Forever Strong (Spruce Texas Romance #10)

Chapter 1

It’s Not About the Dang Drawer

I didn’t mean to say those words.

Let alone shout them.

But the second they fly out of my mouth, the house becomes a tomb.

My husband Tanner, kneeling on the floor next to me, Allen wrench in hand, stony eyes on me.

Our beautiful kids, Marcus and Joshua, sitting in front of the TV fighting over which video game to play next, now silent and peering at me over their shoulders, eyes wide.

I’m pretty sure even the crickets holding their nightly meeting in the tall grass around the pond went dead cold.

Between me and my husband squats a piece of furniture we were in the middle of assembling by the back window—a short white nightstand that looks like a four-legged marshmallow, one drawer in, the other on the floor by my knees.

No matter what I’d do to the wheels or the metal track, the second drawer refused to slide in right.

It doesn’t fit. We didn’t build it properly.

Despite following instructions.

One, two, three, to the end.

It still won’t fit.

Now a stubborn drawer is the least of my concerns. The words I just shouted, they’re out there in the air now. I can’t possibly put them back into my mouth. Even the kids heard.

Tanner whips his hat off and rubs his short head of hair, his eyes on me. “Uh, Billy …?”

My glassy eyes snap to his. I panic. “Sorry. I … think I just …” The kids are still looking at me. What do I say? “Don’t worry. I think I … um … I think it’s just … gas.”

Tanner’s face twists. “What?”

“Gas. From dinner. Just had a bad cramp. I think I need—”

“Some Pepto?” suggests Joshua sweetly, our eleven-year-old, his eyes so cute and wide, my heart can just shatter all over the place.

“Yep, that’s right, a little cup of that will make it all better.” I’m off the floor the next instant. Tanner’s eyes are still on me. He knows damned well it isn’t Pepto I need. He heard the words, too. “Daddy is … gonna get himself some to gag on.”

“I love how it tastes,” moans Joshua with a grin, and now our family’s worst moment is turned into a commercial for the pink stuff, and where do you go with that?

It’s the look in Marcus’s eyes, our older one, fifteen—that cuts deepest. Even just after a year and a half, the kids are comfortable enough with us now that I can’t tuck my words under a rug and play them off as anything other than what they were.

It’s unfair to them. Marcus, going into his junior year at Spruce High, as bright as he is, the boy notices everything.

He’s observant, sometimes disturbingly so.

What am I going to do when he starts asking the real questions? What will I say?

How will I defend my outbursts?

Haven’t I ever thought once about how this might affect our beautiful kids?

Of course I have.

It’s the reason I’ve buried it all for this long.

But while little Joshua continues to think I’m mad over how our medicine tastes, I know there’s no more wool left to pull over Marcus’s bright, inquisitive eyes. I can’t protect the kids from the reality of things any more than I can protect myself.

I grip my stomach when it makes a sudden noise.

Or maybe it really is gas.

In a blink, I’m in the kitchen pretending to get the Pepto, but I’m just standing in front of a picture tacked onto the fridge with a banana magnet, taken at a beach on Dreamwood Isle—us and the boys.

Tanner just peed on my foot because my clumsy ass stepped on a jellyfish.

Marcus and Joshua were doubled over in laughter.

I gritted my teeth and pretended to find it all funny, too, despite the stinging and how many times I insisted the peeing thing was just a myth.

How much of my life is spent pretending?

My hands are shaking, I notice. Not sure when that started.

“Babe …?”

I shut my eyes and hunch over the counter. “Not yet,” I choke to my husband. “Please. Not yet.”

“The kids …”

“It’s late. School starts for them in another week.

We need to get them back on schedule, instead of staying up all …

” My mouth shuts all on its own. I think I’m tired of having the same old fight, and we just got heated about a stupid drawer.

He’s always the one to be the kids’ buddy, the pal, the cool dad, leaving me to inherit the role of asshole, the one who stresses, the villain.

Tanner seems to follow without my uttering another word anyway. For a second, he hesitates, as if really wanting to say something else, but after a breath, he only settles with, “I’ll go get the kids to bed,” before seeing himself out.

I peer back up at the picture of us at the beach.

The laughter in our eyes. How Tanner’s looking at me instead of the camera, adoration in his eyes.

And my tightened grimace.

Trying not to show my discomfort.

The house is quiet and dark soon. Tanner compromised—as always—with getting the kids to bed, allowing them to stay up in their bedroom with the TV on.

