Chapter 24 #2
I wince and look away, trying to hide the sting from that sentence and then go back to what she mentioned earlier. “Have you ever seen a doctor for your insomnia?” I ask, noting that some days the dark circles under her eyes are more obvious than others.
“Yes,” she groans back and turns on her side to lay her head on the back of the sofa. “And I have meds that can help me sleep,
but they make me feel awful the next day, so I try to only take them when I’m desperate.”
“What happens exactly when you try to go to sleep?” I stretch my arm out behind her, my fingers itching to push the loose
strand of hair off her cheek.
“My mind won’t shut off.” She turns to face me, crossing her legs under the blanket. “My body is tired but my head races with
things I need to do or conversations I’ve had with people that embarrass me. I worry about the future and the past . . . especially
the past.”
“Like stuff about your brother?” I ask, my brows furrowed as I watch her body for cues that I’m going too far.
She nods woodenly. “It happened so many years ago, but I still can’t stop remembering that jarring feeling of being woken
up by my dad to say we have to go to the hospital because Mom and Aaron were in a car accident. It’s like my body is constantly
on edge, waiting for an emergency, which makes it impossible for me to fall sleep.”
My jaw tightens as a similar memory floods my mind. “After my dad died, I couldn’t stop counting the chest compressions I
did on him every time I tried to go to sleep. One, two, three, four . . .”
Addison’s head snaps to meet my eyes, her face full of shock and horror.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” I pull my arm out from behind her, shaking my head with irritation for even
saying that out loud. She literally can’t sleep because of her past trauma, and I just dumped my own on top of hers.
“No, please,” she says, scooting closer to me and placing her hand on my leg. Her eyes are grave on mine. “I want to hear about this, Luke. I’ve wanted to ask about your dad for a long time but never felt like I had the right to after . . .”
After you barely responded to my texts when I told you he died.
After you didn’t even show up for the funeral.
After your name wasn’t even signed on a bouquet of flowers from the lumberyard that your dad’s office assistant probably ordered.
Her not being there for me was cold and detached and hurt more than I’ve ever told her. And I never told her because I’m weak . . .
and . . .
I love her.
You can forgive a lot when you love someone.
She swallows nervously, her entire body tense as she sits crisscross, giving me her full attention. “What happened exactly?
Can you tell me about it?”
I inhale a deep breath. I haven’t spoken about this in the three years since we lost him. It’s not exactly a fond memory to
relive and I find that talking about it just resets my grief.
But looking at Addison, my best friend, my wife . . . I feel like I need her to know this part of me. I need the woman I’m
in love with to know the hurt that I’ve endured in order for her to see me. All of me. And even then, she still may not want
me or love me back.
I swallow the knot in my throat and close my eyes. “We were here on Fletcher Mountain . . . just me and Dad. He was helping
me adjust my cabin’s solar panels because a storm had screwed up their alignment. I ran to go get a tool from his truck, only
to come back and find him collapsed—his lips already blue.”
Addison inhales sharply, pressing her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, Luke.”
I wrinkle my nose and avoid eye contact with her. The look on her face too much for me to manage with all of the emotions swirling in me. “Being a volunteer firefighter for Jamestown prepared me medically for that situation. I knew CPR, so I got to work on him.
“But nothing prepared me for the emotional mind fuck that played through my head when I had to . . .” my voice cracks as the
sensation roils through my body “. . . feel my own father’s sternum break under my hands.” I hold my hands up, looking at
them like they’re fucking monsters. Breaking a sternum during CPR is normal, but breaking my own father’s? I am a fucking
monster.
“And the part I’ve never told anyone because I’m so ashamed and disappointed in myself, is the unexpected gag reflex that
happened to me when I had to blow air into his mouth. It’s so fucked . . .”
I drop my elbows to my knees and bow my head, feeling the horror of that day all over me again. Like it was yesterday. CPR
is not something anyone should have to do to their own father. It’s why hospitals don’t let doctors operate on family. It’s
not right to see a family member like that. It’s fucking haunting.
