32. Chapter 32
Graham sipped what the hotel bar considered good bourbon and checked his phone.
Nothing from Helen after CALL ME. Nothing from his friends who didn’t know he wasn’t in Ohio. Nothing from his dad—there wouldn’t be anything from his old man. Ever.
Nothing from Lindsey who should’ve wondered where he was by now.
Unless she doesn’t care.
Another sip.
His veins hummed under his skin, as if sensing Helen was close and they were preparing for her touch. It was wild, he knew. And wrong. And didn’t make a lick of sense. He could feel her. They were both in the same state which made spending the night with another woman feel like cheating.
Which also didn’t make a lick of sense.
He downed the rest of the bourbon and went up to his room. Lindsey was in bed. The room smelled like soap and the Mexican food she’d eaten by herself.
Since I left her alone again.
He couldn’t seem to fucking show up for her.
It wasn’t intentional. It just…was. Graham peeled off his clothes and climbed into bed beside her.
He could tell by the set of her shoulders Lindsey wasn’t sleeping.
He slid a hand across the void between, stopping inches from her back.
She wouldn’t want him to touch her, and she wouldn’t want to talk even if he knew what to say.
The woman next to him already felt gone, and he wasn’t ready to see her go.
Was that how he knew he really loved Lindsey? Did he have to get this close to losing her to admit he wouldn’t have made it through the last few months without her, that he needed her in ways she’d never understand—even if he never fully appreciated how much?
Instead of reaching into his past, he should’ve been thanking the woman in front of him for sticking around and shouldering his grief, for coming through for his dad, and for letting Graham be the asshole he knew he became after his dad got sick and the even bigger asshole he’d become now that his dad was gone.
They hadn’t spent a night apart in weeks. Graham tried imagining the bed empty and it scared the hell out of him.
He didn’t dare put Helen there. The possibility scared the hell out of him too.
He rolled around for hours in the third foreign bed in as many days, watching the red numbers on the bedside clock chip away the night, wondering what he was going to do tomorrow (or today, once the minutes ticked past midnight) and how did Jase go from one bed to the next the way he did and still be able to sleep?
Were they all the same after a while, just like the women piled up behind him?
Did he drink himself into a coma every night?
Graham tried but wasn’t very good at it.
He’d yet to find the sweet spot that knocked him out for a few hours and didn’t leave him gut-sick the next day.
Around three in the morning, Graham’s sandy, swollen eyes landed on Lindsey’s outline in the dark. Would it matter if Lindsey was someone else, as long as she wasn’t Helen?
He slid his hand around her hip, expecting her to toss it away. She didn’t and he shifted closer, pressing his hand between her legs and gently stroking until she rolled onto her back and let him in. The sex, slow and meticulous, was an apology. Afterwards, he finally slept.
A few hours later he woke up to the late-morning sun seeping around the edges of the curtains and Lindsey asleep in his arms. They hadn’t slept wrapped up in each other in almost a year.
Since he’d gone out for a drink alone to meet a swipe right and went home with the hot bartender instead.
The night he’d met Lindsey, he’d found out from a friend that Helen had come to Dayton to visit family and never called him. They’d been in the same city, and she robbed him of the chance to do something about it.
Not this time. In one hundred and eighty-five miles, it was Graham’s turn to decide.
Lindsey stirred against his chest. Even though he was holding her, he already forgot she was there.
She was always beside him, Graham realized.
And he was always a thousand miles away, holding on to someone else.