Chapter 12
Twelve
Henry
A week later…
I’m back in my old room.
The rest of the week passed in pieces. Hours stitched together by pills, ice packs, check-ins from the doctor, and my mother’s hovering. I’m not supposed to bend, lift, or push anything. No ranch work. No projects at my half-finished house. No driving. No work at the foundation.
Just rest.
Shelves lining the wall still hold my baseball trophies. I trace a finger over the tallest one, the state championship. My name is etched on a little brass plate at the bottom.
Henry Simpson, MVP
Once upon a time, that meant something.
Now I’m standing here with a scar on my scalp and orders not to exert myself.
I ease down onto the bed, and Zach snuggles next to me.
And all I can think about is her.
Tabitha.
The memory of her is so fresh it aches. The weight of her body against mine, her breath warm at my ear, the way she whispered my name, the way her face looked in the throes of passion. Her hair spilling across my pillow, her nails leaving faint red trails down my back.
We made love in here. On this bed. A week ago, while the house was full of wedding guests and laughter, we stole hours that felt like a lifetime.
We made love again in her guest room, drawn out and perfect that time.
And then it ended.
I told her we had no future. I left her to wake up alone.
And she left.
What did I expect?
I lean back, staring up at the ceiling. Why did I let her go? Why did I tell her we had no future when every cell in my body screams that she’s mine?
The answer’s obvious.
Because I’m broken.
Because I’m the man who killed someone, the man who can’t shake the weight of it, the man who nearly let a house beam split his skull because he was careless and didn’t bother putting on a hard hat.
Just when I’d decided to go after her…
I close my eyes. For a moment, I can almost feel her here again. Hear her soft laughter, feel her hand brushing across my chest, her kiss pulling me back to life.
But when I open them, it’s just me.
Me, the trophies, and the ghost of Tabitha.
And Zach, of course.
Good old Zach.
“Love you, boy.” I caress his soft head.
This dog quite literally saved my fucking life. My life.
I have a second chance, and I can’t blow it.
A knock rattles my door before it pushes open.
“Still moping?” Sage’s voice. She steps in without waiting for an invitation, her dark hair twisted into a bun and a book tucked under her arm.
I groan. “Don’t you knock like a normal person?”
She smirks. “We’re family. Privacy doesn’t exist.” She sits at the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle me. She flicks her gaze to the scar. “Looks cool. You should keep it. Chicks dig scars.”
“I think I’ll let my hair grow back,” I say, “but thanks. I think.”
She sighs. “You scared the hell out of us, you know.”
“I scared myself.” My voice is quiet.
“You’re alive.” She scratches Zach behind his ears. “Thanks to this amazing canine. That’s what matters.”
Alive. But not whole.
Not without her.
“So, Henry…”
Here it comes.
“This thing. With Tabitha.”
“There’s no thing,” I say more sharply than I mean to.
She crosses her arms, her eyes narrowed. “Then why the big deal about having Mom call her?”
“What does it matter?” I scoff. “Mom said Tabitha’s not coming. Some big, can’t-miss opportunity at med school.”
Sage exhales, tilting her head. “Yeah. I heard.”
“It’s some kind of seminar,” I say, forcing nonchalance I don’t feel. “She’s a big-shot surgeon in the making. She can’t be bothered with me, and I can’t blame her after how I treated her.”
“You sound bitter.”
I look away. “I’m not.”
She raises a brow. “You are.”
I rake a hand through my hair and wince when my stitches pull. “She deserves her chance. She’s worked for it. I told her once we had no future, and she believed me. That’s on me.”
Sage studies me with her dark eyes that miss nothing. “What the hell happened between you two?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
She sighs, continues to pet Zach. “She’s a nice girl, Henry. Intelligent. Beautiful. And she fits in with this bunch. You could do a lot worse.”
Before I can reply, the door creaks again, and Mom slips in with a tray holding stew, biscuits, and iced tea sweating in a mason jar. She sets it on the nightstand like I’m a kid again, down with the flu.
“Mom, I’m allowed to leave the room to eat, you know.”
“I know. But I like taking care of you.” She smiles. “Besides, you’re too thin. This way I know you’re getting your meals.”
“I’ve been eating.”
“Not enough.” She fusses with the blanket at my feet. “Your color’s better, though.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She smiles faintly and glances at Sage. “Don’t stay too long. He needs rest.”
“I’m not made of glass,” I mutter.
“No,” Mom says, her eyes soft but fierce. “You’re made of stubbornness. Which is worse.”
Sage snorts. “Can’t argue with that.” She rises. “Eat your stew. Try not to mope too hard. And for the love of God, call Tabitha when you’re ready to stop being an idiot.”
She slips out before I can reply.
Mom lingers, smoothing the blanket at my feet. “Henry,” she says softly, “I know you think pushing people away will protect them. But it doesn’t. It just leaves you alone.” She kisses my forehead and leaves.
Her words cut deep because they’re true.
I sit in silence for a long time.
I can’t stop seeing her.
Tabitha, lying beside me. The warmth of her breath, the way she looked at me like I was worth saving.
