Chapter 10
[Trinity]
To my dismay, Dart remains.
After lunch, he said he was going to work on stripping more of the roof, and I decided I needed to get away from the house I’d learned was still his, despite only my name being on the title.
I go to my mom’s, whom I tell I need a nap. “Just an hour break.”
Despite Dart’s sweet display with Mirabelle and half a sandwich for sustenance, my anger returns in a flash.
How dare he keep from me that we are still married? How dare he not sign those divorce papers? The sheer audacity that he’d kept this from me.
Not to mention, I could have unintentionally cheated. Not that I’d had any real interest in anyone else, but still . . . it could have happened.
He was unbelievable. Irresponsible. Downright deceptive even.
I’ve done years of personal work trying to heal myself. Grieve the ache of not having children. Mourn the loss of my marriage and Dart’s disappearance. I’m in a better place than I once was because of these past three years, and now this blast of information.
I can practically feel the anger bubbling in my veins. He had no right.
And in many ways, I feel betrayed once again. Disappointed. Let down. Alone.
Dammit, Dart.
As I lie awake on the double bed in my childhood room, I stare up at the ceiling, flipping through the stages of my life.
I’m not that thirteen-year-old girl anymore with Dart Rivers living down the hall.
I’m not the seventeen-year-old young lady who witnessed a friend have a miscarriage in a high school bathroom and decided right then and there I wanted to be a nurse.
That seventeen-year-old who finally took notice of Dart, my older brother’s best friend. Felt the way my belly stirred when I looked at him.
But I had big plans for me.
I went to nursing school, and after two years at another hospital, I took a job with County General and returned to my hometown for a while.
Dart Rivers was still here. Still friends with Tate. Working with Clint. A favorite of Dad’s.
When a much younger Dart left our house, he moved into a trailer outside of town for a few years, raising trouble that worried my parents he’d head down a similar path as his parents.
But somewhere along the way, he changed direction.
He moved out of the trailer park and into an apartment with a friend. He’d taken a job working for another construction company with Clint. He seemed focused, determined to be better than who he could have been.
And he was a huge flirt.
He’d been relentless.
“Do I look like I’m that easy?” I’d said to him one night, when we’d both been drinking too much, and I was hanging out with friends at Milton Roadhouse while he was there with his crew.
“You look like forever.”
I faked a gag, pointing my fingers toward my open mouth and rolling my throat in a choking sound.
“Does that line work on anyone?”
“Only need it to work on one person.” He winked at me. So damn smooth. And yet, he never left my side that night. Didn’t dance with other girls. Didn’t go home with someone else, which I hadn’t known until years later.
I resisted him for six weeks before tequila talked too loudly.
When we finally kissed, I felt like I’d wrapped my hands around a live wire. Like one of those cartoon characters you see with their hair squiggled and their limbs extended, teeth chattering.
Kissing Dart was a need I couldn’t satiate, and we were suddenly sneaking off every chance we got to bring our lips together and grind against one another.
But I don’t want to think about the passion Dart and I once shared.
I’m still pissed.
Deciding sleep isn’t going to be found, I fling my legs off the side of the bed and sit upright, scrubbing at my face. I’m too tired to even cry over this news.
I’m still married to Dart Rivers.
Perhaps I’m just numb to the idea.
When I head downstairs, I move toward the kitchen, where Ruby James is sitting at the table, swinging her little legs beneath it. Clint lost another nanny, and Mom has been helping him out by babysitting the precious six-year-old.
“Aunt Trinity, want to have a cookie with me?” Her little legs swing faster as she eats the creamy center of the sandwich cookie first.
“Sure, sweetheart.” I pull out a chair and sit opposite her while Mom stands, swaying side-to-side, Mirabelle curled against her chest.
“How is she doing?” I ask.
“She’s an angel.” Mom smiles. Her dark eyes dance with love. We’re all falling hard and fast for this new blessing in our lives. “But the bigger question is how are you doing?”
“I don’t know what you mean?” I counter, already knowing she knows something.
“Ruby James, if you promise to be neat as a pin, how about I set you up on the couch to watch a few minutes of Frozen?” Mom offers to remove Ruby James, so we can chat.
“I got her,” I say, standing back up and settling Ruby James on the couch with her favorite movie on the large screen television the boys bought Mom.
They said she needed a bigger screen for her failing eyesight. Mom has 20/20 vision.
The real reason they gifted her the television was so they could watch sports when the family gathered. Although more often than not, we come together for breakfast.
