Chapter 23
Christian
I’m home now, so I cut the engine of my car and get out. I practically skip up to the front door and let myself in.
It’s seven o’clock, and Lana will be waking up soon. Her alarm usually goes on at seven fifteen these days, which I feel better about. She’s allowing herself to rest and I’m happy helping in whatever way I can.
I kick off my sneakers at the door, put them on her shoe rack, and drop my gym bag and take off my sweaty shirt in the guest room before I go to the kitchen. I start the coffee maker before I open the fridge and grab ingredients for the breakfast I’m going to make before I get into the shower.
We have fallen into a routine since I’ve moved into the guest room, perfectly in sync. And she is still so patient with me, encouraging me to speak about it at my own pace. I tell her some things, but they aren’t enough.
Some days I wish she wasn’t so patient or so in love with me because I don’t deserve it when I’m omitting so much, and I hate myself for it.
Lana still gives me everything she has. She kisses me in the morning, wraps her arms around me from behind while I make us breakfast. She has dinner with me every night when she gets home from the shop.
I help with her errands and the groceries, and I love it.
I feel human. It feels like I have everything I’ve ever wanted, but one thing is still missing, and it’s my fault.
I’m still holding back.
I haven’t told her about going to rehab or anything else that happened before that.
Much less the things I’m too ashamed to even think about.
Things that make me wish I could take out my brain and slice those pieces of my history out.
I’d rather never think about those things ever again, even after I die.
Instead, I’d rather think about last weekend and our three nights at the carnival. We always did all three nights since the nearest amusement park was hours away and we shared a love for roller coasters—until last weekend when I got sick on the pirate ship of all rides.
Of all rides!
“Morning,” a familiar, angelic and mellifluous voice says. I feel her arms come around me, her face nestling against my bare back. Then a kiss on my spine. “Smells good.”
“Ham and mozzarella cheese omelet,” I say and turn around in her arms. “Good morning.”
On her toes, she reaches up to kiss my lips. “I’m tired of this.”
“Of a good breakfast?”
She glares. “No. I wake up without you, Christian,” she murmurs. “Move upstairs.”
I nod. Tonight. I’ll tell her tonight before I go to my meeting. “Okay,” I rasp.
Saying okay was one of the few, best decisions I’ve ever made because that smile on her face, the way her caramel eyes melt as she looks up at me, makes everything worth it.
Tonight. I’m telling her tonight!
“Really?” Lana breathes, eyes bright.
“Yes, baby,” I say, cupping her cheeks.
“Good.” She grins, biting her lip. “Because that was me officially asking you to move in with me.”
“It was?”
She nods rapidly, and it’s the cutest thing. “Yes, Christian.”
I press my lips to hers hard and smile against them. “This is me officially saying I will move in with you.”
“My body feels crazy,” she chuckles. “Like I’m really happy and I don’t know what to do with myself.”
I chuckle and pull her up onto the counter. I stand between her legs and her arms come around my neck. “Me too, baby.”
“Soo…” Lana bats her lashes and looks up at me through them. Her fingers toy with the waistband of my gym shorts, then the waistband of my boxers. “I was thinking…”
You have to tell her!
“About?” I ask as if I don’t know. As if I haven’t thought about it myself.
She bats her lashes again, tugging the waistband of both my pants and Calvin’s. “Maybe tonight after work…we can come home and…” She lifts a shoulder shyly. “Light some candles and…”
“Lana,” I breathe, dropping my forehead to hers.
“Not yet?”
“Babe—”
“No, it’s okay,” she says softly. “It’s okay. If you aren’t… If you don’t want to—”
“I do want to,” I say. “I do. When you get home…” I swallow. “Can we talk after work?”
She nods. “Yes. Yes, Christian.”
After my meeting. I’ll tell her after my meeting.
“Okay,” I breathe. “I’ve also been thinking…”
She smiles up at me, but I can tell there’s some resentment. “Yeah?”
I run my hands up and down her smooth thighs, refocusing on being here with her. Stay in the present. “I’ve been thinking about this life you keep telling me to get.”
“What about it?”
“I’m gonna get it,” I say. “Can I go to work with you?”