“Oh, Luke,” Addison croaks and I look up to see her eyes filled with tears, streams falling down her cheeks with every blink.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, me too,” I grind out, my own eyes welling as the pain on her face matches the pain in my soul. “Especially because
it was all for nothing. I tried to resuscitate him for eleven minutes and when he showed no signs of improvement, I made the
decision to carry him to my truck and rush him to the hospital in Boulder. In my mind, I thought an ambulance would have taken
way too long to get up the mountain and this was the smarter choice.”
A flash of him slumped in my back seat hits me all over again. The man weighed more than me by at least twenty pounds, but I don’t remember him feeling heavy. I was consumed with adrenaline. Panicked to be on this mountain alone with my dad, who was literally dying right in front of me.
“He was pronounced dead soon after they admitted him. Just like that.”
Addison huffs out a noise of discontent. Her whole body curled up into a ball as she watches me through the tears in her eyes.
“You did everything you could.”
“I guess,” I huff, yanking my hat off and tossing it on the coffee table. I run a hand through my hair, ruffling it off my
head a bit. “But it took months for me to stop questioning every decision I made. Months for me to stop counting myself to
sleep. It crushed my whole family obviously, but no one bore the burden of the memories I had. I was alone in that.”
And I couldn’t talk about it with any of them. With anyone.
Everyone was in shock.
Everyone was grieving.
Everyone was rallying around Mom, trying to comfort her in any way she needed. And I was so fucking alone.
Day after day.
Night after night.
And my best friend was nowhere to be seen.
I inhale deeply, staring at the embers sizzling in the hearth, hating that I have the memory of my dad’s face in death. Slackened
jaw, discolored lips. I don’t want that memory. I want to remember him alive and well and yelling at me and my brothers to
get our shit together.
“I always thought a heart attack would be the way to go. Quick and painless. But nothing about seeing my dad like that looked
painless. I feel like I just hurt him for no goddamn reason.”
“You were performing lifesaving measures, Luke,” Addison says, her voice hoarse as she reaches out to grab my hand, her fingers trembling as she squeezes mine.
“You would have had regrets if you did nothing too. And if you got a firefighter call and showed up to someone else’s house, you would have done the same exact thing. Fact or fiction?”
I struggle to look into her eyes.
“Look at me,” she states firmly, grabbing my chin and turning me to face her.
I blink slowly, my eyes hurting over the fact that the woman I love knows this darkness in me now. I liked being the light
in Addison’s life. I can tell she needs it. Craves it. Bringing this to her could have just set me back for all I know.
I breathe deeply and reply, “Fact.”
“Then that’s all you need to know.” She wraps her hands around my arm and lays her head on my shoulder, the smell of her floral
shampoo invading my nose and unexpectedly comforting me. “You should sleep well at night knowing you did everything you could.”
“I just wish I could quiet the what-if questions. What if I’d called 911 to get an ambulance up there instead? What if I’d
done CPR longer? What if my dad was showing symptoms earlier that day and helping me just made him worse?”
Addison’s head moves on my arm as she nods her understanding. “What if my mom wouldn’t have driven drunk? What if she would
have opened up about not being sober and tried to get help? What if she would have attempted to have a relationship with me
after jail? What if Aaron was still alive? It’s fucking exhausting to live with the what-ifs.”
“I know.” I exhale heavily and wrap my arm around her, comforted by the feel of her weight on me. This is everything I wanted
back then. “I just miss him. I miss his voice. He had this gruff sound to him that just . . . felt like home.”
“Oh, I remember,” Addison says, leaning back to smile up at me. “I took most of the orders at the building center back then
and he was a talker on the phone.”
I smile at that. I like that my dad knew Addison before he passed. It’s comforting to me to know that he knew my wife.
Her brows knit together, and she chews her lip before reaching to the coffee table to retrieve her phone. “I have something
for you actually.”
I frown as she unlocks her phone to pull something up.
“I’ve been saving this, not sure what to do with it.” She pulls up the voicemail app on her phone and I frown when she scrolls
down and clicks Play, turning it on speaker as she does.
Suddenly, my dad is in the room with us.
