Chapter 23
?
— Colt —
She’d kissed me. For the first time in seven years, my wife had kissed me. I’d felt her lean in before it happened—the slight shift of weight, her hand coming up to press flat against my chest. And then her mouth was on mine, soft and careful, and every muscle in my body had locked down at once.
She was leading. That was the only thing that had mattered.
I’d kept my hand on the door frame and I did not move, did not pull her closer, did not do any of the ten things my body was screaming at me to do.
I’d just breathed through it and let her have whatever she’d needed from that moment.
I counted the seconds because I knew it wasn’t going to last long and I wanted to remember every one of them.
Three. Maybe four.
She’d pulled back, and I’d opened my eyes.
Her hand was still on my chest. I could feel the warmth of it through the shirt like a brand. Her face was close enough that I could see the slight part of her lips, the uncertainty working its way back into her expression.
“I don’t know why I did that,” she’d said.
My voice, when it came, wasn’t entirely steady. “I’m not complaining.”
That almost got a smile. She drew her hand back slowly and folded it in her lap, and I made myself straighten up, made myself give her room. Everything in me wanted to close the space back down. I didn’t.
Instead, I’d reached over and closed the door myself.
I stood in that parking lot for a count of three and talked myself into being calm. Then I got back in the truck.
The drive back, I kept it light. Made her laugh once. She’d turned the radio on, hit some old station by accident, and the song that came through was one we’d danced to at an MC wedding, second year we were together. She didn’t know that. She just let it play, her fingers quiet in her lap.
I let myself have those four minutes and nothing else.
At Betty’s I told her to stay and came around to her side. Opened the door. Held out my hand. She took it without hesitating. When she was standing on the gravel she looked up at me in the porch light, and I thought I would wait another seven years if that’s what it took.
I kept that to myself.
“I’m not—I’m not ready for—” she started.
“I know.” I kept my voice even. “One thing at a time, Lil. One thing at a time.”
Her shoulders settled. I stepped back. I tapped the roof of the cab twice—our old signal, the one she didn’t remember—and let her go.
“Goodnight, Colt.”
“Goodnight, baby.”
It came out before I could catch it. I saw her pause—just a fraction—and an expression crossed her face I couldn’t name. Not memory. Not quite. But something adjacent to it. Her body remembered even if she didn’t.
Then she was walking toward the house, and I stood in the driveway until the door closed behind her.
I sat in my truck for a long time after she went inside.
The house is quiet, just a single light on in the living room—Betty’s back from book club, which means Dutch already dropped the boys home. They’ll be in bed by now, worn out from their evening at the clubhouse. Another normal night for a family that is anything but normal.
I’ve held myself back from her for weeks. Kept my hands to myself, kept my voice steady, kept the full weight of what I feel from landing on her all at once. That was the right call. I know it was the right call.
It doesn’t make the wanting easier.
My phone buzzes. Dutch—his second text of the night. The first had come a few hours ago, when he’d dropped the boys back after Betty got home from book club. All good. I’d left it on read.
How’d it go?
I stare at the message for a moment, trying to sum up my evening in a text.
She kissed me.
The response comes immediately: She finally remembering?
No. Just… She kissed me.
That’s something, brother. That’s a hell of a something.
He’s right. It is something. Not closure, not a happy ending, not even close to what we’d once had. But it’s a start.
I look at the house one more time—at the window I know is Lilac’s room, at the home that holds my wife and sons, at the life that is slowly, painfully, beautifully becoming mine again.
I start the truck. Pull out of Betty’s drive. Roll to the end of the street and kill the engine.