. Longing for someone who had forgotten about me years ago made me feel weak.

  My phone rang, and I steeled myself for the conversation I knew Henry and I needed to have. Yeah, I was a coward because I wasn't above breaking up with him over the phone. I was so sure it was him that I didn't even bother checking the screen.

  "Hello, Henry," I answered.

  "Who's Henry?" my mom asked. Shit, I really didn't want to discuss him with my mom. She'd know I wasn't really interested in him. I couldn't fool her into thinking I was, not since she'd seen the way I loved Tristan.

  "Lil? Did you hear a word I said? I asked you who's Henry?" my mom demanded, snapping me out of my fog.

  I sighed. "He's just a guy I've gone out with a few times. It's no big deal."

  "Well, if you're waiting for a call I can let you go. I can tell you what I called to say later." She seemed relieved to be getting off the phone, and the fact that she hadn't brow beat me for more information alarmed me. My mom usually wouldn't let up until she knew everything there was to tell, even stuff that most mothers would never want to hear.

  When she found out that Tristan and I were together, she asked me if the sex was good, and then she drove me to the doctor to get me on the pill. It had always been just the two of us, at least as far back as I could remember, and not once in my life had she ever let me off easy when there was gossip to dish.

  "No, now is good. I can talk to him later." Much later, I hoped.

  She exhaled. I wasn't going to like this. It wasn't unusual for us to have difficult conversations over the phone. Since I hadn't returned to Roslyn in the three and a half years I'd been away at school, we didn't see each other as often as we'd have liked. She could have visited, but she owned a store in Roslyn that catered to the outdoorsmen and tourists in the area. While business was fairly good, it was a small store, and she only had one part-time employee. Every time she visited, she had to make arrangements with her best friend to come and mind the store for her. Neither of us was very good at asking for help.

  "Lil, I hate not to be with you when I tell you this."

  My heart thudded painfully in my chest. I wished I'd let her off the phone when she'd tried to weasel out of this conversation. "Just say it," I whispered.

  "Last month my doctor found a lump in my breast. I went in for a biopsy, and yesterday I found out I have breast cancer."

  I held my breath. That was bad, worse than I expected, but not necessarily a death sentence. "It's treatable, right? They caught it early enough?"

  My aunt Daisy, my mom's younger sister, died of breast cancer when she was in her thirties. I knew that meant we probably carried the gene for the more aggressive form of the disease, but it was still survivable if caught early. Or at least I hoped that were true.

  "They think so. I've opted for a lumpectomy, and I'll need chemotherapy, but the prognosis is good," she replied.

  "Do you need me to come home?"

  This morning I would have sworn that wild horses couldn't drag me back to my home town, but that was before I knew my mom had cancer.

  "No, Iris is here with me. I just need to know that you are going to keep living your life. We'll get through this, you'll see." She was sick, and yet she was concerned about my well-being.

  After talking about her treatments for another half an hour, I let her off the phone so she could go rest. I held it together through the entire call, but the moment the line disconnected, I started sobbing. My grief was all consuming, to the point that I didn't hear the phone ring, or the pounding on my door. I wasn't aware of anything until two strong arms wrapped around me.

  "I called several times, but I was afraid something happened when you didn't pick up. What's wrong?" Henry asked.

  I forgot about my plans to break up with him as he held me and let my cry into his chest. It took a few moments for me to recover the ability to speak, and then I told him about my mom. Talking to him was easy, and that afternoon we talked about my dad leaving and how my mom was my only family except for my cousin Jess, Daisy's daughter, who I hadn't seen for years. Jess is nearly ten years younger than me, so turning to her for support wasn't an option.

  Henry stayed by my side, not asking anything of me. I loved him then, not the way he loved me, but enough that I decided not to give up on him just yet.

  Chapter Three

  Lily

  Henry ended up working late the night before, and I feigned sleep when he finally crawled into bed next to me. The space between us was more than emotional as we both clung possessively to our own side of the bed. The middle was untouched, the perfect representation of the chasm between us. Sleep was the only quiet in the storm of our marriage; morning always saw a new threat looming in the horizon.

  The alarm went off early, and I forced myself out of bed to start the coffee
maker while he showered. I didn't have to be at work until later in the afternoon, but Henry was offended when I could sleep while he was getting ready for work. It didn't matter that we had different schedules and I'd be at work when he got home; only his schedule mattered.

  "Babe, have you seen my tie?" Henry called out from our bedroom

  "Uh, I think it's on the dresser," I shouted back from the kitchen.

  "I don't know how the fuck you expect me to find it. You haven't done the goddamn laundry in over a week!" he yelled.

  I winced. Thank God Matty was asleep, because I hated fighting in front of him. Not that it ever was much of a fight, more like me getting verbally pummeled. I was afraid Matty would grow up to believe I was weak. He probably would, though; I hadn't exactly shown him I had much of a backbone.

  It was only a matter of time before Henry blew up about something; after all, it had become a nearly daily occurrence over the last year. That man could go from zero to pissed in under a minute. It had been years since the sweet side of him made an appearance and reminded me why I stayed in this miserable relationship. Despite the fact we both worked full time, Henry expected me to do all the housework and take on all parental responsibilities. Sure, he made more money than I did, but I was twice as busy as he was.

  "I haven't had a chance," I protested. My heart wasn't in this argument. I used to care if he was upset with me, but it was nearly a constant state for him now that I'd stopped trying to pacify him with any real effort.

  "What the hell have you been doing? It isn't like I've been keeping you up late," he sneered.

  Yeah, I was expecting that too. Sex had never been a part of our relationship I'd enjoyed, but over the last couple of years it had gotten worse. He had become even more selfish when we were intimate, and I didn't even feel like it mattered if I was there. He just needed a warm, willing body because he sure as hell wasn't concerned about how I felt.