Chapter 24
[Dart]
Iwake first and take a second to process where I am.
The room is familiar. The layout. The paint color on the wall. And yet everything about this space feels different.
I shift my head, finding Trin still tucked under my arm. Her arm draped over my waist. Her breath against my chest.
A quiet awareness of what we did on the staircase and our interaction in the shower afterward surrounds me.
I tug her a little tighter to me, not hoping to wake, but not willing to let her go yet.
The feeling of holding her again. In this position. In our bed. It’s like a dream. Only I have proof it wasn’t because she’s still here. She didn’t disappear last night. The heat of her body seeps into mine. Her skin is so soft when I tickle my fingertips along her shoulder.
Trin wakes with a little start. Her body stiffening beneath mine, perhaps wondering where she is, just like I did. Then slowly she melts into my side and tips up her head.
“Good morning.” Her voice is groggy with sleep. One of my favorite sounds from her.
“Morning, baby.” I kiss the tip of her nose and continue to stroke my fingertips around her shoulder.
“How did you sleep?” I ask, worried that she was plagued by more fears about us.
“Surprisingly well.” She shifts down my arm, getting a better view of my face.
I shift as well to mirror her position, both of us on our side. “Surprisingly well,” I tease, meeting her eyes. Eyes that still hold a ghost of concern, and I want to address that issue. I want to address all her worries, but right now I just want to breathe in our position, luxuriate in it.
“Better than I have in years,” I admit.
“Me too,” she whispers.
I take her hand and bring it to my lips, kissing the ends of each finger. Trinity watches me, a slow smile curling one side of her mouth higher than the other.
“Hi,” I whisper, suddenly hyperaware of our body position, while almost shy about it when I’ve never been shy a day in my life.
“Hi,” she says back.
Suddenly, I recall one of our first times in her bed.
We were in a position just like we are now.
Just staring at one another. For my part, I kept wondering if we were real.
If this incredible, beautiful, smart, driven woman was really lying next to me.
Had she really let me touch her, enter her, kiss her everywhere?
Presently, Trin reaches forward and traces down my nose.
A subtle reminder that not only did it happen as I thought all those years ago, but it happened again. And again.
A dozen years of marriage to her, and some things were steadfast. She was still incredible and beautiful, and smart and driven. And she did let me touch her and enter her.
I can only hope to kiss her everywhere soon.
For now, I lean forward, breaking our eye contact, and run my nose along the side of hers. Her breath hitches. But her hand comes to the side of my head, stroking her fingers through my hair.
“We should probably get up soon,” she whispers.
“Okay,” I mutter, still running my nose against hers, breathing her in.
Her summertime and fresh meadow scent is still apparent. A hint of sleeping against me.
We don’t move.
Her hand rubs down the side of my neck and over my chest, resting against my sternum. I slide my hand over her hip, feeling the silky material of her nightdress.
“Dart,” she whispers, the sound a little breathless more than a warning.
“Yeah, Forever?” I smile, my mouth just centimeters from hers.
“If we don’t move, I might attack you again.”
I chuckle, low and deep. My chest expands. She didn’t attack me. She . . . I don’t know what she did to me. Make love is too soft. Fucked me is too hard.
She clung to me.
For all her protests while dancing, she clung to me on those stairs, and I did the same to her.
“Promises, promises,” I tease, speaking quietly right near her mouth.
She leans forward and brushes her lips against mine. She isn’t kissing me. Not exactly.
“I promise,” she says against my mouth, then she pulls free and tosses back the covers, sliding out of bed.
She laughs, knowing what she’s done to me. I’m hard and horny . . . for my wife.
When we reach Mary Haven’s house, the driveway is full of pickup trucks. Saturday morning breakfasts are apparently still a thing around here.
“Hello,” Trinity calls out as we enter. The chatter coming from the back of the house signals that is where the majority of her family gathers.
Trinity enters the kitchen first. I stand behind her.
All conversation comes to an abrupt end.
Mary is standing at the stove. Cortland sits at the table. Vale is holding Mirabelle. Clint sips a mug of coffee while his little girl is seated beside Cortland, coloring.
And Tate slowly stands from his chair. “I just lost my appetite.”
The flinch in Trinity is subtle. Just a twinge of her shoulders, but it’s enough to raise my hackles.
“Tate.” My tone is sharp. “Can I have a word with you? Outside.”
The tension in the kitchen doubles.
Mary slowly turns, spatula in hand, raised and ready to speak.
“I’m leaving,” Tate announces.
“Outside.” I snap. “Now.” The gauntlet is thrown down. He can either step outside with me or look like an ass in front of his family.
He pushes in his chair, making it thud against the table, and slips out the back door.
Trinity’s head turns, her eyes concerned, but I rub my hand up her back and kiss her cheek. “Be right back.”
I expect Tate to sneak around the side of the house and disappear. Instead, he stands in the middle of the backyard, a space we’ve used for parties and family celebrations.
His arms are crossed, eyes aimed at me like arrows. Tate and I are roughly the same height. He might be broader than me, but I could still put up a good fight. And right now, Tate is looking to fight.
“Just what the fuck is the problem?” I stop a few feet in front of him.
“Are you serious?” He glares at me while fisting his fingers at his side.
“Look. I know I left. I know I hurt your sister. I broke my own heart at the same time.” I thump my fist against my chest. Tate has never been in love.
Not really, and while it used to not bother me, each man to his own, his lack of a true relationship is one reason I never went to him with my issues.