“All set?” I give Ruby James a thumbs up. A small lap tray rests over her outstretched legs, two sandwich cookies on a paper plate shaped like a Zebra’s head, and milk in a covered cup with a straw.
She smiles without looking at me as the movie begins.
Returning to the kitchen, I offer to take Mirabelle from Mom, who has taken a seat in a kitchen chair.
“Not yet,” she says. “I’m soaking up the Mimi snuggles.”
Mom had grandchildren in spurts. Cort’s son Josh is twenty-three and has a child of his own. Clint had Ruby James only six years ago. And now, Mirabelle.
I have concerns about attachment. Me. Mom. Anyone in my family growing too close to Mirabelle before legal matters are finalized.
Still, none of us can help loving such a sweet, easy baby.
Running her hand up Mirabelle’s back, Mom gives her a kiss on the head before playfully narrowing her eyes at me.
“Now, what’s this I hear about Dart being back?”
“How the hell did you hear that?” I shriek quietly, like that rumor couldn’t possibly be true.
“The Babbling Bean, of course.”
My mother loves to bake, and in her forties, she opened a coffee shop that serves a small selection of her favorite items, along with fresh brew. The uniqueness of her coffee counter is that it is also a bookstore, heavy on romance selections.
“He only got here yesterday.” Surprise laces my voice at how quickly the news has traveled. Drawing a looping design with my fingertip on the table, I avoid looking directly at my mom.
“And how are you doing with that?”
I toss myself back in the chair. “How the hell am I supposed to be doing?” I glance at Mirabelle in my mother’s arms, holding onto the truth of the situation for some reason.
How am I supposed to feel about my ex-husband not being my ex?
And how was I going to tell my mother my husband is still my husband?
My parents adored Dart.
Dad never had any reservations about Dart asking me to be his wife, even though Dart had been concerned Dad would not give his blessing.
Mom said she already considered Dart one of the family.
Which meant Mom had been crushed when Dart left. Thankfully, Dad had not been alive. He suffered a heart attack years before Dart took off. Dart never wanted to disappoint Russell Haven, who certainly would have been upset if he’d known what Dart did to us.
“Heard he’s staying at the house.”
My mouth falls open because that decision was only made an hour ago, and not willingly on my part. However, I didn’t have the heart to kick him out.
Whether that made me selfless or a fool was still to be determined.
His reason for gifting it to me comes back to me. His fears about homelessness and death.
Those fears make my stomach tighten.
I am angry with Dart. Pissed even, but I do not wish him to die. And I didn’t want him to feel homeless.
Images of him crushed against a cement wall, flipping a car, or burning in flames bursting from a crashed vehicle make me physically ill.
The thought of such torture causes me to shiver.
“I guess it’s his home, too,” I whisper, avoiding the knowing gaze of my mom. She’s aware that he gave me the house as part of the divorce settlement. Or so I thought.
Not as a protection plan in case of sudden death. Not because he was afraid for me and wanted to make certain I was taken care of.
I place my hand over my belly, gurgling with acid at the thought.
“What do you mean . . . you guess?” Her brows pinch, concern in that divot.
I shake my head, unable to answer, as I’m still processing everything myself.
Mom slowly nods once. “Okay then. Do you think that’s a good idea? Letting him stay with you?”
Something in the way she asks, almost like she thinks it’s a good idea but wants to know my opinion, has me tilting my head.
I don’t think it’s a good idea that he stays, because I have other concerns.
“He’ll leave,” I mutter, turning my head, looking toward the kitchen cabinets, while not really focusing on them. “Eventually.”
I still hadn’t forgotten that nugget of information about his racing career. How it was probably over, but definitely on a break.
“And what if he doesn’t?” Mom counters, not letting the issue rest. Her questions are asked out of love and concern for me.
“Guess I’ll cross that bridge if it gets built.”
I would have never pegged Dart as someone who would run from problems. Never pegged him as someone who might lie to me either, like keeping our non-existent divorce from me.
But I also recall that Dart did ask me to come with him. He might have wanted to run away, but he wanted me to go with him.
And I’d said no.
Our separation had done me some good. Mentally, I was in a better space.
Without the pressure of trying to get pregnant, I had to refocus my attention.
I took it inward. I looked at me. Where I’d gone wrong in our marriage.
How I could have done things differently.
Who I should have been and who I wanted to be. And I’d done it all for me.
Because Dart was gone.
Like the namesake of this town, he would go rogue again despite what he initially promised.
For better or worse.
And my heart was not up for drowning in him a second time.