And I let her walk away.
The stew cools while I stare at the wall. I should eat. I should nap. Instead I pull the past over me like a blanket and let it smother me.
Over a week ago now, but I remember every second like it was yesterday. In this room, we were frantic. But later, in her guest room…
I wanted to rip her clothes off right then and there and fuck her hard and fast, like we’d done before.
I was dying to. And I could have done it.
She wouldn’t have stopped me.
Her nipples were hard and protruding through the silky fabric of her dress.
Instead, though, I cracked open the door to her room, looked deep into those amber eyes, and said, “Please.”
And she nodded.
She nodded ever so slightly.
I squeeze my eyes shut and remember.
The slope of her shoulder, the tiny pulse at her throat, the warmth when I cupped her breast. I undressed her, kissed every inch of her gorgeous flesh. She begged me to go faster. I answered with a stubborn slowness that made both of us shiver.
I learned her breaths, quick and then quicker, learned the way her fingers splayed against my shoulders when I found the exact pressure that turned her body from tense to wildfire.
I let the heat build like a storm. When she gasped and grabbed for me, when she said my name, the brokenness in me dropped away and there was only her, only the shape of how she fit against me.
I wanted—God, I wanted—to flip us hard, to chase the edge with the same ferocity we had before, to be rough enough to satisfy the part of both of us that liked our sex a little wild. But I kept a hand at her back and the other at her jaw, and I moved like we had all the time in the world.
Because I knew it was all too good to last. That I couldn’t give her what she deserved.
I pulled climax after climax out of her, and eventually she pulled me with her.
And when I released, for a split second I believed in a version of us that didn’t hurt, the kind where I didn’t wake up and say things like no future because I was afraid of what I might take from her if she gave me too much.
After we finished, she curled on her side and snuggled into my shoulder. I lay on my back and watched the ceiling and counted my breaths. I told myself that I was fine, that I could hold this little piece of perfection without breaking it.
In the morning, while she still slept, I slipped out.
Without saying goodbye.
Now, a week and a big old scar on my head later, I sit with my memories and a bowl of stew I haven’t touched and those old trophies looking down at me with judgment. The ache in my head is the good kind today. I feel it healing me, reminding me I’m alive.
The ache in my chest?
That’s different.
Footsteps in the hall. The heavy clunk of my father’s boots. He opens my door a crack. “Son?”
“Come on in, Dad.”
He eyes the stew still sitting on the tray with the biscuits and iced tea. “You going to eat that?” he asks.
“Eventually,” I say.
He sits in the chair by the window and glances at the MVP trophy. “You remember that state game? You hit that curveball like it had your worst enemy’s face on it.”
“Lucky swing,” I say.
“Maybe.” He stretches his legs out. “Or maybe you watched enough film and swung enough times and not only practiced but practiced with intention.”
“I hear advice in there somewhere.”
He chuckles lightly. “Just talking out loud so you can hear the thing you already know.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you’re not done,” he says simply. “With this life, with whatever it is you think you broke in yourself. And you’re probably not done with that girl either, whether she’s got time for you this month or not.”
I stare at the bowl until the stew becomes a blur. “She chose what she was meant to choose.”
Dad shrugs. “So did you, plenty of times. Sometimes the thing you choose and the thing you want don’t jibe right away.”
“You think they ever do?”
“Have you ever met your mother?”
I can’t help the laugh that slips out. “Fair point.”
We all know the story of my mother and father. He was Uncle Joe’s best friend, and Mom pined for him from the time she was a little girl and finally landed him when she was twenty-five and he was thirty-eight.
“She’s nothing if not persistent,” he says. “I fought her tooth and nail, but eventually I had to give in.”
“Because you loved her.”
“Because I loved her,” he echoes. “I didn’t want to love her, but I did. And when I finally stopped fighting it, I found a happiness I never could have imagined. Not to mention the perfect mother for you.”
I nod. Then, “It’s not the same with me and Tabitha, though.”
He stands, walks toward the bed, and pats my shoulder gently. “No two stories ever are.” He points to the tray. “Eat. Then nap. Then sit on the porch and breathe some fresh air. It’ll clear your head.”
“Doctor’s orders?” I ask.
“Mine,” he says. “And Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“Call her. You don’t have to do it today. Or tomorrow. Or even next week. But you have to call her before it’s too late.” He walks out of the room.
Zach follows him. He probably has to go out.
I take three bites of stew and set the bowl aside.
Sometimes the thing you choose and the thing you want don’t jibe right away.
I consider my father’s words.
Tabitha chose the seminar. Her career.
Maybe she doesn’t want me. But maybe she does. Maybe she feels she can’t have both.
Call her. You don’t have to do it today. Or tomorrow. Or even next week. But you have to call her before it’s too late.
Before it’s too late.
I lie back and close my eyes. I let the memory of her soften at the edges until it’s a promise instead of a wound. When I open them again, my trophies are still there, a monument to who I once was.
The next minute, I reach for my phone. I don’t dial. Not yet. I just hold it, feeling its weight in my palm.
Not today.
Not yet.
But soon.