Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Daisy
It was Alder’s first day of work. I couldn’t deny it was weird to coast down the driveway and his pickup wasn’t parked outside. Nor was it in the garage. I should be relieved. He wasn’t around to torment me with his strong body and the way he took care of the house. Of me. And Laila.
We’d left at the same time this morning, but when I shouldered through the door to the house and held it open for Laila to go through, the smell of chicken stew wafted across my nostrils, teasing my stomach and making it growl.
Laila heard the noise and giggled. She flung her arms at her sides to get the sleeves of her coat down. “Alder here?”
“No. He’s working.” The former CEO used to work long hours. Cameron Barron’s expensive pickup would often be one of the last ones in the parking lot though he had advocated for normalized working hours for the rest of us. Alder would do the same. He was at the top now. He could slack off. The refinery practically ran itself. Other than meetings and playing oil industry politics, he could work from home. He could take off whenever he got the urge.
Something told me he wouldn’t.
While we ate dinner, Laila chatted about her day and reported what other kids had gotten for Christmas. “They liked Ottery.”
“Good.” The names for her new stuffed animals were very much on-brand for her naming system. Ottery. Red. Tigger. As we talked, the quiet house screamed loudly in my ears. There was no Alder shuffling through the kitchen, no pounding of nails or whirring drill. He had a job that wasn’t caring for this house. Or me.
How would that change things?
I helped Laila get ready for bed and tucked her in.
“Mommy, ’member the zoo trip?” Her little arms clung to Ottery.
We’d gone to the zoo in both Bismarck and Minot before. “The one with your dad or with Grandma?”
“Gramma. We saw an otter, right?”
“Yes, we did.” The otters were always the highlight, but Laila loved everything about the zoos she’d been to.
“I took a picture.”
She’d taken a ton of pictures and had begged my mom to print them out. We’d gotten a hundred images of various animals. I’d had to buy an album just for the one zoo trip, but Laila still enjoyed looking through it.
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Probably stored away.”
“Oh.” Disappointment crossed her face and she rolled over, flopping her otter to the other side.
Once she was asleep, I wandered the house. A deep sense of loneliness settled over my shoulders. Alder was still at work. Or maybe out. With someone.
He said he would act as a married man, but the old anxiety settled in. Just because he was married didn’t mean women wouldn’t try to cross the line. What if he met the one who was worth it? The one who’d be worth losing the house over?
I’d have to find a place to live.
I wanted my year. In the house. It was the house tearing my heart up.
I pushed my hair off my face. I had to distract myself. Tonight was the first of many with just me and Laila. I could watch a show, but the restless energy inside of me needed an outlet. It was dark and cold outside. The upstairs was Alder’s domain. So what should I do?
There were some boxes in the hallway closet. Alder had painted the inside at some point in the last few weeks, but the boxes were my stuff. If I was only in the house for a year, I didn’t need to unpack. If I stayed to rent the place from Alder, I would have time later.
The zoo album was in one of those boxes. I flipped on the hallway light and pulled one out. I opened the top and flipped it closed right away, but I’d seen all the contents. The fake flowers from our first wedding. The knife with the white opalescent handle that we had cut our cake with. His bow tie and my garter. We had done the auction thing with the garter to raise money and he’d bought it.
Happy wedding memories pounded at my brain, but I shoved the box to the side and grabbed another. It was one of the photo albums my dad had off-loaded on me from his childhood, along with more of his parents’ time together. They were stacked on top of the albums my grandma, my mom’s mom, had given me before she had died. I had become the repository of photo albums filled with people I couldn’t recognize, didn’t remember, or had never met.
I pushed that box back into the closet and slid out another. It was mine. I dug through the pile until I found the one Laila had asked about. Good. I set that aside and then picked up an older one. It opened to a page with me and my brother standing by our bikes. We’d been riding around the block, and Mom had popped up to test her new camera.
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I folded myself down to the floor and pulled the album to my lap. Me and Lee with the dog we’d had growing up. Me and Lee at the house my parents had bought in Coal Haven. I was short, barely coming to his shoulder. He was gangly, and his smile was filled with crooked teeth. He’d hated the braces he’d worn in high school. Lee on the couch with a cast on his arm when he was nine. He’d been playing at the babysitter’s and another kid had jumped on him.
