Chapter 33
BLAKE
The door clicks shut behind her and I watch through the window as she backs out of the driveway. Too fast. She's driving too fast.
She's running.
I stand there like a fucking idiot, watching the space where her car was. The driveway looks wrong without it. Empty in a way that freaks me the fuck out.
Reid's somewhere behind me. I can feel him hovering. Waiting for me to say something. Do something. Be normal.
I'm not normal. I'm standing at a window watching an empty driveway and my brain is already—
Too rough. Yesterday. The dresser — the sound it made when the pull snapped off. The way she gasped when I pushed in. Was that pain? Was that her trying to tell me to stop and I was too far gone to—
No. She said she was fine. More than fine. She said don't stop.
People say shit they don't mean when they're—
"She said she was meeting Jamila," Reid offers from behind me. I don't know if he's trying to reassure me, or himself.
"Yeah."
Quiet.
"Could be true," he says. "Jamila's her person. Makes sense she'd want to talk to—"
"She didn't have plans, Reid." I turn from the window. "She woke up and left. That's not meeting a friend. That's leaving."
"You don't know that."
"I know what running looks like."
He flinches. Barely. But I catch it because I catch everything and right now I wish I didn't.
Nice, asshole. Remind him about all the other people who've run. That's helpful.
I drag a hand down my face. "Sorry. That wasn't—"
"It's fine."
It's not fine. Nothing about this is fine. I'm standing in my living room at nine in the morning, unshowered, wearing yesterday's clothes, and the woman I love just drove away too fast and I can still smell her on my skin and my brain won't stop—
The way she looked at me after. Like I was something worth looking at. Nobody looks at me like that. Nobody's ever—
And then this morning she couldn't get out fast enough.
Reid moves into my line of sight. Plants himself there. Hands in his pockets, head tilted, watching me with a grave expression.
"What?" I say.
"You're doing the thing."
"I'm not doing a thing."
"The thing where you decide the worst possible outcome is guaranteed and then act like it already happened." He shrugs. "It's your signature move."
Because the worst possible outcome usually IS what happens. History isn't exactly on my side here.
But I don't say that. I just stand there, jaw tight, fists shoved in my pockets because I don't know what to do with my hands.
"Blake." Softer now. "We don't know what's going on. Maybe she really is having breakfast with Jamila. Maybe she needed to process. She processes externally — you know that. She needs a person."
"Or she's figuring out how to tell us it was a mistake."
"Or she's figuring out how to tell us it wasn't." He holds my gaze. "You heard her last night. About love. About staying."
I did hear her. I heard every word. I can replay them perfectly — her voice, her exact phrasing, the way her fingers traced patterns on my stomach while she talked. I stored all of it like evidence against the day when my brain would try to convince me it wasn't real.
Today's that day, apparently.
"What if I was too much?" The words come out before I can stop them. Raw. Stupid. "Yesterday. What if I scared her."
"Did she seem scared?"
No. She seemed... God. She seemed like she was right there with me. Every second. Her hands on my face, pulling me closer. Her voice saying don't stop and my name — she said my name like it meant something. Like I meant something.
"No," I admit. "She didn't seem scared."
"Then stop deciding she was."
He's right. I fucking hate when he's right.
"I need to do something," I say. "With my hands. I need—"
"Laundry's in the dryer."
Laundry. Right. Sunday. Laundry day. Because the world keeps spinning and clothes keep getting dirty even when you're convinced the best thing that ever happened to you just drove away forever.
"Yeah. Okay."
Reid squeezes my shoulder as he passes. Heads into the kitchen. A minute later I hear him pulling out containers, the fridge opening and closing. Meal prep. His Sunday thing. The routines we built to keep ourselves sane — back when sane was the most we could hope for.
Now I'm hoping for more. And that's the scariest fucking thing I've ever done.
After a side quest cleaning every nook and cranny of the washing machine, then the rest of the laundry room, I dump the clean clothes on the couch and start sorting.
Fold. Stack. Repeat. T-shirts in one pile. Jeans in another. Socks that never have matches because there's some kind of black hole in the dryer that specifically targets my fucking socks. Never Reid's.
My hands know what to do even when my brain doesn't. That's the thing about routine — it holds you together when everything else is trying to shake you apart.
Some of Reid's shirts are mixed in with mine. I separate them by instinct. His are the ones with stupid graphics and stains he claims are "character." Mine are plain. Dark. Boring.
