Chapter 21
THE IN-BETWEEN
“She wasn’t kidding. She’s got every color.” Holt enters the kitchen. “Sorry it took so long. She served me tea and cake.”
“But of course.”
“Then I figured I was up there, so I stopped in and checked out Owen’s room.” He pauses to look down at his feet.
I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking. That Owen’s room was once his. Mabel took Tate’s room, so it looks nothing like it once looked. Now, the walls are a soft, delicate shade of pink. Andy painted a collage of pastel peonies on one wall.
Owen’s room is the same deep navy blue it had been when it was Holt’s. I’d never been able to paint over it, and Owen had never asked. There are soccer posters tacked where there were once hockey posters, but the room feels familiar in a way I’m sure Holt didn’t miss.
“And?” I pull the bottle of sparkling rosé from the fridge. “What did you think?”
“Reminds me of me.” There’s a rasp of emotion in his voice that calls my eyes to his.
Quietly, I ask, “Do you want a glass?”
“Would you happen to have beer?”
I pull my bottom lip into my mouth as I shake my head apologetically. “I haven’t bought beer since Tate.”
“I’ll take a glass of wine.”
Mabel races into the room, now wearing her green tutu over her yellow leggings. The absurdity of my daughter is beautiful, and I laugh. Holt does, too. I’m grateful for the way she’s washed away the moment of awkwardness.
“Can we go for a bike ride?”
“We have company, little miss. I can’t just leave Holt here alone. That would be rude.”
“He can ride daddy’s bike,” she offers innocently.
I think I flinch. I think it’s visible.
When my eyes lift from my daughter and I see my son’s expression, I no longer think it. I know. And I know he saw it.
“I’ll go for a bike ride with you, Mabel,” Owen says easily. The smile he gives me is filled with hurt he tries to hide. “Come on.”
I say nothing as I watch them go. I listen to them put shoes on and hear the rumble as the garage door lifts open.
My hands shake as I pour Holt his wine.
“He’s a really good kid.” Holt takes the glass I offer.
I nod, but manage thickly, “He is.”
“How long do you figure they’ll be gone?”
I pull in a big breath. “Mabel has a solid half hour in her.”
“You want to sit outside?” Hold asks, and I nod.
Holt follows me onto the front porch, and we sit in the wooden Adirondak chairs I bought from a yard sale a couple years back.
I painted them a pretty teal blue and stained the little wood table that sits between them the same stain I slather on the porch every second spring.
I fold my legs under me, and Holt spreads his mass out.
Everything he does, all the space he claims, only reminds me how big he’s grown.
Tate was a big man, but Holt has an easy few inches on him in both height and width.
I hate that I compare the two men. But it’s next to impossible not to.
For so long, Holt has lived in my mind as the boy he was when I knew him last. When I had him and loved him.
He’s so different now—and yet so many of the same feelings are rushing back in—the collision course set for complete destruction.
I wish I could stop it. But it feels hopeless.
Just like he stole pieces of me back then, I can feel the hook of him digging deep into the remnants of my heart. He’s reeling me in, and he isn’t even trying.
“Did you love him?”
I think my heart stops in my chest. It’s beating one moment and then it’s just—well, it’s not.
I take a sip of my wine. My eyes drift to the house across the street. The house that used to be mine when this was his. I wonder if this feels wrong to him. Like this house is still his.
I wonder, for the first time, if he feels like this life was meant for him. But he couldn’t possibly.
He was always meant for hockey.
I have to believe that.
“I loved him.” The words are true and clear, even as they are soft and fragile. I feel fragile.
Holt doesn’t speak for long moments, but I can feel his eyes on me. I think there’s more he wants to say, more he wants to ask. I’m afraid. Afraid of the unspoken truth that stands between us.
When the silence continues to stretch between us, I fill it. “He loved you so much, Holt. He never made a move on me that was inappropriate while you were here. I was always true to you.”
“Until I left.”
I shake my head. “Until I decided to stay. Until I decided that my life path was different from yours.”
He rubs his lips together. I think it’s more to keep words he doesn’t want to say from slipping free.
I wish he’d just let them loose. Even though I’m terrified of how much they’ll hurt, how deep they’ll cut, I think at this point it would be better to free them. To put them there between us so maybe they can finally find peace. Finally rest.
Tate is gone, and it hurts so much. But just like the words Holt won’t say, Tate is there between us. I think he’ll always be there between us—just as Holt was always there between me and Tate.
“Tate was a great father.” A laugh escapes my chest, riding the wave of a sharp sob.
I sip my wine. “When Owen was born, we were both so young. I felt so fragile. Emotionally, physically.” My eyes are cast onto the street, but Holts are on me.
Like always when he watches me, I can feel it. “I changed a lot during my pregnancy.”
There’s a pause, and then, “I hear that’s when you started loving olives.”
I snort a laugh, surprised by the weightlessness of his comment during such a heavy share. “Yeah. That was a weird craving.”
“I’d say.” He tips his head back, his eyes drifting to the street with mine. “You always hated olives.”
“And you always loved them.”
“Weird, eh?”
“What?”
“That Owen would be born loving something both his parents hate so much.” His words steal my breath.
For a moment, I can say nothing at all. “Tate started liking them during my pregnancy as well. At first, it was torture, but…”
“Course he did.” Holt laughs a bitter, sad sound. He leans forward to plant his elbows on his knees. The glass of wine dangles from the fingertips of one large hand and he peers forward, but I’m not sure he’s seeing anything at all.
“He fell for you that first day, you know?”
“What?”
“I saw it happen, but it happened for me, too. I was an asshole for it, but I made sure you spoke to me first. I made sure that you fell for me first.” He bows his head, shakes it. “Maybe it was always me between you and not the other way around.”
The knots around my heart cinch tighter. “It wasn’t.”
He looks at me now, looks into me. I lose my breath.
“It wasn’t?”
I shake my head soft and slow.
“I loved you, Holt.” I shrug a helpless shrug, begging him to understand something I’m not even sure I understand. “And I loved him.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “And we fucking lived and breathed you.”
“I’m sorry.” Emotion rattles in my voice.
It threatens to spill over into the space between us.
“I’ve never said that, but I am. I’m sorry for hurting you.
” I take a sip to help clear my throat. It burns.
“But I’m not sorry for loving him. For building a life with him.
He was a wonderful husband, Holt, and a beautiful father.
” My voice cracks. “He loved them so much.”
“I know, Faye.” There’s a soft acceptance that I can’t begin to understand when he admits, “I’m still upset, but I forgive you.
And Tate, too.” Holt places his wine glass on the table between us and stands.
Pulling the keys from his pocket, he fixes those hard, dark eyes on me and says, “Gonna head out. I’ll see you in the morning. ”
“Okay…”
“Say bye to the kids for me, yeah?”
I nod, watching, my heart aching, as he climbs into his truck and backs out of my drive.