The first laugh is a huff before it turns into something louder—harder. Very humbling, really.
But then she stops and looks at me with wide, incredulous eyes. “You’re serious?”
I nod. “Yeah, I think it’s time I get a part time job.”
She raises her brows at me. “Oh, is the multi billion dollar company you run and own not enough?”
I chuckle. “Do I need to email you my resume?”
Lana’s eyes are narrowed at me, and I only smile. “Fine. But I’m not paying you.”
“Who doesn’t love free labor?”
I push a cart with stacks of books on it from the back room, following behind Lana through the aisles and into the Young Adult section.
“Okay,” she sighs, stopping in front of shelves that need obvious restocking. “They are all basically in order so just find the titles and fill them in. If a book isn’t there then just stock it with a few copies but make sure they’re in alphabetical order.”
Lana grabs three copies of one book and I grab two of another. “By…?”
She rolls her eyes and fills in an empty part of a shelf. “Last name, Christian, you know this.”
I smirk. “Maybe I just need to hear it explained in your voice.”
She gives me the hottest eye roll. “Well, stop being such a flirt and get to work, or you’re fired.”
“I was never technically hired.” Lana growls faintly and I wish I could kiss her on the clock. “Hey, I have a question.”
She sighs, putting one last book into the empty space one the second to top shelf. “What now?”
I hold a couple of books in my hands, leaning against the shelves and watching her. “Is it against the rules for an employee to date their boss here?”
Lana rolls her eyes but I see the way the caramel shade lightens with amusement. “Should be.”
I slip the books into their shelves and pull her to me with a hand on her hip. “But it isn’t.”
Lana stifles an obvious smile and catches herself with a hand on my chest. “Unfortunately.”
I brush my lips over hers. “Liar.”
“You’re fired,” Lana moans softly.
“I was never really hired.”
“Lana!” Her name is called out and, over her head, I see Natalia coming toward us. “Lana, we have to talk.”
Lana’s eyes go wide. “What? What happened?”
“Isa’s birthday,” Natalia says. “We have to plan something.”
“Nat, that’s next month,” I say.
“So?”
Lana snorts. “We’ll do it at my house.”
We’ll be hosting at our new house but…
Natalia smiles. “Okay. That saves me the trouble of guilting you into hosting.”
Lana rolls her eyes and I chuckle. “You left the kitchen for this?”
Natalia’s eyes pinch, shooting daggers right at me. “I was baking the special cupcakes and I was reminded.”
I stick my tongue out at her and she returns the gesture.
“Get back to work,” Lana grumbles, attempting to hide her amusement. “Both of you.”
I knock on the door of her office and from the other side, I hear her say, “Come in.”
As I open the door, I say, “Hey, boss.”
She smiles, her teeth digging into her bottom lip, from behind a desk. “Hey.”
“We’re closing up.”
“Already?” Her eyes wide, she checks the time. “Oh my god. I was— I was so stuck doing this—”
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
Lana releases an exhausted sigh and pushes away from her desk. “Okay, let’s go clean up.”
“Ryan and Michelle closed up the registers,” I tell her and her shoulders relax. “They’re cleaning up.”
She walks around and kisses my cheek. “I’ll go send them home. Want to help me finish up?”
I check my watch quickly. The meeting is going to start soon. “Yeah,” I rasp. “Okay.”
I have to go to this meeting today. There is a new chip waiting for me to be put into our old jar. And I’ll show them to her tonight.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, let’s go clean before we head out.”
I follow her out of the office and toward the café. “Hey, Michelle,” Lana says. “You’re good to go. We’ll finish up. Thank you for today. You too, Ryan.”
Her two most trusted employees thank her before they grab their belongings and find their way out. I lock the doors behind them.
I take a deep breath when I face Lana. She’s wiping off one of the tables, vigorously scrubbing at what looks like sticky residue. I promised we’d talk about it after work. I promised myself I’d tell her tonight—and I will, even if I don’t know how and even if it’s word vomit.
I’ll just take Julian’s advice and talk to Lana.
Talk to her like she’s Lana. The girl who loves you unconditionally. She won’t hate you, she’ll just worry.