Then it’s just us putting ourselves to bed.

The door left open, the hum of the kids’ TV through the wall, I’m turned onto my side staring at that squat marshmallow nightstand with just one drawer in, looking like a plump cartoon character missing a row of teeth.

Tanner cleaned up most of the mess, but that unfinished piece of furniture is still out there right in my line of sight, reminding me of the terrible scene, haunting me with its toothless smile.

I didn’t even want the thing. Tanner did.

Said it’d match the reading chair by the back window, a chair his mom planned to throw out until Tanner rescued it.

It’s hideous but as comfortable as sinking into a cloud.

“Ready to talk?”

Here it is. The moment I’ve been dreading for over an hour. I take in a breath, then realize I’m not ready. “In the morning. I just need sleep.”

“Ain’t neither of us gettin’ a wink of sleep until we talk it out. It’s how we always work, we talk it out.” He touches my back as if to rub it, then stops and slowly retracts his hand. “Is this about the tiny table? Do you hate it?”

Nightstand, I want to correct him because it’s important to call things what they are, but the last thing this bedroom needs is any more of my pettiness. “No.”

“The measurements were off. Manufacturing error. That’s it, gotta be, that’s why the drawer won’t fit.”

My patience is razor thin. “It’s all premeasured. Nothing’s off. We just didn’t put it together right.”

“Sure we did. It’s like Legos for adults. Follow the instructions, screw this into that, plug that into this, and voila: a tiny table to go with Mama’s old reading chair you love so much.”

I let out a heavy sigh and clench my eyes.

This is so Tanner, to push blame everywhere other than where it ought to be, acting like everything’s okay, shrugging off all stress.

How lovely it must be to live like that, totally carefree, buying any piece of furniture we find online after a half-baked thought.

One night, I considered buying a tall stork-shaped floor lamp complete with feathers, but did I?

No. I practiced restraint, like an adult.

We’re supposed to be a household of two dads and two kids.

Feels like one dad and three kids lately.

“I think we should ship it back and order a new one,” Tanner decides, back to rubbing my back, certain it’s that rogue drawer that’s got me in my mood. “I can disassemble it in the mornin’.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s no biggie. They make n’ ship them build-it-yourself things so quick, there’s bound to be mistakes in the construction. With a new one, I’m sure the drawer will fit.”

“Tanner …”

“It wasn’t anything we did wrong. It was cut wrong, I’m tellin’ you. The drawer was just—”

“It’s not about the dang drawer,” I finally snap.

His hand stops.

My words shut him right up.

I feel terrible suddenly. And angry. Why am I so angry at the love of my life? When did my brain take up a sword and lead me into battle against my heart? How have I let it?

“Did you even hear them …?” I find myself asking, my voice barely air. “What I … What I shouted before …?”

It takes a long time for him to produce just one word. “Yeah.”

I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I think my hands are still shaking. Thoughts still racing. The look in our kids’ eyes after I shouted won’t leave me.

“Billy?”

Hearing my name brings me back. “This … isn’t working.”

“What isn’t working?”

“We haven’t been ourselves in years. We get on each other’s nerves. I’m too involved in the Sweet Shoppe. You’re so busy with coaching and football. We don’t have time for us anymore.”

“We’re just havin’ a rough patch, babe, it isn’t—”

“And then our kids. Our beautiful kids. I’m such an asshole.” My face goes into my hands suddenly. “I can’t—”

He sits up and his big arms fly around my waist. His chin tucks into my neck from behind. “It was an off day. Just an off day.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve had this conversation in my head? How many times I tried to talk to you about it and you’d just blow me off? Tanner. Be honest with yourself.” I turn my head slightly. “You feel it, too. You’ve felt it as long as I have. Things … aren’t the same anymore.”

“But I love you.”

“Love isn’t enough. We’re not …” I’m off the bed and at the doorway, arms crossed.

It’s easier to talk when I’m not looking at him.

If I look at him right now and see his beautiful, burning eyes and the longing in his face, I’ll lose my resolve and fall right back into his arms. “We stayed together for all the wrong reasons. Your family’s reputation, with your ma being the mayor.

Pressure from our friends, from all of Spruce, or hell, all of Texas.

It’s too much. We stopped being honest with ourselves.

I … I think we should end this … while we still love each other. ”

“End? … End? Billy …”