Chapter 16 #2
There’s a long moment of silence, and I wish I could peek my head around the wall to get a glimpse of Elle’s face.
She clears her throat. “Just what I said. He’s a professional golfer, and we traveled the world together.
We fell in love quickly and married quickly.
And for a while, in the beginning, it was heaven.
Then things changed between us, almost overnight, and I didn’t like the man he became.
He wasn’t treating me the way I believed I deserved to be treated. ”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re about to tell me another life lesson?” Stella smarts, and Elle laughs.
“See what I mean about you being so smart? I didn’t even have to proposition it that way. But yeah, that’s a big one. Tell me more about your mom. What’s this picture?”
And why does she want to hear that?
Why does her wanting to know about Reese and asking for Stella’s sake make me want, crave, desire, cling to her even more? She’s so good with Stella. So natural and not even close to jealous of Reese. She’s not trying to compete; she’s trying to love and understand my daughter.
That’s when I do peek. Ever so subtly, pressing myself against the wall, watching their profiles, just out of sight.
Elle points to something I can’t see, and I watch, strung out like a junkie, as Stella shifts in right beside her newest hero and shows her pictures of her mom. “That was the first time I tried solids.”
“And this one?”
“My first time sledding.”
“Looks like y’all were having a lot of fun. I had no idea your dad has that many teeth.”
I roll my eyes at her sarcasm, though she can’t see me do it.
“Your parents took a lot of pictures.”
“My mother was obsessed with them. She wanted to be a photojournalist when she was in college. I have her camera. I just don’t know how to use it very well. Besides, pictures aren’t really my thing.”
“Cooking and gardening are?”
“Like they are for you.”
My breath catches, my hand covering my chest.
“Well, thank goodness your mom was into photography, otherwise you wouldn’t have these.
She took stunning pictures. And that smile, Stella.
I think your dad was right. You do look like your mom.
Especially when you smile. So beautiful.
Both of you.” They flip pages in the worn album, the plastic crinkling. “What’s this one?”
“A selfie of us from her phone my dad had printed. That was the last picture taken on her phone. She died the next day.”
I can’t stop my reaction. I march into the room, staring down at my wife’s smiling eyes.
The way she stared at our girl. Eyes that tell me I’m a fucked man, and I don’t deserve any happiness because she doesn’t have any for herself.
She took pictures of Stella because she couldn’t take pictures as a photojournalist. She was home with Stella while I was in medical school. I stole her dream. I stole her life.
Reese texted that picture to me when I was in class and at the time, I didn’t think much about it. Reese used to send me a lot of pictures of them. It was a hey, we’re here, remember us.
Then she was gone.
“Upstairs, Stella. Now. You need a shower.”
“Thanks for the hygiene update, Dad.” Stella rolls her eyes derisively as she stands, giving Elle a hug that makes me want to die just a bit. “Thank you for today. I just… thank you. It was so much fun. Are we still good for Wednesday?”
“For sure.” Elle smiles like the first flicker of dawn after an endless night. “Just let me know what we’re making so I can get what groceries we need. You were a culinary genius today.”
Stella runs up the stairs, and the moment I hear her door slam shut, Elle closes the photo album with a heavy clap . “Can I help clean up since you were too busy spying on us to bother?”
“Why did you leave your husband? Did he hurt you?”
Setting the album down on the coffee table, she rises, adjusting her sweater and turning to look at me. I hate how long she’s taking to answer, and with every second, my blood pressure climbs.
She takes a few steps in my direction. “Yes. He hurt me. Just not in the way you think he did.”
“How do you think I think he did?”
She doesn’t answer me. “Stella told me you blame yourself for your wife’s death.”
The force of her words has me shuffling back until I’m leaning against the doorway once more, needing its support to hold me up.
I didn’t realize Stella knew that, though I’m not surprised either.
In a way, I’m relieved. I think. It’s not a story you ever want to tell your child.
But it’s one thing for her to know I blame myself and another for her to know the reason behind that.
“That’s because I’m the reason my wife is dead.”
I wait. I watch. No flinch. No words. She doesn’t say, I’m sure that’s not the case or we all feel responsible when we lose someone we love too soon or whatever other bullshit there is to throw at me.
No glancing toward the door to run out. Instead, the woman I’m desperate to get rid of saunters across the room until she’s leaning against the opposite side of the doorframe from me, staring up at me with her swirling hazel eyes.
In a heartbeat she pushes away from her side and into mine, onto me, her hands on my chest, her body leaning against me, her chin tilted up, and her lips… her lips are so damn close.
“I would have stayed with David. I would have stayed forever. I tried. I did everything I could think of to make him see me and treat me the way he did when we first met. Everything I could possibly change about myself to make him happy, I did. But he never was with me, and by the time I walked out the door, I had nothing left in me to give either of us. He never hit me. But his words hurt a hundred times more than his fist ever could have.”
“He’s an oozing bedsore who deserves daily pain for the rest of his life,” slips out before I can stop it.
Something I wouldn’t mind providing. The thought of him verbally abusing her has my molars gnashing together so hard I’m shocked I’m not cracking them.
I’m a cardiologist. And an Abbot-Fritz. Destroying him before killing him would be a breeze.
“Maybe. But I don’t regret that I stayed and tried, and I don’t regret that I left when I couldn’t try anymore.”
