Chapter 45 #2
“Shut the door,” Cam growled at me. He was standing at the window, peering at his house through a pair of binoculars.
A thermal scope rested on the windowsill next to him.
The workbench beside him held a laptop and two tablets.
All screens were divided into quarters with each quarter tuned to a different security camera feed of the exterior and interior of Cam’s house.
Levi, my unapologetic arresting officer, was kicked back in a zero-gravity lounger with his laptop.
“What’s his problem?” I asked Levi.
Cam lowered the binoculars to glare at me. “My problem? My problem?”
“He’s gonna say it’s you,” Levi predicted without looking up from his screen.
“My problem is my wife is headed off to Bangor, Maine, and Beavercreek, Ohio, and some other places that aren’t here thanks to you.”
“Me?” I leaned down to ruffle Buttercup’s ears.
“Because you fucked up, broke her best friend’s heart—like I told you not to—so Zoey talked Hazel into doing a spontaneous book tour.”
“Book tour?” I was simultaneously devastated and relieved. That explained the suitcases. “So she’s coming back?”
“We’re getting married next month. Of course she’s coming back.”
“I meant Zoey. She gave notice that she’s breaking her lease and moving out.”
“You’re not dumb enough to be surprised, are you?” Levi asked.
I took the seat next to Levi’s and put my head in my hands. “It was one fucking mistake. She wouldn’t even let me explain.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Cam said, turning away from the window to face us. “Explain what? The explanation is you were an asshole who lashed out at her.”
“Yeah, but if I could just tell her why—”
“Dude,” Levi said, finally glancing up at me. “Even I know that’s not what a woman wants to hear.”
“You’re so fucking bad at this. You’re not trying a case, dumbass. There’s no exhibit A. No jury to impress. There’s no winning,” Cam insisted.
“How the hell else am I supposed to get her to forgive me?”
Cam opened his mouth, then shook his head. “You know what? No. You need to figure this out on your own. I had to figure out how to unfuck things with Hazel myself.”
Levi scratched his head. “Didn’t Mom and Dad give you a verbal ass kicking and some advice?”
“Yeah, but I still handled the unfucking myself.”
I had to admit, Cam had made it impossible for Hazel not to forgive him. He’d finished her dream house, got her book rights back, and then threw in an engagement ring and two pets on top of that.
“Fine. I can unfuck things. If you did it with Hazel after you fucked up, it can’t be that hard,” I said.
“Remind me to never date anyone,” Levi muttered. “I’m exhausted just listening to you two. It’s like you fall for these women who hold up a mirror to show you your shittiest pieces, and then you have to unshit the pieces or be miserable and alone forever.”
Cam and I shrugged.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what relationships are,” I agreed.
We sat quietly for a few minutes ignoring each other until the silence got to be too much for me.
“Hey, did you know women get stuck in sports bras?”
I couldn’t tell who was snoring louder, Meetcute or Levi.
It was after three in the morning, and Cam was back at the window, legs braced, binoculars up.
Our empty beers were lined up in a serpentine path from the door.
The buffalo chicken dip was no more, and I was regretting the fact that I hadn’t brought an air mattress.
I let out a yawn. “This is one of your worst ideas. Why not just call animal control and relocate Bertha to a nice forest somewhere?”
“Because Hazel loves that fucking trash panda, and I love Hazel,” he said. “And we do stupid shit for the people we love even when they’re out of town for a week because our brother is a dumbass.”
“Glad to see you’re letting that go,” I said dryly.
Cam put down the binoculars and returned to his camp chair. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “Larry tell you Felicity came into the store this week to pick up her order?”
“I heard,” I said on another yawn. Felicity usually conned or blackmailed one of us into delivering her groceries. “It’s good to see her getting out like that.”
“Yeah. Making an effort instead of just whining about how things didn’t go her way.”
“I take it we’re back to me and how I fucked up?” I guessed.
“It’s not totally your fault. You spent tens of thousands of dollars on law school, where they drilled into your head to never admit fault and never assume responsibility. You wouldn’t know how to apologize if you had cue cards,” Cam joked.
“That’s not accurate,” I argued.
“Life isn’t some court case or legal argument to win. People make fucking mistakes. Big ones. Your job as a human fucking being isn’t to play judge and jury. You can’t argue your way to forgiveness.”
I sat back in my chair and stared up at the dark ceiling.
Fuck. He was right. I spent so much of my life focused on making sure people who did bad things were punished accordingly that I’d never learned a damn thing about forgiveness.
Especially how to earn it. There was a difference between justice and forgiveness, and I was just now realizing it. “I hate when you’re ri—”
“Shut the fuck up, fuckface,” Cam hissed.
“I’m in the middle of a breakthrough thanks to your rarely exhibited brotherly wisdom, and you want me to shut the fuck up?”
He was pointing at one of the tablets.
Motion detected.
“What the hell? Your kitchen door just opened.”
“No shit.”
“Is the house haunted?” I wondered.
I watched the screen while Cam tiptoed as quietly as a man his size could back to the window. A minute later, a furry blob waddled up onto the deck and headed straight for the door like it had a time clock to punch.
“That furry son of a bitch,” Cam growled. “I’m putting an end to this once and for all.”
He turned for the door, accidentally kicking over the first bottle, setting off an explosive chain reaction.
All three dogs lurched awake, barking like a garbage truck and a mail van had gotten into an accident in front of them.
Levi sat up abruptly. “Wha’s happening? Where’s the chicken dip?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” I told him.
“Hi,” I said breathlessly two hours later when Valerie opened the door.
“Uh. Hi. It’s not even seven a.m., Gage,” she said. Her hair was standing up in clumps, and she had an extra-large coffee mug clamped in her hand. Behind her, I could hear the sounds of a children’s TV show and giggles coming from the living room.
“I know. And I’m sorry. But I’ve been up all night because my brother’s cat has been letting a raccoon into his house at night.
They have the door lever handles instead of knobs, and the back door has the dog’s potty bells hanging from the handle, so the cat pulls on the bells and—you know what?
That’s not important. I’ve had a lot of caffeine.
The important thing is I screwed up big time with Zoey, and I realized how can she forgive me if I can’t forgive you? ”
She blinked in confusion. “I think I’m going to need a lot more coffee for this.”
“Valerie,” I said, grabbing for her free hand. “I forgive you.”
“You…what?”
I took her by her bathrobed shoulders. “I don’t think I realized it until Saturday night when you put yourself between my sister and danger. But I forgive you.”
Her lower lip trembled. “Y-you don’t have to do that. What I did was unforgivable.”
“You made a mistake. It was just a mistake. You shouldn’t have to pay for it for the rest of your life. Not when you’re trying so hard to make things right.”
“They’ll never be right again,” she said quietly.
“They’ll never be the way they were before. For any of us. But knowing that you hurt like we hurt means something. You taking responsibility, not making excuses, not asking for anything in return means something. So I forgive you. I mean it.”
Her face crumpled, and she fell into my arms. Her robe was sticky with something that I hoped was syrup.
She had a butterfly sticker in her hair.
I was hugging the woman who had ended my brother-in-law’s life.
I was hugging the woman who was sorry enough to be forgiven, the woman who’d taught me everything I needed to know about forgiveness.
“Thank you, Gage,” she said, pulling back.
I gave her shoulders another squeeze. “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to fix everything.”