Hot tears poured down my cheeks. The faint vibrations of the garage door opening traveled through the floor, but I didn’t move.
I hadn’t cried in a while over Lee, and there was no boxing the emotions back up. But I also didn’t have to. Alder wouldn’t crowd me. He wouldn’t tell me everything was okay. It wasn’t okay. There would always be a piece of me missing from life, and sometimes I just had to fucking cry about it.
Steady footsteps sounded through the kitchen and paused. I sniffled and wiped my cheeks. Then clothing rustled as he turned into the hallway.
The warmth of his presence surrounded me as he approached. I couldn’t look at him. Just because I was comfortable with him didn’t mean I wanted a corporate god towering over a sobbing me.
“Hey,” he said quietly as he sat down next to me.
“Hi.” More tears fell. I slumped against his shoulder. He put an arm around me and tucked me into his side, like he sensed I didn’t mind the connection this time. I was surrounded by his new-leather-and-cedar scent and the buttery-soft fabric of the suit coat he had unbuttoned.
He took the photo album off my lap, set it on his, and turned the page. I wept as quietly as I could while he flipped through.
“Your dad’s hair was wild in those days,” he said.
A giggle left me, a relief compared to the grief. I traced Dad’s image with his bouffant of hair. “It’s no wonder I ended up in the oil industry with all that goop he used for it.”
“Good thing he didn’t smoke.”
Another soft laugh gusted out of me. I glanced up at his strong jaw, the dark stubble already dusting it after a long day. My fingers itched to trace along his cheek and over his lips.
“This was always my favorite picture of you as a kid.” His rough voice caressed my eardrums and continued further.
My tears were drying up, and the grief was changing to nostalgia. I peeked at the photo he was talking about. I was smiling wide, my two front teeth missing. A giant Christmas gift was open in front of me. A Barbie. The one where she was a doctor, but I had never played with her as that. With the lab coat she’d come in, she’d been a scientist. That was all my imagination had ever made her. “Lee got a GI Joe that year. I used to pretend that it was dating my Barbie.”
His chuckle rumbled right through my cheek. “I always liked that picture because I thought that was what our kids would look like. A scrappy little kid with your smile.” He looked at me, our faces inches apart. “Your brains and ambition.”
Longing and loss mixed together. We’d discussed kids, but mostly that we had wanted to wait until I was at least done with school. I should veer far away from this discussion. We couldn’t live in the past, but at the same time, it was a little like the possibility was still there. We were married after all. “What would they have gotten from you?”
“My charm?”
I nudged him. “Your stubbornness.”
“I’m not the stubborn one in this relationship.”
Relationship. God, I liked the sound of that. “I think your kid will get your dark hair. And your hazel eyes.”
The corner of his mouth lifted and his gaze stroked over his face. “Am I that overpowering?” His tone was teasing.
“You’re always overpowering, Alder. It’s hard to resist you.”
“You have resisted me.”
“Yet here I am.”
Fondness entered his eyes. “Crying on the floor.”
“I was lonely and took a trip down memory lane looking for an otter picture from the zoo.” I wasn’t prepared for my honesty, but sincerity poured out of me. I was lonely, and he listened. “How was work?”
“I have some long days ahead as I learn the ropes,” he said quietly.
“I know. It’s… You don’t have to explain.”
“I want to. This isn’t like before.”
“Neither is this marriage.”
“I’m not like before. I’m better.”
I wasn’t. “I know you are. You’ll make some woman a really good real husband.”
His expression turned pained. He blinked away and worked his jaw back and forth. “I don’t know what I think about my wife telling me that.”
“We’re not staying married after this, Alder,” I said quietly. No matter how much my brain tried to get me to think about it. Alder 2.0 was something to behold. He was driven, considerate, insanely hot, and incredibly sweet. He had a job he’d brushed off as a possibility when we’d been married. After his dad had gotten the CEO position at King Oil and they had moved away, he had stayed behind. People had joked with Alder about whether he was next. He was already working in the oil fields and that was how Weston Duke had started. Alder would laugh and say, “Yeah, right.”
His big heart shone, softening the brown in his eyes. “Why?”
