Chapter 5
Alone in Arthur’s bathroom, I can finally release the fucked-up from its box and feel all the emotions that go with it. Early in my training, somewhere in the beginning of boot camp, when I was having insults hurled inches from my face, I figured out I could bookmark my emotions. That I could dissociate from the pain, humiliation, fear, and sadness clawing the sensitive layers of my skin. I developed a voice sterner than my drill sergeant’s. An internal command that infused power into a single word.
Later, I would growl the word to myself when the traitorous tears pressed at the backs of my eyes during tough training days.
Later, I would whisper to myself when mortar shells shook the base I was stationed in.
Later, I hissed at my heart when I saw the Hayworth truck parked in my driveway.
Laterdoesn’t mean gone. I’ve never been able to erase the feelings entirely, as much as I might want to. The pause is not infinite. There is the time when later is now, and the command grows weak, and the agony of suppressed feelings roars through my body, stronger for having been denied their immediate release.
My short nails, tinged gray with the oil left over from my job, try to dig into the counter of Arthur’s bathroom. But the surface is granite and has no give. The unrelenting stone helps as it bruises my fingertips. I need the steady handhold as I stare at myself in the mirror and watch my face blur with tears.
“He’s not worth it,” I tell myself, as if a logical argument will purge me of this pain.
Stupid. I loved him, and I was stupid.
Growing up with my mother, who would leave a city the same time she left the man she had fallen in love with, I swore to myself I would never let a man dictate my life. I didn’t swear them off. But I told the universe that if I were to have a man, he would bend to me. I would make my choices, and if his plans didn’t fit, then he was gone. There would be no chasing on my end. Or me running away. There would be me standing strong in myself, and a guy could take me or leave me.
But then Daren showed up in my bar, looking handsomely disheveled and flirting in his delicious Southern accent. I didn’t give in at first. I didn’t give in for months.
Then, I did. And I fell for him. Our first Thanksgiving together, he brought me here, to Green Valley. To his home. To this Tennessee town that was so different from the cities I’d lived in and the bases I’d trained on.
Green Valley was peaceful and beautiful and homey. His family was big and boisterous, and the Krauts felt like everything I’d ever wanted with my only-child life and transient childhood. Daren’s brothers and cousin reminded me of the members of my platoon that I’d liked—and none of the creepy assholes I hadn’t.
So, when he finished his degree, prepared to move back to his hometown, and asked me to come with him, I broke my rule.
I moved for a man.
“And look where that fucking landed you,” I berate my mirror self before grabbing the whiskey bottle I found in Arthur’s kitchen cabinet and swallowing another mouthful of the liquid fire.
Work, damn you. Numb my heart and my head and help me forget for a moment that I’ve made all the mistakes I swore I wouldn’t.
But the alcohol isn’t fast enough to blur the image that will forever be burned in my mind of Daren and Trinity. With him touching her the way he’d touched me. Looking at her the way he’d looked at me.
If he can forget me so easily, I should be able to do the same.
But I can’t. My cheeks itch with the salty tears streaming over them, and I can’t breathe through my nose anymore, both nostrils stuffy with grief. Sick of looking at myself and seeing the pathetic creature I’ve let a man turn me into, I turn my back to the reflection and clutch the whiskey bottle against my chest. The cold glass isn’t comforting.
The brief revenge mission I set for myself is over, and without it, I have no direction.
What do I do?
The question could be for now. Or tomorrow. Or the rest of my life.
I’d started planning a future. With him. Here in Green Valley.
Do I go, like Mom always did?Messy breakup meant leaving the place in your rearview and starting over somewhere new.
At least she taught me one important thing.
If a man breaks your heart, don’t stick around and let him do it again.
Daren and I are over. I wouldn’t have ended things based on rumors or gossip. I got my proof—too much of it really—and now, I’m done.
I’m done, I tell my heart. We’re done with him.
No need to ache. No need to send shooting pains through my body with each beat. He’s shown he’s an asshole.
Stop hurting for an asshole.
“God, just stop hurting.” The plea comes out on a choked sob as I slowly sink to the floor, back against the cabinet, a bottle of almost-finished whiskey cradled against my chest.
But my commands don’t work. I only got good enough to put things off until I was alone, and now, the pain can ravage me how it likes.
Alone. Alone. All alone.
A knock sounds on the door, as if the universe heard me and wanted to prove me wrong.
“Robin?” Arthur’s deep rumble reaches my ears just fine. I rarely have trouble with deeper voices.
My hearing loss is misogynistic in that way.
I try to say something to him. To tell him I’m fine. To point out it’s long past his bedtime. To claim I’ll be out in a minute, looking fresh as a field of daisies.
But all that emerges from my throat is another gasping sob.
The big man opens the door I forgot to lock, and I stare at my knees so I don’t have to see the pity on his face. That’ll only make me cry harder. To have recognition that what happened tonight—what’s been happening for months now—is a shitty thing that changes lives.
“Robin,” he says again, then nothing else.
A heavy presence settles beside me, and I don’t have to look to know Arthur sank to the bathroom floor next to me.
For a stretch, we stay there—him silent, me trying to be quiet as more sobs shake my body. Arthur is good at not talking when there’s nothing to say. I thought I was, too, but maybe the whiskey loosened my tongue because when the wave of tears ebbs, I blurt the most frustrating bit.
“Why do I still love him?” I rasp, my throat raw from alcohol and agony. “He hurt me. All this love”—I spit the hated word out—“should go away. Why isn’t it going away?”
“Robin...” Arthur says again, like my name is the only word he knows.
The whiskey bottle slips out of my lap, landing with a soft thud on the bathmat, and I try to curl in on myself, so much shame and self-loathing coating the inside of me that I want to disappear just to get a moment of relief.
The world shifts around me, and I think I truly am drunk by now. But then I realize Arthur has scooped me up off the floor to resettle me in his lap. The burly man wraps his arms around my body, holding me tight against his chest, and guides my head to his shoulder, where my never-ending tears soak the collar of his shirt and the dark strands of his beard.
“I love him too,” he says, the words rumbling from his body to mine, audible because my right ear isn’t pressed against his pec. “And I hate him.”
Maybe being the reason Arthur hates his cousin—who is more like his brother—should make me feel terrible.
But it doesn’t.
It makes me feel less alone.
As I let another round of misery sweep through me, I fist my hand in Arthur’s shirt and press myself as tight as I can against his warm, comforting body.
His crushing hold is all that keeps me together.