Chapter 47
NOLAN
47
My knuckles are white. My fingers crush the steering wheel.
As we descend the winding mountain road leading toward the heart of town, the radio plays on low. The news station is announcing that the school renovations are almost complete and that classes will resume over the coming week or so. This should be excellent news, but inside, I just feel numb.
Inez and I barely share a word as I drive her to the train station. I know that this is what’s right for her but I can’t help but ruminate about everything I will be losing once she steps on that train.
When I pull up at the curb, I get a flashback to the night a few weeks ago when I picked her up right here in that dirty wedding dress. I never imagined that night would lead to all this.
In the short time that we’ve been together, she’s come to mean so much to me. My best friend. My companion. My lover.
Inez never took my shit. She never let me hide behind my excuses. She demanded that I be the best version of myself if I wanted to be in her life. As she had every right to.
She loves my daughter in a way that every little girl needs to be loved. And Stella loves her with her whole heart.
Letting go feels so wrong. But it’s what’s best for Inez.
I cut the engine and sit motionless behind the wheel. Inez turns and looks at me.
“Nolan…” she calls softly after a long, silent moment.
“I…I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this again,” I mumble.
“Do what?” Her voice is feather light.
“Watch you walk away from me.” I squeeze my eyes shut, recalling how much it hurt the first time she left town.
Her lips part tentatively. “I could stay…”
For one selfish moment, I’m tempted to agree. To beg, to plead, to demand that she stay. But I could never live with myself if I did that to her.
“No, baby. No, I…” I shake my head. “You need to go. That’s the right choice.”
Before she can say another word, I jump out of the car. I open her door and help her out before grabbing her luggage from the trunk. Since she already has her ticket, we stroll past the ticketing counter and I carry her bags right to the gate of the quiet train station.
I start to speak. “Make sure you text me the name of—”
“—the name of my hotel. For security reasons,” she nods with a pained smile, repeating the request I made a dozen times last night.
Silence fills a short moment.
“Oh, I made a list of cleaning supplies distributors you might want to check out,” she tells me. “I left it in the filing cabinet. I just…”
My heart aches. “Good. That’s great. Thanks.”
But I don’t give a fuck about cleaning supplies distributors and neither does she. Not when both of our hearts are breaking in real-time.
I angle my body toward her. I take her face in my hands. She looks up at me and the anxiousness in her eyes kills me. “You’re gonna do great,” I say to her, lowering my forehead to hers. “Remember what I told you—if you doubt yourself, know that I believe in you and that I’m rooting for you, no matter how much distance separates us. I will always be supporting you and loving you.”
She smiles somberly. “I’ll be loving you across the distance, too, Nolan.”
“And my door is still open for you. I mean it. No matter how much time passes, my door and my heart will always be open for you.”
She nods, pressing her eyes shut against her tears. I shut my eyes too because the pain on her face is excruciating.
I wish this didn’t hurt so much. It shouldn’t hurt this much. I always knew I wouldn’t be able to keep her. I should have been prepared for this moment. But I’m not. I’m really, really not.
She takes a shaky breath and then she speaks. “Please don’t go back to Lilian. Please. I know you want Stella to have a mother, and maybe…maybe you’ll have moments of feeling lonely but—”
My eyes snap open with urgency when she says that. “Inez. What the hell are you—?”
“No. I may be a horrible, selfish bitch for saying this. But I need to say it anyway. Don’t go back to Lilian. She doesn’t deserve you. She’ll only hurt you and Stella again.”
“You don’t have to worry about Lilian. Now that I know what it’s like to be loved by you—what it’s like to be loved for real—I could never go back to her.”
I will not let my ex-wife lure me with sex and empty promises like she usually does. It may have worked the last time she was in town. And the time before that. But things are different now. I’m different. I know what I want, and I’m not going to settle for a flighty, uncommitted woman who only thinks about herself. That’s simply all there is to Lilian. I’m not sure why it took me so long to see it.
Lilian cares about Lilian. Case closed.
“You’re better off on your own.” Inez swallows thickly. “Or…or maybe you’ll find somebody else and—”
“There is nobody else in this world for me but you. And if we can’t be together, I’ll just go back to the way I was doing things before—on my own. But I’ll never be the same. I’ll always love you.”
When Inez moved into my house, I was barely holding myself together. Just like my car and like my fridge and like my coffee maker. I was a man all patched up with duct tape. But this woman just threw her arms around me and held me in a way I’d never been held before. Like she couldn’t even see the duct tape.
That’s a kind of love I will never forget.
“I’ll always love you, too.”
Her train slowly rolls into the station and I know our moment is almost up.
I whisper by her ear. “I know our time together was short but I’m so grateful I got to love you, Carolina.”
“You have no idea how much our time together has healed me, Theodore. I’m so grateful I got to love you.”
I wrap my arms around her, engulfing her completely. I kiss her forehead, the tip of her nose, her soft lips. We don’t stop kissing until the mechanical boarding announcement sounds over the station’s speakers.
I let go of her and watch as she walks away, dragging her luggage behind her. I watch as she hands over her ticket and boards the train. I watch as the doors slide shut and the locomotive whisks off down the track to its next destination.
Wincing in pain, I grab at the front of my T-shirt. Suddenly, I’m very much aware of the gaping hole inside my chest. My heart is gone.
Shit. Inez must have accidentally folded it up and packed it inside her luggage.
But now it’s too late to do anything about it.