Chapter 9
[Trinity]
Isputter and cough, although nothing comes out of my mouth. Not one of the complicated questions racing around my head.
How?
Why?
What?
“I sent you the divorce papers,” I eventually state, certain I’d had the correct address of the arena where he practiced.
“And I never signed them.”
I stare at him, like I didn’t hear him correctly. He couldn’t possibly be as blasé about the situation as he sounds. My shoulders stiffen, but my heart hammers away, knocking at my rib cage. I can’t draw in a breath. He cannot be serious.
“What do you mean you didn’t sign them?” The disbelief in my voice should say it all, but the clench in my belly knows the simple truth.
He didn’t sign them.
For half a second, something a lot like longing and relief leaps to my throat, but I swallow it down, knowing the emotions are dangerous. The bile is more a warning not to trust him than to believe him.
“When I called you Forever, I meant it.” His whiskey eyes turn to flames. Devotion in the flicker. Dedication in his words. He wasn’t letting me go. He never really had.
Slow your roll, sister.
He already left you. You shouldn’t believe him. You can’t trust him.
“You left,” I remind him.
“And I asked you to come with me,” he tosses back, the volley serrated like the edge of a key.
He had asked. Practically begged. He thought a change for him would bring a change for us.
Maybe it would have.
But I was still me. Not that having a baby was all about me. He never felt that way. We wanted to fill those upper bedrooms, but I had become a woman crazed. One determined to make it happen.
Sex was scheduled. Temperatures taken. Failure not acceptable. We could do this. The physical connection so prevalent in our marriage had taken a back seat to function and mechanics.
Mentally, I was psyching myself out, almost repelling the thing I desired most.
Biologically, it just wasn’t happening.
Dart started turning down sex, rejection that stung soul deep. Like my gut literally twisted because he wouldn’t touch me, didn’t want me. The last miscarriage pushed him over the edge. He believed he’d lose me permanently.
Then, he sprang on me the idea of joining a race team, moving, and making a fresh start.
I knew he’d been back at the local canyon, racing in circles to let off steam, but I never thought it’d go as far as it went. And I hadn’t wanted any part of it.
Because he appeared to have moved on to a new dream, a new goal, for him, and I . . . felt like I had nothing.
As the silence drags between us, Dart finally clears his throat. There is no sense in rehashing an old argument.
The one where he asked me to go with him, and I refused to leave.
“I’m not leaving again.” He drives that determination into the vacant lot of my heart. Braking a second, he lifts his head and levels me with conviction. “This is our house. You are my home.”
He jabs at the dining table to emphasize his point.
“Why gift me the house then?” I counter. The mortgage was marked paid. The deed titled in my name.
He falls back in his chair and lowers his gaze, dragging his fingertips along the edge of the tabletop.
“In case I died on the track. I wanted you to be taken care of. I wanted you to be secure with the house.”
My heart plummets to my stomach. He thought he’d die? I didn’t want him to die. I wanted him to love me. I had wanted him to love me.
When he finally glances back at me, a deep-seated fear dulls the flame in his sharp eyes. He hadn’t been afraid of death. His fear was something else.
Dart was afraid of homelessness.
His mother had him too young. His father was never present.
Eventually, his mother disappeared, lost to drugs.
She’d left Dart with his grandparents, whom I’d never met.
He was especially close to his grandmother, who died when he was in middle school, leaving him with an ornery, abusive grandfather who passed away when Dart was seventeen.
He told Dart he would never amount to anything.
Dart had been too young to live on his own.
Too old for foster care. Instead, he became transient, moving from friend’s house to friend’s house, until finally staying at my house his and Tate’s senior year.
For some reason, my dad took to Dart and told him to stop couch surfing.
With Cortland away at college, Dart was set up in Tate’s room.
Clint had his own space.
I was only thirteen at the time.
Dart was strikingly handsome as a teenager, but annoying, like my older brothers, and I ignored him. His teasing. His winks. His sharp smile made my newly-teenage belly flutter.
When he was eighteen, he moved out.
You’ll always have a home with us, I’d heard my mom tell Dart before he left.
He wanted to make something of himself. Be someone, he’d told my dad.
He didn’t go off to college like his friends but started work in construction.
Years later, after we were married, Dart told me how a house of his own was something he craved. When we bought this place, he actually cried. Not a full-on sob but a few tears to mark his accomplishment.
And he did become someone. To me. He was my best friend, my lover, my husband.
His fear of homelessness now included me. He didn’t want me without a home, even if the place was missing him.
I stare at his face. His eyes are sad, but the laugh lines are still present.
We shared so much joy when we purchased this place, had so many hopes and plans.
He worked so hard to give me everything I wanted.
Not just finished hardwood floors and a new kitchen layout, but a space that was ours.
A roof over our heads and a fire in the hearth to keep us warm in the winter.
We’d been house poor with simple dinners, but we had one another to nourish our hearts. Our souls.
My brows pinch with the memory, the depth of our connection and desires.