Boring. Yeah. That's the word.
Laine's purple sweater is in the load.
I stop. Hold it up.
It's her favorite. She wears it at least twice a week — I've noticed because I notice everything about her, which is either romantic or creepy depending on your perspective. It wasn't in my laundry by accident. I threw it in there yesterday while she was in the shower.
I wanted something of hers in my load.
You're a fucking mental case, Moore.
I fold the sweater carefully. Sleeves tucked, hem aligned. Set it on top of the pile like it belongs there.
Because it does. She belongs here.
If she comes back.
My phone sits face-up on the coffee table. No messages. I've checked four times in ten minutes, which is pathetic. I'm a thirty-seven-year-old man who has survived combat and I'm staring at a phone like a teenager waiting for prom.
Text her. Tell her — what? That you're losing your mind? That the house feels wrong without her in it? That you can still feel where her head rested on your chest and the absence of it is making you insane?
Real fucking smooth, Moore. That'll definitely bring her back.
I think about what Laine needs. Not what I need — what she needs. She needs space to think. She needs to know she's not trapped. She needs to know that whatever's waiting for her here isn't pressure or expectations or a man who'll fall apart if she takes a few hours.
Even though that man is exactly what you are right now.
I pick up the phone. Type and delete three messages. Finally settle on something that doesn't sound desperate.
Take the time you need. We're here.
Send.
I stare at the screen for another thirty seconds. Then I force myself to put the phone down and go back to the laundry.
Fold. Stack. Repeat.
She's fine. She's having breakfast. She's talking to Jamila. That's healthy. That's what people do.
People who are planning to come back.
Shut the fuck up.
I fold one of Reid's work shirts. Then another. Stack them the way he never bothers to — sleeves tucked, collar straight. He’ll shove everything in a drawer like a feral animal but I fold them anyway because that's what I do. I take care of the people I love in the small ways they never notice.
And the big ways they probably wish I wouldn't.
The thought lands wrong. Heavy. I push it away and reach for another shirt.
Two hours of Reid rattling around in the kitchen doing fuck knows what. The last load of folding's staring at me from the coffee table, but I'm just staring at the fucking wall.
I look at my phone.
Nothing.
That's fine. Laine thinks before she responds. She always has. She's deliberate. Careful. She doesn't fire off texts — she considers them. That's one of the things I lo—
My phone buzzes.
I grab it so fast I almost knock it off the table.
Laine
On my way home.
Home.
She said home.
I read it again. Three times. Four.
Home. Not "back." Not "there." Home.
"Reid." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. "She's coming."
He appears in the kitchen doorway, dish towel in hand.
"Told you she wasn't running," he says.
"She said home."
Reid tilts his head. "What?"
"Her text. She said 'on my way home.' Not back. Home."
He stares at me. Then a grin spreads across his face — slow, warm, the kind that reminds me why I've spent the last seven years making sure he was okay.
"Yeah," he says. "She did."
I sit back down on the couch. Surrounded by folded laundry and orphan socks. My heart hammering like I'm twenty years old and don't know shit about anything.
She's coming home.
But I'm still wound tight. Still braced. Because I've learned the hard way that good things announce themselves and then don't show up. That words are easy and follow-through is where everything falls apart.
So I wait. Listening for her car. Trying not to hold my breath.
There. Tires on gravel. Engine cutting off. A car door.
Keys.
Front door opens and she walks in. First thing I clock is the red around her eyes. She's been crying. Not recently — before. The kind of red that hangs on after you've scrubbed your face and told yourself you're fine.
"Hey," she says. Voice sounds different. Not wrong. Lighter. Like whatever was sitting on her when she left this morning got parceled out somewhere between here and the diner.
"Hey yourself." Reid materializes in the kitchen doorway, dish towel slung over his shoulder. Easy. Relaxed. Like we weren't both climbing the walls for two hours. He's always been better at that. The acting-normal thing. I never learned the trick.
Laine kicks off her shoes. Drops her purse by the door. Just stands there a second, scanning the living room like she's getting her bearings. Like she walked out of one version of this place and came back to find it exactly the same and doesn't know what to do with that.
Her eyes find the laundry piles. Then me, sitting in the middle of them.
"You did laundry," she says.
"It's Sunday."
"That's very domestic of you."