Chapter Eleven #2
But Audra’s words were hard, surprisingly hard from such a soft woman. “You can. You should. You got married. You made vows. The least she could have done if she wanted to break them was tell you that. Up front. And what about him? Your friend? He owed you more. Better.”
Copeland shook his head. Maybe that wasn’t altogether untrue, but… “It’s complicated.”
“I don’t doubt it, Copeland. And no one’s a mustache-twirling villain here, but the truth is pretty simple. Hard, but simple. They wanted the easy way out, and you don’t get to blame that on yourself.”
He let out a long breath. Wondering if he’d ever feel more like a stab-wound victim, always just barely surviving bleeding out.
It was easier to blame himself, because then he could live with it. If it was his fault, his mistakes, then he deserved it. And he handled that a lot better than thinking he didn’t.
“So your wife and your best friend betrayed you. And they were wrong,” Audra said, so firmly, like she knew, even though she’d never met Ethan or Danielle. Never known him as he’d been back then.
It was disorienting.
“She was pregnant. Was it his?” She asked it so matter-of-factly, but it didn’t make him feel matter-of-fact. Nothing could.
“Before I knew she was pregnant, maybe even before she knew, Ethan was shot and killed in a hostage situation. It was rough. I thought it was odd how hard Danielle took it, but then I decided it was about…me. She was worried it could happen to me. It changed my perspective. I realized all the ways I’d been failing at being everything outside of a detective.
Then she told me she was pregnant and I…
I wanted that. A shot at that. The kind of family I’d had growing up.
My parents are great. My childhood was great.
I just thought, hey, I can make that happen.
I could learn something from losing Ethan. It wouldn’t have been in vain.”
Sometimes, he wondered if that had been the worst part. That he’d wanted to make something good out of the bad and just gotten more and more bad in return.
“It lasted a few months. I went to appointments. We started planning a nursery. I thought…things were going to be okay. I was going to make up everything I’d screwed up.
Then one night we got in a fight. I don’t even remember about what.
Something small, I’m sure, and she said she wished it was me that had died instead, at least then the baby’s real father would be around. ”
Audra touched him then. Her hand over his fist. He hadn’t realized he’d curled it on the table, but he could still see it in clear, perfect color. The anger, the bitterness, the hate on Danielle’s face.
And then, the ensuing miserable guilt.
She’d apologized, but it had broken something. For both of them. And even when he’d offered to stay out of some kind of misplaced duty, she’d refused.
“She apologized, and after we’d calmed down, I offered to stay. Start over. But… She just wanted me out of her life. A fresh start. Her and her baby. The end.”
And that had been that. She’d walked away, and there’d been no way to make her stay. No way to repair what she’d broken. Except to pretend like they’d broken it together. Pretend like the kid he never met didn’t mean anything to him. Just…pretend, and pretend his way into being someone else.
“I tried to… I don’t know. Keep working. Keep living. But I was someone else. I’d lost everything, even that…core of who I was. I couldn’t stay there. I wasn’t me anymore. So that’s why I came here. To be someone else.”
It sounded ridiculous when he said it out loud. So why had he? Why had he let Audra drag this out of him? It was so…
“I know how that feels,” she said very quietly. So quietly, he had to lift his head, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming she’d said those words.
She wasn’t looking at him. She was frowning at the kitchen sink, but her hand was still over his.
“To feel like two different people. Before and after, even if I didn’t leave.
Everything in my life is before my dad died, and after my dad died.
And not in that sort of…grief way. In an angry way.
That loss of something that wasn’t right, wasn’t fair.
It’s…sharp, so it just sits there. Bitterness.
I don’t like to be bitter. I don’t like the way it…
infects everything, and the people I love.
So I liked it like that. Before. After. I could be someone else after. ”
Why should she understand? Why should she be the one to hold them accountable? Why should this unplanned forced proximity have led him here, talking about things he’d wanted to bury and leave behind?
Except he hadn’t left anything behind. The past always clung to him. A layer of something he’d never been able to wash off. Weights that had stayed right there, his whole time here.
Until now. Somehow, she’d been right. Laying it all out—from start to finish—was a weird kind of exorcism. He’d always hate it. That betrayal would always be a part of him. The loss of a child that wasn’t even his.
But…there was something about laying it all out to someone who hadn’t been there, didn’t know anyone, so stoutly saying what he’d always felt deep down, always tried to talk himself out of.
