Chapter 1
How had it come to this? Solo slid down the wall onto the solid wooden floor of the kitchen. A weirdly protective numbness enveloped her whole body, and she could’ve been landing on a bed of feathers for all she knew…or cared.
The shield didn’t extend to her heart. That did hurt like hell. She looked through the double doors, and her gaze rested on the dining room’s liquor cabinet, daring and taunting her. Colorful bottles in appealing shapes held colorless liquids calling for her to fall into their oblivion.
Her wife, Janie, the woman who painted the brightness into her life, stopped at the kitchen counter and looked down at her.
“Please don’t,” Janie said quietly before she stepped around Solo and exited the kitchen.
The delicate scent of Janie’s perfume reached Solo, and as she inhaled deeply, she choked on the sob she’d been trying so hard to repress.
She had only ever associated Fenty with Janie since their first brief but memorable meeting four years ago, when Janie had been wearing it.
Up to this moment, the scent evoked strong, positive memories and always made her horny, but today, it was a right hook to the jaw.
If she hadn’t already been on her ass, it would’ve floored her.
Solo’s phone vibrated in the pocket of her sweatpants.
She dug it out on auto pilot and read the message reminder: Tell Janie one thing you appreciate about her.
She dropped the cell to the floor and skimmed it across the shiny oak, far away from her.
The therapeutic tidbits she’d been religious about completing had done fuck all, had changed nothing.
Gabe’s voice echoed in her head: If you want your family to stay together, buddy, you have to fight for it.
She placed her palms flat on the floor to ground herself, another therapy tip that had been hit and miss so far, and closed her eyes for a little while before she got to her feet.
Fight for it. Gabe’s advice was always solid; she was dependable, and Solo could count on her for anything and everything.
Whatever Gabe said was better than anything therapist Rae Trent had ever uttered, and it cost Solo nothing too.
She bit the inside of her cheek—the therapy didn’t cost her anything either since Janie insisted on paying.
But which of them was the big breadwinner in their household wasn’t one of their problems and never had been.
Solo prided herself on being a modern masc that way.
She made her way upstairs, every footstep leaden and labored, and she hovered in the doorway of the guest room that Janie had been occupying for the last month.
Janie glanced across at her from where she stood at the closet.
The small, sad smile she offered Solo did nothing to comfort her; she’d seen that same smile on Janie’s lips when she consoled a colleague who’d just lost their case and their client was about to start a ten-year stretch at Joliet Correctional Center.
Solo would take that sentence over this hell right now.
No, she wouldn’t. That would take her away from Janie and from their babies.
She couldn’t survive that any more than she thought she could survive what was happening in front of her.
She chewed on her bottom lip, searching her useless mind for the right words, for any words, that could put a stop to this shitshow before it got to the final act.
Gabe would know the right thing to say, especially now that she was head over heels in love with Lori.
Gabe had been Solo’s rock for the thirteen years they’d been in the Army together.
But when Solo met Janie, it was the one thing she thought she might be alone in, the one thing Gabe wouldn’t be able to advise her on.
She dug her hand in her pocket then remembered she’d abandoned her phone in the kitchen. Gabe giving her the right words might be the only way she could say something meaningful, something that didn’t come out like a weak-assed murmur or just be…disappointing.
If they could get through this rough patch, Solo would give anything, do anything.
Like writing lessons to help her put what was in her heart into actual words.
Wasn’t it supposed to be easier for lesbians to share their emotions with their partners?
Wasn’t that supposed to be one of the primary benefits over straight relationships?
Janie crossed the room and stood in front of Solo.
Everything about her, from the way she looked to the way she smelled to the way she walked, all of it took Solo’s breath away.
It had from the moment she’d seen Janie in Club Infinite.
Was any of that enough to stop this giant wrecking ball of silence from destroying their lives?
“Talk to me,” Janie whispered.
Solo clamped her teeth hard on her tongue.