“Hey, Addison, this is Steve Fletcher . . . say listen . . . we need to revise an order that my son placed with you for the
Hope House before I gave him the go-ahead.”
“Hey! You told me to do it!” Calder’s voice shouts from somewhere in the distance.
“I didn’t tell you to do it,” my dad argues.
“Someone told me to do it. I bet it was Luke.”
“Don’t pin this on me,” my voice says with a laugh.
“Then it was Wyatt. Ouch!” Calder yells. “Dad! Wyatt just decked me. That’s an HR violation. I want to file a report.”
The phone muffles and my dad’s voice is loud and clear in the line again. “Sorry you had to hear that, Addison. If you ever have sons who work for you at the lumberyard, I hope like hell you can
manage them better than me, ’cause I’m fit to be tied with these knuckleheads. Anyways . . . call me back so we can get that
order changed if it’s not too late. Thanks.”
I frown at the phone, too stunned to speak and then hear a scuffle into the line. It’s my dad’s voice again.
“For the record though . . . I wouldn’t change working with my sons for anything in this world. You would be lucky to have
this life in your future. Talk to you later, kiddo.”
Addison lowers the phone and turns to see that my eyes are flooded with tears.
It was like I could close my eyes and none of the bad stuff happened.
Suddenly, he was back on this earth, living with my mom.
He was my boss and my dad again, giving me a pat on the back and I could pick up the phone to talk to him right fucking now.
It’s equal parts wonderful and dreadful and I’d listen to that message all over to feel this beautiful pain again.
“Why did you keep this?” I ask, staring at my best friend in wonder.
She blinks and errant tears fall down her face as well. “I didn’t realize it was still on my phone until last year and I was
too scared to share it with you then. It felt too personal. Like I didn’t have a right to give it to you, especially after
I was so awful when he died. I hope it’s okay I played it for you now.”
“It is. Good God, babe, it is more than okay.” My chest swells with a pain that feels so bad and so good all at the same time
as I pull my best friend into me and hug her with everything I have. “I think I needed that more than I realized.”
She pulls back, her chin trembling wildly as her face fills with urgency. “Luke, when Steve died . . . you called me and said
a lot of stuff about everything and I’m not proud, but it triggered me, and I shut down on you. I was suddenly twelve years
old again and watching my dad bury my brother. I don’t know when funerals will ever feel okay for me again. But I hate that
I wasn’t there for you. You have to know I was thinking of you constantly on that day and many days after. I still think of
you constantly. You’re on my mind like . . . all the time. When I can’t sleep at night, I’m thinking about you as well.” Her
face flushes red as she shudders out a garbled breath and wipes aggressively at the tears on her face.
“I’m on your mind all the time?” My brain swims with confusion, wondering what I care more about. Her words or my dad’s. Honestly,
they’re both giving me more than my heart can handle.
“Yes. Jesus,” she croaks and sniffs loudly. “This is embarrassing. I don’t know why I’m saying any of this.”
“Hey, Roe. It’s okay.” I tip my hand under her chin, so she looks up at me.
“No, it’s not,” she snaps, pulling away. “I’m being weird. You just shared so much with me and I’m turning this into a me
thing and it’s not.” She inhales deeply through her nose, her chin trembling slightly.
“Hey, Roe?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re on my mind all the time too.” My voice is deep and steady as I stare into the depths of her eyes, seeing glimmers
of hope that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.
“I am?” She licks her lips and stares back at me with so much emotion, I want to kiss her pain away. She looks like she wants
me to kiss the pain away.
I swallow the knot in my throat. “I like thinking about my wife.”
She inhales a shaky breath and closes her eyes. “Is that fact or fiction?”
My lips thin as I gaze back at her. The woman who I would forgive for much worse because I guess that’s what love is. Loving
someone through their imperfect moments. “Fact.”
But as she looks up at me all open and vulnerable and admitting how much I’m on her mind, I stop myself from kissing her.
Because the next time I kiss her, I need it to be for forever. No more games. No more bullshit. I won’t kiss Addison Monroe
until I know she loves me back, because if she doesn’t, there’s no amount of CPR that will be able to heal my broken heart.