No matter what he’d done wrong, they had been wrong to hide it from him. Danielle had been wrong to let him think he was going to be a father. They had been cowards, and he wasn’t perfect, God knew, but he’d always been honest.
“You know, I kept this secret from Rosalie for years. I mean, years. And I finally told her last year. I didn’t want to tell her.
I hated telling her, but I had to. And then, I felt better.
To not have it anymore. To be able to tell her everything I felt.
You just have to be able to let it go sometimes. ”
“What was the secret?”
She pulled her hand away from his, looked down at her plate, poked at what was left of her eggs.
“Oh, I’d just sort of… Our parents sucked.
Always. I was pretty aware of it, but Rosalie was younger.
So I just…did a lot while we were growing up so she didn’t know how little they cared about us.
I made sure my parents paid attention to her, wished her happy birthday, got her presents—that kind of thing.
I did things for her and gave credit to my parents.
So, in a weird way, when we found out about my dad’s second family, it hit her harder.
Because she’d idolized him, but what she really idolized was the version of him that I’d created. ”
He could only stare at her. It was completely and utterly selfless. She hadn’t done it for herself. Just for her sister, and even if it had backfired a little, she’d had the best of intentions. She even felt guilt over those best of intentions, like it was somehow her fault.
He had never met someone so bound and determined to hoard every responsibility for themselves, and he imagined she’d just been soldiering that weight her whole life. The weight of this ranch and her sister.
She wrinkled her nose. “I guess that doesn’t do anything to deny the martyr claims.” She got up, took their plates and crossed to the sink.
He grabbed the glasses and followed. He could say something nice. He actually found that he wanted to, but it was dangerous ground here. He recognized that enough to agree with her. “No, it sure doesn’t.”
She started rinsing off the plates. “I guess I am.” She shrugged. “It is what it is. And now we’ve gone down those little memory-lane trips, gotten to know each other a bit, we can call each other friends now,” she said, forcing some cheer into her voice. Then she looked at him and smiled.
Copeland didn’t get involved. He didn’t get wrapped up. He didn’t vomit out his past at the drop of the hat. Whatever she turned him into, it wasn’t him.
This wasn’t exorcising anything. It was dragging it all up and tying her to it.
And he wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting anything. Especially when she laughed. Especially when she looked at him like she was just as irritated she wanted him as he was that he wanted her.
When she looked at him and smiled and said they were friends. When she’d done something he’d stopped everyone else in his life from doing.
She stood up for him. Pointed out the flawed thinking that he’d had a role in what two people he’d loved and trusted had done fully behind his back.
Oh, he knew his parents blamed Danielle, and even poor dead Ethan, for what they’d done. But he hadn’t let them act on that, or say it to him. It had been easy to brush off any of their commentary as a parents’ blind eye to their only child’s flaws.
But Audra wasn’t blind. He hadn’t been exactly nice to her, even if he’d helped her. He didn’t think she had any pie-in-the-sky ideas about who he was. And still, she’d seen everything he’d laid out for what it was.
Wrong.
He’d never had that. Hadn’t let himself have it, and he wouldn’t have even all these years later, but it had just…
happened. She had just happened. And he didn’t know anyone like her.
Never had. She was damn confusing, was what she was.
One minute all soft and self-sacrificing, the next hard and demanding and always…
always carrying too many weights on her shoulders like she was the only one who could.
Her smile faded. She probably saw what was in his expression, but she stood her ground. He could walk away. He could—
But she stepped forward. She didn’t shy away from meeting his gaze. She had to see the conflict there, between the things he shouldn’t want and the things he did. And maybe he thought he saw the same things in her gaze. That was what gave him the permission.
Because if anyone deserved the things she wanted—even if she shouldn’t—it was this woman right here.
So he kissed her. Just swooped down and pressed his mouth to hers, settled his hands on her hips and drew her in.
He kissed her until he forgot there was anything else in this world except the feel of her mouth against his.
She kissed him back. That impossible mix of sturdy and soft. Demanding and giving. And when she leaned against him, of her own volition, he felt like he’d won a war.
It wasn’t wild so much as rooted. Tangled. It felt like being pulled under and into something he didn’t understand, or maybe was afraid to. But the honeyed pleasure of the taste of her in his mouth coated any fear.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned into him fully.
He would have leaned right back, but something flickered in his peripheral vision.
For a second, he thought maybe he was seeing stars, but it penetrated.
How wrong it was. The flicker against the dark.
He managed to get his mouth off hers, turned his head and…
“Audra. Out the window. Fire.”