Chapter 17 Do You Promise?
DO YOU PROMISE?
Islide the key Mom gave me into the lock and twist.
What the hell am I doing here?
She’s got the flu. It’s not like she’s dying. Still, I step inside.
The house is eerily quiet. I’m not unaccustomed to being in quiet spaces, having always lived alone.
But I sense that these walls have never known quiet.
Not ever. Dad bought this house for Mom to fill with babies.
She had two boys, and we certainly never introduced these walls to anything even resembling quiet.
Having met Mabel, I know for a fact that sassy chatterbox has never practiced the art of silence.
So, hearing it now, so still, is a bit of a shock.
What’s more shocking is the long, loud meow that nearly peels the flesh from my bones.
The thing sounds like it’s being mauled, and when it lets out another long meow, I follow the sound to the top of the stairs.
My eyes land on the source of the sound.
A white and brown blur that takes off down the hall.
“Faye?” I call out as I begin up the stairs. With every step, I curse my mother.
I don’t know why she asked me to check on the woman. It’s not like I have any real relationship with her. Not anymore, at least.
I’m reminded of why as I pass photographs on the wall of the family my brother created with the only woman I’ve ever loved.
My teeth grind. The cat howls—no joke, it’s a howl.
I look away from the photographs, but the damage is done. They were a happy family.
I continue the climb, calling out again, “Faye?”
When nothing but silence and another loud meow greets me, I decide to follow the cat into the master bedroom. It’s weird being back in this house, knowing it was where my brother had my woman.
Fuck, she’s not mine. She’s his.
Or was.
Jeez, this is complicated.
I scrub my face with my hand and peer into the bathroom where the cat disappeared. And that’s when my heart stops beating.
I’m kicked into action driven entirely by instinct and—emotion.
She’s sprawled, face down on the floor. She’s in her underwear, and nothing else and she looks—fuck, I’m not sure she’s breathing.
I pull her into my arms, relieved at the warmth of her skin.
She can’t be dead if she’s burning up, but I can’t hear around the thundering of my heart.
I think the thing is trying to claw its way from my chest and into hers.
If I thought she needed it, I’d carve it from my very chest myself.
If I thought she needed it, I’d offer her my beating heart and die happily in the knowledge that she would live another day.
That’s the moment when it all comes to a head. When I know I’d carve out my own heart for this woman who shattered mine—that I know with certainty that I never stopped loving her. Even when she was his, she never stopped being mine.
And she’s mine now. Mine to care for whether she likes it or not. Whether it’s right or not. Whether it makes sense or not.
“Come on, baby. Open your eyes.”
She moans and tries to push me away. I don’t let her. Her eyes open, glassy with fever. She calls me Tate, and that blade in my chest twists.
Her body is limp against mine as I turn on the shower. I need to bring her temperature down. She’s delirious.
I set the water to a gentle warm, suspecting it’ll feel cold against her burning skin.
Then I step in with her, fully clothed. I’m right when I thought it would cool her down.
Within minutes, her teeth are chattering, and goosebumps litter her skin.
Her fingers curl into my shirt and she presses her body to mine, seeking warmth even in her fever.
I hold her close, and I’m some kind of messed up because I don’t want to let her go. She doesn’t even realize it’s me. She thinks I’m her husband. My brother.
Still, I hold her tighter. I kiss her hair.
She trembles in my arms.
“Tate…” she sobs.
That blade twists again. I’m bleeding internally now.
There’s only so much a man can take.
“It’s okay,” I tell her as gently as I can. “You’re okay.”
“He’s back.” She’s sobbing harder now. Her body is shuddering almost violently in my arms, but her skin is still so warm. “He’s back and it hurts so much.”
Is she talking about me?
“Who, baby? Who is back?”
She burrows her face into my chest, and I hold her tighter as she spills sorrow and grief and guilt. “You loved me even when I loved him. You loved me when I couldn’t stop loving him. You told me it was okay…and I loved you for it.”
She’s not making sense. I’m frozen in the messy truth of her raw words, trying to decode them. Because they can’t mean what I think they mean.
“It is okay, Faye,” I manage, but the words fall rough with emotion.
Her fingers curl tighter into my soaked shirt. “He hates me.”
Christ. That cuts. “He doesn’t.”
“He does.” She sounds so broken.
I ache with the need to fix her. To glue all the pieces that living this life has shattered back together.
I press my lips to her hair again. “He loves you, Faye. He’s always loved you.”
She laughs, but it’s a sad, hysterical sound. “That’s what you always say.” Her forehead rolls against my chest. “I always thought you meant that he loved me—but now—I’m not sure if it was your way of telling me you loved me.”
I tell her the only truth that makes sense in this moment. It might not be the right truth or the pretty truth, but it’s the truth. “We both love you, Faye. We both loved you from the beginning. And we’ll always love you—until the very end.”
She sobs harder as she clings to me. She’s mumbling something I can’t understand. Over and over again.
I carry her, sopping wet to the bed and she’s still mumbling the words. She needs something. Something I can’t give her. Something I need to give her.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, baby.” I wince as I strip her from her wet underwear, careful not to look. Not to invade her privacy any more than I already am.
She shakes her head back and forth on her pillow. She’s incoherent through her sobs as I tuck the blankets around her.
“You’ve gotta sleep, Faye.”
Her body trembles with her sobs and fever, but finally, she slips into sleep.
It’s as I’m sitting in the chair next to her bed hours later, having scrubbed her bathroom clean, and changing into my dead brother’s clothes since mine were soaked through, that it comes to me.
Her incoherent mumbling.
My heart stops for the second time tonight because the words she’d mumbled, the plea in her delirium, now plays so clearly in my mind.
“Do you promise?”