So fucking brave. So much life glimmering in her pretty eyes. How could anyone ever try to extinguish it? For that alone, he should suffer.
“I fought with my wife the night she died.” I swallow thickly, my hands going to her hips, gripping her.
“I came home from class, exhausted, needing to study for a midterm the next day, and Reese asked if I could make Stella dinner, give her a bath, and put her to bed so she could have a break. I lost it on her. It was a breaking point I hadn’t realized I was reaching, and I yelled.
Said awful things. Made her cry.” I swallow again, this time audibly as I lick my dry lips.
“And then finally I told her to go. I told her to leave the house if she needed a break that badly, and she did. She got into her car in a rage, lost control of it on a patch of ice, and ended up trapped in it at the bottom of an icy lake.”
Elle’s chin quivers, her eyes glassing over with emotion.
I haven’t said those words aloud to anyone since Reese’s funeral.
I sat at her graveside with my parents, brothers, and sister surrounding me, and I told them the unforgivable thing I had done.
How I had wished it were me who was dead and not her.
I still feel that way. I’ll always feel that way.
“My best friend drowned in a lake when I was fifteen. We were camping, and I didn’t wake up when she left our tent.”
My grip tightens. “Do you blame yourself?”
She shakes her head. “Not anymore. Blaming myself won’t bring her back and it won’t change the fact that I didn’t wake up. I wish I had. I’d give anything to go back in time, but I can’t. So I remember her and miss her instead.”
“It’s not the same, you know. I am the reason Reese is gone. You’re not the reason your friend is.”
Elle looks as broken as I feel. A big, fat tear hits her cheek, and I don’t know if it’s for her horrible past or mine.
My lips find it anyway, my tongue licking it away, tasting its saltiness. Absorbing her grief. I cup her jaw, angling her face, my thumb swiping along her bottom lip. I hated her pain when I first saw her because it so closely mirrored my own. We’re so alike and yet so different.
She is the beautiful, strong side of pain. The dawn after the endless night of darkness. A new breath of life I was never able to find for myself.
Now as I stare into her eyes, my world shifts. My axis thrown off-kilter. I can’t even explain what it is or how it does. All I know is that I’ll never be the same again. Because of her.
My lips strike flush with hers in time to muffle her sob. In this second—and just for this second—I feel like I deserve this. This woman.
I’m here to take away her pain. To erase her heartache.
It’s a purpose I never imagined I’d find.
And whether she’s aware of it or not, she’s peeling my layers back. Slicing my solid resistance up into bite-sized pieces before devouring them. She’s filling me with something else I can’t explain.
Hope maybe?
It sends a shudder through me, a growl from my lungs as I deepen our kiss. Needing to consume her the way she’s consuming me. All my trumped-up, bullshit, pathetic attempts at dislike I pretended to feel for her are gone.
My hands comb through her long, silky strands as my tongue invades her mouth. Our lips move together, soft and wet. A breathy sound—so achingly sweet and tragic—emits from the back of her throat before diving into mine.
I swallow it down. Desperate. Hungry. Ravaged and needing her. Her .
Elle’s hands fist my shirt, her body angry and impatient at my refusal to let her closer. I can’t do that. No matter how much I want her, our reality is unchanged. I’m not what she needs. Even if she is exactly what I need. Someone who has me feeling again.
I break the spell. “You need to go.”
“Tell me why.”
I hold her face in my hands. “Isn’t it obvious?” I’m going to fall in love with you if you stay.
“Maybe I want it spelled out for me.”
I shake my head. I can’t do that.
“I forgive you.”
“What?” I choke on the word.
“I forgive you for giving me Luca’s name. I understand why you did it, and I forgive you, Landon. I forgive you for shutting off the light and closing your window on me so quickly last night too. I forgive you.”
I choke again, my hands all over her, and I dip back down, kissing her sweet mouth, her jaw, her neck.
I pull away and open my eyes, finding her breathtaking marbled irises staring straight into mine.
I don’t look away. I don’t hide. She forgives me, and I give her everything. If only just for this moment.
“You shouldn’t forgive me.”
“But I do. I forgive you.”
My eyes clench shut. “You have to go,” I growl into her.
She doesn’t argue. She knows. “Next time, come and pick Stella up at my door. Now that I forgive you and no longer hate you, I’m starting to like you. A hell of a lot more than I should.”
I already like you a hell of a lot more than I should.
She’s breathing heavily against me, her tits squishing into my chest, my heart hammering back, unable to be kept at bay. My dick is a steel pipe pressed between us, and I straighten, pushing her back. Keeping my eyes shut. The loss of contact more excruciating than I thought it would be.
A soft kiss on my lips and then she’s gone. Out the side door with a click, and I should have walked her home. Made sure she managed the distance between our doors safely. Ensured she didn’t get wet from the rain.
But then I would have followed her inside. I would have lifted her up and wrapped her legs around my waist. I would have mauled her against the closest surface because the idea of finding a couch or her bed would have been preposterous.
She would have stared at me the way I’ve been staring at her—with unmistakable want and need. We would have broken furniture and laughed about it as I fucked us both into mind-melting pleasure.
That’s why she had to go.
Because if she stayed, I would have chosen her. I would have chosen to keep her. And then what would I do when I remembered she’s not someone I can keep for myself?