Page 223 of One Wild Wish

Although too turned on for my own good, I did mean the surfing. I wanted to enjoy a lazy Sunday walking the streets with Gwen, fall into a small lunch spot, lie in the grass while she read and I wrote music, learn to surf with her, sleep next to her, wake with her. Collect all our seconds, turning each into an eternity.

She stopped the lip nibbling. She might have stopped breathing, too. “Sure,” she said. It took a moment to realize she’d answered my surfing question, but it had been a distracted sure. A we don’t have a future sure.

I really fucking hated that sure.

She returned to analyzing the diary. I kept analyzing her: the full bottom lip I’d had between my teeth, the swell of her breasts in her fitted white tank top. She had beautiful breasts, small yet lush with tight pink nipples I hadn’t gotten to feast on, since I hadn’t removed her bra.

She slid her jaw to the side as she read a section carefully. I didn’t remember her doing that when we’d studied together, and I would know. I’d spent most of those hours like this, watching her, picturing her hands on my body, tugging down my jeans. My mouth on her.

We were close enough that I could reach forward and run my fingers through her wavy hair. I followed my instinct. I couldn’t keep away.

Air rasped through her teeth. “That’s distracting.”

“You’re distracting.”

“You know what I mean.” But she didn’t pull back. She leaned toward me.

My sweet Possum. “These are my seconds, honey. I need to touch you. And I’ll figure out the rest with us. Please don’t worry.”

Already, I’d been poring over my schedule in my mind, blocking out times I’d return to San Francisco. Weeks I could fly Gwen to Europe. I’d plan it out, make it foolproof. She wouldn’t have to do a thing but say yes. Instead of fighting me further, she turned her face into my hand and kissed my palm. Not an agreement, exactly, but the tender move nearly split me in two.

We stayed like that awhile: her flipping through her mother’s journal, my hand in her hair, my heart playing an unsteady bass line.

Suddenly, she sat straighter. She lifted a flimsy cocktail napkin from inside the book. “She mentions a bar a few times, a place a guy used to take her. I think it’s the same guy who watched her dance, but she never mentions his name.”

“Considering she hid the journal in a defaced bible, I’m guessing she was worried it would be riffled through. Her parents weren’t exactly lenient.”

Gwen had snuck into my room the night she’d searched out her grandparents. She hadn’t cried or ranted, but she’d picked her nails until they’d bled and had asked if she could sleep over. I’d watched her breathing softly the entire night.

She closed the book and held the napkin gingerly. “By the sounds of things, this guy knew the owner of the bar or a bartender, had no issues getting my mother served without her ID. Mary Hamilton liked her Long Island Iced Tea.”

“I can’t picture your mother drinking.”

“I can’t picture her smiling or laughing or dancing. Drinking is tame compared to that. And this isn’t about her, anyway. I couldn’t care less what she was like. None of it changes the woman I knew.”

Her defensiveness said otherwise. Not that she’d listen to me. Gwen was stubborn like that. My fingers slipped through her hair in slow strokes. She clasped my wrist, stilling the movements. “I think this is our next clue, where we should go. If this guy knew the owner and he’s still around, we might get answers.”

Ted Mercer , I almost blurted. That’s your father’s name.

He’d lived in Oakland, only twenty minutes from his daughter. I hadn’t dug deeper, no point after learning he’d passed, but I had the name she’d sought her entire life.

I nearly spoke it aloud, but I clamped my mouth shut. Not because of my guilt or knowing my deception could obliterate our fragile footing. Not fully, at least. There were too many coincidences piling up: her mother’s letter to me, my choice to delay, Mary’s death, her luggage. A journal offering more insight into that woman than Gwen had gleaned in twenty-eight years. Like everything was happening for a reason, including learning about Mary Hamilton.

Gwen could pretend these scraps of information meant nothing. I saw how her eyes had widened when peering at that dancing photo in the TASC center, how she’d sucked in an amazed breath when Loretta Walsh had called Mary and her sister the Sunshine Girls.

Not knowing her father had always been a thorn in Gwen’s side, but living with a frigid mother had been the larger bruise on her childhood. This journey could help her understand what had stripped the light from Mary Hamilton’s world, lead Gwen to accept the woman Mary had been. That type of closure was invaluable. Plus, the odds of Gwen actually learning her father’s name before I left were slim to none. I’d have time to explain after.

“If that’s our next clue, then we better get on it,” I said.

“Badass PI partners?”

“As long as you don’t go telling anyone else I get the shits.”

She cackled. “I make no promises. And”—she held the napkin flat and read the writing on it—“looks like our next stop is the Blue-Eyed Raven.”

I reared back, stunned into silence. Three rough swallows later, I found my voice. “The Blue-Eyed Raven?” Please tell me I heard her wrong.

She nodded. “In Haight-Ashbury.”