But how do I tell her all of my mistakes and where they led me? I know about her life while I was gone, and it was…calm in comparison. She missed me and she was sad often—as was I—but she didn’t make the same bad decisions. Instead, she made decisions that would take her somewhere good.
I made decisions that led me to my near-death.
I swallow the knot in my throat. “Lana?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, blowing the grown-out curtain out of her face with a smile.
“I…I have to go,” I say carefully. “But I’ll meet you at the house?”
She frowns. I hate those frowns. And she stops wiping, freezing. “Where are you going?”
“I just,” I sigh, “I have to meet…. a couple of friends and stop at the store real quick to get something to bring because—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lana whispers in a tone that’s always scared the shit out of me. “Are you…”
“Lana, wait, I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant—”
A rag gets thrown at my face. “Get out.”
“Lana, please, I mean that I have to go pick up—”
“Get. Out.” She’s pointing at the door. “Now.”
I run my hands down my face, groaning. How could I have possibly fucked this up? “Lana—”
“Go,” she says, her soft voice like venom. There is so much stillness and calm in her anger, it’s terrifying.
So I go.
In my car, I realize I don’t have keys to get into the house later.
I have the jar in my backseat, and when I get home tonight, I’ll clear this up.
But I have to get there tonight first. I need to talk about this with someone because my grip on the steering wheel is too tight and my chest even more so.
I shouldn’t have said I was going to the store.
“You don’t think I know what ‘the store’ means? I’m not an idiot!”
I sigh and press the heels of my palms into my eyes. “I know baby, I do.”
“So why lie?” Lana asks in an angry whisper.
“I’m…”
“Tell me the truth, Christian,” she begs.
“Because you’re losing me here and I can’t…
I’m fighting with a ghost. You don’t come home some weekends and what am I supposed to do with that?
When you do come home, it’s five a.m. and you stink!
You come home dead and vomit in the toilet or the bathroom floor and fall asleep there. And then I think you’re dead!”
The frown on her face has my name written all over it, and it hurts more than anything. It hurts when her bottom lip starts to tremble and her hands start shaking and her eyes are wet and shiny.
“Tell me what to do, baby,” she croaks. “Please—I’m trying.”
“I know you are,” I breathe and go to her, my hands pulling her into my chest where she buries her face and sobs.
Her hands come around me and her nails dig into my back as she cries, and I can’t help it. I cry too.
“You need help, Christian,” she croaks. “And I can’t make you do it, you need to do it on your own.”
“I know.” I’m just not ready. “Lana, baby, I know. Please.”
She pulls herself back, shoving at my chest.“You know?”
“Yes, I do,” I mutter.
“Then put the keys down,” she says, crossing her arms. “Put the damn keys down, Christian!”
I shake my head.
“Christian, you are drunk! Set the keys down right now, you are not driving while you’re drunk!”
“I’m not drunk,” I growl. I only wish I was.
“Christian, I swear to god…”
My hand fists the keys in my hand but I don’t release them.
“Fine,” she breathes and stomps into our bedroom.
I’m a fucking idiot.
“Lana, please, wait,” I rasp and let the keys drop from my hand. I run into our bedroom and she’s pulling my clothes off their hangers. “Lana.”
“No. Don’t speak to me,” she snaps. “You’re leaving.”
“Lana—”
She continues to toss my clothes onto a pile on the floor. When she goes back in for more, I wrap my arms around her and pull her away from the closet.
She kicks the air.“Put me down!”
I set her down on the opposite side of the room and stand in her way when she tries to go back to the closet. “No, Lana, please—”
“Go to the store, Christian.” She points her finger in my face. “Go to the fucking store!”
“No,” I breathe. “No, I—I’m good right here.”
She pokes my chest hard. “I wish that were true.”
“Please, Lana,” I croak.
“You either get yourself together or you’re out,” Lana says. “You want to ruin our relationship and everything we have? Fine! But that was a choice you made. Not me. This is it for you.”
I swallow and I can barely see her through my clouded vision. “I don’t want that,” I rasp.
“Then get your shit together!”