Chapter 11
Sloan drove along the highway, Joanne by his side and the kids tucked into the back of the vehicle, classic rock playing softly on the radio.
Fiona had fallen asleep with her new iPad on her lap, April had been playing on her new phone since they left New York, and Lucas was completely engrossed in his Nintendo Switch.
The devices were expensive, but he didn’t care.
Joanne had quite a fight with April over putting Instagram on her new phone, going so far as to forbid the girl from installing it. Sloan witnessed the legendary wrath of an eleven-year-old girl, and quietly wagered April would install it anyway.
They selected a campground an hour outside of Chicago to stay in overnight. Between the impending reservation and the long, quiet drive, he couldn’t help but feel like he was living someone else’s life, that these were his kids, this was his wife, and they were traveling on some special vacation.
It was a stupid fantasy and one he wouldn’t have admitted to if Joanne had asked what he was thinking. There was just the peaceful feel of sharing each other’s company and Sloan’s profound sadness at what might have been.
What if he’d said yes all those years ago, instead of freezing up like the idiot he’d been?
It hadn’t taken him long to realize he’d made the wrong choice in refusing to marry her.
Within two weeks of his arrival at basic training, he’d already bought the ring.
If he’d gone to her then or called and apologized, told her he was an asshole and a jerk and a hundred different things, he could have begged to have her back.
Maybe she wouldn’t have married David, and their entire lives would have been different.
But that’s not what he did.
He’d choked. He’d dug in his heels. He’d arrogantly thought he’d have the rest of his life to make it up to her.
He’d dragged his feet and taken his time and planned exactly how he wanted to pop the question, never imagining she would already be someone else’s wife by the time he returned from training.
“Tell me about David.” The words were out before he could stop them, the need to know what happened outweighing his desire to maintain the peace. The air between them changed instantly, seeming to carry a charge like a storm blowing in.
“What do you want to know?”
“You got married pretty quick. Why?”
She didn’t say anything for the better part of a mile. He knew because he was counting the markers, waiting for her to speak.
“I thought it was the right thing to do.”
The right thing to do? “Were you pregnant or something?”
She sighed heavily. “No. You were gone. I was living in my father’s house. Things were worse than they’d ever been. David was nice to me.”
“So what, you just married him? Like hey, boom, want to get hitched?”
“Stop it. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Goddamn, he was frustrated, and he would have punched the steering wheel with his hand if it wouldn’t have woken Fiona. He wanted answers, and all she wasn’t telling him was what he really wanted to know. “Did you love him?”
His hands were sweaty on the wheel, his heart racing. This mattered to him more than it should, but he couldn’t back away from the conversation any more than he could stop a freight train with his hands. “Because just a few weeks before that, you were supposedly in love with me, remember?”
“I remember we broke up. I remember you didn’t want to be with me.”
“I was a kid, Jo. I was scared to get married before the ink dried on my high school diploma. That didn’t erase two years together. It didn’t make my feelings for you go away. But a hot minute after that, you hitched your apple cart to the next guy in line.”
He couldn’t stop, couldn’t hold back the words that demanded to be said. “Tell me you loved him. Tell me you fell madly, crazy, deeply in love with him like you’d never felt for me, and that’s why you married the bastard. Because maybe then I wouldn’t hate you so much for doing it.”
“Why did you hate me? Why did you even care?”
“Because I was in love with you, damn it!” He lowered his voice on the expletive. “And you married somebody else!”
“I wanted to marry you, remember?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ. This is ridiculous. No, this is maddening. Do you know that? You are maddening. Forget I asked. Forget I said anything.”
According to his GPS, they had an hour to go before arriving at the campground. When they got there, he’d take a long walk. Put some distance between himself and this Griswald family vacation. If he was lucky, Joanne would be asleep when he returned, and he might actually get some quiet time alone.
She cleared her throat. “No.”
“No, what?”
“I didn’t love him. I was desperate. My dad’s stepbrother moved back in with us—”
“Uncle Bobby?” Fuck. He was a hardcore drunk who grabbed Jo’s ass and talked about her tits like he was discussing the weather. He’d damn near raped her when she was fifteen, and her dad didn’t even care, which was when Jo started sleeping over at Sloan’s house nearly every night.
Her uncle moving back in was the worst possible thing that could have happened to Jo, and he hated himself for not being there to help her. “Jesus, Jo. I’m so sorry.”
“I moved out. I found a roommate and a place that wasn’t too bad up over a bar on Main Street, and I was doing okay for a little while. I had to drop out of school because I needed to work, but then the diner burned down and I lost my job, anyway.”
If he’d known for one second what she was going through, he would have been there in an instant, and he cursed his own stupidity for leaving her alone. But he needed to hear all of it, the entire story. “Go on.”
“David was nice to me. He used to come into the diner, then when that burned down, he showed up at my house. He brought me flowers. He stood there in his chinos and button-down shirt, talking to my drunk-ass father like it was a totally normal conversation.
“I was so damn sad,” she said quietly. “David was there for me. He was going to college in Chicago and wanted me to come with him. He wanted to marry me. I wanted a new life, Sloan. One where I wasn’t the poor kid from the wrong side of town, I wasn’t just a high school dropout, alone.
I saw the chance for a fresh start with a man who loved me, and I took it. ”
He could hear the tears in her voice, feel the mirrored tension in his own tight throat, and he swallowed against it. “I came back for you.”
“What?”
Why was he telling her this now? Nothing good could come of it. The past was the past. It couldn’t be changed. But it was clear to him he’d been holding on to it, refusing to let go of the woman who’d given up on him so easily.
There had been no serious relationships in his life, and while he’d told himself it was because he liked to keep things light, not be weighed down, he could see now that was utter bullshit.
Once bitten, twice shy. It was time to let this wound heal so he could have a real life for himself, unravel this knot and move on.
Maybe have an RV full of his own kids one day.
He looked away from the road to meet her stare, then turned back. He needed to finish this once and for all. “When my training ended. I came home from basic with a ring in my hand. I came back for you, Buckley.”