Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Can I ask you something?” Meredith asks as we lie in her bed, my fingers playing with her hair. We don’t get to snuggle after sex very often because I don’t like to leave Kaylee alone in the house for very long.
“Of course,” I say, although my body tenses because I didn’t miss the nervousness in her tone. Why would she be nervous to ask me something if it’s not bad?
“Why do we only hook up in the guesthouse?”
It rubs me wrong that she calls it hooking up which has always seemed casual to me, and nothing about Meredith and me feels casual. I feel more for her than I ever thought I’d feel again, and it scares the shit out of me. I didn’t think I could feel this much for someone after how much I loved Sydney.
I’m also hesitant to admit the truth—that my room still feels like Sydney’s space. All of her stuff is still in there and it’s our bed. The idea of another woman in that space—even one who’s made me feel like Meredith has—feels disrespectful to Sydney’s memory.
But I’ve always been honest with Meredith, and I won’t change that now. Bracing myself for her reaction, I confess. “I haven’t changed anything about my room from when Sydney was alive. It wasn’t a priority before, and even after we started things, I didn’t ever consider bringing you into that room. I should have thought about that, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” she whispers, but her voice is thick like she’s fighting back emotion, and my gut churns with worry. I don’t ever want her to think she’s not important.
“I do,” I tell her. “You mean so much to me, Mere.” The words don’t feel like enough—not even close—but they’re all I have right now.
Fear holds me back. The last woman I fell in love with died and left me feeling more broken and hollow than I ever thought I’d experience. To open myself up to feel that way again is as terrifying as the reality that it might be too late for me to even have that fear.
I wince as my phone beeps. It’s the alarm I set to go back to the house just in case we fell asleep after we had sex. Of course, it goes off at the worst possible time for me to leave.
She pats my chest and kisses me, but the kiss feels more distant than it’s ever felt before. “You should get dressed and get back inside in case Kaylee needs you.”
“Mere—”
“We can talk more about it tomorrow.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, but still get up and get dressed. Instead of staying naked in bed, she gets up and puts pajamas on and walks me out. Panic starts to claw at my chest because this isn’t usually how we say good night. She should be in her bed, sated and sleepy, with the cute little smile she gets on her face after I kiss her good night.
Now, she’s got her arms crossed and she won’t look at me. I grab her chin between my thumb and fingers and gently tilt her face up. “We will talk tomorrow because I’m definitely not done with this conversation.”
I hate the hurt in her eyes, but more than that, I hate the understanding in them. Like she expected this of me.
I kiss her once more, and like our last kiss, she holds herself back instead of melting into it like she normally does. With a knot in my stomach, I go back into the main house.
When I walk in my room, I stop just inside the door and stare around the space. If she walked in here, what would she notice?
Sydney’s jewelry case on her dresser? The navy blue comforter with flowers on it that Sydney picked out? Sydney’s picture on my nightstand? I think about how I would feel if I saw a picture of another man on Meredith’s nightstand, and a fierce stab of jealousy slices my stomach.
I never want her to feel the way I feel right now, and I refuse to lose her, which means it’s time for me to finally put some of the past to rest.
I text the guys to see who’s available tomorrow. Only Dom is free, but he agrees to go shopping with me.
First and foremost, I need to get a new bed.
“This one’s bouncy. Not ideal for your back, but could be fun when you’re fucking,” Dom says as he sits on a mattress and tests it.
“Could you keep your voice down? There are other people around.”
He smiles. “Everybody has sex.”
“That’s not even close to true.”
He cocks his head side to side. “Okay, fair enough. How about this? Everyone is a result of sex and therefore shouldn’t be prudes about it. ”
Well, at least it’s more accurate. I give him a look, and he chuckles but lets it go.
We walk past a few other mattresses. “So, what brought on this sudden need for a new bed? Haven’t you been sleeping with Meredith already for like a week?”
“I don’t know how I feel about you guys knowing such personal details about my sex life.”
He shrugs. “Stop avoiding the question.”
“We’ve been in the guesthouse.”
His face gets stern. “You’ve been leaving Kay alone overnight?”
“No.”
He stops walking and I turn around to face him, already dreading where this conversation is going.
“Explain.”
Sighing, I tell him about how I’ve been “hooking up” with Meredith, as she so eloquently put it, and then afterward going back to the main house to sleep. Kay isn’t usually alone in the house for more than thirty minutes before I’m back, and I always have the baby monitor with me when I’m with Meredith, so I’d know instantly if anything was ever wrong. Plus, I have a ton of security alerts set up so my phone would alert me if any of the exterior doors or windows opened. I’m not irresponsible, especially when it comes to my daughter’s safety.
Dom pinches the bridge of his nose. “Dude…come on, tell me you’re not this dumb.”
“I know, okay? I get it. I’m screwing this up, but I’m trying to make it better. Starting with getting a new bed.”
Dom steps closer and puts his hand on my shoulder, looking at me very similarly to how Ty did a week ago. “Only you would make the first woman you’ve had feelings for since Sydney feel like a side piece to your dead wife. ”
My stomach curdles as I frown. Only Dom would ever state the truth in such a brutally honest way.
I sit heavily on the nearest mattress. “Hell, that’s exactly what I’ve done, isn’t it?”
He takes a seat next to me. “Probably. I don’t know Meredith well enough to know for sure, but I know Laney would skin me alive if I ever pulled what you have.”
“What would you do to fix it?”
“Fuck her until she couldn’t move or forgave me, whichever came last.” What’s incredible is that he says it with a straight face.
“Okay, that might be how you do things, but I’m buying a new bed and putting Sydney’s stuff into boxes for Kaylee to go through when she’s older so she can have whatever she wants.”
He stares at me like he’s not sure I’m serious. “Are you really putting Sydney’s stuff away?”
He understands how hard I’ve held on to her things. I haven’t touched our room at all; it’s exactly as she left it. I nod.
“Wow, you must really like Meredith.”
“I think I’m falling in love with her,” I confess quietly.
“Seriously?”
I nod.
“Woah, that’s huge, man.”
“I know. But now I feel like I’m letting her down already. I don’t know how to have them both. I’m not entirely ready to put everything Sydney owned in storage, but I also don’t want Meredith to think I’m not taking this relationship between us seriously. I want to move forward with her, which is huge. I never thought I’d want that again. I never thought I’d find anyone who I could feel even a smidgeon of what I felt for Sydney.”
“But you do with Meredith.”
“Yeah, I do. She’s so amazing with Kaylee and she takes care of me, not in a caretaker way, but in small ways that ease my stress and make me feel like I have a partner again. But it’s also different. Before, it was just Sydney and me. We didn’t have anyone relying on us, and we could do our own thing but also look out for each other. It’s different when you have a kid. I never got to experience that with Sydney, so maybe that’s why it feels like such a blank slate with Meredith. But I feel like I’ve gotten a second chance when I didn’t want one. Or I didn’t think I did, but now that I have her, I don’t want to lose her.”
I stare at my hands for a minute, my head a jumbled mess, then turn to Dom. “Do you think it’s possible to love two women at once?”
There’s sadness in his eyes. “I don’t know, Romel. I’d like to say yes, but I’ve only ever loved Laney, so I’m the wrong person to ask. That said, widowers move on all the time, so it’s not unheard of. Sydney doesn’t have to be your only love. I guess the real question you would need to ask is if you can love them both, is Meredith okay having to share your heart with Sydney?”
I need to figure out the answer to the first question before I even attempt to ask myself if Meredith is okay with me loving them both. If I can’t let go of Sydney enough to love Meredith, it won’t matter—I’ll lose her anyway.