The iron maiden squeezing her heart to pulp made the pain in her mouth minimal.
Don’t go. Please don’t go. But instead of those words emerging, she shook her head.
“What are the girls going to do without their mom?” she asked, her temper flaring.
“Shouldn’t you be thinking about them?” She’d never had trouble expressing her anger, and she instantly regretted it.
Janie’s eyes flashed open, and Solo couldn’t even begin to name the emotions swimming in her eyes.
Therapy was supposed to have made communicating easier, but Janie had become increasingly distant and cold, often like her soul wasn’t in her body, and she’d floated off somewhere else, anywhere else apparently, because she clearly couldn’t bear being at home with her family.
Spikes shot into Solo’s heart. Her family was disintegrating right in front of her, and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
“I am thinking about them,” Janie said. “And they’ll be better off without me.” She put her hand square in the center of Solo’s chest and pushed her out of the room before she closed the door.
It was only wood.
Solo could’ve kicked it down with little effort. But it may as well have been steel, six feet thick like the door of a bank vault. That sounded about right. Janie had locked her heart and mind in a safe, and Solo didn’t have the skills or tools to crack it open.
The soft giggles of their girls filtered down the hallway.
They wouldn’t be “better off” without Janie, no more than Solo would.
The seventeen-month-old triplets were a handful when they were both there to parent them, but alone?
She couldn’t—didn’t want to—imagine that.
She placed her head against the door. No imagination would be necessary; it was about to become a reality.
She could only hope Janie didn’t really mean any of what she’d been saying over the past few days, and that she’d come to her senses and realize they all belonged here, together.
The door opened, and Solo just managed to keep herself from falling into the guest room.
Janie squeezed past, rolling a medium suitcase behind her. “I’ll send Amanda to pick up the rest of my clothes from our room.”
“You want me to let your assistant in our bedroom?” Solo clenched her jaw. “Why can’t you do it?” Goddamn, why couldn’t she wrangle the mic from her anger and give another emotion voice?
Janie paused at the top of the stairs. “It has to be this way, Hannah. I don’t know who I am anymore, and I can’t be anything to anyone, especially you and the girls, until I resolve that… If I can.”
Solo walked toward Janie and grasped the handle of her luggage. “You can do that here. I’ll give you all the space you need.”
Janie shook her head and pulled the case from Solo’s grasp. “If I thought that would work, I’d stay.” She caressed Solo’s cheek with her other hand, and tears spilled down her cheeks. “But the past month hasn’t changed anything. I haven’t changed. I’m suffocating. I have to do this alone.”
Janie took the stairs carefully, but Solo couldn’t bring herself to offer assistance, to literally help her wife out of their home. Janie picked up her purse and paused after she’d opened the door. She took the key off her keyring and placed it on the nearby side table.
“This is still your house. You’ll need that key to come visit the girls…
You will visit, won’t you?” Solo heard the cry catch in Janie’s throat, and she launched herself down the stairs, three at a time, the sudden glimpse of hope almost levitating her.
“You don’t want to do this, JJ. Please.” She sank to her knees at Janie’s feet; she wasn’t beneath begging if it’d keep her family together.
Fight for it, Gabe yelled inside her head.
Janie stepped outside, her body shaking with her sobs. “I can’t… I just can’t.”
She pulled the door shut behind her, leaving Solo staring at the slab of wood, another impenetrable barrier between them.
She fell to her side and let the tears come, body-wracking cries that shredded parts of her soul.
Through the watery membrane in front of her eyes, the liquor cabinet beckoned her.
Upstairs, the giggles subsided, and Chloe shouted out in distress.
Solo took a deep breath and pulled herself up from the floor.
She flipped the bird at the cabinet, making a mental note to donate the contents to RB and Woody the next day, and climbed the stairs to her girls.
They had to be her priority now. She couldn’t afford to fall into old patterns to cope with new conflicts.
Hey, maybe she’d learned something from the therapy sessions after all.