Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Henry
I’m clearing the breakfast dishes when Tabitha’s phone buzzes.
“Angie again?” I ask.
She flips the screen over. “No.”
“Spam?” I ask too fast.
“Probably,” she says without looking at me.
Buzz. Again.
My jaw clicks. Zach lifts his head. I go to the sink and rinse the dishes.
“Jesus.” I set down a mug harder than I mean to. “Who is it?”
She sighs. “Does it matter? I’m not going to reply.”
“Him.” All I need to say.
Everything in me goes tight. The rescuer. Right. The man who found her, who saw her shaking and put his coat around her shoulders and got to be the hero. My stomach turns over, hot and stupid.
“What does he want?” I ask like it’s my business.
“He’s just checking in,” she says.
“Checking in,” I echo, and I hate how it sounds in my mouth.
She flips the phone fully face down. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That tone. Like I’m sneaking around with some other guy while we’re…” She gestures between us. “Whatever this is.”
I laugh once. “Fine.”
“I’m here, aren’t I? With you.”
“Because my sister booked you a relaxing weekend,” I snap. “You wouldn’t have come for me.”
“You wouldn’t have come for me,” she retorts.
“You’re really going to go there? As I’ve told you a dozen times, I was ready to drive to Boulder before my own house tried to kill me.”
She winces.
“And I asked for you in the hospital. You.”
“You did. And you have no idea how much I wanted to say fuck everything and go to you.” She purses her lips. “But—”
“But the seminar was too important. I know.” I cross my arms. “You’ve mentioned it a hundred or so times.”
“That’s rich.” She balls her hands into fists. “It’s been three weeks, Henry. Three weeks. Maybe you couldn’t drive until now, but you could have picked up a phone if you wanted to talk to me. This works both ways.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
“Fuck you too.” She stands. “You want me to go?”
“No.” Too loud. The room shrinks. I rub my hand against my temple. “No.”
She stares at me a beat. “Then stop picking fights you don’t want to finish.”
Something cracks. Maybe it’s me.
“I watched you last night,” I say. “You—” I break off, see the heat rush her throat. “You were with me. You were with me. And now your phone is buzzing because some other guy wants to make sure you ate dinner.”
Her mouth tightens. “He’s a decent man who helped me when I needed help.”
“I helped you when a man had a gun pointed at your head.” It comes out harsher than I intend.
The memory hits like a flash-bang. The feel of gunmetal, the yelling, the split-second decision that cracked my world in half.
The gun was technically pointed at Jason, not her, but she was in harm’s way. Ralph wasn’t going to leave witnesses.
She flinches, just a little. “I know.”
“Do you? Do you know what it’s like to see a face every time you close your eyes? To feel the recoil in your bones when you try to sleep?”
I hate the words.
Because she does know. Now. She may not know his face, but she sees him. She has nightmares. I witnessed one.
“You need to stop that,” she says. “I know you’ve been through trauma. Probably worse than mine. But stop. It’s not a damned competition, Henry.”
I open my mouth to speak, but she stops me with a gesture.
“You told me,” she says, more calmly than I deserve, “that we didn’t have a future. At the ranch. After the wedding. Your words, not mine. How was I supposed to know you had decided to come after me?”
I grab the back of a chair. “I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”
Her laugh is soft and stunned. “That one felt pretty specific.”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “I wanted you so bad I could barely see straight. That was the problem.”
“Explain how wanting me equals ‘no future.’”
“Because wanting turns into more,” I say. “And more turns into promises I don’t know if I can keep. Not when I’m a fucked-up mess.”
Her eyes flash. “So you decided for both of us.”
“Yes,” I say, because lying now would be pointless.
She shakes her head slowly, like she’s trying to dislodge the past three weeks from behind her eyes. “You don’t get to burn the bridge and then be angry I found a raft.”
I take a step around the table.
She doesn’t move.
“I’m not angry you had a raft.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I’m angry the raft texted you here,” I say. “I’m angry he gets to be uncomplicated.”
“Uncomplicated?” She huffs. “You think my life is a choose-your-own-adventure with all the traps clearly labeled?”
“I think you deserve easy.” I stop an arm’s length away. “And I’m not easy.”
“Finally,” she says. “Truth. We did promise each other honesty, after all.”
She looks at me, really looks, and I feel it like her hands are on my ribs, like the way she touched me last night when I moved inside her.
“I didn’t come here for Lance,” she says. “I didn’t come here for you, either. I came because Angie invited me, and I finally agreed that I needed to get away. That’s why I came.” She grabs my shoulders. “But I stayed for you, Henry. For you. And I’m tired of running from the thing I want.”
“And what is that?” My voice is a rasp I don’t recognize.
“You,” she says.
Her word lands low and bright in my chest.
I drag a hand down my face. “Okay. Fine. I’m mad. I’m jealous. I’m every stupid thing a man is when he realizes too late that he set his own house on fire.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not fair.”
“I know.” I hold her gaze. “Neither was telling you we had no future when what I meant was I didn’t know how to be a man with a past that ugly and still deserve you.”
She goes still.
The words spill out of me now. “I killed him. And every time I close my eyes I see his face and I hear the shot and I know I’d do it again.
Every damned time. To save Angie. To save Jason.
To save you, Tabitha. It was the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it.
How do I live with that? Being glad I ended a life? ”
“Henry—”
“How do I tell you to bet on me when I don’t recognize myself in the mirror yet?”
Her eyes shine. With anger? Something else? Hell if I know. “By not making my choices for me.”
I close the last space between us. It feels like stepping off a cliff and discovering I like the fall. “I lied,” I say, steady now. “At the ranch. I lied because I was a coward and because I thought keeping you from me would keep you safe.”
“From what?” she asks, a whisper. “From your feelings?”
“From me,” I say. “From the parts of me that break things.” I breathe once, twice. “I’m not fixed. I don’t know if I ever will be.” Another breath. “But I want you. In every way that counts. And if there’s a future left that has my name in it, I want yours written next to it.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. The only sign she’s breathing is the flutter at the hollow of her throat.
“Say the word,” I tell her. “Tell me to walk away, and I’ll try. I’ll fail and try again and fail prettier the second time, but I’ll try. Or tell me to stay, and I will. I’ll stand here and say out loud that I was wrong.”
She steps into me. “If you didn’t mean it,” she says, voice shaking and sure at once, “then prove it.”