It’s all such a confusing battle. The beauty of the past mingled with the hurt of the present.
“Tell me you don’t love me anymore.” He interrupts my thoughts. “And I’ll walk back out that door. You’ll never need to see me again if you can look me in the eyes and mean it.”
I lower my lids, glaring at him across the table. The ringing in my ears distracts me. My pulse rushing, memories like chaos firing in all directions inside my head.
“I hate you.” My voice is quiet, rough like loose gravel in my throat, because the truth is rocky. I am caught in the crossfire between anger and love. What hurts the most is the disappointment.
Promises unkept.
I sigh, turning my head away from his assessing gaze. The fear that he might read in my eyes the truth. A truth even I’m not able to put into words.
“That’s what I thought.” The corner of his mouth tips upward. He’s not gloating, but he is a bit smug. He heard the lack of heat in my declaration, the absence of conviction.
I could still love him. Maybe, possibly, but right now, I don’t like him.
His expression sobers a bit. He swallows thickly. “I’m sorry, Trin. I know the words are not enough, but I’m just sorry.”
He sounds contrite, but his actions . . . they always speak differently.
“And I want to come home.” He blinks hard and drops his gaze.
Time seems to freeze as I process what he’s asking.
“You aren’t suggesting you stay here, are you?” I finally state, my voice trembling. My emotional state matches the quiver.
“I’m not suggesting it, I’m stating a fact. I’m here to stay. I’m home.”
His forearms flex on the table surface. Forearms I do not need to distract me, with their ink and their raised veins, and their overall strength.
Why the hell are his forearms so attractive?
Those arms that once held me. Looped over my shoulder as we sat somewhere or circled around my back when we danced. He’d drape his arm over my waist when we slept and brace himself on those arms when he was over me, entering me, moving in time with my heartbeat.
And dammit . . . I do not want to think about those arms.
“Absolutely not,” I counter, unable to pull my gaze from his forearms.
“Absolutely.” His smile grows larger, catching me staring at his arms. He makes fists, forcing the strength in them to pop just the slightest bit.
Our eyes lock on one another, and the tension between us heightens, like a thick fog, heavy and blinding.
I should be afraid of what I can’t see, and yet, an electric current exists within me. A pull to give in, to push through the opaque veil and seek the sunshine behind it.
I clench my thighs beneath the table, squirming a little bit.
Like my body recognizes something I don’t.
I cross my legs to stop the sudden pulse, but the position only heightens the thumping rhythm.
I clutch at the sides of my seat, mentally willing my body to stop responding to Dart’s gaze.
A gaze where he quirks one eyebrow, like his body reads mine.
He senses my unease, and the lion in him is ready to pounce.
A sharp squawk turns both our heads.
Mirabelle.
Through the mesh sides around the bassinet, I see her legs move. A synchronized lift within the swaddling blanket around them. She lets out a second squeak, announcing she’s awake and needs me, and I’m so grateful for the distraction.
Shoving off my chair, I watch Dart move just as quickly, beating me to the bassinet.
He gazes down at Mirabelle, and I pause for some reason, giving him a minute to admire her.
Does he see what I see in her? Love. Hope. A future.
Hesitantly, he reaches into the bassinet, running the thick pad of his finger over her clenched knuckles. Mirabelle opens her fist, and Dart slips his finger into her tiny palm.
She wraps her fingers around his single one. The response is natural. An instinct to grasp. And yet the way Mirabelle appears to focus on Dart, matching the surprised stare he gives back to her, something in my chest cracks.
“She’s so beautiful,” he whispers, his voice rough with awe. “Just like her momma.”
I swallow thickly, licking my lips as well, knowing she’ll never look like me. Maybe she’ll have similar features one day, but she’ll always have her own special, unique beauty.
“Can I hold her?” His tone is still thick, his eyes fixed on her, like he can’t look away.
I reach into the bassinet, causing him to step aside, and I pick her up, but then hand her to him.
“Hold her head,” I gently warn.
Dart cups the back of her tiny head, using his other hand to hold her butt. Mirabelle continues to watch him, blindly trusting that he won’t drop her. He’ll keep her safe.
Slowly, he lifts her and presses a kiss to her forehead, closing his eyes a second before springing them open and glancing at me.
The well of those whiskey eyes is so deep, I don’t have a clue what he’s thinking or feeling. Only that he swallows hard once more and tugs her to his shoulder, like he’s seen me hold her.
The gallop of my heart is so strong, I swear he can hear it racing.
Mirabelle is so tiny in his hands, and he’s holding her like she’s the most precious thing he’s ever held.
It’s too much. It’s just too much. My eyes begin to burn again, and I blink repeatedly.
“Why don’t you let me hold her so you can eat?” Dart says quietly, offering me a moment. Not just for lunch but for my thoughts.
“I don’t think I could eat,” I admit, my stomach twisting once more.
“Just try,” he says in a hushed tone.
There is so much more in that simple request. More than I dare consider.
Like a second chance at loving him.
A second chance for both of us.