Besides those troubles revolving around his sister, I really didn’t think Tate would understand.
I love his sister, but it doesn’t mean marriage is easy. Relationships take work. Hard work. Tate doesn’t get that.
“Yeah, well, not everything is about you,” he snaps.
This pulls me up short. “Then what is the fucking issue? Because I’m not going anywhere. And our friends are still my friends.”
“Friends?” Tate practically spits. “You were like my fucking brother.”
We were like brothers. We were both a little rougher than Cortland and Clint. A little more reckless and daring. And I wonder where he’s going with this thought.
“And you fucking left me.” He smacks his chest.
What? “Tate.” My throat clogs, the lump inside like a ball of acid. “I tried to talk to you, it’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“Trinity is your sister.” I didn’t feel comfortable telling him about our sex life. The disconnection. The separation between us. He didn’t understand how deeply it hurt her to not have a baby. He didn’t understand how it was killing me not to give my wife what she wanted.
I wanted to be a father. His dad had been a wonderful example of one.
“That’s a poor excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse. And it wasn’t all about your sister anyway. It was about me.”
I sigh, turning my head and squinting in the morning light. “I was tired of feeling like a failure. I was just stuck.” I glance back at him. “Not giving Trin a baby. Not fulfilling my promises to her.”
His eyes widen.
“Even with Cort and Clint.” I glance over my shoulder, as if they can hear me. “I’d been working construction for more than twenty years. I needed to do something different. Something I could control. Something I could win.”
If anyone can understand the sensation of wanting to win, to be significant, it was Tate.
He’d lived in the shadow of Cortland his entire life.
Cort and his professional football success.
Tate might have even been a better athlete than Cort, but he never got the break he needed to do more, be more.
Part of that might have been because of his attitude.
Tate acts like he’s owed something. He’s never seen how easy he has it, how much he already has.
“And you wouldn’t talk to me either,” I remind him.
Much like his sister, I called him. Tried to explain myself. Tate was all too happy to head to that old coal mine canyon and watch me race, but he wouldn’t speak to me once I left.
I assumed his issue was about hurting his sister. Watching as he turns his head, his jaw tight, I realize something. “This is about you.”
He whips his head back in my direction.
“You’re upset because . . . I did something for myself. I was a success.” It wasn’t that Tate wanted me to fail. It’s simply that I’d done something he hadn’t exactly done himself.
His brother had gone off to be a football star.
Petty had been famous with his band.
Marshall was a success with his distillery.
And I’d been victorious, for a little while, as a race car driver.
“Tate.” I sigh. “Don’t you see, man? It doesn’t matter?” He doesn’t need to be a football star or in a band, own his own business, or race laps around a track. He is a success in his own right.
“Easy for you to say. You left.”
It wasn’t about leaving. Nothing ever held Tate back in this town, other than . . . him.
“And now I’m back. Because the most important things are here.” I point at the ground. “Trin. And now Mirabelle.”
Tate scoffs.
“Just because you don’t want to be a dad doesn’t mean I never did. You had the best father, Tate.” My voice cracks at thoughts of Russell. His warm laughter. His kind heart. His belief in me.
“Don’t,” he demands, lasering his eyes on me.
“He was so proud of you, no matter what.”
“Dart.” He grits. “I’m fucking warning you.”
“You have an entire family who loves you.” I wave toward the house behind me. “When is enough enough?”
“You tell me,” he spits. “You had a wife and a home, everything you ever wanted as well.”
Tate knows my deepest desires, and he is right. I had what I’d always wanted, and I stepped away from it. I almost lost it, and now I’m scrambling to get it all back.
I lower my head, shaking it slightly. “I can’t explain it all to you, Tate. Call it a midlife crisis. Call it a stumbling block. Call it a fucking mistake. I’m human, alright?”
Max Larsen saw it that way. A forty-something man feeling empty inside. He recruited me to race, to make a change in my life. But he also understood the value of a good woman. He wanted me to bring Trinity along for the ride. I wanted her there. But I’d still been lost.
I tucked into racing, and sped around a track, chasing . . . something.
Something I hadn’t found until I came back to Trinity and Mirabelle.
Completion.
“I’m sorry I disappointed you.” I blow out a breath and slip my hands into my pockets.
Tate snorts.
“And I’m sorry that I hurt you.” I swallow thickly. “It hurt me that one of my best friends wouldn’t listen to me. Wouldn’t hear me out.”
Tate stares back at me. His eyes so similar to his sister’s, but more wild, almost cagey. He isn’t any more perfect than I am. And one day, I hope he finds atonement for the things he’s done.
“You left me, too, Tate.” Sure, I still had Marshall and Hutch, and Petty on the fly, but Tate and I were the closest. He was the brother I never had. Family always forgives, Petty says. I want Tate to forgive me, but I can’t make him do it.
When he doesn’t say anything more, I turn away from him, take two steps, then stop to glance over my shoulder. “You should come back inside. Your mom made breakfast. Your sister is here with her new baby. Your family wants to spend time with you.”
Family. That’s what Tate was to me. A brother who disappointed me, like I disappointed his sister.
The difference between Tate and me is that I’m owning up to my mistakes. Trying to atone for them. He can accept me or not, but I won’t let him walk out on the good things he has inside that house.
His mom. His brothers. His sister. Their growing families.
Tate is blessed in more ways than he recognizes, and it is too bad he doesn’t see it.
I’ve waved a green flag, signaling I’m ready to begin again. Be friends. Put the wreckage behind us.
Only Tate can decide to speed up or be left behind.