The word was a quick stab to my chest. He had to know why. Anger sparked behind my sternum. He knew. He’d been there. “I can’t go through that again.”
“You don’t trust me,” he said simply.
“We’re different people, Alder.”
“I’m still the guy who’s in love with you.”
My world slowed to a stop. In love with me? It was too soon. He couldn’t. I scooted away from him, but I couldn’t go far. My hip bumped into a stack of photo albums. The books toppled, noisy in the quiet hallway. “You aren’t. You’re in love with what we had.” Just like I was.
I pushed a few albums into the closet and haphazardly stacked the others onto them. They slipped and slid until I had to get on my hands and knees to arrange everything.
I peeked at Alder out of the corner of my eye. He had bent his legs and draped his arms over his knees. He wasn’t looking at me, but the muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched. “You can’t deny what we have. That morning in bed was only more proof.”
My face grew hot, my cheeks burning. “It was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t, and you know it. Our chemistry is as strong as ever. We’re good. We’re doing good.”
“We’re roommates.”
He caught my eye, his gaze wounded. “I look forward to the moment you walk through the door. I love watching you with your daughter. You can’t imagine how much it soothes me to walk through the kitchen and see you watching those murder shows.”
“Serial killer documentaries,” I said woodenly, as if that’d distract me from his words.
“I fucked up back then, Daisy. I was scared of growing up, of being an adult, and failing so miserably. I was so damn scared that I let you go, and that was a mistake.”
“I wasn’t enough to make you change.” Had I given him enough time to?
“I would’ve.”
My inhale was sharp. The truth of his statement stabbed me right between the ribs. Would he have changed eventually? Had I gotten too frustrated too soon? I couldn’t have. “We weren’t soulmates. Or I would’ve been enough for you.”
It was a low blow. I knew that. But it was how I’d felt for so long. Now that I said it, the grown woman in me didn’t completely agree. But she couldn’t disagree.
A divot formed between his brows like he was in pain. “Fuck, Daisy. You were everything. You still are.”
I pushed off the floor. I’d throw my body against the door to get it to shut. I had to get away from a hurting Alder. I shoved the door shut. Albums were in the way. I hip-checked the door. Alder didn’t move.
“Do you dread coming home to me? Did you look forward to when I came home from work?”
The door latched. I kept my hand on the cool wood, staring at the swirling grains.
“Tell me you didn’t,” he insisted. “That you don’t wonder how good we could be together. Tell me that you don’t wish this was real. Tell me the truth, and I’ll drop it.”
I needed him to drop it. But he was playing dirty. I struggled to lie. The aggravating man knew how hard it was for me. I could talk my way around stuff, but outright lying was physically painful. All I had to say was that I didn’t want him. I was over him.
The words refused to form on my tongue.
I could not go down this road with him. My heart had been shredded. I’d failed two classes. I’d had to take summer school after breaking down in front of my advisor. I’d gotten a job as a phlebotomist just so I had a better chance at getting the internship in the lab after they saw my transcripts. I’d gone from a 4.0 GPA to a 2.5.
I had even more to lose. A kid to take care of. I had a job, and I would not find another without moving—away from Laila’s dad and her daycare.
“Tell me, Daze,” he said in a hoarse voice.
If I couldn’t lie, then what? A future with Alder wasn’t unknown. I knew how it ended.
What if it could be different? What if he was the man I had wanted back then? What if…
He’d asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t find one, or I might tell him yes, I watched the clock. I had liked seeing him walk through the door. I liked going to work, knowing he was at home.
We were more than in the same zip code. We were at the same company. We lived under the same roof. But I was still that girl who had given up too early and had stayed too long. All it had taught me was that I couldn’t be trusted when it came to Alder. Only heartbreak waited for me.
“Mommy!” Laila cried from her room.
I jumped and gasped. Alder put his head down.
“I have to…”
I slipped into Laila’s room. “It’s okay, hon.”
“I had a nightmare,” she said in a groggy voice.
“It’s all right. I’m here.” I sat with her until well after she’d fallen back asleep. I heard Alder’s movements on the other side of the door as he got up. The closet door clicked open, I assumed he adjusted the albums. A few minutes later, the door closed and his footsteps sounded above us. Even then I stayed longer.
How could I avoid the man when I didn’t want to?