Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
TIMOTHY
I pulled across the street from Gia’s rental house and gripped the steering wheel hard enough my knuckles ached. The porch light glowed warm against the dark, making the whole place look painfully normal.
Mom was putting Sofia to bed for me. I’d lied and told her I had to handle something for work because I couldn’t explain this. I couldn’t tell her why, after everything, I couldn’t keep Gia in my past, despite my determination to compartmentalize my life. Gia still lived under my skin.
I needed closure from Gia in a way I couldn’t seem to reach. Something still sat jagged inside my chest, sharp enough I couldn’t leave it alone. I wanted to fight. Scream. Accuse her of something. I didn’t even know what anymore. Maybe everything.
All I understood was Gia didn’t get to walk away wrapped up in sacrifice and good intentions. She didn’t get to rewrite us into some tragic story where she’d loved me enough to let me go.
I hadn’t been saved.
I’d drowned.
The worst part was she hadn’t stayed long enough to watch it happen.
Right as I reached for the truck door handle to approach her front door, a white truck with Carolina Equine emblazoned across the side turned into her driveway. My hand froze.
Hudson Raynes climbed out, rounded the hood, and opened Gia’s door like it was second nature.
Something cold and fierce slid down my spine. I sat there, motionless, watching.
They came around the truck, and Gia wrapped her arms around him. That wasn’t some quick polite hug, but a full-body hold, tight and lingering. That was the kind of hug that said you matter to me. The kind that reflected history, trust, and intimacy.
Then Hudson bent and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
My breath locked up. The pain was slow and final, like something cracked on the inside deep enough that it would never fit back together again.
I was too late to get my goddamned fight with her. Too late for anything with her.
She’d gotten her closure and kept moving right on to somebody else.
Hudson wasn’t a bad person. He would probably be good to her. She deserved a man who would remember to put gas in her truck, sit beside her on bad days without trying to fix everything, and make her laugh when she got too deep in her own head. She deserved someone better than me.
I gripped the steering wheel until my hands shook, then started the truck and pulled away from the curb.
* * *
Three hours later, I chopped wood like a man obsessed. One log after another split beneath the blade until my shoulders burned and sweat soaked through my shirt.
“What in the name of all that’s holy is this racket?” my mom yelled.
I glanced over my shoulder. She stood on my back porch in a fluffy pink bathrobe and pink slippers, wearing the kind of expression usually reserved for raccoons in the attic.
Without replying, I turned back and buried the axe in another log.
Truth be told, this felt like a healthier outlet than getting drunk and picking a fight with someone in a bar who didn’t deserve my fury.
“Stop it!” Mom ordered.
I yanked the axe free, swung again, and lodged it deep in the next piece before turning to scowl at her.
“It is eleven-thirty at night,” she snapped, planting her hands on her hips. “It’s pitch black, and you’re out here behaving like a deranged pioneer. What on Earth is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
Mom dropped her chin, closed her eyes, and muttered, “Give me strength.” Then she exhaled long and slow. “What did you do?”
I crossed my arms. “Why do you automatically assume it was my fault?”
She stared at me for a beat. “You’re rage-splitting firewood at midnight after you lied to me about needing to do work tonight.”
I frowned. “You just said it’s only eleven-thirty.”
“This will go much faster, Timothy Hurst, if you confess whatever you did so I can go back to bed.”
I glared.
“You know the rules for living on my property,” Mom said.
“Rule number one: do not wake up your father after he’s asleep.
That man gets up at four every morning and barely survives on caffeine and ibuprofen.
I’ve told him you’re already doing the dairy in the morning.
No reason for him to be down there too, but we both know nothing is going to change his routine.
Second, don’t wake up Sofia.” She lifted a foot to point a slipper at me.
“Either spit out what’s driven a bee up your butt or start packing for eviction. ”
It was an empty threat. Mom would never risk living farther away from Sofia. But Dad? Dad absolutely might load my truck.
“I let her go,” I finally said.
“Her? You mean Gia?”
“We talked about the past while she was out tending to Erika’s mare. We decided it’s best we move on. Now she’s dating someone else.”
“After the other night when you were a mess, you then…” Mom held up her hands to punctuate each word she said. “Let. Her. Go?”
“She couldn’t promise not to run again. I’m not sure I can invest in something real without guarantees.”
Mom marched down the stairs, took me by the arms and shook me.
“I raised you to be smarter than this. That woman is back here to watch her sister die. She’s living in the place that caused her so much pain she had to run away when she was a child.
On top of all that, you tried pressuring her into making some sort of commitment to you?
” A wheezing groan escaped her. “I love you to the moon and back, but you are a hurricane pretending to be a tropical storm.”
I dropped my eyes from her and said in a small voice, “I have Sofia and all. I don’t want to see Sofia hurt. If she got attached to Gia only for Gia to leave like Milly…”
“If Gia is the kind of person who would do that, then you should let her go. We don’t need anyone like that near the family.”
“She’s not,” I said softly.
“Timothy, you’re a grown man. Act like it.” Mom shook me once more and stepped back. She gave me her about-to-get-critical squinty eye. “Gia didn’t fall to her feet begging forgiveness for breaking your heart and you’re butt sore over it.”
“I’m not butt sore.”
Her eyebrows climbed. “You’ve been rage-chopping wood for two hours.”
“That’s exercise.”
“You split my favorite stump in half.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Really?” She drew out the word.
I ducked my head. “Maybe I did expect a bit more acknowledgement of my pain instead of focusing on hers.”
Mom sighed deeply. I could’ve sworn under her breath she muttered, “Men,” like it was a terminal illness.
Then she raised her head and asked, “Tell me straight up, Timothy, now that you had your little moment with the woman who you think ripped out your heart, do you feel done with her? Do you believe you should let it go?”
I breathed shallow for several heartbeats. Then shook my head.
“Didn’t think so.” She pointed at me. “Then be there for her. As a friend if that’s all she can give you. Stop making her carry your feelings on top of everything else putting pressure on her.”
“All right. I’ll stop chopping wood.”
“Good first move.” Mom whipped around and marched back to the house.
I called out, “How do you know about her sister?”
She gave me one of those you’re-an-idiot glares that only my mom can give.
“How do I know about Misty? One of my closest friends is a nurse on the oncology floor. Did you know Gia drives Misty to the cancer ward and sits with her for hours every other week? She takes her in for rechecks between shifts at the veterinary hospital several times a week. I’m sure she’s doing things to care for her that you couldn’t even imagine.
Her sister is wasting away, and Gia has a front-row seat to every bit of it.
” She swallowed hard. “I walked that road with my own sister, God rest her soul, before cancer took her back when you were around six years old.”
I didn’t have anything to say back to her.
Mom stared at me and then said, “I want you to hear me on this. Watching someone you love die slowly—from cancer, from chemo, from all the suffering in between—doesn’t break your heart in one clean snap.
It breaks you by inches. Tiny losses pile up until one day, the person you love is still breathing, and all you can do is pray God takes them mercifully and ends their pain.
You hate yourself for praying it.” She shook her head.
“People think goodbye happens once, at the end. It doesn’t.
You say goodbye over and over to who they were, to what they could do, and to each piece of them that cancer steals.
Every night, you hope their suffering ends by morning…
And every morning you wake up carrying the guilt of that hope. ”
“I’m sorry,” I called out.
“I’m not the one you need to be sorry to.”